Loading ...June 11th, 2008Forget Everything You Know About “School!”
Friend, as I mentioned in my last post, I recently added new tabs to the header to make the central message of the website easier to understand. The following post is a copy of the tab called “Step 1.” Please let me know if this is clear by leaving a comment below. Thanks!
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Now that you are ready to give your home school kids a classical Christian education, it’s time for step 1:
Forget Everything You Know About “School!”
Well, you don’t really have to throw away everything that you know about school, but you do have to try your best to rid yourself of that traditional 12 year, public school paradigm under which you are operating. Chances are very high that you attended a public school. If so, you have been indoctrinated in a system of values and procedures that are not compatible with a classical home education.
For instance, you probably had defined start and stop times for the beginning and end of the school day as well as the beginning and end of class periods. Real learning can’t be contained or restricted by time. The classical model allows the freedom to work on language all day long if that is the family’s preference.
Another facet of public education is the 12 year sequence. Although you might have to keep annual records for your state, you don’t have to limit yourself to a 36 week learning period. For instance, if your son takes 42 weeks to learn the concepts of Algebra 1, so what? He is developing critical thinking skills, and that is so valuable that you wouldn’t want to cut him off just because the public school kids don’t finish their textbooks before the end of the school year. Likewise, if your daughter has mastered cursive handwriting, hurray! Let her move on to something else.
Textbooks are another example of a sacred public school component. A classical Christian education uses primary sources (classic histories, literature, philosophies, and government treatises) to explore meaning; secondary sources like surveys are used to supplement the classics and give a cohesive overview. For younger kids, “living” books with adult read-aloud time are preferred over the use of workbooks.
These are just a few of the old ideas that need to be stripped away for the new ideas to fully flower. Remember Jesus’ parable about how new wine isn’t put in old wineskins? Your children’s classical Christian education is something completely new and exciting which just doesn’t fit in the old paradigm. You can read more about step one in my post, “Discard the Public School Paradigm.”
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June 14th, 2008 at 2:31 am
While I understand that learning is not confined to 36 weeks/year for 12 years, I’m not sure how to get the boys away from the idea that they are “rising 5th graders”. And that they have a set amount of work to do each day, and when they are done, they are “finished with school.” Should I just talk to them about the idea that they are always learning, even when they have finished their “work”? Or are they still too young to really worry about this right now?
P.S. - they will be 10 years old at the end of this month.
June 16th, 2008 at 12:10 pm
Cindy,
When Meredith and Connor were the same age as your boys, we had structured “school” time and specific work that I gave them to do. We generally started the day sometime around 9am and tried to finish by 3pm. (The scheduled content helped me keep track of our progress and helped them be accountable as they checked off each to-do. The hour restrictions provided incentive to complete tasks so they could play!) I’m not advocating unschooling and complete spontaneity; rather, there are certain skills that we will work on with allowance of time in the schedule for some spontaneity when we “chase a rabbit.”
But as they got older, I gradually moved away from giving them the daily schedule of work that they had to get done to the weekly schedule of work to get done to (now) the semester goals which they, as teenagers, are responsible for accomplishing at their own pace.
Even though we had structured “school,” my husband and I talked to them all the time about the concept of learning happening all the time (we were calling it school to comply with the state, also, and to avoid arousing suspicions if one of the kids ever told their public-school buddies that they didn’t do school!) If you begin to introduce the idea that learning happens all the time, then they will be less likely to object when you remove the hourly restrictions during the high school years. What do you do with your 13 year old son who hasn’t completed his essay by the due date and the 3pm. “school’s over” idea encroaches? By the time they reach maturity, they need to get the job done no matter the time of day, so begin to prepare them for that future now by talking about learning happening all the time.
I would still use a daily checklist for 10 year olds with specific goals. You might create a checklist with a box for Monday through Friday to show that he has read his assigned literature. You might also have a check box for playing a math game on Friday. You can add whatever you want to the daily checklist. When they are ready to be more responsible, take away the daily checklist and replace it with a weekly goal checklist. Later, probably around the time of 7th-9th grade, discuss their goals before the year starts and let them decide how to get them done.
As for the grade distinctions (rising 5th grader), if that motivates them, you can continue to use the term, but what if you need to slow down their progress, or what if they begin working on high school level work in 7th grade? We do still use the terms because our community uses that language (baseball registration forms ask for the grade; college transcripts want grade specific info, etc.), but the kids know that it’s not a defining characteristic of who they are or how much they know.
Hope this helps!
Diane