This article was downloaded by: [University of Chicago Library]On: 14 November 2014, At: 09:25Publisher: RoutledgeInforma Ltd Registered in England and Wales Registered Number: 1072954 Registered office: Mortimer House,37-41 Mortimer Street, London W1T 3JH, UK

Educational ReviewPublication details, including instructions for authors and subscription information:http://www.tandfonline.com/loi/cedr20

The World‐wide Education Service: 100 years ofservicing parents as educatorsHugh Boulter aa World‐wide Education Service of the Parents National Educational UnionPublished online: 02 Aug 2006.

To cite this article: Hugh Boulter (1989) The World‐wide Education Service: 100 years of servicing parents as educators,Educational Review, 41:2, 181-188, DOI: 10.1080/0013191890410209

To link to this article: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/0013191890410209

PLEASE SCROLL DOWN FOR ARTICLE

Taylor & Francis makes every effort to ensure the accuracy of all the information (the “Content”) containedin the publications on our platform. However, Taylor & Francis, our agents, and our licensors make norepresentations or warranties whatsoever as to the accuracy, completeness, or suitability for any purpose of theContent. Any opinions and views expressed in this publication are the opinions and views of the authors, andare not the views of or endorsed by Taylor & Francis. The accuracy of the Content should not be relied upon andshould be independently verified with primary sources of information. Taylor and Francis shall not be liable forany losses, actions, claims, proceedings, demands, costs, expenses, damages, and other liabilities whatsoeveror howsoever caused arising directly or indirectly in connection with, in relation to or arising out of the use ofthe Content.

This article may be used for research, teaching, and private study purposes. Any substantial or systematicreproduction, redistribution, reselling, loan, sub-licensing, systematic supply, or distribution in anyform to anyone is expressly forbidden. Terms & Conditions of access and use can be found at http://www.tandfonline.com/page/terms-and-conditions

Educational Review, Vol. 41, No. 2, 1989 181

The World-wide Education Service:100 years of servicing parents aseducators

HUGH BOULTER, Director, World-wide Education Service of the Parents NationalEducational Union

ABSTRACT In the 100 years of the World-wide Education Service (WES), much ofthe original thinking of the founder Charlotte Mason remains relevant today. Theclientele may have changed but the philosophy remains much the same. CharlotteMason pioneered what is now known as distance learning in the Home-SchoolService, which was a system for enabling parents to educate their children at home,and with the majority of the families currently enrolled living overseas, this is themost enduring of her innovations. Adapting the scheme to modern conditions ofcultural diversity, to a wider range of clients, and to a process curriculum emphasis-ing thinking skills provides fresh challenges for the staff of the WES.

1 Introduction

It seems to me that we live in an age of pedagogy: that we of the teachingprofession are inclined to take too much upon ourselves, and that parentsare ready to yield the responsibility of direction as well as actual instruc-tion, more than is wholesome for the children. (Mason, 1886)

Charlotte Mason was probably born in 1841; she died in 1923. Although she wrotefor the last 40 years of her life, the main institutions by which she is rememberedwere all begun within the five-year span 1887-92. In July 1887 she began themeetings in Bradford which soon became national and which led to the formationof the Parents National Educational Union. September 1890 saw the first issue ofParents Review, a monthly educational journal which Miss Mason edited and whichstill continues today as the Journal of the World-wide Education Service (WES) ofthe Parents National Educational Union (PNEU). Soon after that she moved toAmbleside where she established her House of Education for training young ladiesto become governesses and teachers. It remains today as the Charlotte MasonCollege of Education. Meanwhile in 1891 she had begun the Parents Review Schoolsubsequently to become the Parents Union School and now known as the Home-School Service of WES/PNEU. In many ways this is the aspect of Miss Mason'swork about which least has been written. It forms a starting point for this article.

