| Author | |
Leonie
Forum All-Star
Joined: Jan 28 2005
Online Status: Offline
Posts: 2831
|
| Posted: May 27 2005 at 2:53am | IP Logged
|
 |
|
It makes perfect sense, Natalia. 
IMO, an excellent education ( by the dictionary definition above - one of the highest standard) HAS to be an individualized education.
And, as Gutterson argues in the book Family Matters, this individualization is more easily achieved within the homeschool environment.
Leonie in Sydney
|
| Back to Top |
|
| |
mom3aut1not
Forum All-Star
Joined: May 21 2005
Online Status: Offline
Posts: 757
|
| Posted: May 27 2005 at 8:26am | IP Logged
|
|
|
Richelle,
Well, trying to replicate a school in the home is an inferior sort of education. (I remember reading about one mother who insisted that her only child raise his hand to ask a question and address her as Mrs.X.) I am sure people can hoomeschool that way; I don't have the stubbornness to insist on things I view as unimportant and unnecessary. Another would be the Principle Approach. I am sure that can give a good education in secular terms, but it is Protestant not only in application,but at its core. I view that as a deficiency. Unschooling to the point of not insuring basic knowledge is also not good. A case in point is a Maryland family whose children (15 and 17) can't multiply. They weren't interested in learning so they never did. (The young people are of normal intelligence.) An longtime unschooler I know was aghast at this, but I have heard some (by no means all) unschoolers say that it is immoral to force a child to learn anything. One went so far as to say that children should never be forced to do anything at all. I know they aren't typical, but that is a defective education.
Better approaches I think are classical and Charlotte Mason in part because they are liberal educations -- educations worthy of free persons. This is true not only of the content (very important), but also of the respect for the person as a person. The child is a scholar, albeit a small and immature one. Moerover, I feel it is easier to integrate the spiritual aspects of education with an education that is oriented to the true, the good, and the beautiful.
However, you may ask me why I can't do this as with relaxed or unschooling approach? That is, having a home with an enriched environment, knowledgeable parents, and a minimum requirement of learning something in different areas. That is how I homeschooled for several years. I tried that approach with my oldest dd. As a result, she learned almost nothing in math for quite some time. (I was trying all sorts of innovative, non-textbook approaches too.) It was not a good fit for her. She learned much more when I designed more stuctured courses using CKLOH and C&As as spines (I added lots of biographies, historical fictions, literature of a given era, some movies, etc.), a textbook for math. and science, etc.I could have done better than that in retrospect, but my semi-unschooling approach did not work for her. Moreover, with disabled kids (I have three) unschooling is not an option. For example I must work with Joseph consistently or he will regress. To mangle Apollo 13, regression is not an option.
Does it work for some people? That is, will the children in a given family gain the sort of education we want for our children with an unschooling approach? It works for some families and some children. Otoh, sometimes it doesn't. However, the hardcore unschooling approach doesn't seem to take the fallen nature of humans into account. Will humans always choose the good, the true, and the beautiful? Unfortunately not.
So two things a proper education must be are respectful of a chld as a child of God and senstive to the fact that humans, students and parent-teachers alike, are fallen creatures. An excellent education is also one that develops the person in all aspects of his proper human nature-- full of beauty, knowledge, and truth.
Anyway, along my homeschool journey I read Cultural Literacy and The Schools We Need by E.D. Hirsch. I had to seriously consider the communication-assisting aspects of a common culture. I realized that not having a liberal education would be especially difficult for my autistic chldren and make their lives difficult. It also challenged me to change some of my approaches and made me seriously consider my educational pieties and prejudices.
Having a broad acquiantance with history, geography, lierature, the arts, and so on is desirable for any person. True, no one can deeply study all those fields, but having a minimal knowledge of the humanities and sciences makes it easier to learn more. It gives a framework upon which more can be put. (It is not possible to know all about any subject. My dh has a PhD in math, but he has to specialize -- it is not possible for him to keep up with the research except in a narrow field.) That is, education should be broad in general and deep in areas. It is not possible to have deep,profound knowledge in all areas -- there simply is not time enough. It is necessary to have a broad education as well in order to be educated. One family I know never (in years of home education) studied anything in history other than early America. They studied that place and era *really* well. Some other history knowledge did percolate through, but their knowledge is rather patchy and unconnected.
Does an excellent education have to be individualized? I am not sure. It sure makes it easier, but is it necessary? Hhhmmmm. Certainly you can have a great liberal arts education without it, but if we consider education as formation, it would have to individualized-- even if the purely academic aspects are not. I think it's better, when possible, to individualize parts of a curriculum and to consider how to approach subjects with each child while still achieving the goals I set for my kids, but that is not possible for some people (think of my friend with 17 kids).
I would like to add that one thing E.D. Hirsch's books got me to do which I consider very beneficial was to consider what specific goals I want to accomplish with each child in each subject as well as what long-term goals I want to achieve. (It also looks very impressive to teachers and administrators. I was once unexpectedly called in for a portfolio review by the county -- long story-- and I had no samples of student work for my youngest dd in science and history. But I did have my goals and detailed syllabi and they got me through a very difficult situation.)
