We're very lucky.
Jack is the sort of child
we all assume we'll have
when we decide to have children,
and the sort of child
less experienced parents
congratulate themselves for.January and February 2004
March and April 2004
May and June 2004
July and August 2004
September and October 2004
November and December 2004
Blogs we read:
Monday, Jul. 19, 2004 - (Mamma)
Homeschooling
What Type of Homeschooler are you? You want your children to have a classical education. You teach the Trivium of grammar, logic, and rhetoric, and the Quadrivium of arithmetic, geometry, music, and astronomy. Ancient history is fascinating to you, and you own several Greenleaf Guides to prove it. Visit Guilt-Free Homeschooling brought to you by Quizilla
Galileo
***
Rod and I intend to homeschool Jack.
Our reasons are varied and numerous--and we'd probably rank them differently and have slightly different lists. The main one, though, is that the public schools in both our countries seem intent on raising a generation of uninformed and, if possible, stupid citizens. We make much better, easier to influence, consumers that way.
Oh, I'm sure there are exceptions, but even the best schools seem to be dumbing down the curriculum to the lowest common denominator: the child who has grown up in front of the television watching primarily situation comedies where intelligence and reason take second place to the snappy comeback.
We want more for Jack. A lot more. We want him to have a better education than we got and we figure the best way to accomplish that is at home. Not that either Rod or I had bad educations -- actually, both of us got reasonably good educations -- but there were holes the size of the moon for both of us, and the schools systems have deteriorated significantly in the 30 years or so since we went through school.
We also figure that it's never too early to start. Needless to say, at 14 months, Jacks education is very informal. Flash cards and formal teaching won't give Jack the kind of education we want for him. Instead, we make sure that he has toys that encourage his curiosity instead of providing entertainment at the push of a button. We make sure that he has plenty of books to foster his love for language. We play all kinds of good music for him. We play games with him -- but most of all, we talk to him. We respond to his discoveries, and we seek out lots of new experiences for him. My private goal is to provide Jack with at least one new experience a day when I'm with him.
The formal stuff comes later -- much later.
That we are still working on. I kind of like the Waldorf method of education, where kids are taught in integrated units. If this week's unit is about China, in cooking class we will learn to cook a stir fry, in history, we will learn the history of China, in art class, we will draw something in a classic Chinese style, in math we will learn the fundamentals of the abacus, in language arts, we will learn a little bit of chinese language and read some chinese folk stories, in music we will study chinese music and how it's different from European and African music...etc. That puts everything the child learns into a context and makes it all that much more meaningful.
Rod, of course, has his own ideas about how Jack's education should go. We haven't really worked out the details yet, but we will work on integrating the ideas we each have into Jack's days.
One thing we *really* want to do, though, is to take Jack's "school" on the road -- we would like to study opera in Rome, Art in Paris, history in the Fertile Crescent, and that sort of thing. I don't know how much we'll manage that -- but it's the dream.
I have been pondering something that a homeschooling friend said. She always sends her kids to kindergarten, on the theory that there are things about living in our society that are best taught in groups. That makes a certain amount of sense to me. But I have also read that it takes an average of one month of homeschooling to adjust for every year of public school. That suggests that there would be some work to undo some of what he learns at kindergarten that will handicap him as a homeschooler. I guess we have some more thinking to do about what it is that he would learn there that we can't teach him...
I am also concerned about letting Jack get too involved in the local school district. I have heard so many stories that make it seem like the school district thinks like "Big Brother". There is a (for pay) play group sponsored by the school district that seems to involve visits to one's home to "advise on child-rearing", there are "safety programs" before the first day of kindergarten at which the children are weighed, measured, and photographed. There are "almost mandatory" 'drug resistance education' classes for later elementary school. I say "almost mandatory" because the parents can send in a form saying they don't want their child in the class -- but there is some indication that the police department knows who was kept out of the class and they are watched a few years later. And there are televisions in the classrooms and corporate advertising in the hallways at the local schools.
If I were to send Jack to school, it wouldn't be to get weighed, measured,and photographed and then fed hours every week of corporate propoganda. I don't want teachers coming into my home to "educate" me about how to raise my child. And I don't want the schools feeding my kid propoganda from their "War on Drugs".
All of this feels very intrusive to me, and this is in one of the *best* school districts in the area!
Right now, though, the important thing is to start collecting the materials we need, so that we'll be ready when Jack is and to watch for opportunities for things we can do with him so he gets the broadest possible education.
