Homeschool Records and Lesson Planning - LessonMinder

Have You Caught the Spark? Homeschooling with Kindle

2012-03-06T06:00:00.009-08:00

by Susan A. Howard

It is no secret that I am a big fan of good literature and consider it the key component of any homeschool curriculum. I am also a fan of the sensual experience of holding, smelling, flipping through the pages of a book. So, I was convinced that I would not take to the new and soaring e-reader phenomenon until my husband bought me a Kindle two Christmas' ago.

What I have found is that whatever I thought I would miss in tactile pleasure I have regained in the enormous convenience, economy and functionality of the Kindle. Now, I am not promoting the Kindle over similar devices. I have experience with only one brand of e-reader. I expect that other devices have similar functionality, so if you wish to project my glowing review onto other devices feel free, as long as you don’t hold me accountable for any differences between devices!

For the purpose of literature-based homeschooling, the Kindle has proved to be invaluable for several reasons. The first is economical. At just over a hundred dollars, the Kindle costs less than many textbooks. When you then consider how much free and relevant data you can store on it, the economics make even more sense. Most of the classical literature you would want your student to read throughout his school years is available on Kindle for free. You can also send PDF and Word documents, study guides, articles and email attachments to your Kindle. Many of these documents can be purchased off the web or acquired for free. So, your overall documentation and materials cost for the school year would likely be less with than Kindle than without it if you and/or your students read a lot of literature during the year. And in the years to follow (unless you have a propensity to replace devices with every upgrade in technology) the costs should go down even further.

For convenience, you can’t beat the Kindle. Not only can you and your students can carry around most of their homeschooling material in a device as light as and as small as a thin paperback, but you can download additional material from anywhere in a matter of minutes. You can search the material in your Kindle easily, annotate the material, and lookup definitions instantly as you read.

Finally, especially when you use the available leather covers, the Kindle feels and handles very much like a real book, with this difference: It doesn’t become awkwardly unbalanced and fall out of your grip when you’re three fourths your way through a chunky novel like Les Miserables! And although it is probably not the best idea to read your Kindle in the bathtub, I do it anyway. I often forget I am not reading a paper based book.

So if you’ve been holding off buying a Kindle or other e-reader because you weren’t sure it would really meet your needs, I would encourage you to suggest to someone that it would make a really good gift!

(P.S. Amazon did not pay me to say any of this. I’m just sharing my personal experience.)

Homeschooling Ourselves - Benefits We Reap

2012-01-23T08:38:00.000-08:00

I have always contended that among the benefits of homeschooling, a superior education for our children is only one. Those of us who have muddled through home education would probably recognize the by-product of our own continuing education and personal growth. As I prepare files for the printer I realize that my own foray into the world of novel writing and publishing is evidence of the benefits I have enjoyed from educating my own children.

As a child I struggled with reading and writing. I come from a family of competent writers, none professional but all talented. My mother writes poetry, my eldest sister: short stories. Another sister has built a library of ideas for non-fiction and fiction if she could just get all the probono writing she does for organizations, non-profits and her husband’s job out of the way. I always wanted to develop the vocabulary, the clever phraseology and the logically structured arguments that my siblings and parents seemed to utilized with ease. But poor eyesight and an excessive interest in television discouraged my interest in books. Consequently, I fell behind in developing the necessary skills to express myself verbally.

My high school drill-sargeant-of-an-English-teacher taught me that clear writing comes from clear thinking. And clear thinking comes from access to the vocabulary needed to express abstract ideas. But I knew I could think. I knew I had good ideas worthy of defending. After weeks and weeks of painstaking work, rework, editing and advice, I managed to eek out my first A- on my final English paper as a senior in high school. To me, that effort meant that I had the heart and determination of a writer, but definitely not the required toolset.

But after my own children entered school, I quickly realized that they were not getting the education that I did, meager as it was compared to that of my own parents. I tried private schools and alternative ed and came to realize that it was up to me to make sure my children had the concepts and skills they would need to become self-sufficient, life-long learners. So I began homeschooling, not realizing that through my efforts to teach I would learn so much.

My three eldest children had vastly different personalities and intellectual strengths. My first was a natural reader and writer. She read incessantly and began writing and illustrating stories in the second grade. Her younger brother read above grade level but could hardly string a sentence together. The youngest was scary-smart in all areas, and challenged me to determine the difference between intellectual readiness and developmental readiness. When it came to teaching writing, I had a mind-bending range of requirements. Each child needed vastly different instruction, motivation and technique, and each offered me in return a different lesson on my own weaknesses and strengths as a writer.

My youngest daughter taught me to always start simple. Just the facts. Say it as plainly and succinctly as you can. My son, the middle child, taught me how to negotiate the logical flow of a piece of writing. My eldest taught me how to create a lasting image in the minds of my readers. And years of correcting vocabulary tests, essays, creative writing assignments and literature analysis gave me the facility of using language to express myself both creatively and logically. But it was when my daughter and I spent hours discussing her own attempt at novel writing that I began to see how much I understood story, character development, pacing, suspense.

So now that my three eldest are on their way to and through higher education, I have been able to put these skills to use for my own personal gratification and hopefully the enjoyment and benefit of others. My first suspense novel, Critical Mass, is now available on Kindle and will soon be available in paperback. I invite you to take a look. Hope you enjoy it as much as I enjoyed learning how to write it!

You can see my book on Amazon, here.

Education in Light of The Shallows: What the Internet is Doing to Our Brains

2011-11-01T03:00:00.000-07:00

Three weeks ago I wrote about the isolation of technology. Previous to that I posted my skepticism concerning technology’s role in education. In both cases I would have liked to have written a better researched paper on the scientifically proven effects of technology on the brain, but the demands of a weekly blog make deep research a lot more difficult. Still, I planned on examining a number of books, including Alone Together: Why We Expect More from Technology and Less from Each Other by Sherry Turkle, You Are Not a Gadget by Jaron Lanier and The Shallows by Nicholas Carr. Since The Shallows found its way to the library hold shelf first, that is the first one I’ve read. It was fascinating.

Because Mr. Carr does a much finer job of making “my arguments” than I could, I will just do a quick summation of the book and encourage you to pick up a copy for yourself.

The author’s main thesis is this:

The Internet is causing the human brain to lose its ability for deep,linear thought (i.e. reason and logic), creativity, sustained concentration, and long term memory while it increases our ability to multitask and operate on very superficial levels more quickly.

I will break down the thesis in bullet points below, and invite you to consider the consequences of increasing the use of technology in education and particularly in home education where we parents have complete control over our children’s learning environments.

Because our brains are plastic every conscious mental exercise we perform reshapes our neuralogical physiology.

Throughout history man has used technology to facilitate his interaction with his surroundings and has consequently increased in intelligence and mental capacity over time. Starting with representative symbols and growing through the development of written language, number concepts, cartology, time measurement, the invention of the codex (bound books), the printing press, and up to the emergence of electronic media, the human brain has altered itself in response to the varying demands made on it.
Nicholas Carr cites many interesting studies that demonstrate how stimulation of particular areas of the brain promote both the creation of new synapses and synaptic ports and the strengthening of existing synapses through a series of chemical processes.
Some of the neural changes have reportedly occurred in a matter of weeks, and in some occasions, hours.
The studies also reveal a diminished function in areas of the brain that are not exercised.
Throughout our lives our brains change and adapt based on the needs of the organism (us) as manifested by the activities in which we engage.

In response to web browsing and searching, where linear thought is replaced with rapid identifying, sorting and cataloguing, the brain is developing in the area of negotiating distraction, and diminishing in the areas of learning, deep thinking and long term memory.
Further studies suggest that the overstimulation of multimedia – especially online where multiple tasks are performed simultaneously - prevents our brains from processing information effectively, and results in diminished function.
The development of long term memory increases our intelligence. Long term memory results from the processing of short term or working memory by the hippocampus, a small centrally located section of the brain. The capacity for storing long term memory is unlimited. By allowing the web to retain data in place of our own active memory, we transfer less data into the long term memory and consequently starve our brain…reducing our ability to learn and to know.
Renowned thinkers, university professors, scientists and other influential members of our society are promoting the web as a replacement for reading, and are celebrating extensive use of the Internet as a way of freeing our minds for more important tasks than memorizing, unaware of its deleterious effect to our mental acuity.
By limiting our use of technology and balancing it with quiet contemplation, extended linear reading, and sufficient sleep, we can benefit from technology while protecting our mental assets.

In closing I’d like to quickly mention that while is well-researched and intelligent it is also oddly personal and very readable. In fact, I had a difficult time putting it down. I think you will enjoy and find it enlightening.

The Shallows:
What the Internet
is doing to our brains
Buy it now, from Amazon.com

Home is Where the Answers Are

2011-10-26T03:00:00.000-07:00

Of all the objections to homeschooling I have heard, the one that defeats me the most is some variation of, “Well, your kids are suited for homeschooling...they are so cooperative. My kids would never listen to me.” This argument makes unfortunate inferences that were probably unintended by the speaker like: “Homeschooling is easy for you because you have compliant children," (it doesn’t take effort, creativity or tenacity on your part... just luck), “I am an ineffective parent whose unruly children do not behave or respect me,” or "Homeschooling is a departure from what is normal or natural."

The objection is unfortunate because it is so misguided. But how can I argue? I cannot claim to know another parent’s child as well as he, and I certainly cannot attack his parenting skills on this basis. Furthermore, even among the homeschooling community more agree with his objection than disagree. And yet, I know that despite the many times I’ve heard homeschooling “experts” and supporters admit that homeschooling isn’t for every child, – every single child can learn well at home. How can I make this outlandish claim? Because every child does.

Before any child enters school he learns an entire language. Before age five most children learn social, physical and intellectual skills. They learn manners, their ABCs, simple songs, how to walk, run, how to tie their shoes. They learn their colors, shapes, numbers and nursery rhymes. At least, the children in good homes do. “But”, one might ask, “What about those less fortunate?” Well, they learn, too.

Every child learns at home, although what they learn varies. Children in less stable or dysfunctional homes may learn survival or coping skills. They may learn when it is best to withdraw, act out or manipulate a situation. They may learn how to meet their own basic personal needs and the needs of other siblings like acquiring food or seeking shelter. They learn how to protect their families from discovery from outsiders who may threaten what little cohesion the family does have. I know of one severely neglected child who learned to diaper herself at two years old.

That is not to say that all children should be homeschooled. The simple point is, learning happens. This is the mantra of the unschooling movement, and while I personally do not follow their formal method of education (or lack thereof), I can’t disagree with their premise. Children learn. At home and at school, in all environments and through multitudinous ways, children learn. Through the influence and efforts of parents, teachers and mentors and despite parents, teachers and mentors. This is not to say that parents, teachers and mentors are irrelevant. They may not determine whether a child learns, but they undoubtedly affect what a child learns.

I will assume that, if you are reading this blog, your children identify with the fortunate group who enjoy a healthy home environment. You may have taught (or will teach) your child to speak, walk, ride a tricycle, dress himself, and sing a major C scale forward and backward: “Do-Re-Me-Fa -So-La-Ti-Do-Do-Ti-La-So-Fa-Me-Re-Do”. You may have already taught her the sounds of most farm animals, that frogs lay eggs that hatch into tadpoles, and that the moon is in constant motion. Congratulations, you qualify as a home educator! It is not too far a leap from teaching these simple concepts to teaching formal curricula. You are a much more capable teacher than you may think you are!

A reasonable rebuttal would be that these are examples of information common to adults, every day experiences, skills and observations; teaching algebra, or biology or English grammar is another matter. What this rebuttal misses is that parents have a unique advantage over classroom teachers. We have the advantage of receiving our teacher’s “certification” over a much larger time frame than the professional teacher. We tackle what we know first, and grow with our children to handle the tougher subjects when the time comes. The parent of a preschooler has eight years to get algebra under her belt! So, we start with number concepts and counting, and progress to operations, place value, fact families, multiplication tables, fractions, negative numbers and by the time the kids reach the middle grades we are ready with at the most a little prep to move on to algebra.

Of course, fear drives the hesitation parents feel about taking on the awesome responsibility of formally educating one’s own child, especially those children who aim for a college degree. Take courage. The most brilliant minds of history were not the products of a professional education industry but initially taught by their own parents or tutors in the home. The task is not as impossible as it seems. Public education is a recent phenomenon in human history.

I do grant that today the sheer volume of information that children must learn by the time they graduate high school exceeds that required of children just decades ago. But the homeschooling parent does not teach in a vacuum, nor does he rely exclusively on his own knowledge and talents. There is a lot of help “out there” for homeschooling parents, just as there is for teachers.

You are a much more capable teacher than you may think you are, and you do not have to be an “expert” educator. We parents often presume that today’s teachers are wellsprings of knowledge. But certified teachers are actually practitioners of methodology, more sociologists than instructors. In order to manage classrooms of many children with various personalities, diverse cultures and a range of skill levels, teachers may be appropriately expert in child development, conflict resolution, standards and benchmarks or learning styles but less so in actual subject matter. Today’s teachers need not be grammarians, historians or philosophers. Some may be, but many are not. After all, material resources provide subject matter. Generally, today’s teacher’s facilitate learning, but they do not teach in the classic sense of the word.

Home is the most natural place for all children to learn. It is the first classroom for most American children. Why should that change just because the child has reached the age of six? Your children can learn at home. They already have.

Image: photostock / FreeDigitalPhotos.net

Managing Your Homeschool Schedule

2011-10-20T04:00:00.000-07:00

by Susan A. Howard

Many times over my ten years as a home educator, I tearfully swore I would quit. I wasn’t organized enough, I wasn’t educated enough, I wasn’t accountable enough and I was chronically exhausted. At the very beginning of my homeschool “career” I read a horrible homeschool preparation guide that warned me of the rigors of homeschooling and my own potential inadequacies. Consequently, I feared that I would destroy my children’s future, and the only thing that mitigated that fear was the recognition that my own education contributed less to my competence and success as an adult than the influence of my parents’ modeling. My parents were good communicators, engaged intellectuals and avid readers whose example conditioned me to use good grammar, calculate accurately and utilize encyclopedias. Formal schooling, at least in my case, was not the silver bullet that so many tout it to be.

