Homeschool vs. School at Home

If there's one bit of advice I've heard more than any other from homeschoolers, it's the fact that home school is NOT school at home!  Your own reasoning prompted you to keep your children out of public schools, so why would you want to bring that very school system into your home?  Such is done in the method of virtual schooling, to the detriment of students, parents, and the home schooling community. But my focus here is with homeschooling families who begin bringing the classroom methodology, scheduling and general mentality into their home schooling approach.  This may be a natural first tendency, especially if you were public/private schooled, or you've been a school teacher.  It is what you know... what you're familiar with.  But... it is not the ideal for helping your children reach their learning potential, nor for inspiring a life-long love of learning.     

Pre-School and Kindergarten: Too Much Too Soon

School has changed a lot since we were kids. The early years have been transformed from a time of hands-on discovery to overly academic pursuits, and  children have paid the price for it. 

According to the study "Is Kindergarten the New First Grade?" kindergarteners spend considerably more time with formal instruction, academics and testing than they used to. This has taken the place of art, music, science, and child-directed activities. Even though you can read an abundance of studies referencing the vital role of "play" in early childhood development and education, modern classrooms no longer give it the time of day. Children are too busy with workbooks and test prep to mess with such things. 

The problem doesn't start in kindergarten. I recently read the article  "The New Preschool is Crushing Kids." For all the academics and pre-academics we're forcing on children at younger and younger ages, many teachers agree that children are "less inquisitive and less engaged than children of earlier generations." And for all this extra school work they're doing, "young children are gaining fewer skills, not more." In fact, by second grade, children who attended preschool perform "worse on tests measuring literacy, language, and math skills" than children who didn't attend preschool. 

Classic Education... the Charlotte Mason way

Classical Education is the age-old method that produced many educational "giants"  like Aristotle, Newton, C.S. Lewis, and Thomas Jefferson, among others. You can't pin one precise recipe for Classical Education, since of course the Greeks and Romans didn't all do the exact same thing, or even label their educational method as "Classical," for that matter. But they did have a common goal. It was not the mere development of the intellect, but also that of producing virtue in their pupils and influencing their conduct. Students were taught to think for themselves and become life-long learners. 

Classical Education involves teaching children is based on their stage of cognitive development: Grammar, Dialectic, then Rhetoric. Most educators today would define those stages as something like this: 

1. Grammar - Grade school students absorb lots of facts, laying the foundation for future study
2. Dialectic - Middle school students begin questioning and evaluating the facts, and learn to think through arguments
3. Rhetoric - High school students apply what they've learned by making arguments themselves through speech, writing, etc.

Interestingly enough, what we call "Classical Education" today isn't necessarily so. I recently read a great book showing the connection between Classical Education and the Charlotte Mason approach. I came to realize upon reading it that today's version of Classical Education (whether in schools or home schools) may be an attempt to replicate doing what classical educators did rather than getting to the heart of why they did it. This actually matters a great deal, as it can result in the modern version no longer remaining true to the original purpose. 

Let me explain. 

Classic Education began with Rich Literature, Not Rote Memorization

Better than Worksheets, Quizzes, Tests!

One of the beauties of home schooling is that we can utilize different methods of education for our children than the school system does. After we realize that home schooling isn't school at home, we open ourselves up to a phenomenal wealth of possibilities. The more I read about education, the more I find myself identifying with the Charlotte Mason Method. There are so many gems within it, and today I want to share one of them with you. It frees you and your child from the mundane grind of endless busywork, worksheets, quizzes, and tests. Best of all, it helps students to truly own their knowledge and keep it, rather than regurgitating it temporarily only to lose it later.

What I'm referring to is narration. 

What exactly is narration? It is the telling back of what the student knows. "As knowledge is not assimilated until it is reproduced, children should 'tell back' after a single reading or hearing: or should write on some part of what they have read" (Vol 6, Preface and p. 155)  

In practice, it goes something like this:

Home Schooling in the News

Home schooling seems to be a very misunderstood phenomenon. It's an amazing journey, a hard-to-beat academic choice, and a rewarding family lifestyle. It ISN'T school-at-home minus the peers, a cop-out, or a bunch of awkward weirdo's.  After viewing a recent news report and reading more articles about today's home schoolers, I've updated my "Why Homeschool?" page to include the links below. Enjoy! 

Many Tulsans Choose Home School Over Public... Here's a recent news story and video about home schoolers in Tulsa. 

15 Key Facts about Home Schoolers Home schoolers are everywhere! Did you know home schoolers do better on the ACT, they're more likely to attend college and consistently have better college performance? Read what college is typically like for today's home school students. 

Home School Teens Ripe for College "Myths about home schoolers are false, and most are well-prepped for college, experts say." Check out this article from U.S. News & World Report. 

Home Schooling Makes Me Happy  Check out this video of a thirteen year old boy's lecture at a global conference! He was taken out of the education system to be home schooled and shares how he's been able to tailor his education to his interests and style of learning, and a few of the amazing opportunities he's been able to seize as a result of it.

Do Schools Kill Creativity?  In one of the most famous TED talks ever given, Sir Ken Robinson suggests that creativity is as important in education as literacy, and we should treat it with the same status. His engaging speech will leave you with plenty to think about.

(For my other favorite articles about why on earth anyone would WANT to homeschool, click HERE!)

