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March 17, 2007
What We Do and How We Do It
Greg Laden, an anthropology professor at the University of Minnesota, is curious about homeschooling. I thought I'd answer his questions here, rather than dump all of this into his comments.
Let me introduce my family, Greg. We have four sons, none of whom have ever gone to school. I have a degree in English; my husband studied aerospace engineering and computer science, and works in IT. I also have several undergraduate and graduate credits in education (teaching and curriculum design). We are Pagan. Politically we are libertarian and conservative. We move and travel frequently with my husband's job.
We began homeschooling because I felt that my oldest was too young to spend most of his day at a school; I thought he was better off at home until he was older. I was also concerned about the quality of public school education and thought I could do better.
Now we continue to homeschool largely for the same reasons Chris does: "It’s really not about education with us anymore. It’s about the freedom not follow an arbitrary schedule that controls our lives." Exactly. That, and I believe that schools waste too much time, and focus too much on irrelevancies. I believe that schools more often train kids to not think.
We attempt a form of classical liberal education. We place importance on learning Latin (we'll start ancient Greek next year), classical history, math, and logic. We're pretty relaxed in our actual approach. Like Chris said - it really only takes two or three hours a day.
I'll address Greg's comments, one by one:
First, he's interested in learning about some of our typical days. My kids get up around 8 am, and we start school by 10. In the mornings we work on math, Latin, and writing/grammar. During or after lunch I read to them, a different subject every day - classical studies (mythology and ancient history), world history, literature, math/science, etc. Tuesdays and Thursdays, that's all we do. Tuesday afternoons we spend at homeschool classes, where my kids take Lego Engineering, a P.E. class and an American history class. Thursday afternoons we spend at karate classes. Monday, Wednesday and Friday afternoon we work more on literature, or art, or history projects, or science. Or, we might go on a field trip (museum, orchard, state park, organized field trip, playdate), or work on project for Scouts. They also have assigned reading every day, and are required to read a book of their choice every day. Their Dad reads to them some more at night, anything from "Harry Potter" to "Alice in Wonderland" to "Hunt for Red October."
In the evenings and weekends they are involved in Scouts and First Lego League.
I have kids who would be in preschool, 1st grade, 3rd grade, and 5th grade. The 1st grader's schoolwork is completed in about half an hour, not counting read-alouds. The 3rd grader takes an hour to an hour and a half. The 5th grader has 2-3 hours of work a day, not counting reading.
Greg says: "It seems to me that one of the great advantages of the traditional system is that courses divide the topics into a certain size range of material, and individual classes, with assignments, periodic tests or quizzes, etc. keep everyone on track (both teacher and students) to get a certain amount of work on specific topics done over a specific time."
It might help to think of homeschooling more as a tutoring arrangement. I might find it helpful to divide topics into a certain range of material, but then again, we are not as controlled by schedules as a school is. A course does not have to fit into a semester. We can spend as long as we need to, or desire to, on any topic.
Tests and quizzes are generally unnecessary, because as my child's tutor, I know exactly what he understands and does not understand. We do review work in math, and if a child reveals a weak spot, we go back to that topic. I do give quizzes in Latin, and if a child reveals a weak spot, we go back to it. Tests in the other subjects are simply not necessary, at least not at our level. We discuss history, science, and literature; if they don't know the material, they can't keep up with our discussion. It becomes obvious. We do a great deal of teaching by Socratic questioning, as well.
"Nonetheless, “courses and classes” provide useful structure, or at least a useful framework. How do you get these benefits in a home school setting?"
Usually by going outside for them. It is useful for the kids to become used to that structure and framework, as it is what they will be expected to deal with in college. So we take outside classes. When we reach high school level, they will more than likely take community college classes.
Do home schoolers use textbooks? What do you think about textbooks? What are the alternatives?
We use a textbook for math, along with supplementary materials. We will eventually use textbooks for science. In general, we prefer to avoid textbooks. Textbooks at the elementary level have the side effect of training the child to think in bite-sized nuggets, and are often biased, bland and boring. I would have no problem using a textbook that is thoughtful, interesting, well-written and engaging, but I have found very few of them. We sometimes we use textbooks written pre-1970s, where the information is not time-sensitive (such as Latin or English grammar, or math).