But the reason for my poor self-image as a home educator was really not my education or my intelligence, but rather my time management skills. Had I been a professional teacher or paid tutor I would have external requirements - the expectations and scheduling of a third party - to keep me accountable. Lacking those externals, I had to somehow put together a schedule to which I would consistently adhere. This required me to weigh everything that we did as a family in terms of its affect on our homeschool goals. Understanding how to evaluate and incorporate a variety of interests, obligations and and chores into the homeschool environment did not come immediately or naturally. In fact, many of the ideas I will share with you below are ideas I only wish I’d implemented, hindsight being much clearer as we all know. Sometime we learn more from failure than success. Managing our homeschool schedule is an art that has developed over ten years time and continues to develop as I prepare for my preschoolers to enter the homeschool experience.

One may anticipate that the most time consuming aspect of homeschooling is teaching. In fact, those new to homeschooling will soon discover that the biggest drain on the homeschool family’s schedule and budget is maintaining the household. When a family spends the bulk of their waking hours out of the house, they impact the spaces and resources of external institutions – work places and schools. Utilizing one’s own home as the workplace or school leaves an astonishing amount of mess that janitors clean up after for those who work outside the home. We suddenly have more meals to prepare and clean up after, more sweeping, vacuuming, surfaces to wipe down not to mention the accumulation of books and materials in use every day! Then there is the consumption you just take for granted in other spaces – utilities, for example. It sounds almost ridiculous to mention, but it really has an impact, and the bigger the family, the bigger the impact.

So, balancing the homeschool schedule is a matter of efficiently completing household chores, school subjects, extracurricular activities and social events. Let’s deal with the simplest tasks first: household chores.

1. Share the burden. Include your students as household and homeschool team members

Your children can benefit tremendously by necessarily becoming a member of the household maintenance team, and you can enjoy some much needed assistance. Their traditionally-schooled peers spend much of their time away from home and family, and often do not learn simple life skills like preparing meals, maintaining a budget and using an ATM machine. My parents came from a very private generation. Consequently, I was not privy to our family’s financial position, aware of its burdens nor how my parents managed to support their family of six. I entered adulthood a financial incompetent and suffered a great deal for my ignorance. Had I been given the responsibility of keeping the pantry stocked within a set food budget, creating menus (a great time and money saver, by the way), paying the utility bills once a month, or maintaining the family cars, those tasks would have been less daunting when I struck out on my own, and my parents would have had more time to attend my weekend volleyball tournaments. By including your children in running the household and the budget you can contribute to their development as competent adults, their maturity, their work ethic and time management skills, and maintain the household simultaneously!

2. Determine your educational and parenting goals for your children/students.

The second step in managing your homeschool schedule is to determine what your goals are for your children. It is my belief that all children should prepare for college, regardless whether they actually attend college when the time comes. No mentally healthy child of average intelligence is incapable of succeeding in college prep academics. Many people would argue this point with me but I adhere to my opinion. There are levels of academic pursuit that do require superior intellectual talent. High school level physics doesn’t fall into that category. But other goals of equal or greater value than academics may appeal to your family. I, for example, want my kids to be relevant and contributing members to their community and nation. My children should also develop good Christian morals and discipline. Finally, I place value on my children finding the artistic and recreational pursuits through which they can fully enjoy their creative humanity: fine arts, photography, music, performance, or competition. You must determine those goals for your family.

3. Evaluate which courses and activities are essential to your goals, and incorporate relevant activities into the home school curriculum.

Having identified your goals, you can then choose the school subjects that promote them, and evaluate the activities that dominate your calendar in terms of their contribution to those goals. My homeschool schedule accommodates a college preparatory curriculum, as our priority. After the lesson plans for those courses are entered into the schedule, I can then work in other activities. I co-founded a local grassroots political organization to advocate for particular ideas and candidates. Because I want my children to become good citizens, I incorporated my political endeavors into their homeschool experience. They accompanied me to meetings, made signs for rallies and campaigned on street corners. On one occasion our organization interviewed a local candidate to determine whether we would endorse him. My daughter not only attended the event, but addressed the candidate with her own concerns, adding considerably to the conversation.

In another instance, I direct the choir at my church, which provides an opportunity not only to model our responsibilities to our faith community, but also provides an opportunity for my daughter to practice her piano performance skills. Providing liturgical music at church services is an important experience that augments my daughter’s music education, and reflects well on her high school transcripts.

4. Limit each activity to the minimum time needed to benefit from it.

Of course, there is only so much time in the week to include extracurricular activities along with academics, chores and “down time”, regardless of how worthy the activities are. You can either cut out those activities that do not advance your goals, or you can rotate activities seasonally. You may have to do both. Rather than singing in the church choir year-round, perhaps your children could join the Christmas choir. Have your athlete choose one or two sports, rather than three or four. A debater could engage in speech summer camp rather than competitive speech club during the school year. If you limit your activities seasonally, everyone can have their various needs met without risking the academic schedule and your sanity.

5. Adopt a scheduling method that works best for you: daily planner, software program or online service.

Knowing then which subjects and activities will dominate your week, your next task is to find a scheduling tool that works for you. There is no shortage of scheduling methods: a refrigerator calendar with a simple to-do list, a paper-based homeschool day planner, spreadsheet software and even a full service online organization and record keeping service like LessonMinder.com. Methods are individual, and although I have my opinions on which solution is best, the most important thing is that you have a solution of some kind. Too many homeschoolers resort to boxes of graded (and sometimes ungraded) assignments and could not report to a third party how their children are progressing until they have succeeded at some standardized test.

The beauty of an online service like LessonMinder.com is that after set up is complete, maintaining records, grading and providing convincing and professional quality documentation that will keep the doors open for your children to access higher education and financial aid, is easy and reassuring. By simply correcting assignments and entering grades into the same online day planner that your children use to keep track of their daily assignments, you are also automatically if not unconsciously building a cumulative GPA, generating an official transcript and keeping your children on track. Additionally aided by the curriculum suggestions, recommended book lists and homeschooling resources, a LessonMinder.com account is well worth the small monthly service fee. But whether or not you track your students by calendar, notebook, software package or online service, have some kind of daily planner is essential.

6. Develop a consistent routine of flexibility

Many homeschoolers – especially unschoolers – bristle at the idea of a day planner and a routine. They believe that children need the time and flexibility to have ideas develop naturally and pursuits spontaneously engage them. They are right. But allowing for down time and flexibility does not necessarily conflict with maintaining a strict routine. What some of these advocates for freedom and spontaneity do not recognize is that as creatures of habit, human beings respond well to routine, especially children. They like the security that comes with knowing what comes next, and what is expected of them. Predictability is as comforting as spontaneity is exciting and both comfort and excitement are positive experiences. Besides, routine is not necessarily synonymous with rut, monotony or banality.

There are many ways you can turn a regularly scheduled activity into a cherished and anticipated time. A friend of mine starts every morning very early. Her children and she are schooling by 6:00am, but if you were a fly on her wall you might not have noticed. Before six, “Mary” gets up, makes her coffee and two cups of hot cocoa and meets her two children back in her bed. There, the three snuggle up with their cozy beverages and warm blankets and read aloud Sophocles, or the Founders, Shakespeare or Lord of the Rings…whatever they happen to be assigned for reading. Then they talk about what they have read and after an hour or so they go downstairs for a warm, home cooked breakfast. They dress, do their chores, which may include cleaning out the chicken coop and feeding the horse, and then shower and change for the rest of their day. By 8:00 in the morning they are wide awake and fully engaged. Once a week her son takes flying lessons and will soon acquire his pilot’s license, and every Saturday her daughter rehearses with the Seattle Youth Symphony. A routine like that can hardly be considered a rut.

But acknowledging the importance of flexibility, how would one schedule unscheduled time? One year, I experimented with the four day work week idea. We only schooled Monday through Thursday. Friday – all day – belonged to my kids. No chores, no required school work, no obligations of any kind. Just as often as not, my children chose to use the day to lighten their workload on school days. They slacked off a bit during the week and made it up on Friday. That was fine with me because they had made their own decision about it, and that was partially the point – giving them some reasonable control over their own scheduling. My friend, mentioned above, reserved mornings for chores and school work, and left afternoons free for her children to disappear into the backyard fort, into a good book, or whatever else interested them. Then evening scheduling kicked in once again with ballet, boy scouts and Tai Kwon Do.

7. Experiment and Enjoy the Adventure!

Every homeschool environment is unique. It is one of the things that makes home schooling the best educational option for all children. The education is personalized, targeted and one-on-one. There is no one solution that works. Experiment. Be creative. Don’t worry about trying new things, and changing course. You have to find the way that suits your family and your children. So rather than worry about your own lack of discipline and the chore of scheduling, engage the task as an adventure of discovery. That’s what this journey is all about!

Image: Stuart Miles / FreeDigitalPhotos.net

A Sea of Remote Islands: The New Isolation

2011-10-11T03:00:00.000-07:00

What do the following vignettes have in common?

A group of neighborhood children playing tag in the street;
A family of five sitting down to dinner;
A passionate discussion between young people around a campfire;
A crowded community dance.

They were all once common in American life, but are increasingly rare. I find it very ironic that as the world has gotten smaller, and tools designed to connect us, from the telegraph to the Internet, have progressively grown to define our global, technology-oriented culture, individuals have become more isolated from one another. I started thinking about this when I discovered a social network web site dedicated to bringing like-minded people together.

My family structure is atypical. There is a thirteen year span between my third and fourth children, and then a fifth follows another, two years behind. So I have two sets of kids – three young adults and two toddlers. Finding other women with whom I can relate in my unique circumstance is difficult. So, as a way to meet new friends, I started an online group for moms in my area who have similar family compositions.

Poking around this group web site, I started to find highly segmented, targeted groups of people: Wiccan homeschoolers of Asian descent, Miniature Schnauzer-loving Conservative Democrats, the six-fingered senior citizen group, and of course mine, the moms-over-40-with-huge-age-gaps-between-children group. While browsing these groups, a sudden feeling of loss came over me. Although on the one hand it is great that we have services to help us find a community in which we can belong, especially when our individualist culture has destroyed the traditional neighborhood and our new found moral relativism has dismantled the cultural homogeny of an earlier time, there is on the other hand a problematic consequence. We are fostering a society of isolated individuals who circulate in evermore microcosmic groups and more narrow and superficial relationships, creating cultural isolation that in some respects narrows to the point of narcissism.

In the normal course of the day, except in cases of extreme crisis like national disaster, or large scale threat, we focus almost exclusively on ourselves. We drive as if the road was our private domain. We walk down city streets with earbuds in our ears, our eyes glazed over by inner thoughts generated by the musical theme in our heads. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve turned around in a store in response to someone addressing me, only to find that they were talking into a cell phone ear device, having a very private conversation in a very public place. Our fellow man has become window dressing, just another product on the shelf, the potted plant on the sidewalk.

We see evidence of our detachment in the erosion of common courtesy in public. Men spit, anywhere, anytime. Middle-aged men fail to offer seats to the elderly on subways and commuter trains. Adults swear in front of young children. People talk through movies in the theatre, or sing along loudly at a $100 concert by their favorite performer, totally unaware that those sitting next to them paid to enjoy the performer, not the off-key fan. And why not? Who are you to tell me what to do? I have a right to this and that. You see, it is all related to our highly customized pursuit of our own interests, goals and desires in disregard of those who really don’t exist except as window dressing. This is not a new complaint, of course. Big cities have had this problem for as long as there were big cities. But this attitude can now be found in all corners of America – even the smallest of towns. I live in a town of about 30,000 and witness this behavior daily.

The customized, personalized lifestyle counteracts the positive impact of diversity – the ability or at least the opportunity to practice relating with others, particularly those who have different perspectives. I don’t have to deal with people with whom I disagree, do not understand or do not like. I do not have to consider ideas with which I am uncomfortable. I do not have to be made to feel that I am wrong, or misinformed. I have personalized everything in my life – my entertainment, my politics, my education, my relationships and even my religion. Everything and everyone that does not fit my mold is expendable. The result is that our nation is increasingly fractured not just politically, as has been the most recent charge, but socially as well.

The fracturing of our society is certainly not a new phenomenon. We have always struggled with divisions based on race, ethnicity and social status. But our niches are growing more myopic and our personal environments more controlled. Consequently, we can cut ourselves off from general society far more effectively than in the past.

So, what does any of this have to do with homeschooling? Well, the fractured society impacts homeschoolers even more than the general public because although they are better socialized than the average traditionally schooled child, their parents must work harder to create peer opportunities for them. As I mentioned in a previous blog, many communities, particularly small towns, revolve around the public school system and homeschoolers are often observing from the sidelines. Because of their unique lifestyles, they must form community around homeschool co-ops, religious institutions, or online groups. These methods of building community tend to create far narrower homogeny than the neighborhoods of yesteryear.

I know that many home educators would argue that their children are more exposed to cultural diversity because they have the ability to travel and focus more thoroughly on social and cultural topics. But it isn’t cultural diversity that we are losing. We are losing something much deeper. We are losing the the cultural cohesion and diversity in relationships that allows us to trust one another and rationally weigh opposing ideas. Instead of healthy debate, instead of learning from one another, we hold the higher ideal of leaving well enough alone, of not offending each other with our differences of opinion. So we remain quietly divided. Consequently, it is more difficult for us to sustain the Democratic Republic that gave rise to diversity in the first place. As a fractured nation, fewer citizens make decisions based on the general good, or the good of the nation. Too many focus on the needs and desires of particular niche groups, or of our own very individual needs and desires.

I have seen this particularly in homeschool coops and forums that try to form community around a philosophy, educational style or religion. Like everyone else, my family sees the benefit of forming relationships and fostering a sense of belonging with like-minded people. But that further isolates us into subcultures of a subculture. In combination with the many isolating lifestyle choices our culture already pushes on us – like Facebook, customized playlists and network gaming, the pervasive concept of relativism which fits very nicely in an individualistic philosophy, and the necessary technological resources that facilitate home education like online courses and computer based instruction, homeschooling reduces our natural opportunities for balance.

Children who are brought up on highly customized and personalized education, individualized single-user entertainment and controlled environments may suffer a number of unintended consequences - narcissism, narrow-mindedness, detachment, rigidity, and a tendency toward tribalism - if our tendencies toward isolation are not actively resisted. There are steps that we can take to counter these potential consequences.

