Thursday, April 27, 2006

PNEU Curriculum Although it is far from finished, I have decided to post my Charlotte Mason/Parents' National Education Union (PNEU) curriculum project. I have been working on it since 1998. The foundation is laid, the superstructure is in place, most of the walls are up, but there is still a lot of work to be done and I can only do it slowly. In 1998, I ordered a number of the Parents' Union School term programmes from the Armitt Library. When I discovered that they were insufficient to answer all my questions, I ordered more. I am very grateful to the Armitt for preserving this material and to Dr. John Thorley for photocopying and mailing it to me. I am working with programmes 90 through 100+ for Forms I-IV and programmes 133-143 for Forms V-VI. The programmes for the lower forms were published during the last few years of Charlotte Mason's life and presumably reflect her latest thinking about her curriculum. Unfortunately, there was not a long run of programmes for the upper forms from this period; however, all that I know of Elsie Kitching's (Charlotte Mason's successor) work convinces me that she was very loyal to her mentor's practice and would not have made more than minor changes. Some much later programmes that I scrounged from several kind people have been helpful in clearing up confusing points. I tried to compile the curriculum for each form, to discover how it connects with the curriculums for previous and succeeding forms, to write it up in a way that makes sense to people who are accustomed, not to fluid "Forms" through which children move on the basis of ability and achievement, but to fixed "Grades" through which children progress by age, and to pare away unnecessary details that would distract from its shape and flow. I tried to report without interjecting my personal interpretations, but sometimes judgment was required in the interest of simplicity or sense. To me, this compilation is not an end in itself, but only a necessary first step--learning exactly what Charlotte Mason did so that we, 100 years later, can begin to create on the basis of her experience and insight a curriculum for all the children entrusted to us. 9:34:39 PM

© Copyright 2006 Victoria Waters. Last update: 5/6/06; 9:13:12 AM.