What does community look like at Ambleside? A good start would be to look at Charlotte Mason’s “Science of Relations;” right relationships to God, self, others, and ideas.
Charlotte Mason evokes several principles in her call for children to serve: Service is a deliberate work; service widens one’s sympathy; and service involves self-sacrifice.
While there are many aspects to maturity, there is none as important as the nature of one’s relationship with God.
Education is the science of relations, relations with saints and sinners, the past and the present, earth and sky, art and craft, work and leisure. Still, there is more. Nothing matters so much in the making of a man or woman as his/her relationship with God.
For Ambleside students in the home and school classroom, the handwork lesson is a time of rest, contemplation, joy and accomplishment. Emphasis is placed on the skill to be learned rather than the project to be produced.