Dow

nloa

ded

by [

Uni

vers

ity o

f C

hica

go L

ibra

ry]

at 0

9:25

14

Nov

embe

r 20

14

182 H. Boulter

2 A Brief History of the Home School

The Parents Review School was first announced in early 1891 in Parents Review:"It shall be an unique school, for the pupils shall go to school and be taught athome, at one and the same time, and have the twofold advantages of schooldiscipline and home culture" (Mason, 1891). The school was to begin in the middleof June in order to "secure half a term's work before the summer holidays", but itwas also made clear that pupils could enrol at any time, an important principlewhich still remains.

Initially the scheme was intended for use by parents or governesses in the home.Programmes of work and timetables were sent out from Ambleside, "governess ormother simply carrying out instructions" (Mason, 1891). This was backed up by anexamination system which was deliberately open-ended and un-threatening, de-signed to assess what the children did know rather than what they did not.Interestingly the fee charged was by family rather than by pupil—5 guineas perannum at a time when a nursery governess' salary was only £20 per annum.

Information about the development of the Home-School Service is hard to comeby as Miss Mason seems to have kept the accounts to herself. Nonetheless in 1892the numbers are recorded at 65 and this had grown to 300 by the end of thecentury. At the time of Miss Mason's death in 1923 the numbers were still aboutthe same.

The picture, however, gradually became obscured by the use of programmes inschool rooms and schools as well as home-schools. Indeed, in some cases, onlycertain classes in the school would be using the programmes and the associatedexaminations. Some of the aspects of the early stages of the PNEU have remainedconstant while others have changed and are points which need to be discussedfurther. For example, the involvement in the full size range of education hasremained with some children being taught in families, some in small groups, somein schools ranging in size from under 10 to several hundred. The idea of a commoncurriculum has also remained although in recent years the emphasis had been verymuch on the needs of families rather than schools. The age range, however, haschanged. In the early years materials were available if necessary to prepare secon-dary-aged students for the Cambridge Local Examination. Nowadays the HomeSchool only goes up to 13+ but also includes a nursery course for 3 to 5-year-olds.The balance between boys and girls has changed too. Although the programmeswere always intended for both sexes, in practice girls tended to stay at home morethan boys,.especially with the growth of independent boys boarding schools—i.e.preparatory schools. The college at Ambleside remained firmly single sex until wellafter its transfer to the local education authority, Westmorland, in 1960 (Inman,1985). And in the period between the World Wars it is not insignificant that themajority of pupils at the growing number of PNEU schools in Britain were girls.Nowadays, while it is true that the 25 or so PNEU schools in Britain still largelycater for girls, the overseas work, whether through the Home School or in British-style schools overseas, is completely co-educational.

The clientele of the PNEU has also changed. In the early years, by definition, thematerials were only available to those who could afford them. Miss Mason,however, was anxious that her ideas should be made available to a wider audienceand certainly between the wars a number of local education authorities, mostnotably Gloucestershire, were using PNEU materials in their schools and sending

Dow

nloa

ded

by [

Uni

vers

ity o

f C

hica

go L

ibra

ry]

at 0

9:25

14

Nov

embe

r 20

14

World-wide Education Service 183

the examination papers to Ambleside. From the start there was an overseas elementand part of the history of the Home School has been a change from a largely UK-based clientele to one which is overseas. By 1950 the British and overseas enrol-ments were balanced 50:50. Today over 90% of Home-School pupils are livingoverseas. There are approximately 300 pupils in the Home-School Service and afurther 100 on the nursery education course.

3 The Philosophy of the PNEU

The first Annual General Meeting of the PNEU was held on 3 June 1890. ThePresidents were the Earl and Countess of Aberdeen. The 16 Vice-Presidentsincluded the Archbishop of York, five Bishops, the Head of a Cambridge college aswell as both Miss Beale and Miss Buss (Parents Review, 1890). The declared objectsof the Union were not only "to assist parents of all classes to understand the bestprinciples and methods of education...", but to publicise this understanding andto bring parents and teachers together. Education was to cover "Physical, Mental,Moral and Religious" aspects. Fathers were to be involved as well as mothers.

