One of the blessings of Charlotte Mason’s methods is the flourishing that results. You don’t have to look very far to find thriving online communities discussing everything from cabbages to kings. Our feet have indeed been set in a broad place. But if recent history has taught us anything, it’s that being face to face matters. Local community matters. Yes, being relatively anonymous and having things on our terms is easier (think sweat pants, no make-up, sitting in your favorite cozy spot) but investing in real life CM community can be truly rewarding.
I had the opportunity to be a part of a book group reading through Brothers Karamazov this past year as well as a mom’s retreat where we explored nature together and discussed Fairy tales. Both of these events sowed into my life in meaningful ways as I watch my kids and myself getting older. I’m thankful to have a company of women close by who love the same things I do who I can share my life with. But it didn’t start that way. We all met somewhere along the line like C.S. Lewis described in The Four Loves when he said: “Friendship … is born at the moment when one man says to another ‘What! You too?'” It starts little by little working towards real life connection.
Book groups are a great spine for local Charlotte Mason community. It’s where we read together, learn, grow, think, discuss, and chew on the ideas that flesh out into real life. Charlotte Mason in Community is one source where you can find local groups or list yours. Facebook groups are another place to find or create local community. People are migrating towards homeschooling and are in need of help. Creating places where they can jump into something and begin learning and finding local community or even others who are in the same situation is significant.
Last year I was able to gather together with a group of young, new, just-starting moms and read through some of Home Education with them and it was so inspiring! Seeing eyes light up and hearts respond to the high calling of motherhood and the potential fulfillment of their desire for a great education for their children was such a sweet experience. What a blessing to be able to help someone open the door to all the glorious realms Charlotte Mason introduces us to.
The beautiful thing when you come together around Charlotte Mason’s ideas and set aside some of the particulars for the sake of community, like whose camp everyone follows, is that we find we have so much in common: Faith, books, nature, riches, handicrafts, the pursuit of truth, beauty, and goodness. A genuine group of interested people (as opposed to those looking mostly to promote themselves) just coming together around her ideas can create thriving community with interests in so many directions! The feast is broad. Communities can support and encourage one another, doing their best to maintain Charlotte Mason’s high ideals, while also being charitable towards others understanding the realities of daily life, family circumstances, and that we come from different pasts and are all at different seasons or places along the journey.
The thing about Charlotte Mason community is that it takes on a life of its own. Just as children are persons, so are mothers and parents and families and grandparents. When people are given the space to connect and share, all sorts of unique gifts and talents start coming out of the woodwork! We often feel the need to go online or far away to try to find the best Charlotte Mason things, but all the while we are sitting on acres of diamonds in our own backyard! Yes, there is a time and place for learning from outside sources, but so much can happen with the people right around us who are thirsting for community and place. People wanting to read together, to learn and grow together, to create, share, work with their hands, behold beauty, to be known and to know others and to journey down this road together.
In our area, community events beyond book groups have opened up spaces for people to come out and connect. One of those events for us, has been the handicraft fair. What began as a few people attempting to imitate Almanzo’s milk-fed pumpkin has grown into a bi-annual community gathering where, not only do the kids make and sell handicrafts, but people can come out and see faces, catch up and talk, make acquaintances, and forge friendships. People new to the area or just starting to homeschool have a venue where they can meet local families and learn about the community.
Other local handicraft fairs have popped up in nearby areas, bringing their communities together, creating spaces where children can create, display, play, learn economic principles on a small scale along with many life lessons. But it doesn’t have to be a handicraft fair, maybe it’s a book fair, an art display, a recitation or performance, a campfire with folksongs, a potluck, or something else. With Charlotte Mason’s feast there are so many possibilities. We have seen co-ops form, small retreats take place, plays organized, music performed, and more.
This will be our 6th year having a local conference and one of the things that we’ve focused on is having speakers from within our own local community share and contribute each year. We’ve had a local mom share about how she used Charlotte Mason’s methods through hard times as they fostered multiple children, another mom who was a public school teacher who now CM homeschools spoke on science, how to navigate high school and transcripts, another mom whose education was in language spoke on teaching Latin, another mom who came from a highly academic family shared about how a Charlotte Mason education taught her to truly learn for the first time, a father who specialized in music taught us how to teach solfage, and another mom whose specialty is in formal dance taught everyone how to square dance and so on and so forth. We have found all we need right in our own community and people are happy to share what they’re learning through Charlotte Mason’s ideas with the rest of us, and bringing that forward each year has helped us all grow.
We do live in a heavily populated area so we have many resources here, at the same time, there was a time early on when just a few of us met once a month and read and discussed Charlotte Mason’s ideas together and that was a rich time of learning and fellowship. Consider the possibility of real life connection in your area and you may find that the community you take pains to establish ends up sowing back into yours.
…for the village that can offer a happy community life, sustained by the people themselves, is able to hold its people.
~Charlotte Mason, Towards a Philosophy of Education, p.286