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How to Think About Homeschooling
I’ve been deluged by people over the last few months, and especially over the last week, picking my brain about homeschooling. So much so, I started a YouTube channel discussing homeschooling in a Jewish context. I get constant questions that are all basically this: “What’s the best math curriculum for 1st grade?” or “What is my 3rd grader supposed to know?”
I’m about to let you in on a secret: There is no list of attainments your child has to have mastered by the end of a certain grade that teachers are magically given when they get their certificates. They learn classroom management and curriculum development; but they aren’t given keys to your kid and what they have to learn by certain benchmarks. We are told, and we believe, as parents that we are the ones that know our children best. So why is it, then, that we can’t trust ourselves to know what they need to learn and how they need to learn it?
As millions of American parents consider homeschooling for the first time this year, I’d like to give you some advice on curriculum: Think of it as a meal. There is no perfect dinner you can make for your family, there is no right answer between steak or meatloaf; between spaghetti and meatballs or mac & cheese. And even if you find a meal you like, you can’t serve the same dinner night after night either.
In our homeschool, we follow the educational philosophy of Charlotte Mason, a long-dead and wise English educator. She wrote six volumes of her thoughts on education, and Twenty Principles summarize a great deal of her beliefs and teachings. Number 13 speaks to the topic of choosing the right curriculum (among the literally hundreds currently available on the homeschool marketplace):
13. In devising a SYLLABUS for a normal child, of whatever social class, three points must be considered:
(a) He requires much knowledge, for the mind needs sufficient food as much as does the body.
(b) The knowledge should be various, for sameness in mental diet does not create appetite (i.e., curiosity)
(c) Knowledge should be communicated in well-chosen language, because his attention responds naturally to what is conveyed in literary form.
The website for one of the most famous Charlotte Mason curriculums, Ambleside Online, summarizes this principle as follows:
13. In devising a curriculum, we provide a vast amount of ideas to ensure that the mind has enough brain food, knowledge about a variety of things to prevent boredom, and subjects are taught with high-quality literary language since that is what a child’s attention responds to best.
Every curriculum has different book lists and plans of attack, but ultimately all they are all just menus to choose from (and you don’t have to follow the recipes exactly, either). There is no right or wrong choice, there is just what you believe works best for your family. Pick one that looks appetizing and nutritious and trust yourself to whip up a feast for your children to enjoy.
Published in General
In my teacher prep program I did not get any experience planning for yearly curriculum benchmarks. Even subjects “standardized” through Common Core-like initiatives vary wildly from school to school, class to class, and student to student. You figure out what the “benchmarks” are at every new place you teach. CC was a guideline and again, its application varies wildly depending on where you are.
As a language teacher, I get a break from this kind of madness which is nice. To give you an idea: at my current school where I teach 5 levels of French, I use backwards planning to rewrite the curriculum for FR 1-4 based on my understanding of the work needed to complete French AP, the highest level class. In short: students who take AP will need to understand certain concepts on the exam that year so I can then plan “backwards“ for what students will need to have learned in the years prior so the pacing is even.
I dislike when academics make teaching into a lofty, elitist science. It’s not. It takes three things: knowledge of the subject, a good rapport with students so they have an environment to learn in, and the discipline to get the work done. None of that should require advanced degrees.
Thank you Bethany. Parents in my home county are in a tailspin right now because the traditional public school system reversed course and cut off all in campus learning. This advice is helpful.
@bethanymandel
I heard you on the SpeakEasy podcast lamenting the fact that there are too few childrens books for black Americans written to show that other black Americans have achieved their goals and dreams through hard work and perseverance. We happened to learn of a book by one of the local ladies here in Glasgow, KY about a young black woman who had a dream of being a pilot and became the first woman pilot in America, later helping to train the Tuskeege Airmen in WWII. As our daughter married a man from Nigeria and so has children who are less melanine-challenged than we are, we bought this book for her 4th birthday. Here is a link to how to get the book in case you are interested: Fly Girl Fly by Peggy Goodman