Although Charlotte Mason may not have been an original thinker (Coombs,1984, 1985), there is no doubt that the practical outcome of her thoughts wasremarkable. Coombs has traced Miss Mason's thinking back to Herbert Spencerand to Rousseau and certainly her emphasis on the importance of the individualchild ("Children are born persons") has a Romantic tinge to it. However, herthinking is not 'child-centred' in the sense that it is the function of the parent-teacher to foster what random stimuli interest the child. Rather the parent/teacherhas the responsibility for providing the child with a wide range of carefully selected,high quality materials which will stimulate the child and to which the child willrespond as he wishes. Having provided the initial stimulus the parent/teachershould adopt a passive role, what Charlotte Mason calls "masterly inactivity". Thecurriculum model is, therefore, one of content rather than process, but there is alsoa great emphasis on a wide range of practical and outdoor experiences.

4 The Curriculum

Those who were educated by the PNEU will often recall in later years the threethings they found most memorable: picture study, narration and the nature note-books. Certainly Rumer Godden, writing from Kashmir in the early years of theSecond World War recalls with pleasure:

[They] send material out each month, not only a good help but a life-linefor me; with every set of lessons they send literature, poems and extracts,well chosen, and also a brief study of an artist, say Michelangelo—with apack of reproductions which I valued. (Godden, 1987)

Charlotte Mason felt very strongly that children should have the best of what wasavailable, whether that be art, literature or music. There was to be no talking downto them. If they could not see the works of the great masters themselves, theyshould have high quality reproductions, a feature of the PNEU/WES programmeswhich continues today. Similarly with literature, children should have only the best,and from an early age, whether it be Shakespeare, Pilgrim's Progress or Plutarch'sLivesl

Dow

nloa

ded

by [

Uni

vers

ity o

f C

hica

go L

ibra

ry]

at 0

9:25

14

Nov

embe

r 20

14

184 H. Boulter

Narration or telling back was a particularly PNEU technique. From the age of sixchildren were encouraged to repeat the gist of what had been read to them whetherit had been a fairy story, a passage fom the Bible or from a geography book. Sadlythis practice has now largely lapsed but those who were brought up on it found it aninvaluable discipline. Perhaps with an increasing emphasis on listening and speak-ing skills this practice will be re-established.

The nature note books epitomise Charlotte Mason's emphasis on first-handexperience. "Every day's walk gives him something to enter: three squirrels in alarch tree, a jay flying across a field, a caterpillar climbing up a nettle.. ." (Mason,1886). The point is not only that children should be encouraged to observe andwrite from their own experience but that a wide range of experiences were a validbasis for investigation. The PNEU curriculum, therefore, in subject terms, happilyencompassed science, mathematics, geography, history, art, music as well asFrench, astronomy and physics.

When, therefore, we came to revise the curricula in the early 1980s we had littledifficulty in adapting Charlotte Mason's original ideas to the best in currentthinking about curriculum development. There were problems partly to do with thecontent model of curriculum thinking and partly to do with cultural diversity whichwe had to wrestle with and to which I will return in Section 9 of this article.

5 Assessment

Charlotte Mason's views on assessment were somewhat ambivalent. She seems tohave regarded exams as a necessary evil. Certainly when establishing the ParentsReview School (Parents Review, 1891) she is careful to explain: "the regulations willbe with a view to safeguard the children from worry and to give them the habit oftaking examinations as a matter of course". These examinations were often takenviva voce with an adult writing down the answers. They remained a feature of thePNEU up until 1974 and were one of the last instruments which linked the PNEUschools and the Home Schools. Nowadays assessment is rather more complicated.As far as the Home Schools are concerned, parents are asked to complete anassessment form at the end of each term commenting on various areas of thecurriculum and any difficulties which may have been encountered and sending insamples of their children's work together with their own marks and comments. Thetutors then respond to these assessments giving guidance on areas of difficulty andmeasuring the children's attainments both against other Home-School pupils andalso the schemes of work which the children are following. As far as overseasschools are concerned assessment is now largely conducted on the basis of annualvisits by WES staff and consultants to ensure that schools are working effectivelyand to recognised norms.

