Vision
To cultivate the pursuit of wonder that awakens our souls to God, who is above all, through all, and in all. – Inspired by Ephesians 4:6
Mission
Sursum Corda provides a rich atmosphere of learning, inspiring children with a broad and generous educational feast that will challenge and inspire us as we nourish our souls on the true, the beautiful and the good. We commit to growing together as mothers, educators and spiritual influencers in our families.
Philosophy
We pursue Wisdom in accordance with the Classical Christian Tradition through the principles and methods of the Charlotte Mason philosophy.
“For what, after all, are principles but those motives of first importance which govern us, move us in thought and action?” – Charlotte Mason, Toward A Philosophy of Education
Class Methods
Sursum Corda offers a wide educational feast and encourages a vibrant relationship with all kinds of knowledge that find their source in God. The methods that foster delight in learning and help students begin to love and care for what they ought are incorporated in classes and whole community learning:
- Living Books: From the Early Years through Form IV all students use engaging books in literary form that captures the reader’s attention: “The ideas it holds must each make that sudden, delightful impact upon their minds, must cause intellectual stir, which mark the inception of an idea.” – Charlotte Mason, School Education
- Oral, Written and Creative Narration: The act of a knowing, whereby the student assimilates and internalizes knowledge for himself through retelling in his own words what he has read, is one of the truest forms of self-education. All powers of the mind are at work in the act of narrating and this method is used in all Forms.
- Methods of Keeping: Book of Centuries, portfolios, commonplace journals allow students to capture and catalogue the places, times, events, significant historical figures and the delectable knowledge they encounter throughout the year across all classes.
- The Great Conversation: Group discussions and experiential activities engage students within a community of thinkers, thus contributing to the conversations that have been going on through the ages about God, humanity and the world.
Charlotte Mason and the Classical Tradition
When one surveys the broad and generous feast that Charlotte Mason, renowned British Education Reformer of the late 1800’s, provided for her students, it is clear she deserves a prominent place among a long line of Classical scholars and philosophers. Beginning with the Greeks, this pursuit of wisdom and determination to define “education”, was adopted by the Romans, further developed during the Middle Ages and continued through the Enlightenment and was in fact the educational tradition Charlotte herself was fighting to preserve in the face of a more progressive model. Very early on, the Christian community adopted this method and, in large part, is the reason we have as much as we do of the tradition today.
What is the Classical Tradition?
Extending far beyond Classical Greece and Rome, here is what some of the greatest minds within the tradition have to say about education:
“The object of education is to teach us to love what is beautiful.” – Plato
“Educating the mind without educating the heart is no education at all.”- Aristotle
“But living a just and holy life requires one to be capable of an objective and impartial evaluation of things: to love things, that is to say, in the right order, so that you do not love what is not to be loved, or fail to love what is to be loved…” – St. Augustine
“Transmission of the soul of society from one generation to another.” – G.K. Chesterton
“Telling the truth to the last baby born.” – G.K. Chesterton
“The liberally educated man is at home in the world of ideas and in the world of practical affairs, too, because he understands the relation of the two. He may not be at home in the world of practical affairs in the sense of liking the life he finds about him; but he will be at home in that world in the sense that he understands it. He may even derive from his liberal education some conception of the difference between a bad world and a good one and some notion of the ways in which one might be turned into the other.” – Mortimer Adler
“The cultivation of wisdom and virtue by nourishing the soul on truth, goodness, and beauty by means of the seven liberal arts and the four sciences so that, in Christ, the student is enabled to better know, glorify, and enjoy God.” – Andrew Kern, Circe Institute
The ideas and philosophies behind the Christian Classical Tradition are big. They aim far beyond methods, scopes and sequences. They help us and our children reorient our ideas about education to understand that it is not merely about preparing for life, but cultivating the ability to truly live in the abundance promised in Scripture. The work and philosophies of Charlotte Mason are so valuable because they help bridge the gap between our modern world and this deeply philosophical tradition. Her principles and philosophies help bring clarity and structure. They provide us with a clear idea of how this beautiful approach to education can be lived out.