So that's my experience and my thoughts on education.
In Christ,
Deborah
|
| Back to Top |
|
| |
julia s.
Forum Pro
Joined: Feb 27 2005
Location: Maryland
Online Status: Offline
Posts: 394
|
| Posted: May 27 2005 at 9:36am | IP Logged
|
|
|
Deborah,
I'm not Richelle, but you've given me a lot of good things to think about. I agree with you about the liberal arts education and teaching kids to love the true, the good, and the beautiful (I also liked what Natalia had to say about that too). I lost your train of thought when you got to the Ed Hirsch books...
You said: It also challenged me to change some of my approaches and made me seriously consider my educational pieties and prejudices. Exactly how did the Hirsch books do this?
Thanks for joining in and thanks ahead of time for your help.
__________________
julia
married to love of her life
with ds12 ds8 ds3 and ds1
|
| Back to Top |
|
| |
Willa
Forum All-Star
Joined: Jan 28 2005
Location: California
Online Status: Offline
Posts: 3881
|
| Posted: May 27 2005 at 9:37am | IP Logged
|
|
|
Aristotle writes:
"We may safely assert that the virtue (areté )or excellence of a thing causes that thing both to be itself in good condition and to perform its function well. The excellence of the eye, for instance, makes both the eye and its work good; for it is by the excellence of the eye that we see well. So the proper excellence of the horse makes a horse what it should be, and makes it good at running, and carrying his rider, and standing a charge.
"If, then, this holds good in all cases, the proper excellence or virtue of man will be the habit or trained faculty that makes a man good and makes him perform his function well."
So, philosophically, "excellence" is defined as what maintains something in good condition and perform its function well. He goes on to express excellence (or virtue) as a mean between two extremes. Christian doctrine would refine this as the virtue or excellency being a positive thing in itself, and the vices being either a deficiency, or a seeming excess.
Cardinal Newman considers the excellence of education to be as follows:
"In default of a recognized term, I have called the perfection or virtue of the intellect by the name of philosophy, philosophical knowledge, enlargement of mind, or illumination; I say, a University, ..... educates the intellect {126} to reason well in all matters, to reach out towards truth, and to grasp it."
That's why I thought Deborah's point about taking the long view was so essential. Intellectual excellence is more than anything a habit of mind, if I am not missing anything; knowledge is important (Newman says) but the perfection of the intellect consists not in the knowledge itself but in the disposition of it.
__________________
AMDG
Willa
hsing boys ages 11, 14, almost 18 (+ 4 homeschool grads ages 20 to 27)
Take Up and Read
|
| Back to Top |
|
| |
Willa
Forum All-Star
Joined: Jan 28 2005
Location: California
Online Status: Offline
Posts: 3881
|
| Posted: May 27 2005 at 9:44am | IP Logged
|
|
|
Newman -- "self-education"
I was digging yesterday and found this section from Newman's Idea of a University -- in context, by self-education he is talking about what goes on in a university outside of formal classes -- the discussions of the students among themselves, the informal enculturation, their independent pursuits -- but I thought it applied somewhat to homeschooling/unschooling as well as opposed to "building school" or "school at home". I think it's important to remember that probably NO ONE nowadays in the USA gets the kind of education he would think of as ideal, but as far as alternatives go, he is clearly on the side of the homeschooler IMO!:
"Nay, self-education in any shape, in the most restricted sense, is preferable to a system of teaching which, professing so much, really does so little for the mind. Shut your College gates against the votary of knowledge, throw him back upon the searchings and the efforts of his own mind; he will gain by being spared an entrance into your Babel. Few indeed there are who can dispense with the stimulus and support of instructors, or will do any thing at all, if left to themselves. And fewer still (though such great minds are to be found), who will not, from such unassisted attempts, contract a self-reliance and a self-esteem, which are not only moral evils, but serious hindrances to the attainment of truth. And next to none, perhaps, or none, who will not be reminded from time to time of the disadvantage under which they lie, by their imperfect grounding, by the breaks, deficiencies, and irregularities of their knowledge, by the eccentricity of opinion and the confusion of principle which they exhibit. They will be too often ignorant of what every one knows and takes for granted, of that multitude of small truths which fall upon the {149} mind like dust, impalpable and ever accumulating; they may be unable to converse, they may argue perversely, they may pride themselves on their worst paradoxes or their grossest truisms, they may be full of their own mode of viewing things, unwilling to be put out of their way, slow to enter into the minds of others;—but, with these and whatever other liabilities upon their heads, they are likely to have more thought, more mind, more philosophy, more true enlargement, than those earnest but ill-used persons, who are forced to load their minds with a score of subjects against an examination, who have too much on their hands to indulge themselves in thinking or investigation, who devour premiss and conclusion together with indiscriminate greediness, who hold whole sciences on faith, and commit demonstrations to memory, and who too often, as might be expected, when their period of education is passed, throw up all they have learned in disgust, having gained nothing really by their anxious labours, except perhaps the habit of application.