How does teacher training work in a home school environment? In other words, how to you determine when there is an area of knowledge that you want to develop with the child that the parent(s) are not comfortable with, and then what do you do about it? Learn it? Seek outside resources, and if so what? With older kids, do you send the kid off on their own with the task of coming back and teaching the parent? (That’s a technique we use for graduate training that sometimes goes very well!)
Very often, I learn it. I did not know Latin before I began homeschooling. My math education was abysmal, and I feel as though I'm learning math for the first time. I can learn anything and, in fact, that's one of the most important pieces of knowledge I can pass on to my students - that they can learn anything.
That said, soon my oldest will be at or beyond my level in math, and then he (or we) will go to my husband for teaching. If his Latin ability outstrips mine, he (we) will either take classes online, or seek a local tutor. He may well take science classes at a community college. If he develops an interest that is simply not within my desire to learn, he can go learn it himself or I will arrange a class or tutor.
Since we began homeschooling I have spent countless hours researching what I need to teach, how, how best to do so.
Do some home schoolers develop and use highly advanced IT resources, while others avoid these things, figuring that kids will have a huge amount of exposure to electronic gadgetry in this society anyway?
We run our own web server out of the house, and our kids have their own computer. I'll be teaching them HTML this summer.
Are there specific useful IT resources (software, hardware) that everybody else should know about because they are so good? Is there a sense or knowledge of OpenSource resources in the Home School community?
Not really. Many homeschoolers like to use planning software, but there's a dearth of that for the Mac. In fact, often curriculum publishers do not publish for the Mac.
Are there themes that work their way through all (or many) aspects of what you do, over the years? For instance, in my family, we are interested in birds, so birds get woven through a lot of different areas of exploration. Birds have shown up in my daughter’s science fair projects in a couple of places, we have a collective family level knowledge of bird behavioral biology and evolution to which we can refer. In some families this kind of thing may gravitate around horses (COD?) or some other theme. Is this common?
Yes, it's common! For my family it's space flight and certain periods of history.
I’m sure testing has it’s uses. But what about in a home school setting? (Other than having the home schoolers take standardized tests, etc.) How do you handle evaluation?
Testing is very useful when you are teaching a class of students. It is difficult to know exactly how much each student out of 25 has retained. Again, since I teach one on one, I don't have that problem. Nor do I grade. We simply don't move on until they've mastered the material.
For evaluation purposes, I look ahead to college. What skills, and what knowledge base, will they need to get into a good college? Are we on track for that?
Many homeschoolers do test. I just don't see the point.
In my opinion, a large amount of what is learned in a traditional setting is lost within weeks or months. In other words, just because a student got a passing grade in algebra last year, the calculus teacher cannot assume that the student has algebra knowledge …
… Other than saying “home schooling is better therefore the students learn more….” I’d love to hear how this works in home schooling. How is knowledge developed for the longer term, how do you review, how do you know what the kids know, how do you integrate earlier with later learned materials?
First, understand that I divide knowledge between skill areas and content areas. I am not particularly concerned with retention of content area subjects (such as history, and, at this level, science). How much history do you remember from high school? None of us remember much, if any, and yet we've still gone on to do well in college and be productive citizens. Strike that - productive members of society. "History retention" and "citizens" is a whole other rant.
Skill areas include math, foreign languages, grammar, spelling, writing mechanics, etc. First of all, we do not adhere to a traditional school schedule, so we do not have a lengthy summer break. That helps. Our math program incorporates regular review sessions. Our Latin and English grammar programs are cumulative; if they flounder, I go back and re-teach the area they're having trouble with. Avoiding a lengthy gap means that we don't have to waste as much time on re-teaching.
For everything else, we read and discuss, read and discuss. No, they don't remember everything, but that's okay. If you can read and discuss well, you can learn. Don't make the mistake of thinking this means that we think history and science are not important. We place a high value on both. However, science at the elementary level is just reading and playing - you can't really delve into most branches of science until you have the math to do so. You don't need tests and quizzes to learn history - you read, read, read and discuss, discuss, discuss; you watch documentaries, you travel, and then you read and discuss some more.