Pre-Schooling

I read about a survey given to mothers and kindergarten teachers which asked what skills are most important for children to have upon entering school... As a whole, the mothers all listed academic skills- like knowing ABC's and 123's, while the teachers all listed non-academic skills- like attention, listening, and fine-motor skills. While there isn't anything wrong with learning letters and counting (especially as your child shows an interest in learning them!), some of the best pre-school activities include: 

Early Academics

In conclusion to my previous post about Pre-Schooling, I'd like to share a few good bits of advice from experienced home schooling moms who would ask you to consider carefully before launching into early academics with your pre-school aged children. 

Can you start academics before age 5? Should You?

    

"I have no doubt that you can teach your children academics before they turn five. The important question is, should you? I would suggest that the answer is "no" for two reasons.

Assessing Your Child's Learning

One of the goals of many home school parents is for their children to learn to think, not just spit back information.  How do you gauge true learning and encourage high thinking skills?  I'd like to introduce one tool you may find helpful in achieving these goals.  A professor named Bloom, who led a group of educational psychologists, came up with a scale we can use to understand the level of difficulty in our students' thinking.  It's called Bloom's Taxonomy.  Although some consider his work  controversial, I think that when used properly, this particular scale is still useful as an illustration of the various depths of learning. Below are both his scale, and the newly updated scale... (the updated scale changed from nouns to verbs and switched the top two components)

Original Version :

Your Educational Philosophy

Your educational philosophy will serve you in many ways and is a valuable reference as you navigate your way through home schooling. Here are some open-ended questions to think about together with your spouse. Referring back to your answers will help you set goals and decide whether particular methods, curricula or materials are a good fit or not. Use these as a starting point to get you thinking about what education can and should be for your children. 

What is education?

What is its purpose?

What is its value?

How do you obtain it?

How do you know when it has been obtained?

What is the role of the student?

What is the role of the teacher?

What is worth knowing?

Perceptual Modalities

The three learning modalities are the ways we prefer to take information to the mind.  We all learn in a variety of ways, but generally have a dominant method.... 

  

    1. Kinesthetic...  (aka Tactile) learn best by doing, touching, manipulating  

          2. Visual...  learn best by seeing and making mental images

          3. Auditory... learn best by listening

 The way your child learns best is called their "dominant modality."  Their "secondary modality" comes in second, and their "weakness" is his or her least favored method.  If your child can learn equally well using two different modalities, they are considered to have "mixed modalities." "Some kids- about 30 percent- operate out of a blend of two or three strengths."(1:27)

Very young children learn almost entirely through doing (they are kinesthetic learners), so preschool, kindergarten and first grades should be taught accordingly. In about first or second grade, children begin to be able to learn visually (which is why reading often takes off at this age), and around fifth or sixth grade, they begin to learn through listening. Keep in mind every child is different, and these are approximate ranges. As adults, we can learn through any of the three modalities, but, it is when we take in information through our dominant modality that we learn best. We can learn with our other modalities, it just takes more work.

If you try to teach a child in a modality he is unable to learn through yet, you will frustrate both yourself and the child. Once your child is to the point that he is capable of learning in more then one  modality, he should be able to switch between modalities to learn. But, the more you can teach to his dominate modality, the better he learns and remembers.

Four Learning Personalities

    These personalities give some insight and practical ideas for reaching your child. You can also make more sense of his behavior. The learning personalities are different from the modalities, because instead of dealing with how our brain likes to take in information, it deals more with suiting different personality types. 

Learning Styles & Teaching Styles

There's much talk about learning styles and teaching styles. It's thought that children learn best through their personal learning style, and that in discovering it you can teach more effectively, improving their retention. There are different methods of analyzing and naming the different learning styles, and chances are your child fits into more than one category. 

I'll be looking at two different systems of classification. The first system of modalities is based on how we take in information best- by hearing, seeing, or doing. The second system is linked more to our personality- and why we may respond better to different methods.

Re-Thinking Education

How it used to be...

    Upon our birth as a nation, "young people in America were expected to make something of themselves, not prepare themselves to fit into a pre-established hierarchy. Every foreign commentator notes the early training in independence, the remarkable precocity of American youth, their assumption of adult responsibility."2:5 There were no excuses here- ignorance and failure were thought to be due to poor character, not one's unfortunate, inescapable "placement on a biological bell curve."2:6 

    An introductory look at our history shows a nation busting at the seems with innovative, self-sufficient, creative, educated people- though school was of no consequence. We were brimming with impressive inventions and discoveries, because people had true liberty. They sought out knowledge of their own accord, and added their own value to society. Many common, unschooled people rose to greatness because they had the liberty to make their own way in life- seeking out knowledge of interest to them, and spending their early years in ways that would have led to police arrest today. 

    Consider the writer-politician-scientist-businessman, Ben Franklin, who left school at age 10, or George Washington, whose schooling was a mere two years, beginning at age 11, when he already knew how "to read, write, and calculate about as well as the average college student today... He had no father as a teenager, and we know he was no genius, yet he learned geometry, trigonometry, and surveying when he would have been a fifth or sixth grader in our era."2:31  And don't forget our founding fathers. "The men who won our Revolution were barely out of high school by the standards of my time: Hamilton was twenty in the retreat from New York; Burr, twenty-one; Light Horse Harry Lee, twenty-one; Lafayette, nineteen. What amounted to a college class rose up and struck down the British empire, afterwards helping to write the most sophisticated governing documents in modern history."2:25