Why? ...Why Not?

I really cannot remember a time, at least from the time I got married and had any conscious thought of having a family of my own, that I was not planning to homeschool. It was more like an intuitive decision, a natural action. So to delineate my reasons for doing so is actually quite an exercise.

Still, once we hit that first challenging year of formal homeschooling, I found I needed to be able to remind myself "why" I was doing this thing. And this year, when we moved to a small town, with few if any other homeschoolers around, where community life centers around the schools, where we were not only the new kids in town but the oddballs as well, I found I needed to really spell out, for myself, why I homeschool.

It all seems like one reason in my own mind:

Family unity. Raising our young Christians in keeping with their baptisms. An integrated life. A meaty education. Learning to think. Learning right and wrong, rather than how to follow the crowd. Real history instead of "social studies". "Sex education". The precedence of the family over the state. Really belonging to an organic whole instead of being lost in the herd. Making sure my children go out into the world as adults, not as large children. Imparting practical skills, not just head knowledge. Sharing a way of life. Restoring what is broken in the modern world.

It's Back-to-Homeschool Week

Randi at I Have to Say... is hosting Back-to-Homeschool Week:

Next week, here on my blog, I will be hosting "Back to Homeschool Week". There is a topic for each day and my hope is that my fellow homeschoolers here in the blogosphere will participate by posting their own experiences on their blogs. This is the time of the year that our thoughts begin to turn towards curriculum, planning and scheduling, and I thought that gathering together to encourage one another would be beneficial all of us.

Join in the fun! I'll be posting my thoughts on the daily topics here. (Oh goody! I loove essay questions!)

Toothpaste

It is a good thing to find blobs of toothpaste in the children's bathroom sink. It means they are brushing their teeth.

Year 3

Theology:
NT Catechesis w/Dad
Memory work
read Exodus & Matthew
The Story of Icons
Icon coloring book set

Math & Logic:
Developmental Math workbooks
Montessori math lessons: multiplication, division, fractions, decimals
Memorization of multiplication and division facts
(on the link, scroll down to "The First Year Student and Math Facts")
Mind Benders A1
FamilyMath & Let's Play Math activities
Mathematicians are People Too Vol. 1
Mathmagic (Childcraft)
Math for Smarty Pants
On Beyond a Million: An Amazing Math Journey
Fractals, Googols, and Other Mathematical Tales
Anno's Magic Multiplying Jar
The Story of Clocks and Calendars: Marking a Millenium

Language:
copywork: copying own narrations which mom writes out
dictation
Getty Dubay handwriting book C or D
English for the Thoughtful Child
Greek: study of John
Typing with Ten Thumbs Typing Tutor
memory work: selected poems & psalms, the Gettysburg Address, the Preamble to the Constitution, Chief Joseph's speech

History: Early Modern
Spine: Story of the World vol. 3 & activity book
Usborne Book of World History
Squanto's Journey
Pilgrims First Thanksgiving
Buttons for General Washington
Louis Braille, the Boy Who Invented Books for the Blind
America's Paul Revere
Naya Nuki: Shoshone Girl Who Ran
Seaman: The Dog Who Travelled with Lewis and Clark
Tree in the Trail
Great Speeches of Native Americans
Trail of Tears
Benjamin West and His Cat Grimalkin
Ben and Me
American Adventures: True Stories from America's Past
Phoebe the Spy
The Double Life of Pocahontas
Betsy Maestro American History series
Shh! We're Writing the Constitution!
The Birchbark House
How We Crossed the West: The Adventures of Lewis and Clark

Geography:
Montessori puzzle maps
Montessori pin maps
State by State

Science: Chemistry & nature study
nature notebooking
4-H projects
Handbook of Nature Study
Burgess Bird Book
Learning the Birds podcast
A Drop of Water
Fizz, Bubble and Flash: Element Explorations & Atom Adventures
The Boy Who Drew Birds: A Story of John James Audubon