1. Limit your family’s participation in online social networks and go meet real people.

While it seems that social networks allow us to remain more connected to those we care about, it in fact reduces relationships to meaningless superficiality with meaningless banter, self-focused updates, and a misleading notion that we are "keeping in touch". Instead of replacing real friendship with a user-interface, use the interface to schedule real time to be physically present with those you care about. Teens are especially taken in with the perception that they are present to their friends when they interact over social networks. Recent studies, however, are documenting negative psychology consequences to the use of social networks among young people.

2. Actively engage your neighbors in sit down dinners, and small scale entertaining in the home.

I know how busy you are! I've been unsuccessful in organizing a neighborhood Christmas party for the past ten years! But there are ways we can multiply the benefit of entertaining at home by planning events that serve multiple purposes. For example, several years ago, in an attempt to get to know some of my parishioners from church while also providing an opportunity for my daughter to get more practice in piano performance, I scheduled an Arts Party. Everyone was encouraged to bring a poem, song, speech, play, or other talent to share with the rest of the guests. It was a great time that my guests still talk about today.

3. Participate in community events through the library, local YMCA, food bank, Boys and Girls Club, Senior Center or other community organization.
Volunteering provides wonderful opportunities for young people to gain work experience, and give to the community. But it also exposes them to a variety of lifestyles, circumstances and people.

4. Commit to participating in a community-oriented charitable cause at least once a year.
Every community has some kind of annual charitable or cultural event - even the smallest of towns. Whether it is a concert series, a cancer run, a community drama troupe, a Miracle League - volunteers are needed everywhere, and charitable causes are great ways to branch out and make connections.

5. Seek out homeschool organizations, coops, and programs with diverse but open memberships.

Rather than looking for homeschool groups that limit membership to certain philosophies, religious perspectives or learning styles, find diverse groups in which you can share your beliefs, perspectives and interests openly. Aside from situations you find particularly harmful to your children's well-being, diversity in relationships is healthy.

Remember that the health of our communities affects the health of our regions, states and ultimately our nation. The health of our nation affects the welfare of every individual who resides here. As homeschoolers we can have a positive impact locally and across the continent.

Image: Simon Howden / FreeDigitalPhotos.net

It’s About Learning, Not Earning

2011-10-04T03:00:00.000-07:00

A September/October Saturday Evening Post article by Diane Ravitch, Research Professor of Education at New York University and a historian of education, was a case study on the problem of education. I do not mean that she presented a case study on the problem of education in her article, but in fact the article and Ms. Ravitch herself is a case study on the problem of education.

What is the first thing you think about when you think of “education”? If you are a parent, like me, with school aged children, or you are not in the field of education you probably freely associate education with a subject, like math, or a child sitting at a desk. Maybe you recall the smells of tempera paint and paste or the pangs of walking into class having left your essay at home. In other words, you think of school and of learning. That is not the kind of thing that Ms. Ravitch and other educational experts are referring to in phrases such as “What is good for education?” or “Education in America”. They are referring, instead, to the profession and institution represented by the term “education”. And therein lies the problem.

Education (“schools”) in America will never improve until educational professionals disassociate their careers and their industry from the process of learning. To them, learning is inextricably linked to the education industry. When the industry declines, children fail to learn and when the industry grows, children succeed in learning. But we have ample evidence that this direct relationship does not exist. The education industry has been growing wildly with per student annual spending commonly above $10,000. Yet anyone who tries to argue that the public school system is providing even an adequate education for the majority of American children is disconnected from reality. The body of evidence that gets the most attention is standardized test results. But we also have graduation statistics, drop out rates, college success statistics that rate homeschoolers well above public schooled children, examples of homeschoolers demonstrating superiority in competitive endeavors like national spelling bees, and college entrance exam results. Then, to make the point even more poignant we can look to the growth of charter schools and homeschooling, a direct result of the loss of faith in public schools.

The problem with the educational system is further exacerbated by the professional educator’s belief in his unique and exclusive qualification in defining and assessing learning success, evidenced by a comment made by the head of Washington D.C.’s union Nathan Saunders in an interview with John Stossel. “I know my kids are learning by the look in their eyes.” A ninth grade student may not be able to correctly identify the Civil War president on a multiple choice history test, but a professional educator can see the student’s progress through that twinkle in her eye!

People like Mr. Saunders and Ms. Ravitch assume a certain level of expertise and ownership that they believe commands respect and endows them with control. Their advice must be heeded, their ideas implemented, their demands met. And I can sympathize with the attitude. After devoting large amounts of money, time and dedication to one’s career, most professionals would not want laymen to challenge what they believe they know. Legitimate criticism of a veteran educator or education “expert” by a “man on the street” might suggest that their decades of effort were irrelevant, obsolete, wasted. It weakens their credibility. An expert with no credibility is oxymoronic.

But the consequence that educational experts fear the most is the effect criticism has on their job security and their earnings. If the public believes that the education industry is no longer essential to the learning process, they will no longer support the exorbitant funding increases cities across the nation and the federal government have been granting year after year to the public school system.

So rather than admitting that their industry is a bloated one, that it wastes large amounts of money, and fails to run efficiently, that its unions demands are unreasonable, that its certification requirements are in some cases unhelpful, unwarranted and ineffective, that its fear of competition prevents innovation and creativity, the industry blames testing. They blame a lack of funds. They blame the culture. They blame educational choice. And, as with Diane Ravitch’s article, they offer no evidence. No data. No sources for their opinion that these things are in fact to blame.

Their tendency toward self-protection and desire for job-security is easy to understand, easy to relate to. But education does not exist to give individuals career options. This is exactly where the layman departs from the professional educator. The institution of education exists to teach children, a task that it is demonstrably failing based on every reasonable criteria including testing, statistics, college course offerings, and the observations of parents, employers, teachers and administrators alike.

Many, especially teachers, might argue that teaching and learning are two opposing sides of the same coin, and a failure to learn does not necessarily indicate a failure to teach. That is true. In nearly every class of children, regardless of the talent, dedication and passion of the teacher, someone will fail. Sadly, some children are simply not equipped, not supported, not free to succeed. But no reasonable person would define some as a majority or even a large minority. In April of 2007 the state of Washington postponed until 2013 the requirement for seniors to pass the now defunct state math and science assessment as a condition of graduation because the class of 2008 failed the test in large numbers. Understand, this was not an academically rigorous test, but designed to assess basic knowledge. Yet 44% failed the math portion and 62% failed the science.

Large numbers of teens in America drop out of high school. Large numbers of teens are illiterate. Most high school aged Americans have no working knowledge of history, no familiarity at all with the great philosophical ideas of Western culture, and very little understanding of civics or economics. And even if they become financially successful in life, their ignorance contributes to the slow steady decline of republican democracy, America’s cultural morality and the pursuit of truth. In 2005 Bill Gates blasted U.S. high schools in a speech to the National Governors Association for not adequately preparing 66% of the nation’s children for citizenship and the workforce. And while parents, students and society at large certainly do bear some of the blame, this is not simply a failure to learn.

On the other hand, we are not talking about failures that can be attributed specifically to teachers, either. The educational establishment would want us to believe that educational critics are blaming teachers. We aren’t. We are blaming the bureaucracy and institutional culture within which teachers operate that ties learning success directly to education industry growth rather than classroom support, discipline and high standards. We are blaming the association of learning failure with industry streamlining, accountability, competition, challenge, and loosening of monopolistic control. What’s good for the bureaucracy is not good for the kids. If it were, our children would be the best educated kids on the planet.

Special note: Since writing this article, I have come across a newly published book that makes the same point. Although I have not yet had the opportunity to read it, and incorporate any of its supporting data into this article, I thought that my readers may be interested in doing more research on their own. Check it out: Push Has Come to Shove: Getting Our Kids the Education They Deserve--Even If It Means Picking a Fight by Dr. Steve Perry

Image: Arvind Balaraman / FreeDigitalPhotos.net

Irrationality Does Not A Good Teacher Make

2011-09-27T03:00:00.000-07:00

Last week I ran into a discussion on a popular forum about an outrageous rant against homeschooling from a blogger whom I will keep anonymous. We’ll call her “Blogger Babe” or “BB” for short. (I don’t want to reward her meager attempt at seeking and reporting the truth.) Blogger Babe is or has been a high school English teacher. She drew the ire of many intellectual and academic home educators, many of whom are educational professionals themselves. Her blog, ironically, illustrates why homeschooling parents are justified in their belief that they can do a better job educating their own children than the current public school system.

Blogger Babe was inspired to write a piece on homeschooling because so many in her generation are now doing it that it is in her experience approaching mainstream acceptance. BB planned to research the phenomenon of home education and then write a report about the reasons parents choose this option. It is not clear from her article whether she abandoned her research or simply abandoned the subsequent report. “I planned to report out why parents in our generation are deciding to homeschool en masse but I can’t do it. I can’t get past the total lack of logic.” In either case, she conducted sketchy research, and then proceeded to lambast home educators with a biased and unsupported tirade.

It is interesting to note that she claims to have been thwarted in her attempt by a “total lack of logic”, implying that home educators have no logical reason for their choice. And yet, she neglects to invoke any logical line of argument to support her claim that home educators are illogical. This is, by definition, a conundrum. Rather than rant in return, as a logical home educator I will proceed to lay out my supported reasons why, based on her own line of argument, BB’s suitability as a teacher is suspect and, by deduction, why nearly any parent who is able to reason and who loves his children would be eminently more qualified than she to teach.

BB is not qualified to teach even the most basic material for three reasons.

1. She performs sketchy research resulting in poor analysis.

Based on the only information she supplied us in her article, it would appear that BB limited her research to web-based blogs, forums and communities. We can surmise that if she had interviewed a variety of homeschoolers: those with and without college experience; those who have teaching degrees or careers as well as those who have experience in other fields or who are uneducated; those who fall on the ideological left vs. the right; those who choose academic college prep coursework vs. those who follow a Rousseauian child-centered model; those who homeschool for religious or anti-religious reasons; or those who had been successful vs. those unsuccessful; she would have included such interviews in her article. She didn’t.

In her article BB rhetorically asks, “Are homeschooling parents egotistical enough to think they can know and teach Everything? Classics? Calculus? Chemistry? PE?” But she can’t offer an answer because she never really asked the question. Nor did BB bother to connect with any of the online course offerings, distance learning schools and interactive resources which compensate for home educators’ academic weaknesses and augment their strengths. Consequently, BB reveals complete ignorance of the process of homeschooling, how assessments are done, and how much onus for success is assumed by the student vs. the parent.

Just as easily as she browsed forums and homeschooling web sites, BB could have Googled for homeschool statistics, test scores and studies. She could have phoned a handful of universities and asked the admissions directors what their experiences of the homeschool student populations have been. Hillsdale college, for example, could have told her that formerly home schooled incoming freshman outperform public schooled freshman by large margins on entrance and placement exams.

You would think that BB would have at least researched entities that traditionally support her view – if for no other reason than to appear to have been responsible in her reporting. Did she mention the legal challenges to homeschool and the reasons for them? Did she talk to the NEA, or her state’s legislature, her superintendent of public instruction, perhaps? Had she done that, she could have then brought in some perspective from the Home School Legal Defense Association. My guess is that she does not even know what the legal limitations for homeschool are, and why.

In conclusion, BB shows an inability to present objective and accurate data by:

a) Neglecting to conduct interviews of home educators, avoiding any first-person, direct experience in her data set.

b) Neglecting to interview any homeschooled children or formerly homeschooled adults.

c) Neglecting to investigate the available specialized curriculum, tools and resources that facilitate the unique and demanding homeschool environment.

d) Neglecting to include any objective third-party studies, statistics, or test results provided by such organizations as the United States Census, the National Center for Education Statistics and major American universities.

e) Neglecting to consider any data offered by interested subjective parties such as the NEA, state governments, National Center for Home Education or the HSLDA.

f) Limiting her research to passive observation of web-based communities.

2. She prejudges her subject with disdain.

The fact that BB’s inability to complete her research or report objectively exposes her strong negative preconception to homeschooling that is made even more evident by the connotation of her word choices:

“I can’t help but be freaked out by Facebook groups and blogs touting their homeschooling methods and group field trips. Homeschooling Co-ops are popping up everywhere encouraging the average parent that they can become both teacher and school to their brood. Sounds problematic, right? Because it is.”

Remember, BB admits that her vitriolic attitiude against homeschooling prevented her from completing her research and objectively delivering her “report”. But more striking in this quote is her choice of loaded words such as “freaked out”, “touted”, “average” and “brood”. For me, and I am guessing that for at least some of you, these word choices conjure up the image of a homeschooling half-wit spewing conspiracy theories surrounded by twenty dirty, unshoed gremlins. And, in fact, evidence that the majority of homeschool moms chew “backy” and swap roadkill recipes on those Facebook pages she is so “freaked out” about might redeem her piece. But she offers no reasons that homeschool methods, field trips and co-ops are indeed problematic. Schools have methods, field trips, and collaborative teaching. What is the complaint? Is a field trip somehow more enriching when a paid bus driver transports the children instead of a mom in a van? BB just drops this charge at paragraph one and never brings it up again.

Throughout BB’s article snide sarcasm supplants objective reasoning. She writes: “What a disservice to keep kids in a bubble and not allow them to experience other students’ and teachers’ ideas. It’s the ultimate control freak and fear-driven parenting behavior.” Nowhere before this statement has the author shown that homeschooled children are isolated from other students and teachers. But then, we have already established that her lack of research denied her the knowledge that homeschoolers are more socialized than their public schooled peers and in more positive ways. They travel the country competing on large debate and speech teams, coordinate volunteer community enrichment campaigns through the boy scouts, participate in charities and church functions with other youth from public and private schools, perform in youth symphonies, ballet and other fine art events, and attend online classes with instructors and a chatroom full of students from ALL OVER THE WORLD. This past year, my daughter organized and performed in a classical chamber benefit concert to help forty of her friends travel to Europe this summer for an educational tour. Would she call that a bubble?