"Yet such is the better specimen of the fruit of that ambitious system which has of late years been making way among us: for its result on ordinary minds, and on the common run of students, is less satisfactory still; they leave their place of education simply dissipated and relaxed by the multiplicity of subjects, which they have never really mastered, and so shallow as not even to know their shallowness. How much better, I say, is it for the active and thoughtful intellect, where such is to be found, to eschew the College and the University altogether, than to submit to a drudgery so ignoble, a mockery so contumelious! How much more profitable for the independent mind, after the mere rudiments of education, to range through a library at random, taking {150} down books as they meet him, and pursuing the trains of thought which his mother wit suggests! How much healthier to wander into the fields, and there with the exiled Prince to find "tongues in the trees, books in the running brooks!" How much more genuine an education is that of the poor boy in the Poem [Note 2]—a Poem, whether in conception or in execution, one of the most touching in our language—who, not in the wide world, but ranging day by day around his widowed mother's home, "a dexterous gleaner" in a narrow field, and with only such slender outfit
"as the village school and books a few
Supplied,"
contrived from the beach, and the quay, and the fisher's boat, and the inn's fireside, and the tradesman's shop, and the shepherd's walk, and the smuggler's hut, and the mossy moor, and the screaming gulls, and the restless waves, to fashion for himself a philosophy and a poetry of his own!"
Idea of a University
__________________
AMDG
Willa
hsing boys ages 11, 14, almost 18 (+ 4 homeschool grads ages 20 to 27)
Take Up and Read
|
| Back to Top |
|
| |
tovlo4801
Forum All-Star
Joined: Feb 28 2005
Location: Minnesota
Online Status: Offline
Posts: 386
|
| Posted: May 27 2005 at 10:38am | IP Logged
|
|
|
Deborah,
Thanks for responding. I'm hoping I didn't put you on the spot. I really appreciate that you shared your perspective. It gives me a lot to think and pray about. I actually don't disagree with most of what you wrote. I also feel deeply my children should have a basic base of understanding of the breadth of history. I want them to understand how to think and communicate effectively and I believe aspects of classical education can provide this. I want my children to be functional in math and science and even more importantly I really hope my children will see the beauty to be found here. I want my children to learn at least one foreign language (ideally Latin). I am deeply uncomfortable with a completely unrestrained approach to unschooling and see potential issues with character development. If I were to do some form of unschooling in my home it would be a partial form with a brief period of time for some basics to be covered and lots of time left free for their own interests to be explored. I'm just not comfortable with unrestrained video games, computer and TV time. It seems to me that my kids most productive free time is free of these distractions. I would still expect them to be respectful and obedient. They would still be expected to participate in mass and prayer times. This is not unschooling, I know. It actually doesn't seem too different from the kind of school you describe. I think that we may be coming to a similar end result from different perspectives. It sounds like you came from a more relaxed perspective and moved toward more structure and so as you describe things there is probably an unintentional emphasis of the structured aspects. I'm coming from a very structured atmosphere and feeling the need to lighten some of the unnecessary load. I'm in the process of discerning what can be let go and what is critical to hang onto. So I think I'm probably unintentionally emphasizing the unstructured aspects.
It's the determining what is critical that is leaving me spinning a little bit. What is critical seems to be so variable depending on the person's perspective. I have strong feelings about a knowledge base I want my children to master. But I'm beginning to wonder if much of what I want my kids to cover comes from a selfish place rather than a serving of God's plan. Do I want them to cover it, because I want to learn it? Are these things that are important to me truly important enough to my children's education to risk them developing an attitude of learning as a chore to be completed? As I've wrestled with this issue I've begun to see how little a specific knowledge base actually played into the overall goals my dh and I discerned when we began homeschooling. We wrote down our spiritual, intellectual, emotional, social and physical goals for our children when we began. It is the intellectual goals that are most relevant here. This is what we discerned after prayer that we wanted to provide our children with long-term through homeschooling:
1. to love learning.
2. to see learning as an opportunity to grow, not as a chore to be completed.
3. to have a broad view of the world and an integrated understanding of subjects. (eg. to understand that math is connected to history; that literature is connected to science; that faith is foundational to anything that they learn.)
4. to grow into adults who can intellectually handle learning whatever they need to learn as they live their life.
