More homeschooling hell
Sep 20, 2002 Homeschooling
My friend loaned me the book Pocketful of Pinecones, which is the fictional account of a woman homeschooling her two children using Charlotte Mason principles in the 1930s. It’s treacle with sugar sprinkled on top. My teeth hurt after reading it. However, the chapter titled “What Education is All About” was useful. This is what she says.
Presently I aim to give the children three opportunities in our little homeschool every day as I am able: 1) something or someone to love, 2) something to do, and 3) something to think about.
Now that’s lovely. I’m going to copy that out and hang it up above my desk because that’s really what it’s all about, right? It’s very relevant for me because I’m struggling with needing “proof” that Noah is learning.
There’s this T. Berry Brazleton book that I like because it gives detailed portraits of three very different babies. The baby that’s the quietest — who rolls over late, talks late, is less chattery — is actually doing very complex work. After reading that book, I had a better understanding that an awful lot goes on behind the scenes in child development.
The problem is that I’m hung up on measurable stuff (that’s why I need to be deschooled) and I know that in kindergarten around here, a lot is expected of kids. I freak out because even though I don’t think those curriculums are developmentally appropriate, the kids who are attending school are doing stuff that Noah’s not doing. Then I think, “Am *I* holding him back?”
I did end up buying a very simple curriculum by Ruth Beechick but I’m not sure if I’ll use it. (It comes with a colored wall chart — gag me with a spoon!) Despite my crazed yearning for a kid who will pass proficiency tests that I don’t even believe in, I do think that kids should not be formally schooled until they’re about 8.
When I read books about brilliant middle and upper class children in Britain (because as a child, I always wanted to be live in England where they had things like Mary Poppins and crumpets), they always started school “late” and by 12, they were quoting poetry and learning Latin. There’s a book that backs me up about this with tons of studies but it’s such a rotten book that I hesitate to recommend it.
Oh well, you’re all grown-ups, read it at your own risk: The Successful Homeschool Family Handbook. It assumes Christianity, which I don’t like. It also tells you all about how kids don’t need this or that or blah blah blah, unschooling stuff and then goes on to say that unschooled kids do better on all the tests and win all the spelling bees. But aren’t we supposed to not care about that stuff? Isn’t that why we’re unschooling? Or are we unschooling because we *do* want super-babies just like all the traditional schooled people they despise? I’m getting whiplash from reading it.
I am insane. In one of the zillions of homeschool books I’ve been reading, they go on and on about how the homeschooling mother should have a loving spirit of quietude and that perhaps mummy might do well to hang pictures of the gentle virgin Mary around the house to remind her of how beatific motherhood ought to be. I told Brett that I was going to get me a big old copy of The Scream as a more accurate reflectoin of my state of mind.
September 20th, 2002 at 11:40 am
Is it Better Late Than Early?
They’re awfully damned early to suggest feeding schedules and not “snacking between meals.” Big issue there for me.
But I didn’t find the book all that research-heavy — more like the authors’ opinions.
September 20th, 2002 at 12:53 pm
Thanks for the heads-up about the Successful Homeschool Family Handbook - I have a huge stack of homeschooling books I got from the library on inter-library loan, and I’ll never be able to read them all, so I needed to weed some out.
Have you read any of the homeschooling books by Linda Dobson? Or for that matter, from the Prima Publishing label? (Linda Dobson’s are on Prima, but there are other books they publish on homeschooling by other authors.) I really like them. They do seem to have a bit of an unschooling bias, but acknowledge that other methods work better for some people as well. Right now I’m reading “Homeschooling in the Early Years” (I think that’s the title) and I really like it.
September 20th, 2002 at 2:42 pm
Hehe, I have the Successful Homeschool Family Handbook sitting right here on my desk. Going back to the library tomorrow, lol.
Have you checked out the Unschooler’s Handbook? I loved it - down to earth, not preachy and it has some very reassuring antecdotes.
September 20th, 2002 at 4:44 pm
I have an entry up about homeschooling today, with a couple of books I’ve found useful…
September 20th, 2002 at 7:49 pm
While I don’t have any “school age” children (I have a 3 yo and a 2 week old), I can already see that unschooling is perfect for our family. Just watching my children learn and explore on their own without me directing them and seeing how much they’ve done already - without losing their love and desire to learn - has me convinced that they’ll do just fine without needing to be told what to do.
Anything written by John Holt or John Taylor Gatto has just reinforced that for me and been very inspirational. Also, I belong to a great unschooling list at Yahoo Groups (unschoolqueendom) with an amazing group of women - one who has a grown daughter completely unschooled all her life.
And no, I don’t think unschooling has anything to do with raising super kids - at least it shouldn’t. To me it’s all about continuing to respect and trust our kids to know exactly what they need and to do it in their own time. And to keep their love of learning alive and never let them think that learning is something that has to be done or only happens at certain times.
September 22nd, 2002 at 1:23 am
I homeschooled my son (now 35) formally from ages 7-9. Actually I started reading children’s books out loud to him much earlier than that and at age 4 started reading a chapter each evening to my husband and son from the classic children’s books. Then I sent my son to an expensive Waldorf school for kindergarten and first grade and found he was not learning there.
We took him out of school and I worked with him at home for the next two years using simple, short books on science and reading workbooks from K-Marts. I sat down with him and we worked on these books for an hour each day, including weekends and holidays. At age 8, he still could not read on his own in spite of his obvious intelligence.
Then one day a light went on in his head as we worked together; I could see it light up his face. Something came together in his brain and he suddenly understood what reading was. In the next year his reading level went from grade one to grade six. Unfortunately his math level didn’t keep up, so we ended up putting him in 3rd grade when he returned to school (a rural public school this time).
Once he had mastered the tools of the student trade, he took his school work very seriously as his business or job and was a mostly ‘A’ student all through grade school and high school and an all ‘A’ student through five years of college even though he never completed a degree.
I share all this to encourage you to not be too hasty in looking for concrete progress in your homeschooling. Sometimes a certain level of maturity needs to be reached before things you are presenting begin to make sense in a way your child can use. I’ve since learned that boys in particular are often not ready for formal schooling until age 8.
I intend to write about my idea for curriculum development for K-12 students in my next posting to my web log this coming Wednesday. I hope you’ll give it a read and let me know what you think.
September 22nd, 2002 at 7:05 pm
Here is an article I think you’d enjoy reading about unschooling: http://oregonlive.com/news/oregonian/index.ssf?/xml/story.ssf/html_standard.xsl?/base/news/103243660562252.xml.