Further on, the author accuses homeschoolers of using the freedom and creative exploits of homeschooling as “some excuse to shield their kids from the scary world of other people and school.” Once again I have to explain that she did not offer a single example of a home educator trying to shield his children from anything or anyone. But let’s assume some are. Why would BB condemn rather than praise that action? The lack of interest to protect vulnerable children from dangers that may risk their mental, emotional, physical and spiritual health is pervasive and typcial of our cynical culture of self-gratification and self-centeredness. It is a perverse lie that we are bad parents who protect our children, and it is this attitude that allows a parent to send her eight year old daughter to the bus stop alone at 7:30 in the morning and then sob into the television camera after the child has gone missing. It is parents’ responsibility to protect children. Whether or not schools represent something from which a child should be protected is debatable, but not the point. The author is criticizing home educators for wanting to protect their children. She offers no evidence for or against the contention that schools are dangerous. She expects us to understand and agree with her unstated premise that the school environment is benign. More importantly, she attacks home educators for doing something that she has not demonstrated they do, and she does it out of sheer contempt.

Irrationality is not conducive to good teaching; we expect teachers to present material objectively and reasonably. The tendency to hurl insults without any supporting data is an emotional and irrational behavior. I would argue that one of the chief reasons that parents homeschool is because of the promulgation of irrational views by emotional teachers. For example, claiming that Darwinian macroevolution is fact when scientists in the field are scrutinizing Darwin’s theory with increasing skepticism[i] is irrational. Accusing thinking individuals of pushing “creationism” simply because microbiology and zoology provide ample direct evidence against specific aspects of Darwin’s theory is not rational. Claiming that the “Dark Ages” was a period of intellectual, scientific and creative suppression and stagnation in contrast to the views of legitimate medieval historians is not reasonable. Banning from the classroom the single most significant literary work ever written in context to every literary criteria just because it’s content is religious is irrational. If a student wants to legitimately question and investigate whether an increase in CO₂ emmissions raises global temperatures, or whether the inverse is true, that natural increases in global temperatures increase CO₂ in the atmosphere, he would have to do it at home. Very few science teachers would entertain the latter hypothesis. If a student wants to learn why America thrived under the free enterprise system he would have to learn that outside the average American public school classroom.

Homeschoolers are not running from school, they are running to education. Our infamous blogger is an example of the kind of teacher that forces parents to make that choice – a teacher who teaches subjectively, irrationally, and arrogantly with disdain for the parents whose taxes pay her.

3. She displays a narrow view of the world, and of the opportunities within society for character growth and modelling.

Approximately one third of BB’s article covers her unique redefinition of education. Teachers are frustrated with the expansion of their job description. They serve as instructor, foster parent, counselor, entertainer, disciplinarian, arbitrator, security officer, friend. BB expects them also to play life coach. Since when was education more concerned with “creating self” than with teaching skills and enlightening students to truth?

“More important than the actual material was that my best teachers illustrated for me how they think. What they valued. How they chose to live and how I could choose to as well when I graduated to adulthood… The teachers your children will encounter will be excellent examples of character sprinkled with a few non-examples but we need all of those perspectives to question our beliefs, confuse, irritate, inspire, uplift, and finally create ourselves. One parent teaching at home can’t do that.”

Equally troubling to me is the author’s anemic definition of “character”. Character, by her description, has nothing to do with universal values such as honesty, integrity, self- sacrifice, compassion, generosity, tenacity or courage. Good character to BB is nothing more than the open expression of one’s choices. But character is not about creating a persona, or developing a lifestyle. Character is not about empowerment. It is about goodness. It is about right and wrong. It is a matter of values not experiences, judgments not encounters.

Furthermore, are teachers really the only people we come across in life who have the capacity to inspire, challenge, and stretch us? What about extended family, pastors, neighbors, coaches, boy scout leaders, bosses and coworkers, authors of Great Books…what about bloggers? What about entertainers, world leaders, the guy who delivers the mail? Our blogger might scoff. What does the mailman know about life? What indeed. Well, what does a janitor know about medicine?

I’ve just learned about a janitor, Vivien Thomas, who learned medicine on his own while working for a respected surgeon and ultimately pioneered the first heart bypass surgery with no more formal training than his high school diploma. He was eventually awarded an honorary doctorate from Vanderbilt University. I guess BB would have been one of those who sought to keep Thomas in his place, sweeping floors for a living. He wasn’t an “expert”. He wasn’t trained.

“…teachers are experts who know more than you,” BB states, flatly.

They know so much more than the collective “you” - i.e. anyone who reads her blog – that they are indispensible for teaching not only math and geography, but also the meaning of life itself. Even those whom she considers bad teachers offer children invaluable opportunities for growth in her worldview.

“I also had one abusive high school teacher who belittled me every day in front of the class to the point that I wouldn’t speak anymore in her room… After months of her cruelty, I asked her what I did to deserve her hatefulness and she backed down because she was and is a coward. In her ugliness she taught me about my strength.”

God forbid she start reading the news. She may learn that some teachers actually abuse their students in more nefarious ways than belittling them in class. Wesley Cherniak ring any bells? By BB’s logic, a student could learn a lot of positive things from Mr. Cherniak’s behavior, and so is lucky to have encountered him. I bring this up not to make light of Mr. Cherniak, not to claim that we parents should fear teachers, nor to indict teachers over any other profession. Adults of all walks of life do evil things. Rather, I mention this only to argue that BB’s slavish praise of the teaching profession is not balanced. Teachers are not uniquely indispensible.

I will grant BB that we can and should find the positive in all situations in which we find ourselves, to turn bad experiences into learning experiences. But we do not have to seek out such experiences. They are an inevitable part of everyone’s life. And then, I would be remiss not to point out that her appeal for making lemonade from lemons directly contradicts her earlier statement in which she admonishes parents from isolating their children. If we can draw lessons from experiences with ugly, cowardly, abusive teachers, can we not also draw lessons from overprotective parents?

Finally, who wins the debate if I disagree with BB’s definition of character? Perhaps I think that it is more important to remain loyal to the values with which one was raised than to redefine oneself? Perhaps I think that my children should be influenced by persons I believe have more character than the teachers at my local public school? Shouldn’t I decide that for my own children, and allow BB to decide that for hers? What makes her right and me wrong? Therein lies the beauty of living in a free country.

To sum up, BB is not qualified to teach children because she has an insular view of the world and a distorted view of personal character.

4. The author exhibits poor critical thinking and deliberative discourse skills

I think I have adequately shown that our blogger has put forth a very weak argument. Emotional hyperbole does not make a persuasive case and her piece lacks any semblance of logical thought. We can give her the benefit of the doubt and surmise that she is feeling threatened and defensive. But then, doesn’t she demonstrate a complete lack of prudence in posting this drivel rather than handing off to a few friends first, or hiding it in the bottom drawer for a week while she gathers her composure?

In the end Blogger Babe quips, “You know that one saying, ‘Those who can, do. Those who can’t, teach’. Here is my revision: Those who can teach, do. Those who can’t, homeschool.” She says this, totally unaware that a growing number of university and college professors, parents with multiple degrees, and public school teachers are homeschooling their own children.

Would you really want someone with this attitude influencing your child?

“…These false teachers are bold and arrogant and show no respect…they attack with insults anything they do not understand.” ~ 2 Peter, Chapter 2: 10- 12

[i] Dissent From Darwinism 'Goes Global' as Over 600 Scientists Around the World Express Their Doubts About Darwin's Theory

Conflicts Between Darwin and Paleontology

Image: Michal Marcol / FreeDigitalPhotos.net

Home Education and America's Future

2011-09-19T23:15:00.000-07:00

I live in a small community that identifies most significantly with its public high school. Although we are known to outsiders as the home of a prominent state fairgrounds, connected locals are devoted blue and gold Muskrat fans. (Ok, so our school mascot is a little more fierce than a muskrat, but for the sake of anonymity…) I am told that even the elementary school children wear the high school’s colors to school on game day.

But there are other ways in which the community revolves around the public school system. Every year in September the major churches get together in the high school auditorium for an interfaith evening of prayer on behalf of the town’s students and teachers. I don’t have actual figures in front of me, but in the sixteen years I have lived here I only remember two school levies failing, both just last year, in the midst of a pretty harsh recession. Even when our test scores fall way behind those of neighboring school districts with similar demographics, citizen polls indicate high approval of its public schools. And yet, I have heard – again no hard data – that 40% of our county’s children are homeschooled, and enrollment in our town has been on the decline for years. There is a discrepency here that I can't quite wrap my head around.

In this article I want to encourage all those who, like me, ask themselves every year, “Is homeschooling really the best way to educate my kids?” Well, whether or not it is, the alternative of public school for entire regions of children would still constitute an educational downgrade, and in many cases private schools are not far behind in failing to educate their students.

I have been recently paying very much attention to our local public school system. I’ve attended some school board meetings, talked with board members and board director candidates one on one, followed online forum threads between teachers and parents, and engaged in long conversations with educational experts and administrators. Most of them don’t know that I am on the outside looking in, and often I wonder why I bother. Usually, when the conversations are over I thank my Lord that I was given the courage and resources to break away from the quagmire this system is. Aside from one ridiculously The only thing everyone agrees on is that there is a problem. And no one wants to find the reasons before coming up with a solution. Now I ask you – how do you fix something about which you are afraid to determine the cause of the failure? Loosing water pressure in a leaky pipe? “Well, goodness sakes, don’t blame the rusty joints – just fix it! Run more water through the pipe at a faster rate!” But wouldn’t it make more sense to replace or repair the joints? With plumbing, though, there are no jobs, union contracts or political careers on the line. We can afford to identify the problem with the plumbing. Not so with the schools. So, typically the conversations I witness wind up being aimless complaint sessions with competing interests and missed opportunities for change.

I recently watched two similar documentaries about the charter school lottery in New York City, The Lottery and Waiting for Superman. Despite an inane article by Diane Ravitch in this month’s Saturday Evening Post online and the emotional and irrational support she has garnered (mostly from public school teachers) in the site’s comments, stakeholders from all over the political spectrum agree with the documentaries’ one inarguable point: most public schools in America fail miserably. Administrators, teachers, and educational experts use words like “crappy”, “abysmal”, “Titanic” (as in “sinking fast”). They refer to the PISA, a global test comparing the educational efficacy of nations, offered by the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development, which in 2009 ranked the United States in the middle of the pack of about 50 nations for all three subject areas tested – science, math and reading. Just yesterday John Stossel aired an updated version of his "Stupid in America" that identifies much of the same issues presented in the two documentaries.

But what are we doing about it besides making movies and providing show content for the Bills - Maher and O’Reilly? What are those citizens who vote for levies, picket for teacher pay, and cheer the school mascot in the town parade doing about it? With every contract negotiation and levy that has passed in my city, the quality of education has just declined. I know what you and I have done about it - at least in regard to those we are most responsible for, our children. But what can we do for our nation and our communities?

As homeschoolers we need to have confidence in our choices, and encourage others not to be afraid of joining our educational revolution. We also have to encourage and support those other educational options for kids whose parents do not feel empowered to homeschool – charter schools and voucher legislation. Although I wish it weren’t so, I don’t believe the public schools will improve significantly anytime soon. And even those that are doing a good job teaching, are often not teaching the right thing. Their students may be able to get into a good college and land a high paying job, but do those individuals understand the most critical truths of life? While we focus on skillsets – literacy, writing, technical savvy, and presentation skills – we neglect to teach universal truths or the processes by which we seek and evaluate truth.

Home educators do not only determine the quality but the content of what our children learn. Many would accuse us of limiting our students’ exposure to certain facts, philosophies and perspectives. Speaking for myself I can say that the opposite is true. I am sure many of you can say the same thing. For example, when we studied climate change we analyzed two documentaries presenting opposing views of whether or not global warming was the result or the cause of increasing carbon dioxide production in the atmosphere. There is a correlation between temperature and CO2 levels, but causation is never discussed in the classroom because it is already presupposed. Whether CO2 causes warming, or warming causes CO2 is a legitimate matter for debate.

The bottom line is, it is far more likely that we parents and guardians will be able to make the changes we need to make - in our lives, our homes, our own skill sets and self education - to meet the academic needs of one or several children in our care than it will be for this overly complex, politically charged, mismanaged and overfunded mega-system called the public school system to finally, after four or more decades, reform itself. Home schooled children are this nation’s future.

For more information about the references made in this article click below:

Complete Data from the Paris-based Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development's (OECD) Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA)

Saturday Evening Post’s American Schools in Crisis by Diane Ravitch

John Stossel’s Stupid in America Aired 9/18/2011

The Lottery

Waiting for Superman

Homeschool and Technology: Are We Stunting Our Childrens’ Education?

2011-09-13T00:00:00.000-07:00

Last month I attended a school board election debate for a district that is struggling to meet academic goals. Although the six candidates represented diverse political views, life perspectives and skill sets, they shared a remarkably similar view of their public school system, its strengths, weaknesses, needs and goals. Every candidate agreed with the nodding audience that the administration was professional and forward thinking, that the teachers were all dedicated and well-trained, that the sense of community was strong and that the biggest problems came down to a lack of funding. Most in th room agreed that the district could not meet its students’ needs without technological improvements – computer lab upgrades, smart boards, software and other whiz-bang “educational” devices. The children needed state of the art technology to compete in this highly technical global economy, “hear, hear, hazzah!”

My sixteen year old homeschooling daughter penned a quick note and handed it to me. “Have they never heard of paper?” Now, do not be mistaken. We are not Amish. We have running water and electricity. My husband and I have made our living in the tech sector for over twenty-five years, and my children are as computer savvy as any publicly schooled student. But our society over-emphasizes the importance of technology, especially in education. Technology is useful, but it is not an educational imperative. For those of you who find this claim incredible and provocative, please keep reading.

As I sat among the incoming freshmen and their parents at my daughter’s college orientation two years ago, I assumed that each one of them understood the unique qualities of this religious private liberal arts school that made it one of the highest rated and most successful small colleges in the nation. Over 90% of its students went on to graduate school and among their alumni were a disproportionate number of university professors, education professionals, theologians, successful businesspersons, lawyers, and doctors. Some of the 2011 graduating senior theses included titles such as, “Determining the Indeterminate: How Much Can Natural Science Grasp Matter?”, “An Exposition and Criticism of the Marxist Epistemology” and “First Things First: A Consideration of the Principle Differences between Aristotle and Descartes”. I did not skim the cream off the list of theses. Each thesis out of about eighty in all is equally remarkable and the group covers topics that span the gamut of subject matter: science, math, philosophy, literature, politics, economics and theology. This level of knowledge, clarity and depth of thought is not typical of the average American undergrad. And clearly, this is not a typical American college.