In the content areas, kids will remember what interests them. It is my job to engage them, to make the subject as relevant as possible, and to give them as much of a broad overview, a framework, as I can. But then, they take off. For instance, I take all the kids through a four-year cycle of world history. My oldest loves history, has been through this cycle once already, and reads our history encylopedia for fun. This year he has begged to be let out of the regular history rotation (we're doing ancients this year) so that he can study World War II instead. And so he is. You can bet he's going to remember a great deal about World War II, because that's his current passion.
And, of course, whatever else you think is interesting and important that I have not mentioned.
Now that I've answered your specific questions, your general question was about methods, what do we do and how do we do it. As I mentioned before, I've done a great deal of research into education, into what I think they kids should be taught, what I think constitutes an excellent education, and how we can give them one. I developed a general philosophy of education, and then from that made some more specific goals. Keeping both my goals and college in mind, I drafted a tentative plan of education for the kids. Tentative! Maybe my plan won't be a good fit for one child. Maybe it won't be enough for one, or too much for another. As they get older and want more say in their education, perhaps my plan won't fit their needs. Education wears many different faces.
Every year I review the plan, and make note of where we are in relation to it. Based on this I make a more specific plan for the upcoming year, but again, it's always flexible. However, this way I know if we're "on track." A flexible plan, and year-round schooling, means that we have the freedom to chuck the plan here and there to do something else - to travel, to play, to follow other interests.
I generally use programs specifically made for homeschoolers, at least at the elementary level. However any program, any curriculum is a tool. I never use any program as written, but always adapt it to our needs. I might use two or three different programs for any subject, pulling from each what we need and ignoring the rest.
If you, or anyone else, has any questions, I'm more than happy to answer.
Posted by lynx at March 17, 2007 6:57 AM
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Comments
That's a great letter to use for anybody with questions of how homeschooling works... even if it meant to be specific. Thanks!
You might like the Education Forums about Homeschooling and Unschooling.
Posted by: Scott Hughes at March 17, 2007 1:36 PM
I have such a smart daughter and four equally smart grandsons. BTW. Grandpa has two web sites built by hand using html. The boys should surpass this.
Posted by: Dad at March 17, 2007 4:51 PM
Thanks for this. When people ask me about how/why I homeschool in the future, I may just send them here! :o)
Posted by: RegularMom at March 18, 2007 7:54 AM
Very nice essay! Makes me think all homeschoolers should put up a similar essay for the use of family and friends and for general edification.
I find I myself am having a real problem explaining to relatives and acquaintances a point you touched upon relating to testing, curriculum, mastery, etc. I think of it as the difference between “input” and “output.”
Any competent businessman attempts to maximize the output while minimizing the input. The public schools, alas, are not competent businesses: they, and most people who are the products of the schools, focus on input to the detriment of output.
How many homework problems did you do? How many hours did you practice? How many semester hours did you take?
I’m finding it hard to get anyone to understand that the question should be rather: what have you learned?
You wrote, “However any program, any curriculum is a tool. I never use any program as written, but always adapt it to our needs. I might use two or three different programs for any subject, pulling from each what we need and ignoring the rest.”
Yes. The goal should never be simply to “finish the curriculum.” Sometimes, a textbook or curriculum may be a useful tool: like you, I find this to be the case in math and languages – in both cases, you need practice work, and it’s easier to not have to make it all up yourself. But the goal should always be learning: the textbook or curriculum should only be a tool used to reach that goal and should only be used to the degree it advances one towards that goal.
You wrote, “I can learn anything and, in fact, that's one of the most important pieces of knowledge I can pass on to my students - that they can learn anything.”
You know, most people don’t believe they can learn anything! My kids are learning Chinese (my wife is the daughter of Chinese immigrants) and classical Greek, and I am frantically trying to stay ahead of them. I manage (usually).