So if I see that the effort to follow a certain method I feel attracted to or to impart certain information I want them to know seems to be hindering the accomplishment of our overall goals, what do I subordinate? Do I grit my teeth and keep plugging away at the method that promises to produce an excellently educated child in the virtue of perserverance at the risk of fostering a distaste for learning in my children? Or do I re-evaluate our priorities and switch gears to find ways to better serve the goals our particular family was called to originally through prayer and discernment?
|
| Back to Top |
|
| |
tovlo4801
Forum All-Star
Joined: Feb 28 2005
Location: Minnesota
Online Status: Offline
Posts: 386
|
| Posted: May 27 2005 at 10:55am | IP Logged
|
|
|
Willa,
I love the Newman quote. What a rich explanation of the benefits and risks to both extremes in homeschooling! Thank you for posting this. This is definitely something worth meditating on IMO. Do you really think that the kind of education he describes at the end is not being achieved anywhere right now? It's not perfectly implemented, but that EXACTLY describes what I have dreamed of providing for my kids all along. But I think in the imperfect swings from extreme to extreme in our home somewhere in the middle this falls into place. And I'm hoping with having this to meditate on frequently, I can steady the swings to a solid path.
I do have still have one essential question that continues to nag me though.
Newman wrote:
How much more profitable for the independent mind, after the mere rudiments of education, to range through a library at random, taking {150} down books as they meet him, and pursuing the trains of thought which his mother wit suggests! |
|
|
What exactly are the mere rudiments of education? What are those critical elements that must be imparted before a child can be given the freedom to explore the world at random as his mother wit suggests?
|
| Back to Top |
|
| |
tovlo4801
Forum All-Star
Joined: Feb 28 2005
Location: Minnesota
Online Status: Offline
Posts: 386
|
| Posted: May 27 2005 at 11:03am | IP Logged
|
|
|
BTW, Natalia, I loved you comments. So much of what you said resonated with me strongly. I'm completely out of time to comment and I'd probably just restate what you already said, but I wanted you to know I appreciated your post.
|
| Back to Top |
|
| |
Willa
Forum All-Star
Joined: Jan 28 2005
Location: California
Online Status: Offline
Posts: 3881
|
| Posted: May 27 2005 at 11:11am | IP Logged
|
|
|
mom3aut1not wrote:
Better approaches I think are classical and Charlotte Mason in part because they are liberal educations -- educations worthy of free persons. This is true not only of the content (very important), but also of the respect for the person as a person. The child is a scholar, albeit a small and immature one. Moerover, I feel it is easier to integrate the spiritual aspects of education with an education that is oriented to the true, the good, and the beautiful.
However, you may ask me why I can't do this as with relaxed or unschooling approach?
|
|
|
Yes, I can't at this point reconcile unschooling with my views about the importance of a liberal education. No doubt there IS a way to unschool and still orient to "liberal" learning and the good, the true, and the beautiful. I think I know some people who are doing it, but I don't live close enough to them to see HOW they actually do it. For me, it ends up in relativism, and frustration, and a sense of artificiality.
I believe that a proper "docility" is a great virtue for the learner whatever his or her age and I can't seem to reconcile this docility or humility with the principles of unschooling as I understand them.
That's why I've ordered Suzy Andries book, in the hope that she will provide me some principles to understand these aspects of Catholic unschooling. All the secular unschoolers who speak philosophically speak in terms of the adult having no "right" to teach and the child having every "right" to choose for himself. I just don't believe those premises.
Still, I am reading Newman and while he acknowledges the dangers of autodidacticism, he also warns even more sternly of the dangers of information-cramming and secondhand knowledge. So in that way, unschooling seems so much preferable to the rigors of textbook-oriented, teach to the test type schooling.
Where am I now? I am functionally most comfortable with a semi-structured home routine with plenty of provision for flexibility and exploration. When we've done this -- the kids progress, I feel at ease with my conscience, and things flow better. I can reconcile that type of schooling best with my understanding of what education and parental authority is about.
When I try to loosen up too much, it seems to play into my dysfunctional side too much. I flounder, my kids flounder. I had a parallel experience to Deborah's when I tried to unschool completely. The most damaging longterm effects were that my kids became less "docile" and less humble in the face of knowledge. Their creativity expanded and they were able to entertain themselves for hours quite productively, but they did not develop the ability to submit themselves and their spirits to the pursuit of wisdom.
My 2 children that were most formed by my unschooling, to this day are the children that struggle most having to do what they don't immediately get gratification from doing. On the other hand, I could well have been doing it "wrong" and in fact, knowing so many who are doing it "right" I must assume that I could have done it much better.
However, I see negative effects when I follow my routine/flexible program too blandly and continuously, without reflection.... when it becomes as CM says a "system" rather than a principled, reflective "method". So I *need* these interims where I can take stock, examine myself and my methods, experiment -- even when it looks temporarily like it's less efficient. I've enjoyed this discussion much and am looking forward to spending time this summer discussing "Homeschooling with Gentleness" with women I admire and respect very much! I'd love to expand my boundaries of understanding, and in fact, have done so at least a bit through this discussion.
