Angelica Kajiwara

The Crisis in Modern Education

Walk into any classroom today, and you’ll witness the same scene: students frantically memorizing facts for the next test, teachers racing through standardized curricula, and everyone focused on performance metrics rather than actual learning. We’ve turned education into an information delivery system, forgetting that we’re supposed to be forming human beings.

But what if there was a better way? What if education could transform not just what students know, but who they become?

Charlotte Mason, a 19th-century British educator, believed it could. Her revolutionary approach to education (emphasizing wonder, relationships, and character formation) offers a compelling alternative to our current system’s obsession with data and outcomes.

Who Was Charlotte Mason?

Charlotte Mason understood something we’ve forgotten: education is never neutral. Every classroom, every curriculum, and every teaching method shapes not just minds but souls. The question isn’t whether we’re forming our students. It’s what kind of people we’re forming them to become.

Mason’s philosophy rested on a radical premise: “Children are born persons.” Not empty vessels to be filled, not problems to be solved, but complete human beings deserving of respect, wonder, and the very best that human culture has to offer.

The Biblical Foundation: More Than Arguments

Mason’s vision aligned perfectly with the biblical call in 1 Peter 3:15: “Always be prepared to make a defense to anyone who asks you for a reason for the hope that is in you; yet do it with gentleness and respect.”

Notice what this verse doesn’t say. It doesn’t call us to win arguments or memorize apologetic formulas. Instead, it assumes our lives will be so marked by hope that others will be curious enough to ask why.

This is formation, not information. It’s about becoming the kind of person whose very presence demands explanation.

Why Modern Employers Are Calling for Character

Here’s where Mason’s century-old insights become startlingly relevant. The World Economic Forum’s latest reports reveal that employers are desperately seeking workers with character-based skills:

– Analytical and Creative Thinking (top workforce needs)

– Leadership and Social Influence

– Motivation and Self-awareness

– Empathy and Active Listening

These aren’t just job skills. They’re moral virtues. And while modern education scrambles to teach “soft skills” through emotional management workshops and ethics modules, Mason understood that character can’t be programmed. It must be cultivated through relationship, wonder, and time.

Four Pillars

1. Narration

In our age of information overload, Mason emphasized the art of holy remembering. Through narration (having students tell back what they’ve learned in their own words), she taught them to actively engage with truth rather than passively consume content.

Like the writer of Ecclesiastes urged, “Remember your Creator in the days of your youth.” True education anchors students’ identity in what matters eternally, not just temporarily.

2. Living Books Over Textbooks

Mason insisted on giving children “living books.” These are well-written works of literature that awaken curiosity and kindle moral imagination. She understood that “tell me what you read, and I will tell you what you are.”

Great books don’t just transfer information; they form souls. They prepare the ground for virtue by teaching us to love what is good and desire what is true.

3. Contemplative Learning

While our culture prizes the “rise and grind” mentality, Mason championed the sacred art of contemplation. Through nature study, students learned to receive wonder rather than extract data and to worship rather than merely observe.

As philosopher Josef Pieper noted, true leisure is “a condition of the soul”—a receptive openness that allows divine insight to break through. In simply looking at a flower with reverence, students encounter the Creator himself.

4. Slow Cultivation

Mason understood what John of Salisbury wrote in the 12th century: the human mind is like a spring garden that must be planted, cultivated, and harvested through patient, lifelong study. 

She rejected the modern rush toward immediate results, knowing that wisdom and virtue grow slowly, like deep roots that can weather any storm.

The Moral Leadership Crisis

Today’s headlines scream about corruption in leadership, ethical failures in business, and a general collapse of moral imagination. Meanwhile, recent studies reveal that moral leadership is “in high demand but short supply.”

Mason saw this coming. She knew that when education focuses only on skills and information, it produces people who “know the price of everything and the value of nothing.” We get technically competent individuals without the character to use their competence well.

The AI Challenge

As artificial intelligence threatens to automate many job-specific skills, Mason’s emphasis on uniquely human virtues becomes even more prescient. Machines can process data and follow algorithms, but they cannot:

– Wonder at the beauty of creation

– Form relationships built on trust and character

– Lead with moral authority earned through integrity

– Show empathy and active listening

– Navigate uncertainty with wisdom and humility

These distinctly human capacities—what Mason called the formation of the whole person—represent the future of education in an AI world.

Practical Applications

Mason’s principles aren’t just theoretical ideals; they’re practical methods that can transform any educational setting.

Replace worksheets and comprehension questions with narration and discussion

Replace textbook summaries with living books and primary sources  

Replace rushed curriculum coverage with deep, contemplative study

Replace behavior management systems with habit formation and character development

Replace standardized assessments with an authentic demonstration of learning through telling back

The Eternal Perspective

Ultimately, Mason’s vision calls us to remember education’s sacred purpose. We’re not just preparing students for jobs—we’re preparing them for eternity. We’re forming souls that will give account not just for what they accomplished, but for who they became.

In a world obsessed with relevance and utility, Mason offers something infinitely more valuable: transformation. Students educated in her methods don’t just acquire skills; they develop the kind of character that draws others to ask about the hope within them.

A Call to Action

The question isn’t whether Mason’s methods “work” in the conventional sense. Test scores and college admissions will take care of themselves when students are truly educated. The question is whether we have the courage to pursue formation over information, character over competence, and eternity over efficiency.

Our students, and our world, desperately need educators who understand that education is never neutral. In every lesson, every relationship, and every moment, we’re shaping the next generation’s capacity for truth, goodness, and beauty.

The choice is ours: Will we settle for producing efficient workers, or will we dare to form human beings capable of bearing faithful witness in a broken world?

Charlotte Mason showed us the way. The question is whether we’ll have the wisdom to follow it.

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This article is adapted from the research paper “Educating for Eternity: A Theological and Classical Response to Modern Education” by Angelica L. Kajiwara.