Charlotte Mason famously describes education to be a delectable feast and it is the Classical Tradition which provides the long and welcoming table for such a feast to be laid. At this table, in this tradition, we learn, are humbled by and glean wisdom from the voices of the past while participating in the Great Conversation that has existed through time, place and culture.
It is also at this table where we engage with those around us as we learn how to love the things that are lovely, to glorify our Maker, and better serve one another. In essence, to become as fully educated and fully human as we can.
Children are Born Persons
With more than 40 years direct experience working with and observing children, Charlotte Mason shaped an educational model that exalts Christ as Supreme Educator and honors children as born persons. Her Twenty Principles which are thoroughly unpacked in 6 volumes of the Original Home Education Series, begins with one vital truth that has profound implications – “Children are born persons.” With such knowledge, children’s minds are not seen as blank slates to be written upon or buckets to be filled with facts and information, but rather as a child who is wonderfully and fearfully made with a curiosity to know and ability to think and wonder about the world around him. The mind of a child contains powers of both reason and imagination. Mason states in Home Education, “Reason is present in the infant as truly as imagination. As soon as he can speak he lets us know that he has pondered the ’cause why’ of things and perplexes us with a thousand questions. His ‘why?’ is ceaseless.”
Just as a body needs proper nourishment to grow healthy and strong, so does the mind. There is a way that honors and feeds their growing minds with great formative ideas and a way that famishes and dishonors their minds sacred personhood.
“The mind is capable of dealing with only one kind of food; it lives, grows and is nourished upon ideas only; mere information is to it as a meal of sawdust to the body; there are no organs for the assimilation of the one more than of the other.”
Charlotte Mason, “Towards A Philosophy Of Education”
Sursum Corda seeks to honor a child by properly feeding their minds with a feast of truth, goodness and beauty. It is precisely because our children are born persons that we use the educational tools available to us:
“We are limited to three educational instruments — the atmosphere of environment, the discipline of habit, and the presentation of living ideas. The P.N.E.U. Motto is: “Education is an atmosphere, a discipline, and a life.”
Charlotte Mason, Home Education
Education is the Science of Relations
Another foundational and guiding principle of the Charlotte Mason philosophy is that “education is the science of relations.” From the time children are infants, they become intimately acquainted with the world through all their senses. Everything around them is a wonder and open invitation for exploration! As children grow older, their relationship with the world deepens. Exposure through literature, music, art, nature, history, science and more allows them to form more complex and enduring relationships with that knowledge. The more wide the feast, the more delectable the process of learning becomes and the more opportunities there are for nurturing relationships that lead to care, enchantment and delight.
“The question is not,––how much does the youth know? when he has finished his education––but how much does he care? and about how many orders of things does he care? In fact, how large is the room in which he finds his feet set? and, therefore, how full is the life he has before him?”
Charlotte Mason, “School Education”
Karen Glass, in her seminar, “Principles at the Helm” validates the sacred God-given personhood of a child that must not be encroached upon. “Education is the science of relations” is a universal principle, which rests upon the foundation cleared by the “code of education” in the Gospels:
“Take heed that ye OFFEND not––DESPISE not–– HINDER not––one of these little ones.”
She goes on to say, these two vital principles – “children are born persons” and “education is the science of relations” are like two torches that light the way. When they are internalized, they will shape our educational decisions and behavior.
“Wisdom, the Recognition of Relations––…Now what is wisdom, philosophy? Is it not the recognition of relations? First, we have to understand relations of time and space and matter, the natural philosophy which made up so much of the wisdom of Solomon; then, by slow degrees, and more and more, we learn that moral philosophy which determines our relations of love and justice and duty to each other: later, perhaps, we investigate the profound and puzzling subject of the inter-relations of our own most composite being, mental philosophy. And in all these and beyond all these we apprehend, slowly and feebly, the highest relation of all, the relation to God…”
Charlotte Mason, “Parents and Children”