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An Intro to Homeschooling, For Me and You
In less than a month, I’ll be starting homeschooling with my eldest. She’s almost five, kindergarten age, and I cannot tell you how relieved I am to see everyone her age going to school and I get to keep her around.
For a lot of reasons; mostly cost, quality of education, the length of the school day and the lack of outside time, we decided against Jewish day school and public schooling. Over the last few years, I’ve had a lot of questions about what we plan to do, and so, here is an intro to our plan as a family and the methodology we’ll be following.
Several years ago I took a webinar offered by an Orthodox Jewish homeschooling mother that was basically Homeschool 101. During that webinar, she mentioned Charlotte Mason; an English educator from the 19th century. I read more about her on the Ambleside Online website (a curriculum based on her writing) and fell in love with the literature-based philosophy:
Charlotte Mason was a British educator who believed that education was about more than training for a job, passing an exam, or getting into the right college. She said education was an atmosphere, a discipline, and a life; it was about finding out who we were and how we fit into the world of human beings and into the universe God created. But this kind of thinking was pretty much eclipsed during the 20th century by demands for more exams and more workers. In 1987, Susan Schaeffer Macaulay wrote a book called For the Children’s Sake, which reintroduced parents to Charlotte Mason’s methods and philosophy, and it started to gain a foothold with a new generation of homeschoolers.
Charlotte Mason believed that children are able to deal with ideas and knowledge, that they are not blank slates or empty sacks to be filled with information. She thought children should do the work of dealing with ideas and knowledge, rather than the teacher acting as a middle man, dispensing filtered knowledge. A Charlotte Mason education includes first-hand exposure to great and noble ideas through books in each school subject, and through art, music and poetry.
The knowledge of God, as found in the Bible, is the primary knowledge and the most important. History is taught chronologically, using well-written history books, source documents and biographies. Literature is taught along with history, using books from or about the same time period. Language arts skills are learned through narration, which consists of the child telling back a story, first orally and later in written form; copywork, or the transcribing of a well-written piece of literature; and dictation of passages from their books. Memorization was used by Charlotte Mason not so much to assimilate facts, but to give children material to meditate or “chew” on, so her students memorized scripture and poetry.
Science in the early years emphasizes nature study with an emphasis on close, focused observation of creation as a means to knowledge of God. Charlotte Mason was very excited about science. She felt that all the new things people were discovering in her lifetime were part of God’s revelation, including the theory of evolution which was accepted by many Christians at the time. Christians using her methods now can still identify with her emphasis on nurturing curiosity and a sense of wonder, although most will teach that from a creationist viewpoint rather than an evolutionary one.
There’s a short explanation of the ABCs of the philosophy here as well. I’m sold by B, books.
We will be using either the Ambleside curriculum or the Charlotte Mason Institute’s new curriculum called the Alveary. I’ve attended several seminars over the last several years of studying Mason’s methods, and I’ve been impressed by the CMI staff and perspective. While there is a fee to use the CMI curriculum ($200 per family per year) there is more structure and support for families than the free Ambleside curriculum. As a new homeschooling parent, that is very appealing.
For those interested in podcasts, I’ve found the Delectable Education podcast to be the best for learning more about Mason’s methods, especially the first two episodes introducing it.
Before diving into Charlotte Mason’s writing, which can be a bit dense, this is a great introductory book. When you’re ready for the real thing, buy this edition (there are six volumes altogether); there have been several poorly edited versions of her writing over the last few years.
Over here, we’re already breaking the rules, starting homeschooling with our five-year-old; not waiting until six as instructed by Ms. Mason and her followers. We need a soft open for my daughter’s sake, and mine. She’s the guinea pig; sorry honey.
Because the Alveary doesn’t have a kindergarten curriculum, we’ll be following the “Year 0” booklist on Ambleside’s website with Jewish living books, Torah portions and Hebrew additions.
I’ve been building a curriculum for the next year, a Jewish Mason-inspired kindergarten. I’ve been updating a Google doc with our lesson plans for the upcoming year (it’s, as you can see, a work in progress). Please feel free to comment with suggestions on books, activities, music, or anything else that comes to mind!
Published in Education
There are always the classics. Here’s chemistry in action, with no deference paid to actual manufacturing processes:
FYI I stumbled on to this:
The Tom Woods Show
Ep. 1217 How the State Sucks the Life Out of Education, and How the Private Sector Just Made a Great Leap Forward in Math
FWIW, I get why people hate Mises guys, but his show is pretty broad, topic-wise.
Interesting “education” search on TomWoods .com
Part of his biography:
Chart
Chart
This guy is an Ivy League chemistry professor.
MORE SUBSIDY COMRADE!
Notorious progressives complain about the education mafia.
All the best (or at least memorable) chemistry experiments are about blowing things up. There are a few experiments that are both impressive in the explosion you get and relatively safe as well. Those would be good for a home school environment.
I would second bill.deweese’s comment. To that end, see the free e-book: The Essential Guide to Self-directed Education at FEE.org (Foundation for Economic Education).
God speed Bethany.
We homeschooled both our children albeit late in the game. My son was in fourth grade and charming his way through school and our daughter starting in HS as we were in Hawaii and the school system leaves a bit to be desired. It was a great decision. Make sure you get into the community – lotsa resources and support.