It seems obvious to me that I and my kids can acquire any intellectual content that can be learned by any other human being on earth, if we wish to put in the effort. I exclude in-born talent: I do not believe that I can learn to write music as well as Bach, Mozart, or Beethoven. On the other hand, I am certain I could learn to write fugues or symphonies if I worked at it: they just would not (probably) be great fugues or symphonies.
Remember Professor de la Paz in Heinlein’s “The Moon is a Harsh Mistress”? Most Americans once thought that way. (Think of Edison, the Wright brothers, or Lincoln teaching himself Euclid while riding circuit.) Anyone can learn anything if he or she only tries!
You wrote, “However, science at the elementary level is just reading and playing - you can't really delve into most branches of science until you have the math to do so.” I think this is slightly too pessimistic. Have you looked at Hoagland’s “The Way Life Works”? Bright grade-schoolers can understand this, and I myself am learning some biology too going through it.
Of course, you cannot really fully grasp physics until you know calculus: indeed, although I have a Ph.D. in theoretical physics, I’m not sure I, or anyone else, _fully_ grasps phyiscs!
But science is not primarily plugging and grinding to calculate. The math and the calculations should follow upon conceptual understanding. After all, Galileo did not have calculus, and I think we can fairly say that he grasped some aspects of physics. (There were a number of serious but conceptually oriented books on math and physics written decades ago by Irving Adler: I find “The Wonders of Physics” and “The Giant Golden Book of Mathematics” particularly useful. Adler had a gift for explaining sophisticated ideas in terms bright grade-schoolers could grasp.)
Even the best, and most rigorous, college physics series (I have in mind the Berkeley physics series and the Feynman lectures) emphasize conceptual understanding first, to be followed by calculations (rather demanding calculations in the case of both of these series – if you really “get it” conceptually, you should be able to handle the tough calculations).
Finally, I have a couple of questions. You mention, “We sometimes use textbooks written pre-1970s, where the information is not time-sensitive (such as Latin or English grammar, or math).” You’ve probably mentioned this elsewhere, and I missed it, but what are you referring to for grammar? Just give me a link if you’ve already written this up, but I’m interested to know what specific old grammar book you were alluding to and what else you are using for grammar.
Also, you described yourselves as “Pagan.” Could you elaborate? Do you pour out libations to Apollo and Athena early each morn?
You mentioned just in passing, “Politically we are libertarian and conservative.” I am, I suspect, a slightly more radical libertarian than you, although my cultural views are, I think, similar to yours. We are both, I think, more interested in what Aristotle thinks than what Oprah thinks: the true definition of “conservative” should be someone who considers Aristotle, Euclid, and Locke to be his or her contemporaries (few American “conservatives” are conservative).
But, I’m finding that my political views are quite significant to how I teach history and related areas. If you simply tell the truth (and that often means finding books written before 1980), government ends up looking pretty bad. I’m not “ordering” my kids to be libertarians, but I’m finding that if you seriously study Jefferson and the Revolution, the horrors of the twentieth century, etc., it’s hard to avoid libertarian implications. History is indeed the record of “man’s inhumanity to man,” and a lot of that inhumanity is due to governments (and a fair amount to religion). Is your experience similar?
Again, a great essay!
Dave
Posted by: Dave M. in Sacramento at March 20, 2007 3:21 PM
Dave, some quick, short answers:
We use Harvey's Elementary Grammar. It has been updated a little bit, but it's still essentially what it was in 1880.
We don't pour out libations to Athena and Apollo, but I'm not opposed to doing so. We are not part of any particular tradition at the moment - we used to be Wiccan, but are not any more. We believe many Gods makes more sense than one God (there, I just made all my Christian readers cry). We celebrate the cycles of life.
The person to whom I was responding with this article seemed to be under the impression that all homeschoolers are Christian fundies.
Yes exactly - we care more about what Aristotle & co. think than what Oprah thinks. That's a nice way to put it. And I have had that same or similar experience in teaching history; I really do want my kids to think for themselves and not parrot our views, but it's hard to look at the facts and not tend towards libertarianism. Or atheism, in the case of one of my kids.
I want to address your science comments in a post.
Posted by: Stephanie at March 23, 2007 7:17 AM