6 A Model for Distance Learning

Without realising that she was doing it, Charlotte Mason was one of the pioneers ofdistance learning and she created a model which was not only unique but which hasstood the test of time remarkably well. Given Miss Mason's emphasis on theimportance of individuals and the relationship between them, it is hardly surprisingthat the foundation of the present Home-School Service is the relationship betweenthe parents and their tutor, not the materials which are supplied—they are secon-

Dow

nloa

ded

by [

Uni

vers

ity o

f C

hica

go L

ibra

ry]

at 0

9:25

14

Nov

embe

r 20

14

World-wide Education Service 185

dary. Secondly, unlike many distance learning schemes, it is not a correspondencecourse, it is a system for enabling parents to educate their own children. In additionto content and, one hopes, process, the Home School also offers the possibility ofinteraction, especially between parent and child. The results can be spectacular. Thefirst Home-School pupil I met (at the time aged 11 and recently returned fromIndia) went on to obtain four A grades at A Level and a place at Cambridge: home-schooling, at the very least, did not seem to have held her back. To give a totallydifferent example, I recently met an Egyptian family who had translated ournursery education course into Arabic and were using it to great effect with theirfour-year-old daughter who had Down's Syndrome. Parents constantly refer to thejoy of learning alongside their children (Boulter, 1985).

A further aspect of the Home-School Scheme is that on the whole it does notsupply its own teaching materials. Again, following from Charlotte Mason's insis-tence on the importance of children having access to good books, much time andeffort is taken in selecting and keeping up-to-date the best materials that arecurrently available on the market. The programmes thus consist of notes ofguidance on how to use the books and materials which have been selected. In manyareas of the curriculum this presents few problems but when it comes to environ-mental work, given that we have families in some 120 different countries of theworld, there are difficulties. With this in mind we did commission specifically anenvironmental science folder called, in deference to Charlotte Mason, Starting froma Walk (Wilson, 1988). It consists of some 80 themes or topics which can be used invirtually every part of the world and includes the weather, the soil, the humanbody, as well as local flora and fauna.

While the main medium continues to be the written word, we also supply audiocassettes for French, music, movement and astronomy. In view of the widegeographic distribution and the remote location of many of our families, videocassettes are not yet practicable, but micro-processors are becoming increasinglycommon, especially for word-processing and data-handling.

It is significant, I think, that the Home-School Service no longer offers courses forolder students; 13 is about the age at which home-learning needs to focus directlyon the student rather than on the student through the parent. It is also significantthat the only two correspondence courses for younger children of which I haveknowledge—one American, one British—are markedly less successful in that theyare highly prescriptive and do not provide for the creative flexibility which is amark of the PNEU/WES scheme.

7 The Religious Dimension

Recent writing about Charlotte Mason has tended to underestimate the importanceof her religious thinking and has often dismissed her as yet another Evangelical. Wehave already seen the number of distinguished clerics who allowed their names tobe associated with the founding of the PNEU. However, Charlotte Mason's religionwas not merely conventional. It is clear that a visit to Florence in 1893, and inparticular to the Church of Santa Maria Novella, was a lasting and mysticalexperience for her. She came to see the whole process of education as being thework of the Holy Spirit: " . . . the great recognition that God, the Holy Spirit, ishimself personally the imparter of knowledge, the instructor of youth, the inspirerof genius". "The immediate point is that the teaching of grammar without pedantry

Dow

nloa

ded

by [

Uni

vers

ity o

f C

hica

go L

ibra

ry]

at 0

9:25

14

Nov

embe

r 20

14

186 H. Boulter

and without verbiage is, we venture to believe, accompanied by the illuminatingpower of the Holy Spirit" (Cholmondeley, 1960).

This religious inspiration does much to explain the dynamism of the early yearsof the PNEU movement. It is an area which more recently has tended to beneglected. It is true that missionary families still enjoy certain financial benefits andthat when the PNEU celebrated its Centenary in 1987 it seemed fitting to have aChristian service of celebration, but as a main thrust it has largely been dissipated.In this context it is interesting to note that a recent book on Christian educationwhich draws heavily on the thought of Charlotte Mason, For the Children's Sake(Macaulay, 1984), has obviously had a strong following, especially in the UnitedStates.