My wife also tutored here in Virginia a program called Classical Conversations. It’s a fascinating Christian-based program that consist of three phases. Basically memorizing knowledge, learning the why’s of that knowledge, and internalizing, thinking about, and communicating that knowledge.
I used “we” loosely. My wife was the primary teacher and I was the principal and support. And remember your sense of humor. You might be homeschooled if: you spent the whole day in your PJs.
I’m just beginning on our first formal homeschool year. Joined a co-op which meets weekly, and just returned from our first day. What an eye opener! Even though it was only 3 classes (and fun ones like LEGO STEM engineering, art, Spanish—the kids and I are exhausted! Just 4hrs! I cannot imagine the wasted time in school all day. Well I can imagine it, I went to public school and now it’s much, much worse.
I can’t imagine sending my precious kids there. Kids with cell phones, easy access to depravity on the internet, average teachers at best, uninspired or pathological teachers at worst—a bunch of kids together the same chronological age, but with a huge disparity in maturity levels. And then you send a 6 year old there from at least 9a-2:30p? Five days a week? And then homework after school? Way, WAY too much time, not too much learning, and a quick killing of the spirit. Even though it is challenging with two sets of twins, 6 and 3 y.o., I recognize the luxury that it is to stay home and watch them grow and learn. Their pure spirit protected a bit in their younger years.
Over 100,000 home schooled kids in Russia: Who knew?
Since there are over 19 million school-aged children in Russia, that means only 0.5% of the children in Russia homeschool. By contrast, nearly 3% of US schoolchildren are homeschooled.
Larry Elder rant on education.
It’s at the end of part 1 and continues on part 2.
Good on you, Gatomal! My response to people who claimed they couldn’t tackle homeschooling was that there is NO ONE on earth–no dedicated teacher, no school authority–more interested in your child’s success. That alone should be enough impetus for anyone to give it a go.
Is it just me or isn’t sending your kids to (most) public schools in this day and age a bit like handing them over to Satan for 8 hours a day for 12-13 years?
I suppose, since you mentioned Satan, that my devil’s advocate response might be, “Well, whose fault is that, anyway?”
And although I agree that a homeschooling environment is ideal, I am quite sure that there are some who, with all the will in the world and due to family or other circumstances, just can’t quite pull it off. In such cases, if at all possible, and since all public schools are not equal, I’d urge those parents to look around and do the best they can.
I’d also remind them that there are 16 hours or so of each day that their children are not in school, and that even though they may be asleep for (optimally, eight to ten of them), that still leaves a good many hours of the day, 48 hours on the weekends, and almost three months in the Summer to get to work.
We were extraordinarily lucky with our granddaughter in that the small-town public school district she lives in is excellent. She’s currently in an individualized program in the fifth grade, and her family is very satisfied. She also has the best of both worlds, in that her mother is a joyful and committed educator, and her grandparents are no slouches either. Homeschooling doesn’t only have to happen in the “home classroom” is my firm belief.
The elephant in the room, IMHO is the very large number of children in this country who are in horribly inadequate school systems, and whose parents are, for one reason or another, unable to homeschool them, and also unable to provide much if anything in the way of enrichment opportunities outside the regular school day. Solving that problem will require much more than a commitment to homeschooling by the rest of us, as it is a situation that will only continue to get worse until its root causes are effectively addressed.
I would note an even larger elephant, in contradiction to this:
Sadly, there are an enormous number of children for whom this just isn’t true. They are the kids who not only fail to succeed, but also end up pulling the teacher’s attention and energy away from kids who could succeed.
They need to collect the tax money the same but let the parents spend it more creatively. Flexibility.
For some that would be a fine solution. For a great many, I’m not so sure.
EDIT: The majority of the parents I’m thinking of probably don’t pay any taxes.
Amen!
It’s so obvious. Aggregate value would go to the moon.
I really think there would be a way for irresponsible or disinterested parents to be helped if that’s the issue. Kids just need to improve and not waste time and resources. I could have used a math tutor so bad. My highschool English was traditional and brutal and it really helped.
I hope you are right.
Parents have a constitutional right to raise their children in whatever way they seem fit, including every aspect of their education. Children have a mere statutory right to be raised in a safe environment. If a parent doesn’t give a crap or even actively resists attempts to educate their child, there is nothing any outside force can do.
Re: @amyschley, point taken that there are children whose parents don’t give a rat’s. Guess I should have said IF you feel you are the most interested person to see your child succeed….
Years ago – when we decided to homeschool – I got into an argument with my father over parental rights. He asked me what about parents who are not looking out for their children? I told him as long as the children are not physically endangered parents could raise their kids any way they wanted to. “But think about those poor kids!” he insisted. I told him that if I conceded the right of the state to interfere with the way parents were raising their kids because in the view of the state the parents were doing a “bad job,” it would only be a matter of time before the state decided I was doing a “bad job” raising my kids. My kids well-being was important enough to me that I was willing to sacrifice the well-being of children whose parents failed to live up their responsibilities. Too bad for those kids – my own come first. My own kids was where my responsibilities lay.
I don’t want any money.
I want to be left alone.
If the state has to give money to homeschool parents, the state will want to control what homeschool parents are doing.
Leave us alone!
Fair enough.
Just to be clear, I meant more like private charities that would consult or something. I am not that knowledgeable and I haven’t thought it through, though.