Still, a couple parents hadn’t gotten the memo. During the orientation one parent began arguing the school’s policy concerning student conduct. Then another parent asked the question that left the Dean of Students searching for an answer. Until then he had been impeccably articulate. The question was, why doesn’t the school issue laptops like other schools? I guess the answer seemed so obvious that the Dean was shocked that an answer was sought. But it finally came. “Because the students don’t need them."

The parent was aghast. “What do you mean, they don’t need them? Won’t they need to do research? How will they communicate? How can they write their papers?” The Dean’s response was similar to my daughter’s question the other night. “They use paper. And books.” Silently I quipped, “You know, those heavy blocks of tree pulp that don’t have a power switch, but are still full of data.” Computers were available for writing papers, and a few workstations were installed in the mailroom for email. (None of the dorms were equipped with Internet access - another source of shock.) Students were certainly welcome to bring their own laptop to school if they wished, but they would get along just fine without one.

The parent’s reaction was so typical of most today. How did we ever survive without iPads, Cell Phones, Amazon.com and DVDs? It wasn’t that long ago that we did just fine without them. Personal devices and the Internet provide a lot of convenience and even more distraction for most of us. Worse yet, they do more to isolate us than to bring us together despite FaceBook’s best intentions.

I am sure you have heard the expression, the "technology gap" used to explain away the real reasons educational outcomes differ dramatically between the poor and the not-so poor. Granted, there is a corrolation between wealthy countries/people and access to technology. But the causation cuts both ways and depends on a host of contributing factors. The truth is that technology has nothing to do with education, and the lack of it has nothing to do with academic, professional or personal failure.

One of the most technologically advanced industries today is the movie industry. Among production companies, Pixar stands out as the technology innovator. Their animators use the most complex graphics, animation and special effects software available, much of it developed in-house. You would expect then that computer proficiency would be a basic requirement for employment. It’s not. Pixar knows what every five year old knows. Learning how to use a computer is not that complicated. If you can click a button, identify a symbol, understand cause and effect and read at the fifth grade level you can operate most computer programs. Knowing how to tell a good story, though – that, at Pixar Productions, is a highly sought skill.

You see, it takes accounting skills to operate Intuit’s Quickbooks, layout and design skills to effectively use MS Publisher, traditional animation skills and rudimentary physics to animate Flash movies, language skills to write a novel using Word, and a basic knowledge of musical notation to write a song in Sibellius. None of these programs require a degree in computer science or extensive training. They certainly do not need to be introduced in Kindergarten and reinforced every year through high school. However, a student cannot accomplish anything, let alone operate a computer, if he cannot read or reason.

There is a temptation for homeschooling parents to rush to the Internet because of all the great resources one can find there including lesson plans, online courses, educational games, projects, handouts – the variety and quantity seems endless! There is Wiki, travel sites, blogs, political debates, news and current events – a student could spend all day just soaking up data. Then, there are all the cool technological toys that make learning so much fun. Students are making their own YouTube videos, building web sites, blogging for English credits, and attending classes across the globe through online conferencing software. These are great accessories to a strong educational program, but the core of that program involves a much more basic skillset. For example, how well does your student scrutinize the data that she browses? How does she determine how credible the information is? Johnny can graph climate change in Excel using colorized animated graphics and functions that change the output in response to variable input. But should he encounter a bug in the software that misapplies the function, could he catch it? Your student can program a funky remix to her favorite ripped tunes and set it to a vibrant abstract animation, but can she articulate why great music is great?

Education at its core is the process of teaching students how to think. Many people today question whether the old Western model of abstract reasoning is even relevant anymore. There are many types of intelligences, they argue, and as societal and economic dynamics change, the skills that enable people to lead successful lives change as well. Abstract reasoning is so “yesterday”. Well, the problem with that argument is that it employs the logical fallacy of chronological snobbery. Yes, logic is one of those “obsolete” abstract reasoning skills and so you may think my objection irrelevant. But logic is also the surest way to determine what is true and without it science and math – the two areas American students struggle with the most – would not be possible.

Abstract reasoning will always be the core of a good education because a good education is not a job training program. Certainly, well-educated people are more suited to certain types of work, and are more likely to get hired in the job market. But that is a side benefit. The purpose of education and the reason the public should shoulder the financial responsibility for education is to 1. produce a citizenry that can weigh arguments, analyze rhetoric and make logical political decisions; and 2. to produce a society of individuals who understand and pursue truth, goodness and beauty. Personal autonomy and the ability to discern truth, goodness and beauty are the essential qualities of being human. It is in these two areas that public schools in America are failing most profoundly.

So, the question is, does technology make the difference between those who can think critically and those who can not? Just look to history for the answer. Have the greatest minds in the history of mankind been developed within the last thirty years?

It is in great books that you will find a great education. If, like me, you are one of those highly connected Facebook browsing, Tweeting, blogging homeschool parents, and find great value in the resources that the Internet brings to your fingertips, and are using it to augment a solidly academic program, I’m glad you are using technology to your advantage. But, if you are not up to speed on the latest iThingy, don’t despair. Make a cup of tea, grab your favorite work of literature and your favorite spot under the shady tree in your backyard and invite your students to connect the old fashioned way.

Image: Stuart Miles / FreeDigitalPhotos.net

What Have I Got to Prove? Homeschool Records: Why You need Them, and How to Prepare Them

2011-09-06T00:00:00.000-07:00

by Susan A. Howard

Live your life, every day of it, with great expectations and great things will happen in your life, daily.

~ Art Fettig

As a community to which the descriptions “non-conformist”, “individualist”, “independent” and “passionate” reasonably refer, home educators are not quick to accept external requirements on their methods, styles, and goals. Still, there is one area in which conformity and cooperation with the “system” should interest us: recordkeeping. There are many good reasons for keeping organized, accurate records for your homeschooled students. Good record keeping facilitates the learning process, ensures future options for our children and in some states is legally required. In this article I hope to persuade you to take steps toward better record keeping by addressing some of the objections and enumerating the benefits.

First of all, let’s define what we mean by “records”. I don't for a minute think that the reader is unfamiliar with school records - but for the benefit of "set up" I'd like to define them anyway. I apologize in advance if I bore you momentarily. There are a number of documents that fall under the school records umbrella, generally into one of two categories: academic and non-academic. Non-academic records include a document that informs the school district of your intent to homeschool, and immunization records. We don’t need to make a case for maintaining those as they are often required by law. Academic records, on the other hand, document the content of a student’s educational experience and his educational progress. Sometimes this information is required by a state or local school district. In some circumstances, the information is needed to demonstrate academic or even parental competence to third parties.

Among the academic records, a school transcript is most essential, particularly for students planning to apply for college. But they also serve in documenting the material and progress of students in any grade who may be moving between or into new educational environments, or who need to demonstrate their educational status for a third party. In some states, homeschool parents must submit Attendance Reports to verify that their students have met minimum school day requirements. Report cards and progress reports, rarely used in a homeschool setting, document progress over a limited period of time several times during the year. They are intended primarily as a communications device between a teacher and parent, and so are typically unnecessary in the homeschool environment. A diploma, or certificate of commencement, indicates that a student has adequately completed an extended program of study and is ready to advance to the next stage of education, enlist in the military or enter the workforce. These documents are not difficult to produce when homeschooling parents keep the associated data in an organized manner. If the idea of organization frightens you as much as it does me, then keep reading. We have solutions for you!

Before I address the objections to record keeping, let me discuss the main reasons that all home educators should document their students’ educational accomplishments and experience: proof. You may reflexively ask, “Why do I have to prove anything? Education is about helping young people discover who they are, what they are passionate about and what they are capable of. I don’t care what society thinks about my child’s education, I care what she thinks about her own education.” If your child lived in a vacuum, then you would be right. As it is, you are only partially right. It is important that your child care about her education. But it is important that I care about it as well.

We live in common. Society is an organization of interdependent individuals. We all benefit from the accomplishments and contributions of others within the society and, for that matter, throughout the world. Not only do I depend on your child’s success directly and indirectly, your child will in turn depend on others throughout his life for an income, for community, for support services, for opportunities, for enrichment. That dependency will require him to demonstrate competence, often through personal contact, but also on paper.

Look at the several ways, for example, a GPA (Grade Point Average) facilitates a student’s life:

Lower insurance rates
opportunities in the armed forces
access to academic scholarships and grants
admission to particular colleges, and
access to certain types of employment.

I have been told that in some industries like banking, an employer might request your high school records even though you have earned a college degree!

But there are other reasons that you may need to prove your child’s educational competence. Even though homeschooling has made enormous gains over the past twenty years as a viable educational option within mainstream society, there is still a lot of opposition to it. In some individual cases, parents have had to prove the effectiveness of homeschooling in court. Even in very accommodating states, a parent may find themselves legally defending themselves against their own spouse for the right to homeschool. Printed quarterly report cards, attendance records, a GPA and a few sample tests or essays go a long way toward convincing a family court judge that you take homeschooling seriously and can be a trusted educator. I sincerely hope you never have to deal with that situation. But we never know what the future holds for ourselves and our children. It makes sense to be prepared.

Finally, being able to attest on paper to the effectiveness of homeschooling promotes the homeschooling movement generally, and eases the pressure on all of us. So many homeschooling pioneers have paved the way to assert our right to homeschool, and the threat against homeschool as a legitimate alternative looms even so. Our students hold up well to scrutiny. Why not shout it from the rooftops?

If these reasons are not enough to convince you, then lets investigate some of the persistent concerns.

#1 - “My student is a person, not a statistic. Grades do not accurately reflect her competence, capabilities and interests.”

Again, we need to be very careful about terminology and definitions. When a homeschooling parent objects to grades I have to ask her what she means. Even if it looks the same on paper, a homeschooler’s grade and a traditional grade do not represent the same thing. If one defines “grade” as “an arbitrary assessment made by a teacher based on statistical expectations against material determined by a third party”, then the “A”, “B”, or “C” reflected in a homeschool transcript is not a grade. If, on the other hand, one defines a “grade” as merely an assessment of a student’s capabilities, then a home educator's own opinion qualifies as a grade, whether or not it is presented symbolically (A-F). Herein lies the beauty of homeschooling: A homeschool “grade” whether expressed as A-F, Pass/No Pass, Mastery of Material or “My student is particularly compassionate toward the vulnerable” is the most accurate reflection of a student’s capabilities because the evaluation comes from the educator who knows the student intimately: an involved and committed parent/guardian.

Some would argue that a parent would be the least objective evaluator. But the statistics don’t bear that out. Homeschoolers, as a group, perform well in standardized tests, college entrance exams and college performance. Home educators must be getting it right.

Knowing, therefore, that homeschooling is the best option for your student’s education, shouldn’t you have a way to prove that to any entity that has the power to make decisions about your child’s future? From this point of view, grades, credits and the documents that communicate them are tools for your benefit and that of your child.

#2 My child has access to a Running Start program or similar college-in-high school program, and will therefore use her community college records for university admissions.

Transcripts from community colleges may improve your child’s chances for earning his place at a university. However, a university may still require his high school records for admission. Admissions requirements for college transfer students are often identical to that of incoming freshmen. If the student’s first two years of college do not meet all of the standard admissions course requirements, a college will refer to high school transcripts to make up the difference. For example, most colleges require at least two years of lab science prior to admission. So, if your student took only one science lab in Running Start, he would for most colleges need a way to demonstrate a science lab credit from high school as well. There are a number of ways to demonstrate that, but a transcript is by far the simplest for you and for the prospective university.

#3 – My child is not going to college, so I don’t need to keep records.

I have heard this objection many times, and still have difficulty relating to the position. How many of us are currently living the life we anticipated when we were sixteen? A high school student is not in a position to know where he will be after graduation. How could his parent? As a parent you may have opinions about your child’s suitability for college, the importance of college, or whether or not you can afford to send them to college. But that does not mean you have the right or even the power to decide whether they go to college.

I can offer a couple anecdotes to illustrate this point. My college roommate overcame many barriers to attend UCLA. In high school she lived with her divorced mother who was an alcoholic and drug addict, constantly in trouble with the law or passed out on the couch. My roommate spent her high school years waitressing until late at night to support the two of them. It was a hard and lonely road. But she kept her grades up and was accepted to UCLA, which she paid for through grants, scholarships and working. She earned her degree and is now a successful professional.

The Notre Dame football player, Rudy Ruettiger, famous more for not playing football than playing it serves as another good example. In 1993, he was the subject of a movie that bears his name. As an academically challenged and undersized youth, Rudy’s dream of playing football at Notre Dame should not have been realized. But through sheer determination, he maintained a satisfactory community college GPA that earned him admission to Notre Dame, and worked his way onto the football team as a fearless although unlikely walk on. Granted, these two can be seen as exceptional examples. But why would any of us prevent our own children from being exceptional?

The HSLDA (Home School Legal Defense Association) recommends that homeschoolers keep records for three years in elementary and middle school, and permanently for high school. Although the HSLDA’s primary focus is advocating for homeschoolers’ rights in the court system, they refer to other practical reasons for record keeping, like the psychological affect organization has on our ability to perform effectively. The cost benefit weighs heavily in favor of heeding their advice.

And there is a cost. Record keeping can be time consuming. But if you take the time to set up a system that works for you, you will save time in the long run. The data that you should store in order to provide thorough reports includes:

Course names and descriptions for each student and grade;
Total credits earned (most full-year academic courses equal a single credit);
Total grade achieved in each class;
Portfolio of significant work like midterm or final tests, essays, science lab reports with methods, results and photos and literature analysis records;
A booklist (not required, but very helpful); and,
Number of days attended with dates if needed by law.

While there are a number of available record keeping solutions, LessonMinder specifically integrates record keeping into our web-based organization and planning system to provide those documents at a touch of a button (or two!). It keeps all pertinent records automatically, so that after having used the system for the school year, transcripts, report cards, attendance and other pertinent data is readily available.