__________________
AMDG
Willa
hsing boys ages 11, 14, almost 18 (+ 4 homeschool grads ages 20 to 27)
Take Up and Read
|
| Back to Top |
|
| |
Willa
Forum All-Star
Joined: Jan 28 2005
Location: California
Online Status: Offline
Posts: 3881
|
| Posted: May 27 2005 at 11:31am | IP Logged
|
|
|
tovlo4801 wrote:
Newman wrote:
How much more profitable for the independent mind, after the mere rudiments of education, to range through a library at random, taking {150} down books as they meet him, and pursuing the trains of thought which his mother wit suggests! |
|
|
What exactly are the mere rudiments of education? What are those critical elements that must be imparted before a child can be given the freedom to explore the world at random as his mother wit suggests? |
|
|
Good question, Richelle! Probably at *least* the 4Rs and though I wasn't altogether impressed with the Climbing Parnassus book I did think the author made a good case for acquiring as much Latin as circumstances allow. That being said, none of my kids yet have gone beyond Henle 1, nor have I, so I'm certainly not speaking from the top of Parnassus here 
Someone else I read recently also proposed that a wide experience of English literature could substitute for formal learning of Latin. You learn so much about the roots of language, of style, and of how to think if you simply read and pursue chains of thought as Newman describes. I think that makes a LOT of sense.
I also think the Catholic religion teaches very much not only about doctrine and revelation per se, but about Truth and Beauty and about how to think and discern and avoid extremes, how to put things in proper perspective (which Newman calls the ultimate perfection of education), and how to acquire a humble "seeking" attitude towards learning. So even aside from the fact that it's our duty to teach it, I think (Catholic/Christian) religion is a great improvement to the mind and in fact, one of the children whom I was a bit negative about in my last post has made GREAT strides in the virtue of teachability simply by having a great desire to learn and practice his faith better.
Rambling on and on here! One of my goals this summer is to try to streamline my homeschool a bit, putting first things first and trying to be more conscious of how my methods influence my teaching results. I'm trying to figure out how to focus on those 4Rs and make them part of our *whole* life rather than just things we do to get done. Since I have seven children (well, one's moving on past my sphere of direct influence, so I'll have only 6 in my homeschool next year) I have to focus on the "needful things" and that seems to mean constantly refocusing, and refocusing -- there's educational clutter just as there is household clutter -- all good and useful perhaps, but just in the way if there's too much!
__________________
AMDG
Willa
hsing boys ages 11, 14, almost 18 (+ 4 homeschool grads ages 20 to 27)
Take Up and Read
|
| Back to Top |
|
| |
julia s.
Forum Pro
Joined: Feb 27 2005
Location: Maryland
Online Status: Offline
Posts: 394
|
| Posted: May 27 2005 at 12:26pm | IP Logged
|
|
|
tovlo4801 wrote:
Willa,
I do have still have one essential question that continues to nag me though.
Newman wrote:
How much more profitable for the independent mind, after the mere rudiments of education, to range through a library at random, taking {150} down books as they meet him, and pursuing the trains of thought which his mother wit suggests! |
|
|
What exactly are the mere rudiments of education? What are those critical elements that must be imparted before a child can be given the freedom to explore the world at random as his mother wit suggests? |
|
|
Richelle,
I'm going to put on my counselor's glasses  and ask you to lie down on my sofa for a moment. I'm going to use the Socratic method, and turn the question back to you . (It might be helpful if you imagine a corny german accent too)
What do you think are the critical elements of education?
__________________
julia
married to love of her life
with ds12 ds8 ds3 and ds1
|
| Back to Top |
|
| |
Natalia
Forum All-Star
Joined: Feb 07 2005
Location: Louisiana
Online Status: Offline
Posts: 1343
|
| Posted: May 27 2005 at 12:38pm | IP Logged
|
|
|
Willa,
I remember reading Idea of a University for a professors forum I participated in when I used to work for a Catholic University in Santo Domingo before I got married. It made an impression on me but I back then my focus was completely different. i didn't even know that hsing existed! I bet I could get a very different perspective reading it now
Thanks for reminding me of it,
Natalia
|
| Back to Top |
|
| |
Natalia
Forum All-Star
Joined: Feb 07 2005
Location: Louisiana
Online Status: Offline
Posts: 1343
|
| Posted: May 27 2005 at 12:44pm | IP Logged
|
|
|
What are the critical elements of education?
I don't know if you had a chance to look at the website I cited on my other posts but I think that this is a good summary:
"... these three essential parts of all education: ordered basic knowledge, basic skills or tools of learning and the habitual vision of greatness.
Ordered basic knowledge is the knowledge most worth having; without it we are condemned to our ignorance, fantasies and desires. It consists of the knowledge of God and his revelation (religion and theology), of what he has made and holds in material creation (natural science and mathematics), and knowledge of God's special creation, humanity, in its thinking (philosophy and literature) and achievements (history and culture).
Basic skills of learning are necessary to enable students to learn effectively while in school, but, perhaps more important, to continue learning throughout life. These include the ability to listen attentively, to stick to the point, to speak clearly, to write effectively, to read perceptively and critically. In addition, they include competence in straight thinking, in mathematical computation, in scientific analysis and a reading knowledge in at least one language other than English. These basic skills include some proficiency in the making of beautiful things (the fine arts: drawing, painting, sculpting, music and drama) and in the reflective habits of mind necessary for considered judgments and charitable behavior in a civilized community.