8 Funding

The whole question of funding, while seemingly mundane, is also fundamental toany discussion of the PNEU. As an organisation it has never, to my knowledge,sought grants or financial assistance from other outside bodies. It has therefore hadto charge fees for the work which it does and this has, willy nilly, put it into theindependent sector. Nonetheless, as already indicated, Charlotte Mason wished hermovement to be available to all classes of society and in the twenties and thirtiesthe programmes were followed in a number of maintained schools. Despite this,one is left with the inescapable feeling that during the earlier decades of this centurythe PNEU was very much an upper and an upper-middle class affair. One reasonfor this at least must have been the cost of the Home-School Service. Another wasthe influence of Miss Mason's eminence grise, Mrs Franklin, who did much todevelop independent PNEU schools in Britain (Gibbon, 1960) and a third was thecontent of the programmes themselves which I return to in Section 9.

Today the situation is rather different. We have already noted that over 90% ofHome-School families are overseas and, although we do not have exact statistics,the majority probably have their fees paid for them by their parents' employer. Inother words payment of the fees is part of an overall employment package.Certainly families returning to Britain as often as not return to the maintained as tothe independent sector and that is very much in our minds when choosing materialsand advising families. We also seek to maintain close links with both sectors ofeducation; it is no coincidence that I have the distinction of being both an associatemember of the Society of Education Officers and an honorary member of theIncorporated Association of Preparatory Schools! Our fees, which are approxi-mately £650 per pupil per annum, may seem slight when compared to independentschool fees, but are prohibitive for many families who wish to educate their ownchildren at home in Britain. The PNEU has been dogged by financial difficultiesthroughout its history and the fact is that employing tutors to work from an officein London, meeting families about to go overseas, and answering their queries andassessments is an expensive undertaking. Interestingly, an educational voucherscheme could lead to a re-vitalisation of the Home-School Service within Britain.

9 A Critique

Not surprisingly much that has been written about Charlotte Mason and the PNEUmovement has come from those within the organisation; they are therefore parti

Dow

nloa

ded

by [

Uni

vers

ity o

f C

hica

go L

ibra

ry]

at 0

9:25

14

Nov

embe

r 20

14

World-wide Education Service 187

pris. Nonetheless an attempt must be made to offer some sort of critique of themovement and its effectiveness with particular reference to its Home-SchoolService.

The most acerbic recent criticism came from the pen of Robin Tanner, teacher,etcher and Her Majesty's Inspector (HMI). After visiting a number of primaryschools in Gloucestershire in the late 1930s he writes "the dead hand of the PNEUlay heavily on the schools of this beautiful countryside..." (Tanner, 1987). Harshcriticism indeed and, although only part of the cause can fairly be attributed toCharlotte Mason, nonetheless it needs to be squarely faced.

When we came to revise the PNEU/WES programmes in 1981 I was conscious oftwo weaknesses. First, the lack of a critical awareness in Charlotte Mason's thinkingand throughout the movement; secondly, a lack of sensitivity to cultural diversitywhether this be within British society or in relation to other societies. I have alreadycommented on the fact that Charlotte Mason's view of the curriculum was largelyconcerned with content. This is essentially conservative and therefore a static point-of-view. Children were to be presented with high quality material, but who was todecide whether the quality was good? Bunyan's Pilgrim's Progress was always aPNEU favourite but I cannot be alone in finding it almost unreadable. In otherwords neither students at the College nor children in the schools and Home Schoolswere encouraged to question, or to be critical, or to form their own opinions. Isuspect that narration also fostered this attitude; pupils were encouraged to listenattentively and to summarise what they had heard; less frequently were theyencouraged to talk about it. This certainly seems to be what Robin Tanner found inthose Gloucestershire schools he had visited: "but when I talked to the children ofthese things they were uncommonly shy, and some very silent" (Tanner, 1987).