This month, LessonMinder.com is free for a year for anyone who registers by September 30th. Check it out at: www.lessonminder.com

The hope of the world lies in what one demands, not of others, but of oneself. ~ James Baldwin

Homeschooling Mantras: Part 5 of 5

2011-08-23T06:00:00.000-07:00

Overstatement #5: Children Will Learn What They Need to Learn on Their Own

The idea that children will learn all that they need to know through discovery and interaction with the world around them is an idea at least as old as Rousseau in the 18^th Century. It has been promoted with some variation by the Montessori movement and provides the main reasoning for unschooling. But is it true? I have read articles about successful unschoolers, and of course there are famous examples of self-learners like Abraham Lincoln that attest to the idea. But do these examples prove that all children in all circumstances, or even most children in most circumstances are self-motivated learners? Is it universally true or just conditionally true? I suspect that it is conditionally true.

My main concern is how one determines the objective. What is meant that children will learn what they “need” to learn on their own? Many homeschoolers would say that what they need to learn is what they are driven to learn, or what they want to learn. They contend that the best person to make that determination is the child himself. While I agree that input from the student is necessary for an adult to develop a suitable curriculum, I strongly disagree that the student alone should determine his coursework.

That a child is not capable to decide for himself what he should and should not learn is so obvious that it is difficult to articulate. Jean Jacques Rousseau believed that a child should learn in an environment free from adult interference; he should learn experientially through his own discovery from investigation and trial and error. The idea is ridiculous on its face. Does a baby learn his first language free from adult interference? Would a child survive long discovering which berries in the garden were edible and which were poisonous? Would a child be able to discover a foreign culture or the meaning of the symbol “A” without adult interference?

The idea that a child cannot benefit from an adult who serves as teacher, lecturer and mentor disregards the exponential progress that humans have made as a result of what is called “masterminding”. One generation of humans discovers a fact through trial and error, observation, experimentation and then shares the information in the most efficient way - through oral or written language – to the next generation who compounds the abstract concept by applying it to some other discovery, and on and on. Humans naturally learn from one another, peer to peer as well as generation to generation. As Newton said in a letter to Robert Hooke, “If I have seen further it is only by standing on the shoulders of giants”.

If each generation had to repeat the research and learn previously discovered concepts anew through experience, human progress would stagnate. (It’s called “reinventing the wheel” - I'm sure you've heard of it.) You may argue that a student does not need adult guidance to pick up a book and learn about the great ideas of the past. That is true. But what that argument overlooks is the adult that is represented by the book. A child did not write about that great idea. An adult did. Students need teachers, whether those teachers are represented by textbooks, computer programs, or human beings. Maria Montessori would agree. She advocated for self-motivated learning within specific conditions. Students are self-directed within a limited choice of educational activities, but those activities are predetermined by educators for the purpose of promoting certain concepts.

To be fair, I recognize that no one could possibly believe (Rousseau notwithstanding) that a student should be isolated from all adult guidance. Self-directed learning is not self-generated learning. If an unschooler asked his parents to explain a difficult concept with which he was struggling, I imagine the parent would oblige. So I believe we can all agree that students need adult guidance. Returning to our initial question then, is a student capable of deciding which subjects to study? For the same reasons that he cannot learn without adult assistance, he cannot know which courses of study will take him into successful adulthood. As a minor, he most likely does not have the responsibilities of an adult and so cannot relate to the knowledge base required of a responsible adult.

Educational expert Sir Ken Robinson contends that none of us today know what an adult twelve years into the future will need to know because of the rapid pace of change in technology and human progress. Although it is true that we cannot predict some of the future’s technological and vocational skills, we can guarantee that human beings will still communicate abstract concepts using language, mathematical formulae, and visual data. We can anticipate that humans will still express themselves artistically through music, dance, drama and art. We can be certain that humans will still struggle with purpose, meaning, value, morality and other metaphysical and philosophical questions. Some things will change. Most things will not.

Therefore, while there is certainly room within a home-based curriculum for students to study subjects about which they are passionate, the core curriculum of language, mathematics, basic science, social sciences and the arts must also find their way into the student’s coursework. I believe it is a home educator’s responsibility.

LessonMinder can help in your efforts to prepare your children for college. Visit http://www.lessonminder.com/ today.

Homeschooling Mantras: Part 4 of 5

2011-08-16T06:00:00.000-07:00

Overstatement #3: Standardized Testing is Irrelevant and/or Harmful

In my state it was the WASL (“Wassle”). The state test that supposedly began as a gauge for teacher competence and magically morphed into a gauge for student competence and then finally became a graduation requirement that more than half the state’s seniors failed to meet, was so reviled by parents and educators alike, that it was tossed out in favor of a “new and improved” HSPE (“Hispie”) for high school students and MSP for the lower grades.

I was happy to see the WASL go and skeptical that the new test would be an improvement. This is not because I think testing is irrelevant. Rather, this particular test came with a lot of political baggage and was obviously arbitrary. A majority of Washington state students had never performed to the test’s standard, and when legislators put their collective foot down and made the test a graduation requirement that over 50% of the state’s seniors subsequently failed, the governor refused to enforce the requirement and encouraged the legislature to delay the state requirement by law. “If at first you don’t perform, never mind” is an interesting twist on the old adage about perseverance.

In the state of Washington, neither private school students nor homeschool students are required to participate in state assessment tests. Homeschool students must be evaluated annually by a test of some kind. (Although, that law is not enforced to my knowledge or in my experience.) Because I am already aware of my children’s educational progress relative to their peers and to the expectations of the colleges I hoped they would eventually attend, I had no concern about their performance on standardized tests, nor any need to have them tested for my own peace of mind. As such, the WASL was as good a test as any to meet the legal requirement and it was convenient.

There are many reasons that my children might have struggled with the WASL. First of all, I refused to prepare them or “teach the test”. Some parents argued with me that to teach the test was to teach relevant concepts, so how was teaching the test any different than teaching subjects? If you believe that the WASL competently tested developmentally appropriate material than I suppose that argument is valid. However, if like me you believe that the WASL tested well below what could be reasonably expected of a healthy average student of a particular age or grade, then they should be able to pass the test without preparing for it. That was my logic, anyway. So, while my home educating peers picked up the prep packets from their local districts, I ignored the impending tests and got on with our regular coursework. Secondly, as I discovered through reports from my children, the test was poorly written, ambiguous, required particular, popular and arbitrary methods of problem solving in addition to the correct answer in certain subjects like math, and were asked to reflect and write on ideas and topics that my children could not culturally relate to. Third, my children are what I would consider of average intelligence. They are what we think of as A-B students: disciplined, hard working, healthy and engaged, but not Mensa level gifted thinkers. I know that many of you will argue that “average” is a “C” student, not an “A-B” student. But I am not using the school system’s definition, I am using a more factual definition. Grades do not reflect intelligence. They reflect a combination of intelligence, effort and cooperation, with effort and cooperation having far more weight than intelligence. Often times a “C” reflects the boredom (lack of cooperation and effort) of the smartest kid in the class. So, I stand by my assessment that my children are fairly average in intelligence. Their SAT scores were not high enough to earn them Ivy League educations or academic scholarships, but good enough to get them in most universities. Finally, before taking the WASL, I let my children know in no uncertain terms that I did not care how well they performed. Had they completely failed the test, there would be no consequences at all. There was no pressure or even encouragement to perform. Despite all of these disadvantages, my children passed the WASL easily.

They are not unique. An HSLDA article from October 2004 entitled “Academic Statistics on Homeschooling” reports that homeschoolers routinely outperform traditionally educated students by over 30 percentage points. They cite many studies to support their claim. So what drives the opposition to standardized testing? Why is testing one of the leading homeschool (and general education) controversies? I’ve collected several objections to testing that I would like to address.

Tests only show how well kids take tests

Every statement that sounds true is often at least partially true. The problem I have with this statement is the word “only”. If you have ever studied logic or debate or if you have just thought about it enough, you will recognize that statements employing universal terms like “only”, “every”, “always”, “never”, “all” and “none” are ~~always~~ usually misleading. Certainly tests show how well students take tests. That seems obvious, doesn’t it? But the only “testing skill” that may skew the accuracy of the test’s determined objective is the ability or lack thereof to perform under pressure in a particular environment. (Other skills are required for successfully taking an academic test, but they are skills the student would need to succeed in the most basic educational environment: how to read, how to follow instruction, how to use a pencil, etc. ) It is important for all children to learn how to perform under pressure in a particular environment. But if that specific skill is not the test’s objective, and influences the demonstration of skills the test is designed to assess, then the test results will be inaccurate.

Ok. But is there nothing else the test can tell us? A student who scores on a standardized test in the 90^th percentile for math, and in the 30th percentile for reading, would know that any pressure he felt from taking the test affected him more in the area of reading than in math. The test would verify that he is more competent in math than in reading and that his mathematical reasoning exceeds that of most of his peers at least in the specific areas tested. Whether or not the student can benefit from this knowledge or whether this is information he did not already know is beside the point. The test is assessing more than his test taking skills.

Tests are not reliable

…and we are? I don’t know about you, but I am not certain I can accurately assess my children’s strengths and weaknesses. I don’t think most people can accurately assess their own. When I was in college my mother insisted I would make an excellent teacher and I thought she was insane. Here I am twenty five years later teaching my own children and loving it! If doctors cannot accurately diagnose many illnesses and disorders, and teachers cannot accurately assess whether or not a particular student has a learning disability, if psychologists cannot accurately assess whether someone has a personality disorder or a mental illness why are we dismissing something as benign as a written test simply because it may not be 100% accurate. I wouldn’t expect it to be. I would simply expect it to give me sense of how my child is doing. The inaccuracy of any given test on any given day is the reason that colleges will allow student to take the SAT more than once. It is no secret that tests can offer skewed results. Tests should be used only as one piece of the assessment puzzle and should be combined with other data in determining the progress and skill set of any student.

Tests only show how well kids have prepared for that particular test, and my children need to focus on material not reflected in the test.

This two-part complaint assumes first that only those who prepare for a test take it. My kids never prepare for standardized tests because that would defeat my purpose for the test. I use tests to verify for myself that I am sufficiently preparing my kids beyond average expectations. It doesn’t tell me whether or not my kids are performing up to their potential, or as well as they “should” by some standard I adhere to. It only tells me that I am sufficiently keeping them above mainstream standards. (The SAT and ACT have a different purpose for us, and so for those tests my kids have prepared.) As long as the test is taken cold, it will give students an idea of the concepts they have internalized – the concepts they really know.

In response to the second part of the complaint, most standardized tests assess skills that all children, regardless of interest, personality, talent and future plans require to participate in society. The skills normally tested are basic. No standardized test designed to assess progress in primary or secondary school is going to ask students about the half life of plutonium, or real estate law or how to perform a triple lutz jump on the ice. If my child has a strong interest in geology or history or veterinary science, his interest should not keep him from learning basic math and language skills.

The tests must be administered in an unfamiliar environment.

Barring a disability, humans adapt naturally. A healthy student who cannot adapt needs the opportunity to practice.

The methodology does not conform to my child’s learning style.

Learning styles show a propensity toward processing information received in a particular manner – most commonly either aurally, visually or kinesthetically. They do not necessarily process information exclusively in a particular manner. Most people utilize multiple methods for receiving, comprehending and processing information. Some students’ learning style will give them an advantage over other students but then so will their intelligence, history, upbringing, personality and a host of other factors. So, again, use standardized tests as a gauge rather than a rating.

My student has a disability that prevents him from completing the test within the required time, or under the conditions that the test is administered.

This is the easiest objection to address. By law (the Americans With Disabilities Act) standardized tests must accommodate the needs of learning disabled and handicapped children. (My student will be unable to finish etc.)

I am not interested in changing your mind about whether or not your children should be tested. Hopefully, I have relieved some minds from needless worry regarding testing. My main objective is to discourage home educators from forwarding arguments that are poorly supported, weak or untrue. If you have an aversion to testing, I understand. It is your right, and in states that do not compel homeschoolers to test it is (happily) not even your issue. But I applaud those who simply want to make sure they are responsibly gauging their children’s progress, and do so with an objectivity that recognizes the benefits and limitations of any and all evaluative media.

Homeschooling Mantras: Part 3 of 5

2011-08-09T06:00:00.000-07:00

Overstatement #2: Government Has No Business in Education

Many home educators resent having to pay taxes for the education of other children. I wonder if these homeschooling parents have ever considered the resentment of single adults paying taxes for the education of children that were not their own. What about elderly or childless couples? And, what about the couple who has only one child, paying for their neighbors 2.3 children, or the family of eight children taking their unfair share of the tax dollars for themselves?

The purpose of public education is not to offer students opportunity for success nor parents a financing option for educating their children. Public education exists to meet the needs of the civilization, the common good, the community at large. A strange perversion of individualism, tainted by relativistic ethics has overtaken our culture. As a result everyone operates within society from a position of “what’s in it for me?” But public education isn’t about you, it is about the community.

The idea is very simple. If all children within a society are given an equal opportunity to learn, the society will suffer less crime and enjoy greater economic output, greater progress, cultural cohesion and most importantly, the ability to competently sustain a democratic republic. For about a century public schools in America did just that. Then, the cultural degradation that slowly resulted from a combination of bad and erroneous ideas from folks like Darwin, Freud and Marx and tumultuous 20^th century events such as devastating war, worldwide depression and the spread of communism eroded our collective perspective on truth, morality and personhood. Naturally, these influences negatively impacted educational content and behavior.

I do not object to funding the education of “other peoples’” children, but funding the poor and in some ways harmful education of “other peoples’” children. I mind paying taxes for the compulsory promulgation of propaganda, pseudo-science, and materialism. I don’t mind paying taxes so that future politicians, teachers, business leaders and neighbors can make informed political decisions and behave with a certain amount of civility and responsibility. I don’t mind paying taxes so that future adults will contribute significantly to the economic growth of my community and nation. None of us should. To live in common with other individuals, sharing space, resources and culture, we must agree to shoulder some collective burdens.

Rather than fight exclusively for the benefits of our own children, we would do well to fight for the educational benefits of all children, even as we withdraw our own children from the system. Our first responsibility is to our families, but that does not mean we have no responsibility to the community at large. Government schools do make sense in a democratic republic – the citizenry is the government, and insofar as the citizenry involves itself in civic affairs it will have an impact on government schools. Frankly, we have more to fear from our culture than our government, history notwithstanding.

There are only 2.3 million homeschooling children in the United States out of nearly 80 million in traditional school settings. Those remaining 78 million children will comprise the community in which our adult children live. We have a stake in everyone’s future.

Homeschooling Mantras: Part 2 of 5

2011-08-01T21:00:00.000-07:00

Overstatement #1: "The home school should not be school at home!"