Literature:
Favorite Poems Old and New
Lamb's Tales From Shakespeare, 6 stories
A Treasury of North American Folktales
Kildee House
The Wheel on the School
The Sign of the Beaver
Caddie Woodlawn
The Prince and the Pauper
The Incredible Journey
Little Lord Fauntleroy
The Courage of Sarah Noble
From the Mixed Up Files of Mrs. Basil E. Frankweiler

Art, Music, & Handwork:
Suzuki violin
Recorder using Recorder Fun!
My First Patchwork Book
My First Machine Sewing Book
origami projects from Easy Origami
nature crafts from Nature Smart
Native American crafts: moccasins, beadwork, pine needle baskets
Hymns: 1 per month
continue observation drawing using Drawing for Children
Watercolor for the Artistically Undiscovered
picture study of 6 artists
music appreciation 6 composers

Most of the books are on Amazon in a listmania list here.

Bored.

That's right. The almost-eight-year-old is bored. I informed her that this is the normal condition of being almost eight, and that it will likely pass once she actually turns eight. But I am confused. This is one of two imaginative, resourceful children who are adept at entertaining themselves, spending hours painting with watercolors, reading (very challenging) books, writing, pretending, playing chess and Clue and card games, and begging to be allowed to help with the cooking. Today this very same bored child spent a long, peaceful morning looking at a book of string figures and figuring out how to do them.

I am also chagrined. Because this bored child is asking to go to public school, thinking that it will alleviate her boredom. But in his essay Against School, John Taylor Gatto writes:

School trains children to be employees and consumers; teach your own to be leaders and adventurers. School trains children to obey reflexively; teach your own to think critically and independently. Well-schooled kids have a low threshold for boredom; help your own to develop an inner life so that they'll never be bored. Urge them to take on the serious material, the grown-up material, in history, literature, philosophy, music, art, economics, theology - all the stuff schoolteachers know well enough to avoid. Challenge your kids with plenty of solitude so that they can learn to enjoy their own company, to conduct inner dialogues. Well-schooled people are conditioned to dread being alone, and they seek constant companionship through the TV, the computer, the cell phone, and through shallow friendships quickly acquired and quickly abandoned. Your children should have a more meaningful life, and they can.

What is happening here? I thought we were already doing this. Shall I utter the lament of Everyparent: "Oh-where-did-I-go-wrong?" Or is it Gatto that is wrong, about school being the source of boredom?

But Gatto goes on :

Who, then, is to blame?

We all are. My grandfather taught me that. One afternoon when I was seven I complained to him of boredom, and he batted me hard on the head. He told me that I was never to use that term in his presence again, that if I was bored it was my fault and no one else's. The obligation to amuse and instruct myself was entirely my own, and people who didn't know that were childish people, to be avoided if possible. Certainty not to be trusted. That episode cured me of boredom forever, and here and there over the years I was able to pass on the lesson to some remarkable student.

This is, in essence, what I tell my daughter. Boredom is the product of the undisciplined mind and body, not of environment.

But I also investigate further. What activity or benefit is she expecting school to provide? Why, specifically, does she think school will solve her boredom problem?

Her younger brother is ahead of her in math, she tells me, and she feels bad about this. This is true. Actually, they are at about the same level. She is doing perfectly well with math, but he is a year and a half younger, and has a knack for math. "The way to get better at math," I point out, "is to work on it more. Do you want to work more on math?"

"Yes," she says. "I want to work on it every day!" She goes on to tell me that public school kids work six hours each day instead of two or three, so they must be learning more. I point out that that is not necessarily true, since she knows as much as, if not more than, schooled children her age. Learning only happens if interest an attention are there, which is why we get more done in less time at home. "Do you really want to have someone else do your thinking for you and tell you what to do with your time?" I ask. "That is what your six hour public school day would be like."

