Worthy of Celebration & Protection
Dear Parents,
When our teaching staff first gathered in August — before they were tasked with journals to label, bookshelves to organize, and desks to arrange — I asked them to think about their answers to a few philosophical questions.
These are questions that were presented at a lecture I viewed this summer by John Stonestreet, president of the Colson Center, on how to engage the cultural moment that we are in. (His talk was entitled Bene-Kuyper: A Modest Proposal. You can listen to it here.
What’s good that we can celebrate and protect?
What’s missing that we can contribute?
What’s evil that we can resist?
What’s broken that we can restore?
When I first heard those questions myself, especially the first one, I couldn’t help but think about education and the work of Ambleside School. I have seen with my own eyes and can testify that there is so much good to celebrate and protect between these walls.
But what is it exactly that’s worth celebrating and protecting? To answer that, I want to share with you a little bit more about my background with Charlotte Mason.
At around the ten-year mark of my journey with Ambleside School and studying the writings of Mason, I had a very distinct thought that settled upon me one afternoon while preparing for an assignment for the Master Teacher Training Program I was participating in.
“But by God could she know this” (“she” being Charlotte Mason).
I don’t know what I read at that moment that triggered the thought, but I remember thinking that in all the years of studying her writings, I never encountered anything that contradicted itself. It was all so thoroughly consistent.
A few short years later I came across a statement she made in her biography, The Story of Charlotte Mason by Essex Cholmondley, that confirmed that Mason herself believed what I had earlier suspected.
“I have not made this body of educational thought any more than Columbus made America. But I think it has been given me…”
She later added, “The thing we hold amongst us is too great to be lost and, I believe, is God-given.”
As I sit in classrooms, I am amazed at the education our students receive. Mason’s foundational idea of a child as a person directs all that we do as we go about educating them.
They are respected, not coerced or manipulated. They are given worthy things to do and to read and to look at. The daily result — delight. Our students love coming to school.
So I am writing to you today to celebrate the good work going on in each and every classroom, in the hallways, at morning assembly, and all that falls under the Ambleside name. It is all worth celebrating and protecting.
Gratefully,
Krise
