The Power of Awe in a Charlotte Mason Education

As each of my children graduated, I found myself surprised by the people they had become.

I only had my own experience of early adulthood to compare them to, and they didn’t quite fit that mold. Over time I began noticing the same thing in other young adults who had grown up in Charlotte Mason homes. For a while, I simply collected words in my mind as I tried to describe what I was seeing.

They were courageous—far more so than I remember being at their age. They were humble, but honestly so, not unsure of themselves. At the same time, they seemed to carry a quiet confidence in their ability to step into the world and do the work set before them. Perhaps most surprising of all, they appeared to know what that work was.

My children are now 21, 22, and 26. None of them have been part of the common statistic that most young adults change their minds several times about what they want to pursue at this stage of life. They have moved forward with a steadiness and clarity of purpose that I certainly did not possess when I was their age. And it isn’t only my own children. I have seen the same maturity, clarity, and confidence in many other graduates of Charlotte Mason homes.

For a long time, I simply observed it without quite knowing how to explain it.

Recently, however, I began reading Awestruck: How Embracing Wonder Can Make You Happier, Healthier, and More Connected by Jonah Paquette, a clinical psychologist who studies the science of well-being and the role awe plays in shaping human life. As I read through the research he presents, something suddenly clicked.

Researchers studying awe have found that experiences of wonder have remarkable effects on the human mind. Awe increases humility. It enhances creativity and curiosity. It encourages collaboration and strengthens social bonds. It turns our attention outward rather than inward. It makes us kinder and more generous, more compassionate, and less concerned with status or material success. Experiences of awe also increase life satisfaction and even improve critical thinking.

Paquette writes,

“Indeed, a key effect of awe is that we feel a sense of connection to other people, and to something larger than ourselves. Rather than make us feel isolated and alone, awe blurs the line between the self and the world around us, diminishes the ego, and links us to the greater forces that surround us in the world and the larger universe. But that’s just the tip of the iceberg. Beyond connecting us with others, awe spurs us to be kinder and more compassionate. It makes us happier, healthier, and less concerned with materialism. Experiences of awe spark curiosity within us and help orient us to what truly matters in our lives. In short, awe changes us in the most incredible of ways.”

Reading those words, I could not help but think about the education our children receive when we follow the Charlotte Mason method.

Because awe does not only come from once-in-a-lifetime experiences like standing on the rim of the Grand Canyon or seeing the earth from space. Paquette explains that awe can be cultivated in smaller, everyday ways as well—through encounters with beautiful works of art, music, books, and the natural world.

In other words, through the very feast Charlotte Mason placed before children.

When we offer our children a steady diet of beautiful ideas, living books, and time spent observing the natural world, we are quietly filling their lives with experiences that inspire wonder. Day after day, year after year, these moments accumulate.

Nature study may be one of the most powerful sources of these experiences. A child kneeling to examine a spider’s web heavy with morning dew, watching a chrysalis open for the first time, or noticing the quiet precision of a bird building its nest is encountering something far larger than himself. These small moments awaken the very response researchers are describing: a sense of wonder, humility, and curiosity about the world.

If Paquette’s research is correct—and the evidence is increasingly strong—those repeated encounters with wonder are not merely pleasant educational experiences. They are formative. They cultivate humility. They strengthen curiosity. They shape compassion. They orient a young person toward something larger than themselves.

In a sense, we might say that a Charlotte Mason education gently “microdoses” children with awe.

And over time, awe changes them.

So as you begin thinking about the year ahead and the curriculum you will place before your children, remember that we are not only educating our children to pass classes, tests, or entrance exams. The ideas they encounter shape the kind of people they will become.

The books they read, the beauty they encounter, the natural world they learn to notice—these things quietly work on the heart and mind in ways we may not fully understand for many years.

Sometimes we only see the results later, when we watch the young adults they have grown into. And we realize that along the way, they learned not only facts and skills. They learned to live in a world that still has the power to leave them awestruck.