"Why Ambleside?" Hear from Our Alumni
In early January we held a chili dinner for alumni of Ambleside School in McLean, Virginia. It has been seventeen years since I took the helm of Ambleside, and sitting with these young graduates—high school students, college students, and professionals, I was reminded of the long road we are on with our students and the distant vision of growth parents and teachers need to endure the difficulties along the way.
One student was eager to share his latest wisdom from his freshman year in college:
“It’s so great that students at Ambleside listen to Mozart. It’s as if there is a distant drum beat that reminds me that there is something good and true in the world, and I can do something good and true in it. My friends at college don’t have this.”
What a gift!
An Ambleside education gives young people a distant drumbeat, an echo of something good, true, and beautiful! How can we, as parents, teachers, and leaders, keep from losing sight of this distant vision when our children are struggling right in front of us?
It is in the genius of Mason where we find clarity. She began her work in education with personal curiosity and a deep desire to understand how children learn best. She developed a philosophy of education based on natural law. Scanning the social climate of 20th century England, she gained a hearing with eager young parents and teachers who put her ideas into practice. Within half a century, young people across Great Britain were being educated with great books and worthy things in a manner that sparked and nourished a love of learning for generations.
Just a few weeks ago, my neighbor, who was educated in one of these British schools 70 years ago remarked, “You have no idea how much the education from those years has enriched my life in retirement.”
Mason says, “Our aim in education is to give a full life. Children make large demands upon us. We owe it to them to initiate an immense number of interests. Thou has set my feet in a large room should be the glad cry of every intelligent soul...The question is not, how much does the youth know? When he has finished his education, but how much does he care...how large is the room in which he finds his feet set?” (School Education, 170)
I have had the privilege of watching many young children, including my own five, struggle to find their way in a less than perfect situation at school. Perhaps it was a new teacher who resorted to punitive methods of behavior management. Perhaps it was the desk mate, who was rude or intrusive. It might have been the overwhelming math or grammar concepts where extra practice was needed—day after day, year after year.
The most resilient children have parents who are able to endure struggle with them, resisting the urge to fix it, change it, improve it, leave it, “supporting them in weakness and informing ignorance.”
What I discovered at that alumni dinner, that I had not understood before, is that an Ambleside curriculum and the Ambleside method sits with them too. This method of education, the relationships built between classmates around worthy books and things is a powerful tool for formation in children.
Many of these young people had struggled at Ambleside in some way.
Yet, day after day, year after year, through the books, the nature studies, the classical music, the art, the practice, the conflict resolution, these young people were nourished.
And now they tell their stories:
“As a child, I was very much what we might term a ‘student at risk,’ I struggled from an early age to master even the most basic skills in math, reading, and writing. But at Ambleside I was seen as a whole person and never just as the sum of my strengths and weaknesses. When I left Ambleside at the end of 8th grade I knew what I was capable of: I had learned resilience, hard work, and self-efficacy.”
“My parents chose Ambleside out of nowhere and I got to spend nine years of my life here—with these people....That’s what Ambleside does—when you get to high school, you don’t care so much what other people think of you. I’ll never have friends like I had at Ambleside.”
“I don’t know whether I am going to study the humanities or the sciences in college. I love them all.”
“I came back to teach at Ambleside because I wanted to be part of a movement that valued growth over grades, gave grace when someone needs it, and inspired students with hope and confidence in themselves.”
And this from a young alumna who lost her father in college:
“I can’t put into words what I felt during my Dad’s memorial service when I saw almost all of my Ambleside classmates there...I vividly remember feeling so known and loved just by their presence, because they were friends who I had grown up with.”
Sometimes as parents, teachers, and leaders, we allow the day to day challenges to cloud our view of the long road in our journey with children. Charlotte Mason, inspired by the Holy Spirit, has laid a good path for us; she invites us to press through the bumps along the way with confidence in the distant destination and the lifelong affections they are forming each day.
Ginnie Wilcox, Head of School