The habitual vision of greatness, the third essential part of learning, entails the development of the moral imagination, of worthy hopes, of ideals and character. It is the development of personal norms derived from familiarity with the very best in what is good, true and beautiful."
Taken for this website
Natalia
|
| Back to Top |
|
| |
tovlo4801
Forum All-Star
Joined: Feb 28 2005
Location: Minnesota
Online Status: Offline
Posts: 386
|
| Posted: May 27 2005 at 3:13pm | IP Logged
|
|
|
julia s. wrote:
I'm going to put on my counselor's glasses and ask you to lie down on my sofa for a moment. I'm going to use the Socratic method, and turn the question back to you . (It might be helpful if you imagine a corny german accent too)
What do you think are the critical elements of education?
|
|
|
OK I feel pretty naked right now!  Have I revealed some terrible personality flaw in my posts that needs to be explored?
The truth is I don't know the answer to that question.
Here's my instict:
1. The ability to understand at a basic level calculation fuctions (add/subt/mult/div). To be able to perform basic arithmetic calculations in real life either by mental/paper methods or through the use of electronic aids.
2. A basic familiarity with higher level mathematical ideas and vocabulary.
3. A general understanding of the major flows of history.
4. The ability to communicate verbally and in written form what is inside of them in a reasonably clear manner.
5. A general familiarity with the natural world and it's forces.
6. An understanding of God's love, and the guidelines and sacramental gifts God provides.
Obviously there is so much more, but my instict says this could be a minimum. Yet these are so vague. Fulfilling these as written could take up very full days through all of our children's schooling years if we were inclined to go to the depths of what each one hints at.
For example, understanding the major flows of history could involve a brief overview of the major time periods and people/places in history and then leave room for free exploration of what interests beyond that. It could mean a very detailed, structured program laid out for the child involving structured vocabulary, discussion questions, research papers, memorization, etc. It could mean SOO many different things.
When we began homeschooling my dh and I had a very specific dream of the education we hoped to provide. The aspects of what we've dreamed of providing for our children cover intellectual, spiritual, emotional and social areas. I wanted to homeschool in part because I didn't see our dream education being offered anywhere else. So if our children wouldn't receive it anywhere else, we might as well try to provide it ourselves. I'm torn between feeling inadequate and feeling that I am uniquely qualified. It's a very uncomfortable place to be in. I feel inadequate because I didn't receive the education I want to provide. I feel inadequate because my own understanding of the tools of learning are limited. My own ability to express myself verbally and in written form is weak. My own training in logic is non-existent. I could turn to experts to provide what I'm lacking, but no expert really understands exactly what I'm so passionate about providing for my children. Only my husband and I make up the combination of people that truly understand what we want for our children. That makes me feel uniquely qualified to provide that education. No one else feels that same passion or can see that end goal as clearly as we can. Yet practicality and insecurity lead me back to recognizing my own lack of skills in the areas that I want to share with my children. So I move into a pick and choose mode. I turn to experts and pull from them what I believe will help me accomplish this goal or that goal and create a customized system to achieve our overall goals. But then I'm told that the expert's system really only works if you follow it all the way. I worry I've picked and chosen my way to a completely ineffective system by leaving out the critical pieces of each expert plan. What if I'm completely wrong? After all I am not the expert. I am uneducated myself. Is it prideful to think I know better than the experts? Yet I feel that I do when it comes to OUR specific goals. Do you see the spinning around I'm struggling with? I'm just lost in it all. If I turn our family over in whole to some expert or experts to educate, then I'm not really providing the education I dreamed of. If I turn away from the experts and follow my own instincts then I'm aware of my inadequacies. If I try to find some middle ground I'm prideful for thinking I know better than someone much better educated and wiser than I am.
I guess that's why I'm looking for some minimum core that is necessary to get from the experts. What is required, very specifically, to provide that groundwork for an excellent education? Does providing the rudiments of education actually leave any free time for the free exploration of the world? I desperately want the answer to the last question to be yes. But if I follow the experts there would be no time to just think and explore freely. It would all be sucked up in workbooks, required reading, vocabulary and spelling tests, research papers, grammar exercises, memorization and a myriad of other things that I don't fully understand the purpose of.
I'm looking for a consensus and I'm probably unlikely to find it. This expert disagrees with that expert. They all disagree with the other expert. It makes it a little hard to chuck a passionately-held dream and put yourself in the hands of an expert, when the likelihood of the experts being wrong anyway is pretty high. They all can't disagree with each other and be right. So maybe I'm better off just following my own uneducated instincts anyway. If I could just find the core of truth in all of the experts divergent methods, then I'd have the base of safety. But it's just not that easy to find is it?