I dabbled in homeschooling a bit when my children were very young, the two eldest being in second grade and kindergarten. It wasn’t anything like traditional school. We gardened, dissected plants, collected bugs and frogs, played phonics and math games, read aloud curled up in blankies and followed along with a Bob Ross style PBS drawing program as our art lessons. But that was preschool, really. In Washington, children younger than 8 are not legally required to attend school, and my children were already above grade levels for reading and math. Once they began private Christian school, I naturally expected them to perform to specific standards, which they mostly did.

Then came an educational crisis having to do with the incompetence of my children’s school staff, and I was convicted to pull my two eldest out of school entirely. I had already tried public schools, and was never impressed with my own public education growing up. My parochial high school was a mixed bag of good and bad experiences, as I expect most traditional school environments are. But the crisis I faced was not something I could work with – a staff of teachers who simply refused to communicate directly to me that one of my children - an "A" student was suddenly failing. They expected my child to do that for them. They sent notes home with my daughter and actually expected her to give them to me. When they did not hear back from me, they neglected to follow up. Now, this does not excuse my daughter from avoiding to tell me she was having trouble in school. But her teachers were responsible for following up. When I suggested that they should have done so, they replied that they simply didn’t have to time to follow up with all the students with whom they had difficulties. Really? There was obviously something more wrong with this school than my individual complaints. So, I took a very blind leap of faith.

In the middle of my daughter’s seventh grade year I made a split-second decision to pull both my children out of that school and bring them back home, and found myself panicked over what to do next. I hadn’t had the opportunity to prepare. All the typical fears homeschooling parents grapple with were compounded by the sudden circumstances. I did not have time to research the best homeschooling methods, curricula, support options, etc. So, I looked back on my own education, copying what I remembered as good and modifying what I remembered was not so good.

I created a school space in my home with desks and materials, posters and equipment. I bought shelves on which I started to stock curricula, how-to books, workbooks and reference materials. And, having fond memories of that back to school shopping spree, I took the kids to Staples and stocked up on new pencils, erasers, compasses and whimsically designed Peachie folders. Then we started drilling grammar, practicing handwriting, memorizing poetry, completing math problems and writing essays. I was recreating school at home. I didn’t know that such a thing would be wrong until one homeschooler told me it was.

After awhile I started to notice the same criticism popping up in books and articles, web sites and home school conference presentations. I don’t remember ever hearing a good reason for why I should abandon my little schoolhouse-at-home. It was said that the traditional school environment would stunt creativity and self-motivation. It would take the joy out of learning. But I wonder now if the objection to the schoolhouse environment is more a matter of fashion. Some homeschoolers and especially unschoolers see themselves as the anti-school crowd. It is just not “good form” to set up your anti-school homeschool to look and operate as a school. Ok, I get that. And if the messages people derived from my behavior as a homeschooling mom were more important than my children’s education I would consider their criticism. But I do not believe that the data supports the idea that the traditional school model – a desk, a textbook and a teacher – stunts creativity and self motivation.

It is not the method of schooling that is failing our children, but rather a complex combination of social, cultural and political perspectives that use the method to teach an agenda inconsistent with real learning. The problem is not as simple as the manner in which data is communicated to and retained by students. There are so many things wrong with traditional education today that it is difficult to enumerate them. I’ll list just a few. There are more. In general, today’s classroom is plagued with:

Centralized political influence tied to federal dollars that make demands unsuited to the conditions of individual school districts.
Inaccurate textbooks written by unqualified editors who are not specialists in the subject that the content covers.
Good teachers who are restricted in how they can present material and discipline their classrooms.

Bad teachers who are protected from any corrective discipline.
Students who routinely manipulate a culture of adults – parents and educators alike – who are afraid to demand, require, expect, judge, punish and even often times reward.
The distraction and competition of technology and entertainment
Highly diverse student populations
Political considerations – pressure from special interests and the federal government

We could spend many words analyzing each of these problems and coming up with many others. My point is simply this: requiring your student to sit at a desk for an hour, read from a textbook, or practice math on a chalkboard does not spoil his educational experience, nor diminish the effectiveness of homeschooling, especially when such an environment is augmented with more active, physical and creative learning experiences.

Educational expert Sir Ken Robinson famously contends that governments around the world created public schooling in the 19^th century to meet the needs of the industrial revolution. Although one could argue that the United States public school system grew organically out of the community school model, his logical assumption proves nonetheless valid. Even so, that fact does not mean that public schools are ineffective. The history of education in America simply denies that contention.

My parents were born just before the baby boom generation and slightly after the WWI generation. Their public education was superb. Both of my parents are avid readers. While neither is a professional speaker or writer, they both exhibit excellent written and oral communication skills. They both have deep knowledge of history, are disciplined and reasoned thinkers, and are highly creative. They dance and have an appreciation for classic music and high art. They are not exceptional for their age. They simply enjoyed an education that was not marred by political correctness, relativism, multi-culturalism and experimental educational methodology. The example is anecdotal, I acknowledge. But I find these characteristics consistent with many others in their generation.

Another example that the problem with education lies in content more than style is an experience I had as a junior in high school. I attended a Catholic girls’ high school in the eighties. It was considered an academically rigorous school into which I tested toward the bottom of the acceptable range, and my classmates were noticeably and at times annoyingly brilliant. And yet, when given a vocabulary test that had been written in the early 60’s for eighth graders every single one of my classmates failed. My 11^th grade English teacher was trying to demonstrate for us that standards and expectations had even by then declined dramatically, and that we should take note and demand as much of ourselves as we could. If was a lesson that has stayed with me ever since.

Schools can work. They just often don’t. And I believe that is the main reason homeschooling exists and will continue to grow. Rather than turning our back on everything that looks like traditional education, why not use what works and modify what doesn’t?

Homeschooling Mantras: Did You Really Mean That? Part 1 of 5

2011-07-27T09:30:00.000-07:00

I have been homeschooling for fifteen years, and have had homeschooling friends for over twenty. I live in a very homeschool-friendly region of a homeschool-friendly state. And so, I have had for nearly half my life heard the many popular homeschooling anecdotes and mantras that still pop up on blogs, in articles and conversations throughout the home school community. These lines, ideas, talking points – however you’d like to refer to them – represent diverse points of view but have some commonality to them nonetheless. They all contain a bit of sophistry that I believe derives from a combination of passion and insufficient analysis.

Love him or hate him, the conservative talk radio host, Rush Limbaugh, has wisely said on many occasions, “thinking is hard work”. I know of many considerable intellects who would agree, G.K. Chesterton for one. I just happen to have my skeptic’s antennae raised as a matter of habit, and so I often hear or read things that just don’t sound right. I am forced to spend time considering them and find myself disagreeing with folks a lot. This tendency of mine has its advantages and disadvantages. Some people unfortunately describe me as “argumentative”, a quality I do not desire. I do not want to be contrary, I just don’t want to mislead anyone. Before I assent to a particular idea I have to know that it is true. When the red flags go off in my brain, I have to challenge the concept that set them off. Consequently, I am confident that I am being as objective as possible.

For example, I read in a homeschooling blog the other day that the educational drop out rate in America is 50% - one out of every two teens you know, see on the street or friend on Facebook is a high school drop out. On its face it just seems like an exaggeration, doesn’t it? It is such an astonishing figure I wonder if I misread or misinterpreted it. Well, I am not going to disagree simply on the basis of my astonishment, so I looked it up at the National Center for Education Statistics. The drop out rate has been on the decline since the 1980s for all demographic groups. It was 14% then and is 8% now. So, learning that and giving the article’s author the benefit of doubt, I thought that perhaps he was including homeschoolers in his definition of “drop out” in some poetic sense. After all, a homeschooler has “dropped out” of the public system. So I looked at the Census data.

In 2010, children under the age of 18 comprised approximately a quarter of the U.S. population, or a little over 77 million. The most recent home school population we have on record is 2.3 million or 2% of children in the United States. Adding that to the NCES statistic of 8%, we are not even close to 50%. Thankfully. Perhaps he was referring to his state...or his town?

It seems to me that taking responsibility for teaching our own children requires us to practice what we expect our children to learn. I am sure we all want our children to think critically, evaluate objectively and communicate accurately. And yet, I continually see statements and arguments within the homeschooling community that seem more emotional and subjective than logical and objective, or that are simply incorrect. We’re all human, of course – we all react emotionally from time to time. But in the context of promoting homeschooling and influencing each other with our experiences, thoughts and ideas, we should hold ourselves to a high standard.

Statements such as “I don’t want my home school environment to be nothing more than a classroom at home”, “Homeschooling parents shouldn’t teach their kids, they should allow their kids to learn”, and “government has no business setting educational standards”, sound wise and revolutionary. But are they? My objective is not to contradict, but to encourage us all to take a more reasonable approach to promoting what I think is truly revolutionary: homeschooling.

The next several articles I release will address some of the overstatements that I have repeatedly come across over the years. I invite your respectful and civil dialog.

A Homeschooling Model: Developmentally driven, Multi-Sensory, Holistic Education

2011-07-19T21:00:00.000-07:00

by Susan A. Howard

Many tend to categorize students into learning style categories. A child who demonstrates spatial intelligence with blocks and Legos is a “kinesthetic” learner, while another who needs diagrams, pictures and demonstrations is said to be “visual”. Others, who process information best when hearing it explained, are “auditory” learners. By identifying our student's learning style and catering to it we expect to facilitate learning. But leaning too heavily on learning style may in fact inhibit students from processing information as deeply as they would if a concept were presented in a variety of ways.

Then, of course, there is the impact of other educational conditions. How do learning styles intersect with child development, self-directedness and experience? How does an auditory learner benefit from experience when the nature of experience is kinesthetic? And how does a kinesthetic learner express himself abstractly during the rhetoric phase of development? Although a student may respond best to information delivered through a particular sense or activity type, the best learning environment for all students utilizes all the senses, is targeted for a the student’s developmental stage, and allows the internalization of concepts through experience. Studies show that a multi-sensory learning methodology expands the brain's capacity for learning and processing information, especially in young children[i]. A mind encouraged to process concepts holistically grows vigorously, and learns most effectively.

Consequently, home educators should build a curriculum that incorporates a variety of developmentally appropriate, multi-faceted activities. Not only will such a curriculum educate most effectively, but will engage both the student and the educator. So, what would a holistic sensory course of study look like? Let’s set up a week-long fourth grade grammar lesson on prepositions as an example. I’m not suggesting that we would need five days of holistic sensory education to successfully teach a simple concept like prepositions. I am simply using this as an easy example of the different ways we can teach a single concept to the various learning styles.

Step One: Auditory

Monday we might start by listening to the preposition song. There are several. I think the most popular is set to Yankee Doodle. If you don’t know it, or don’t believe me, just look it up on YouTube. When you have a group of students this can be especially fun because it is corny and invariably evokes the giggles. A short “lecture” can follow, defining a preposition. We read the definition of the preposition: “A preposition is a word that helps a verb create a relationship between two nouns.” Then we explain the definition through discussion or lecture: “What do you think we mean by a “relationship”? We establish (using a humorous example that fourth graders can appreciate) that a relationship in this sense is one of time, location, manner, means, quantity, purpose, state or condition. For example, the phrase “The fat teacher sat on a tack” shows a relationship of location between the teacher and the tack. He wasn’t beside the tack or under the tack, but on the tack. The phrase “The fat teacher was shamed by his girlish scream” demonstrates a relationship of “means” or cause and effect. Emphasize the final point that a preposition is always followed by a noun and that the group of words starting from the preposition to the noun or noun phrase and is called the “prepositional phrase”. To finish up this auditory lesson, we may want to recite five to ten sentences and ask our students to pick out the prepositions.

Tuesday: Visual

Tuesday we might move to a visual method of teaching the concept. We can once again utilize our YouTube video or recording of the Preposition Song, this time with “lyric sheets” so the students can sing along to the song. They can use the lyric sheet to memorize the prepositions. Then we could hand out a word hunt puzzle, and see how many prepositions they can find in a block of letters. Games are a great way to lighten up the drier subjects such as grammar while remaining on track with the concept we are teaching. Make sure students know the meanings of all the prepositions on the list. Introducing some of the more mature prepositions like despite, albeit, beneath, and throughout will help young students build more interesting sentence structure. Memorizing prepositions allows us to get more creative with preposition games in the future as a way to keep the lesson fresh throughout the year.

Wednesday: Kinesthetic

Wednesday we might begin by reviewing the definition of a preposition, and the situations in which they are used: time, location, manner, means, quantity, purpose, state or condition. We can follow it up by seeing how many prepositions the student, or one of the students in the case of a class, can recite from memory. Then we might offer a visual/kinesthetic hand out or a game – preposition bingo, or a preposition crossword puzzle. You could also use magnetic poetry words to build sentences, or play a physical version of “Ad libs” by pulling words randomly out of boxes that separate words by parts of speech.

Thursday: Memorization

Fourth graders have a great capacity for memorization as a matter of brain development. Take advantage of that on Thursday and set up two students, or parent and child, and test each other on how many prepositions they know. See if either can remember the entire list.

Friday: Self-directed, Creative Experience

On Friday you may offer a variety of assignment choices that allow students to enjoy a little creative autonomy. They can create their own preposition crossword puzzle, write a poem about prepositions, or create a graphic design incorporating prepositions as a visual and symbolic element of the composition. They could even invent a preposition board game. For this assignment, creative immersion is key. You could even end the week videotaping your own performance of The Preposition Song, changing the musical style. (Think a preposition rap hasn’t been done? Think again!)

Developmental Suitability

In all our creative curriculum building, we should remember how our student's physiological development contributes to their ability to process types of information and benefit from particular activities so that we are not asking the child to perform in a manner that does not promote their learning at their particular age. The classic educational concept of the Trivium is based primarily on developmental suitability and has fortunately been revived by the homeschooling movement. It breaks education down to three stages of development: the grammar stage, the logic stage and the rhetoric stage. These terms are not course subjects in this context, but rather mental processes. In the grammar stage (roughly up to age 11) a child’s brain is best suited for rote memory learning. They love to memorize and recite. Spelling bees, multiplication tables, historical timelines, and poetry recitation comprise an elementary education precisely because this is the developmental stage most suited for rote memory. In our example above we mention the memorization of prepositions. This activity is perfectly suitable for the fourth grade level. Not so for the eighth grade.