"Yes," she replied, "sort of. Sometimes I don't know what to do." The answer is dawning on me. Her request for public school is a request for more structure, more direction, more responsibility, and more challenge. I think of what would have been expected of a seven or eight year old child 100 or even 200 years ago -- perhaps not so much academically, but several hours of home and farm chores and learning practical skills like sewing and knitting. A girl of eight in those days was halfway to adulthood; it was time for intensive training in the complex tasks of running a home. I think back over the past few days: happy, smoothly-flowing days. I had assigned her more tasks than usual: baking something without my assistance, entertaining her little sister, mopping the floor, writing her 4-H story. She is asking for more of this sort of day: guided days, so she can move into more complex projects, greater responsibility, and a larger sphere of independence. I run this idea by her. Yes, she says, that's what she wants. More projects. And more jobs.

As homeschoolers we often argue, along with authors like the late Raymond Moore and Charlotte Mason, that we want to allow our children to have a childhood, to not push their learning, to not hurry them to grow up too soon. We want to give them the gift of time, to look at the clouds, to dig in the sand, to think for themselves and discover their own interests. So, then, isn't it paradoxical that John Gatto also resonants with us when he says:

Don't let your own have their childhoods extended, not even for a day. If David Farragut could take command of a captured British warship as a pre-teen, if Thomas Edison could publish a broadsheet at the age of twelve, if Ben Franklin could apprentice himself to a printer at the same age (then put himself through a course of study that would choke a Yale senior today), there's no telling what your own kids could do.

Are we talking out of both sides of our mouths here? I don't think so. Our culture does force children to grow up too quickly...and at the same time it inhibits maturation, pushing the age of adulthood back farther and farther. Perhaps it is that we foist upon children the problems and privileges of adulthood without establishing a foundation of responsibility, identity, belonging, and order. Or perhaps it's that we give them breadth without depth, as Dana has been pondering. I'd like to hear from others -- what do you think?

At any rate, with my "bored" child, I am reminded that "giving the gift of time" and "letting them follow their interests" doesn't mean doing nothing or giving no direction. Instead of leaving her so many free hours to play -- she has matured beyond that -- I need to revisit the Moore formula, and make sure she has a sufficient dose of study, service, and work.

You Call Me 'Good'...

Did Jesus come to teach us to be good people?
Well, that depends on how you want to read the Bible. We can read the Bible, beginning to end, as a book of rules telling us what will make God happy, what we have to do, and then go out and try to do it. We may make an admirable try. Yet we know that, without exception, we will fail. Not only will we fail to do what is right before God, we will actually break his law and make him angry. Then what? If we don’t manage to follow that old saw, “What Would Jesus Do?” every minute of every hour of ever day, what good does it do us? None. Yet we can’t do it perfectly. Nobody ever has.

So where should our focus lie? What did Jesus come to teach us? He wasn’t crucified for what he said about how to live a good life. The Pharisees were all in favor of rules. They were angered, and plotted against him, and crucified him, because of what he said about Himself. “I am the good shepherd.” “I am the light of the world.” “I am the bread of heaven.” “If you do not eat my flesh and drink my blood, you do not have life in you.” When they asked him clearly if he was the Son of the living God, he said that he was, and that they would see him coming in power. And see him come in power they did– as he went to the cross, and paid the price for all our falling short.

Did Jesus come to teach us to be good people? No. He came to teach us that we cannot be good people, but that he, the only Good Person, would pay the price for our not being good, and give his goodness to us so that we could stand beside him, without fear– so that we could see God. Any teacher who says that the core of the Christian faith is “How to be good people” has entirely missed the point. Any church that makes our goodness the center of their preaching is not a church of Jesus Christ, because Jesus Christ has gathered us on the foundation of his goodness, not our own. He laid down his life to buy us, poor miserable sinners that we are. That is how we read the Bible– the whole Bible– as the story of God’s love for us, which led him to give his life for people that would never be good without him.

82nd Carnival of Homeschooling

...is up at Tami's Blog. Check it out!