That was quite a ramble. But then you did ask me to lie down on the sofa didn't you. 
|
| Back to Top |
|
| |
Natalia
Forum All-Star
Joined: Feb 07 2005
Location: Louisiana
Online Status: Offline
Posts: 1343
|
| Posted: May 27 2005 at 4:05pm | IP Logged
|
|
|
tovlo4801 wrote:
| I'm torn between feeling inadequate and feeling that I am uniquely qualified. It's a very uncomfortable place to be in. |
|
|
I hear you Richelle. It is an uncomfortable place to be and I think it is likely that your feelings will continue to fluctuate because I think that both feelings are valid and I think they are probably both true. I know that I am not qualified to teach things I know nothing about but because I know my children better than the experts I can make better decisions regarding their education
tovlo4801 wrote:
| So I move into a pick and choose mode. I turn to experts and pull from them what I believe will help me accomplish this goal or that goal and create a customized system to achieve our overall goals. But then I'm told that the expert's system really only works if you follow it all the way. |
|
|
I personally don't see anything wrong with being eclectic. I have never found a system, a method that I can suscribe to all the way. i always find something I don't like or something that doesn't suit us. I think that even in a method of teaching like Classical education or Montessori the students themselves pick and choose instinctevely (sp?), to a certain extent but that doesn't prevent to be "molded" mainly by a certain style of teaching. I don't know if that makes sense at all> I guess what I am trying to say is that I don't believe that because you don't follow a certain method to a t' your kids are not going to get an education that helps them to excell. I might be that the resultant hybrid is not called CE or CM or whatever but I don't think it is less valid for not having a name.
tovlo4801 wrote:
| I worry I've picked and chosen my way to a completely ineffective system by leaving out the critical pieces of each expert plan. What if I'm completely wrong? After all I am not the expert. I am uneducated myself. Is it prideful to think I know better than the experts? Yet I feel that I do when it comes to OUR specific goals. Do you see the spinning around I'm struggling with? I'm just lost in it all. |
|
|
I think that this worry is one that all hsing moms can relate to. And I think that worrying is OK as long as it is not a worrying that is paralizing and that prevent us from making decisions. I guess that is where Faith and Hope come into play. Faith is to believe in what we can't see- I think that what makes this hsing bussiness difficult is the human factor. It doesn't matter what the method, I don't think we can guarantee the results, because we are dealing with human beings that have freedom of choice. So much of what you teach stays latent. So much of what we say or do will not bear fruit until later. There are so many variables...
My goal is to stick to my goals. If I have in mind what I want from my children and at appropriate times I try to see what they want, I think that there are more that one road to get to the goal. After all, don't all the roads lead to Rome?
I am sure that all the roads are not equal: some are more of a straight path, some are curvy, some have obstacles, some my force us into a detour. But, if our goals are important enough does it really matter how we get there?
I am rambling trying to grasp something that is elusive to me too. Something that I am trying to comprehend. I think that the conclusion that I am coming to is that having clear goals is what is important. I think our goals should be:
-a result of prayer
-open to the inspiration of the Holy Spirit
-defined enough so that they carry us through in moments of doubt
-flexible enough to accomodate the personality and gifts of our children
I know that all this rambling doesn't really answer your questions but it is where your questions have taken me.
Natalia
|
| Back to Top |
|
| |
tovlo4801
Forum All-Star
Joined: Feb 28 2005
Location: Minnesota
Online Status: Offline
Posts: 386
|
| Posted: May 27 2005 at 4:57pm | IP Logged
|
|
|
Natalia,
You are such a comfort to me. I have to tell you that I think somehow the Holy Spirit is using you in this conversation. First of all your kind words really soothed my sorrow and worry. Thank you. Second, I'm not sure what lead you to the Trinity School and then to mention it in your posts, but I believe God was trying to get a message to me through it too. I didn't go the to site the first time you mentioned it. Your second post prompted me to actually go to the site and look around. As I was looking I was sorting through all my thoughts about an excellent education. I was formulating a question out of frustration. "Does education really have to be PAINFUL?" My question was not sincere, it was sarcastic. Then I clicked on the staff at the MN location at the Trinity School. (Actually I think it's weird enough that there is a branch of this school in Minnesota!) But here is the quote that was next to the name of the Head of School at the Minnesota branch:
"Education is a painful, continual and difficult work to be done by kindness, by precept, and by praise, but above all, by example."
John Ruskin
I was a little stunned. Then my dh called. I began to talk over my frustrations with him. He was very gentle, but basically helped me see through many different examples that a challenge, even one that is painful, is how we grow. In education we need to be challenged to grow as well. As much as I want my children to love learning, my husband helped me see that they actually might not love it as much if I protect them from experiencing any pain in it. My dh mentioned Augustine saying that the "Aha!" moment when we get something is like getting a glimpse at God. If I protect my children from really being challenged, then I protect them from reaching and growing closer to God.
I'm still trying to absorb all that's been said here, and what I think the Holy Spirit has laid in my lap through you, Natalia, and through my dh. It will take me a while to synthesize what this means for the direction I was planning on taking our school.