As the child nears puberty, though, their brain changes. Rote memory becomes tedious and dull. The student enters the logic stage where they thirst for the why as opposed to the what. At this stage they want to know why Napoleon was driven to travel thousands of miles to conquer Moscow more than exactly how many miles Moscow is from Paris. They are consumed with if-then scenarios. This is the age that science and math, correctly taught, can become truly fascinating. It is NOT the time to memorize the periodic table!

By the time the child enters high school he is starting to express himself. As he matures he wants to have an impact on the world around him. If he has received a solid classical education he is full of knowledge, skilled in critical thinking, and is now ready to assert his own response to it all. This is when we teach him how to express himself, how to ask questions and where to find the answers, how to analyze and come to solid conclusions. This is the time that rebelliousness rears it’s ugly head – but only if the child perceives some limitation on his ability to express himself. Because most teens in America do not have the skills to express themselves in ideas they resort to expressing themselves in other ways – more visual ways and often less acceptable ways. This is the time when children can be at their most hopeful and idealistic, or their most destructive and despairing. The difference lies in the perspective of the world they have developed based on their experiences and the education they have received to this point.

Self-Directedness

Among homeschooling families, A Thomas Jefferson Education by Oliver Van DeMille has been very popular. In many ways it echoes the philosophy of Maria Montessori who supported a child’s natural curiosity and love of learning. And while we must remember that children, being children, need adults to direct and guide them, we must also remember that they are people, not programs. Montessori education offers students self-direction within a limited number of choices which fosters independence and responsibility. By working with our students’ strengths and interests we enable them to take some ownership over their own education that will result in a more successful outcome in the long run.

Getting Started

So, what is the first step in developing a multi-sensory education? Not all published curriculum employs a holistic strategy of learning. You may have to augment your curriculum of choice, or develop your own curriculum (which can be a really great experience!) If you are new to homeschooling, I recommend you engage in some preliminary reading. There are a multitude of homeschooling how-to books, seminars, and conventions, so much so that the pursuit of your own education could distract from your child’s! But don't allow yourself to become overwhelmed. When I first began homeschooling I read a book that basically told me that if I was not ready to cut everything out of my life and focus 25 hours, 8 days a week to my children’s education, I should just give up right there! The audacity of that statement made me rebellious enough to toss the book in the trash and ignore her advice outright. I am glad I did, but I have ever since worried myself sick over the job I was doing. We all feel inadequate to the task, partially because we care so much about giving our children the best education possible. But some study will give you a solid footing on which to start developing your curriculum. (I have listed some helpful resources at the end of this article.) Your biggest ally, though, in creating or augmenting curriculum is your own creativity and sense of fun. Learning is exciting. Our world is a place of wonder. Discovering it with your children and enjoying the process is extremely important for you and them.

RESOURCES:

All of these can be found online or at your local library. However, I recommend that you purchase them as you read them. There are many other books that will give you more practical advise about process – how to set up your schedule, how to find resources, how to manage large families, etc. These titles, however, will tell you most what to teach, why and in what way. They will help you develop a commitment to homeschooling, and will serve as reference through your years of educating.

Dorothy Sayers, “The Lost Tools of Learning”, audio lecture or article
Susan Wise Bauer, The Well-Educated Mind: A Guide to the Classical Education You Never Had & The Well-Trained Mind: A Guide to Classical Education at Home
E.D. Hirsch, Books to Build On: A Grade-by-Grade Resource Guide for Parents and Teachers (Core Knowledge Series)
Laura Berquist, Designing Your Own Classical Curriculum: A Guide to Catholic Home Education
Mortimer Adler, How to Read a Book
Oliver Van DeMille, A Thomas Jefferson Education

[i] Effects of Music Training on the Child’s Brain and Cognitive Development

Gottfried Schlaug, Andrea Norton, Katie Overy, & Ellen Winner, 2005

Get the Most Out of Summer Reading

2011-07-15T20:44:00.000-07:00

By Susan Howard

My daughter’s SAT scores were good. They were not great. They were just enough to indicate an acceptable level of intellectual competence. Her grades were good, but of course, how else would a mother report her own daughter’s performance? Still, I tried very hard to evaluate her fairly, and there were some B’s and at least one C on our homeschool transcript. But when her school of choice, a very rigorous private liberal arts school, read her analysis of Ray Bradbury’s Fahrenheit 451, and saw her high school reading list of over 250 of the greatest books of Western history, they accepted her enthusiastically.

Having tracked my daughter’s maturing and intellectual progress, I am convinced that the single most important thing I did as a home educator was to unplug the television and give my children access to great books from a young age. Great books – not good ones, funny ones, trendy ones, hip ones, but great ones – like those of Beatrix Potter, E.B. White, Laura Ingalls Wilder, Lewis Carroll, and A.A. Milne at first, and then graduating on to Mark Twain, Jules Verne, C.S. Lewis, Johann David Wyss, Louisa May Alcott and finally to Tolkien, Shakespeare, Dickens, Austen, Bronte, and Dostoevsky for examples.

I discuss why classic literature has such an impact in my last blog article, The Importance of the Classics. You may wonder how in four years’ time we could assign 250 books – approximately 62 books per year. The simple answer is that we didn’t. We gave the children access not assignments.

Having started early with great books and having limited audiovisual over-stimulus, my children were neither intimidated nor unprepared to process the abstract information, advanced vocabulary, and profound themes that good books provided them. Consequently, they discovered the joy of reading a good story, traveling to distant lands and meeting interesting characters. They read great books for pleasure. How to turn that “summer reading” into credits became a creative project for me.

At first, not trying to spoil the idea that all this reading was really just entertainment, I would casually ask my kids, “so, how many books do you think you’ve read over the past month?” and then follow up with, “Wow…any you especially liked? What else did you read?” Then I would covertly record the list and stick it in a file. But I found that to be a very inefficient way to catalog their accomplishments. After all, some kids have better memories than others, and some kids are less communicative. So, while my oldest daughter would recall every title, character, plot twist, author name and copyright date (ok – I am exaggerating to make a point) my son would respond to me queries with answers like, “I dunno…I know I read something.” Additionally, I was never really sure how much of each book the kids really grasped. I knew I had to come up with a more formalized way of categorizing their reading list. So, I made them a deal. I would assign fewer books during the school year and allow them to read anything on the shelf, if they would simply fill out a record of what they had read when they were done. They would still get an assigned book here and there, one that tied in to other areas of study and for which they would have to write and essay or complete a related project. But most of their reading would be self-directed with no strings attached but the literature record.

A literature record is exactly what it sounds like. It is a document in which the student records the title, author, copyright date, and certain important key elements of the story. What are the setting, genre and theme? Who are the most important characters, the protagonist, and antagonist? What is the main conflict (man vs. man, man vs. nature, man vs. himself)? For advanced junior and senior high school students you can ask them to record the plotline – the rising and falling action, the climax, and the resolution.

How much a student is expected to complete depends on the student’s age and ability.

The literature record I still use is the one I developed years ago for my older children. I have found it a reliable and easy way to keep my records straight. But it has also served to help my children recall character names, plot elements, copyright dates and other aspects of each title, and has served as a very effective tool in preparing teens for the writing section of the SAT. With a binder full of completed literature records, the student can simply pull three, study the summaries, analyses and author bios and strategize on how he might use the information to respond to a number of essay prompts.

So, what if your children prefer to fill their summer reading with more popular titles – graphic novels, teen romances, Twilight or whatever the popular new series happens to be? You can still get mileage out of their entertainment by teaching them how to analyze what they are reading by documenting it in a literature record.

To access the LessonMinder lliterature record, log on to www.lessonminder.com and click on the Resources link or Tweet this article and we will send you the PDF for free!

Homeschooling - The Importance of Classic Literature

2011-07-14T10:12:00.000-07:00

by Susan A. Howard

Fortunately for me, my eldest daughter, necessarily the homeschooling Guinea pig of the family, had always loved literature. This was a great surprise to me as neither I nor my husband were big readers. As a baby, Alane would pretend to read her picture books, telling the imagined story with drama and inflection in very convincing baby babble. She began using common language early and by two was carrying on fairly comprehensive conversations. So, I instinctively began teaching her the alphabet and phonics. We made a game out of it and all the teddies, dollies and stuffed Disney characters joined in.

By the time Alane entered Kindergarten she was reading. By the end of first grade she was reading at the fourth grade level. By the time she was in second grade she had exhausted all the possible reading material appropriate to her young age. She skipped the Juni B. Jones and Magic Treehouses and went straight to Kenneth Grahame, E.B. White, Laura Ingalls Wilder, C.S. Lewis, and Roald Dahl.

By the time she graduated high school she had built a reading list of over 250 classic titles that included such diverse authors as Dante, Shakespeare, Dostoyevsky, the Brontes, Chaucer, Ray Bradbury, Oscar Wilde, and Homer. Because of her voracious appetite for literature and my own delight in it, one of my homeschooling friends asked me, so what good really is reading the classics over reading more modern literature? Isn’t the fact that she is reading the important thing? I guess the answer lies in why a classic is a classic.

Classic literature offers readers more than reading material – more than a venue for practicing a practical technique. Through classic literature, education is compounded. A student is exposed to the many edifying qualities of classical literature simultaneously.

At its least classic literature offers readers a unique aesthetic experience. Dicken’s delightfully clever phraseology, Twain’s sarcastic wit, Shakespeare’s expressive poetry, and Charlotte Bronte’s warmth provide a valuable artistic experience for the reader. The reader learns that communication is not just about conveying information, but doing so with style and compelling expression.

Classic literature provides a window of experience for readers, a vehicle for seeing places and meeting people they might not otherwise have an opportunity to experience especially at a young age. By travelling the world and beyond throughout history by way of the written word, students experience life from a safe distance, gradually broadening their scope in a healthy way. To get a sense of regret without having to regret, to experience the ruination of revenge without being ruined, to learn the meaning of real vs. superficial love without having to throw away one’s heart to a rogue, to understand sacrifice before having to make it, prepares students for these very challenges they will face sooner or later in their own lives. Consequently, avid readers of classical literature demonstrate surprising maturity for their age.

Occasionally, a work of literature will qualify as a classic because it introduces a radically new idea or theory. In some cases that idea is a poor or dangerous one. Mein Kampf and the Communist Manifesto for example are responsible for great human tragedies. The Catcher in the Rye has been cited as influencing the violent actions of Mark David Chapman, John Hinckley Jr. and Lee Harvey Oswald. Whether or not some these works are suitable for youth is a judgment that parents must make based on the personality and maturity of their students. Regardless, like all classic literature, they certainly provide intellectual value and an opportunity for a student to practice their critical thinking skills. If the student is not challenged intellectually he is most likely beyond the book. But for those who do not yet have the skills to analyze and criticize objectively, these works must be scrutinized and considered carefully.

By contrast, the best of classic literature has a depth of profound truth that teaches the reader something of life. Whether it is the consequence of a particular character or behavior, a contrasting point of view, an aspect of the human condition, a universal problem that we all must face, or all of the above, classical literature offers invaluable wisdom and insight. It is this quality that allows a reader to revisit a book multiple times and having grown from previous reading will discover new ideas and insights that he was not previously prepared to process.

By exposing your students to great books, you will prepare them for life, develop their intellects, spark their imaginations, and expose them to the great truths of human existence. Isn’t that what education is all about?

For two great resources on classical literature, take a look at Mortimer Adler’s How to Read a Book and Susan Wise Bauer’s The Well Educated Mind. You can also access LessonMinder.com’s extensive classical literature database at www.lessonminder.com

Homeschooling Advice - Balancing the Subjective

2011-07-08T10:22:00.000-07:00

By Susan Howard

Founder, LessonMinder.com

I am going to give you some very important homeschooling advice: Don’t take anyone’s homeschooling advice. I know that sounds like a logical conundrum, but let me explain. In a world where everything has been studied, analyzed, broken down and defined, we begin to think that we know more than we do. We start to talk about our emotions in terms of chemical reactions, define reality as perception and categorize behavior in terms of disorders. Parenting becomes process and teaching becomes method. Soon, we will all need advanced degrees to eat, breathe and sleep.

I am not suggesting that knowledge is irrelevant. How could I be a home educator and suggest that? What I am suggesting is that full knowledge will always remain beyond our reach. The world is too big, too miraculous and too complex for any of us to ever have the whole picture, regardless of our credentials. Furthermore, no one pursues knowledge immune from the influences of their own subjective experience and point of view. That subjectivity colors the results we get in our so called objective research. And so we must balance the subjectives of professional educational, psychological, metaphysical and scientific knowledge with our own personal experience, research and knowledge.

Home schooling is nothing if not subjective. Its purpose is to personalize the educational experience to respond to our children’s interests, personalities, strengths, weaknesses and family culture. Perhaps one family rejects evolution, while another find logic an essential component of a good education. A family with and ADHD child may choose to protect him from the institutional pressure to use behavior modifying chemicals, and another with an intellectually advanced child pursue courses beyond his so-called “grade level”. Homeschooling is all about customization. But there are professional home school advisors, educational consultants and child psychologists who enthusiastically try to promote a particular method of instruction.

I just received a newsletter from one such “expert” exhorting me to never teach my child, but rather provide an environment in which she can learn. Are the two really mutually exclusive? Perhaps they were for her children. But my children are not her children. The homeschooling movement is not a movement against teaching or teachers. It is a movement against the systemized manufacture of performers for the purpose of employment. It is against group-think. It is against one size fits all education. It is deeply subjective. I am sure you remember at least one teacher in your own educational history whom you respected and admired, and to whom you are deeply grateful. I have several. Teachers, mentors, masters, coaches, camp counselors…they are an important component in everyone’s educational development. Not only do I enjoy teaching my children, but they enjoy learning from me. (Truth be told, we learn together!) And, I believe that others outside the home can also serve that role for my children in a constructive way. That may not be true for your children, and that is my point.

In most cases, no one knows children better than their own parents. If you do enough research and preparation for making the decision to homeschool, you will no doubt come across a variety of conflicting opinions on how to proceed. Use what you can, and throw out the rest. I nearly gave up homeschooling because I was not as organized as one particular expert suggested I needed to be. Everyone has to adapt to their own lifestyles, strengths and weaknesses.

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