All in All: Homeschool Pros and Cons, Part II
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| Potomac School, 1910 |
Every so often we get phone calls from
someone who is interested in homeschooling. (We're kind of
inadvertently on a community homeschool resource list.) Some folks
are new to the area or seriously contemplating homeschooling.
Occasionally though, the caller, in a pique, has spontaneously
decided to pull her child out of school because the teacher is not
being nice to Junior. While we're trying to dissuade such a caller
from teaching her child at home, she typically interrupts to say, “So
where do I go to pick up my books?” Sorry, it's not that simple,
dear.
The freedom homeschoolers have in
choosing materials for their children, setting the path for their
family and for each individual child, is one of the wonderful
benefits of teaching children at home, but, as do many other perks,
it comes at a price.
Let's start with the drawbacks. First,
the number of options for homeschool materials is overwhelming and
growing every year. Back when we started homeschooling in the 1980s,
it was easy to decide which direction to go because there were few
choices. We didn't want to replicate school at home, so I steered
away from the workbook/textbook materials. After surveying the few
methods out there, we decided that the unit study approach sounded
good, and we went with KONOS as our primary curriculum, adding in
math and reading materials. So simple!
Now, there are umpteen different
philosophies – unit study, Charlotte Mason, classical,
neo-classical (or is that just an art movement?), Latin-centered
(not to be confused with the two just mentioned!), traditional,
unschooling, Principal Approach, literature-based, eclectic, Waldorf,
Montessori, Thomas Jefferson education, and on and on and on.
All these choices can make a parent's
head swim and create feelings of incompetency. After some research,
often the best thing to do is to just jump in and try something. It's
not the end of the world if you need to make a few directional
changes along the way. As you begin teaching, you'll discover your
teaching style and what methods work best with your individual
children. Also – beware of the quest for the best. With so many new
products continually coming out, we can sometimes feel that we need
to jump ship try out that new program. If it
is working – be satisfied.
Other problems associated with mapping
out a plan for your children are that it can be hard to know where to
start as well as difficult to determine if you are hitting
appropriate targets. The answer here lies in both some self-education
and experience. I used to fret mightily about whether or not my older
children were getting an adequate education. I went to the school
system and obtained copies of what they expect in each grade. What a
waste of time! Undoubtedly you will leave gaps in your children's
education. But if you teach them how to learn, help them grow in
curiosity and skills, they will thrive in all kinds of situations.
OK, if the sheer volume of philosophies
with their accompanying materials is the biggest drawback to parental
choice, being able to tailor the education to the bent of each child is the biggest plus. It is the rare
child who neatly fits the mold of “average” student, but in a
classroom of any size, the teacher needs to pick a mark and aim for
that center. Good teachers can work with children of varying
abilities, but still the overall flow has to be tempered by the fact
that he or she is teaching 25 (or 10 or whatever) children at once.
At home this isn't necessary. So, if your child excels at math but
stinks at spelling, an all too familiar scenario in my house, he can
work a grade or two ahead in math, but behind in spelling. If a child
is struggling with reading, you have the ability to find a program
that would address his issues and work intensively in teaching him to
read. Theoretically this happens in public schools, but for a child
who has mild learning issues, all too often they fall through the
cracks.
But the most important time for a
tailored education comes in the junior and senior high years. Here
you can allow your children to begin to explore areas of particular
interest. Our son Jonathan began taking computer programming classes
in junior high and discovered he has both an interest and aptitude
for writing code. Peter tried out accounting at a community college
and decided that would make a good college major. In our
family we have both core requirements and areas of flexibility. So for science in
high school everyone must take biology and chemistry. But other
science courses can be selected by interest. Andrew took Advanced
Chem and Physics while Kara became a Master Naturalist (similar to
the Master Gardener program) and studied a bit of Vet Science.
Kristen took Anatomy and Physiology as well as Nutritional Science.
Each of these courses prepared those teens for future ventures -
Andrew in engineering, Kara as a wife of an ecologist, and Kristen as
a nurse.
Side note: I've been reading a fair bit about Finnish education in preparation for an article I just wrote for Practical Homeschooling magazine. The Finns, who have had remarkable academic success with a system that is antithetical to that followed in most U.S. schools, but not all that dissimilar to many homeschools, also believe in highly individualized education in the high school years.
Here are a couple of things I don't
mean when I talk about individualizing education. For starters, it
doesn't mean cosseting your child. At least by junior high, you need
to be giving firm deadlines on assignments. None of this, “Oh, I
know you've been busy, Johnny. Take an extra week,” baloney!
Second, it doesn't mean you focus exclusively on strengths. No, you
should also have a strong push on the weak areas. We knew early on
that Andrew would be studying engineering in college, and that he
would not have much room for electives. So in high school we made
sure that he had plenty of good literature and history studies. Turns
out he liked history enough to take a fair amount in his undergrad
years anyway, but somehow a whole lot of his history courses started
out with “History of Technology ...” as he covered the span of
history from ancient times to the present.
Next up in this series: Fun and Fears
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