To encourage a critical awareness in the Home School is not easy; parents, likeCharlotte Mason, all too often see the curriculum in terms of content rather thanprocess and interaction. But if we are to take Charlotte Mason's dictum seriously—"children are born persons"—we must encourage them from the earliest age tothink for themselves. This is the basis not only of judgement in art, music, historyand literature, but also of problem-solving in science, mathematics and technology.Certainly our revised materials have tried to incorporate these aspects of thecurriculum but it is still, for example, difficult to find history books which offerexercises which are more than glorified comprehension tests.

The question of cultural diversity is more complex and has become more pressingwith the growth of our overseas work. Charlotte Mason had a single minded and'high' view of culture. One wonders just how appropriate the content of herprogrammes was for the primary school children in rural Gloucestershire? Forfamilies living overseas this is an even greater problem surrounded as they often areby different faiths and different cultures. Certainly we encourage them to drawupon their local experience, but what sort of history do you teach to Finnishchildren attending a British-style school in South Korea? Or what sort of religiouseducation do you offer to a family of 'born-again' Christian Tamils living in SaudiArabia? Our Island Story (Marshall, 1905) and the authorised version of the Bibledo not seem entirely appropriate.

There is much thinking still to be done. In practice we consider that, whilstoffering an essentially British-oriented curriculum as far as the selection of books isconcerned, we must encourage schools and families to draw not only on the countrywhere they live but also on their own personal backgrounds, especially where this is

Dow

nloa

ded

by [

Uni

vers

ity o

f C

hica

go L

ibra

ry]

at 0

9:25

14

Nov

embe

r 20

14

188 H. Boulter

not British. The sadness is that this richness of experience is not always recognisedwhen children return to ordinary schools in Britain.

10 Conclusion

The Home-School Service of WES/PNEU remains a very potent vehicle of distancelearning, especially for children between the ages of 3 and 13. The quality of thecontent remains as important as it was in Charlotte Mason's day. We have triedmore recently to emphasise the importance of skills and process as an essential partof effective learning. However, what remains unique and most effective is the scopefor interaction not only between parent and tutor, but between parent and child asthey learn together in the Home-School room. At its best, it can be dramaticallysuccessful.

Correspondence: Hugh Boulter, 'Lukers', 47 High Street, Theale, BerkshireRG7 5AH, United Kingdom.

REFERENCES

BOULTER, C.J. (1985) Home school questionnaire, The Journal of the World-wide Education Serviceof the PNEU, 20(3).

CHOLMONDELEY, ESSEX (1960) The Story of Charlotte Mason 1842-1923 (PNEU).COOMBS, M.A. (1984) Some obstacles to the establishment of a universal method of education for

parenthood by the PNEU, unpublished M.Phil. thesis, University of Aston, Birmingham.COOMBS, M.A. (1985) The Little Manual Called Home Education, The Journal of the World-wide

Education Service of the PNEU, 20.GIBBON, MONK (1960) Netta (London, Routledge & Kegan Paul).GODDEN, RUMER (1987) A Time to Dance, No Time to Weep (London, Macmillan).INMAN, J.P. (1985) Charlotte Mason College (London, The Cormorant Press).MACAULAY, SUSAN SCHAEFFER (1984) For the Children's Sake (Westchester, Ill., Crossway Books).MARSHALL, H.E. (1905) Our Island Story (Windsor, Thomas Nelson).MASON, C.M. (1886) Home Education (London, Kegan Paul, Trench Trubner).MASON, C.M. (Ed.) (1891) The Parents Review School, Parents Review, Vol. II (London, Kegan

Paul, Trench Trubner).Parents Review (1890) Vol. I (London, Kegan Paul, Trench Trubner).TANNER, ROBIN (1987) Double Harness (London, Impact Books).WILSON, R. (1988) Starting from a Walk (Stoke-on-Trent, Trentham Books).

Dow

nloa

ded

by [

Uni

vers

ity o

f C

hica

go L

ibra

ry]

at 0

9:25

14

Nov

embe

r 20

14