Thanks for your kind words and thanks for being an unknowing conduit for the Holy Spirit to whack me upside the head.
|
| Back to Top |
|
| |
mom3aut1not
Forum All-Star
Joined: May 21 2005
Online Status: Offline
Posts: 757
|
| Posted: May 27 2005 at 5:13pm | IP Logged
|
|
|
Richelle,
If you really want to know what I gleaned from E.D. Hirsch, would you mind waiting until this weekend? It's been years, and I'll need to consult those books a bit to answer.
In Christ,
Deborah
|
| Back to Top |
|
| |
julia s.
Forum Pro
Joined: Feb 27 2005
Location: Maryland
Online Status: Offline
Posts: 394
|
| Posted: May 27 2005 at 5:15pm | IP Logged
|
|
|
tolvo4801 wrote:
OK I feel pretty naked right now! Have I revealed some terrible personality flaw in my posts that needs to be explored?
|
|
|
No, that wasn't it. Your original question (way back on page 1) is something I wrestle with too. And I realize that on a philosophical level I may be getting something out of this discussion, however, I really hope that through all of this you are getting something more concrete. And sometimes the best way to move in that direction is to admit whatever nagging feeling or knowledge that we have on the subject, analyze that and then move foreward. I guess I was hoping that you did have some feel of your own for this answer and I didn't want you to dismiss it out of turn. And you do. That was a great list to start with.
tolvo4801 wrote:
| I wanted to homeschool in part because I didn't see our dream education being offered anywhere else. So if our children wouldn't receive it anywhere else, we might as well try to provide it ourselves. I'm torn between feeling inadequate and feeling that I am uniquely qualified. It's a very uncomfortable place to be in. I feel inadequate because I didn't receive the education I want to provide. I feel inadequate because my own understanding of the tools of learning are limited. |
|
|
I'm not sure that even if you figure out all the components to an excellent education (and I'm still interested in what they are too) that your homeschool will ever match a dream or ideal everyday. I know I'm only able to get my son snuggled up to me in those loving readaloud moments only once in a blue moon. Ususally I have a preschooler bouncing around in the background or a boy who just wants to run off and play with his brother. He has some maturing to do before he finds great literature as enthralling as one day I think he will (Maybe not all of it, but some of it anyway). Ideas are good for keeping us on track of why we hs too, but try to keep your goals realistic too.
tolvo4801 wrote:
But if I follow the experts there would be no time to just think and explore freely. It would all be sucked up in workbooks, required reading, vocabulary and spelling tests, research papers, grammar exercises, memorization and a myriad of other things that I don't fully understand the purpose of.
I'm looking for a consensus and I'm probably unlikely to find it. This expert disagrees with that expert. They all disagree with the other expert. It makes it a little hard to chuck a passionately-held dream and put yourself in the hands of an expert, when the likelihood of the experts being wrong anyway is pretty high. They all can't disagree with each other and be right.
|
|
|
When the advice the experts give you confuse you -- evaluate the experts. Not all of them are worth listening to. Not all carry the same weight. Start with people you've found as a reliable source before and move out from there.
And they do not all contradict. I think you've gotten some good leads on this from the different people on this forum. Do it Charlotte Mason style and narrate for yourself what you think each is saying.
tolve4801 wrote:
| But it's just not that easy to find is it? |
|
|
No. Not at all. There is still more to be found on this subject. And I'm in no way trying to stand on Paddy's Irish Spring soapbox and sound like I know more than I do. I just want you to focus on the concrete and the attainable as well as the idea. The idea is worthy of the chase, but I know you want your real life to work as well. I think your a very intelligent person who has given me some good advice. I don't want you to doubt yourself. God talks to us all, just keep listening.
OK couch time is over.
__________________
julia
married to love of her life
with ds12 ds8 ds3 and ds1
|
| Back to Top |
|
| |
tovlo4801
Forum All-Star
Joined: Feb 28 2005
Location: Minnesota
Online Status: Offline
Posts: 386
|
| Posted: May 27 2005 at 6:33pm | IP Logged
|
|
|
mom3aut1not wrote:
Richelle,
If you really want to know what I gleaned from E.D. Hirsch, would you mind waiting until this weekend? It's been years, and I'll need to consult those books a bit to answer.
In Christ,
Deborah |
|
|
Deborah,
It wasn't me who asked for that, but I'll be looking forward to seeing what you have to share on the subject. Thanks for all your insights!
|
| Back to Top |
|
| |
tovlo4801
Forum All-Star
Joined: Feb 28 2005
Location: Minnesota
Online Status: Offline
Posts: 386
|
| Posted: May 27 2005 at 6:37pm | IP Logged
|
|
|
Julia,
Thanks for the couch time. Your advice is well-taken. It was very good to be reminded of the gap between the ideal and the reality. I'm going to add all your really wise thoughts to the mix as I sit back and think this all over. And yes, I am getting something concrete to move forward with out of this conversation. Thank you for contributing to the discussion.
|
| Back to Top |
|
| |
|
|
4Real Forums : Philosophy of Education
Topic: excellence in education - what is it?
