I am all for home schooling, but unfortunately you get the idiots doing it too.
When does she think they are going to come home with a sudden interest in integral calculus, or valence shell electron pair repulsion theory?
Maybe mom is too stupid to know such things exist, or maybe the newspapers are trying to make home schooling sound bad.
It's probably both.
Well, we homeschooled our children, having first tried to mainstream them into the CA school system. We found that they had had educational experiences less structured than the one the NYT is here castigating and we also found that it took at least a year to get them back on track enough to actually have lessons and learn things.
So context is everything and the NYT is nothing, as usual.
So what! I am very satisfied with my life, and have accomplished some things of which I am very proud. I would guess that if her kids have the "math gene", they will be interested in learning the stuff you mention. If they don't--then they will hone in on things in which they have interest, and develop learning in those things.
We homeschooled and turned into unschoolers bascially because certain family tragedies upended our homeschooling discipline. At the time I was very concerned that there were areas missing from my kids' education.
But the unschooling worked better than I thought. It's true, math is a sore point, but as my sons got older and developed life ambitions, they started to come to me with requests for texts for more advanced math.
One I couldn't get to touch his math, but when he found he couldn't get into a college computer course without it, suddenly started advancing in it on his own. Plus if they have friends doing a particular class they will often do it with them.
Unschooling does not work for all. My boys ended up in the trades (which was their inclination anyway), but I think if one had wanted to become a doctor or such they would have directed their own learning in necessary subjects.
It probably has more to do with personal discipline than anything else.
How many children graduate from public high school without any exposure to those topics?
I didn't take integral Calculus or valence shell electron pair repulsion theory (Advance Chemistry) until 2nd year college.
These kids are a little young for integral calculus or valence shell electron repulsion theory, and their parents don't necessarily intend to stick to the same educational program all the way through. When the kids are older and start developing interests like space flight, skyscraper design/construction, the parents will hopefully have the sense to suggest a course in advanced math or chemistry at the local community college or online. By that time the kids will probably have figured out that if they want to do some of things they're dreaming about doing, some formal coursework will be necessary, and they'll have their motivation.
Why? Are they supposed to? I learned these things in college. I've never used either one, and I'd be hard pressed to remember anything about them. Was it good for me? Maybe in some way that I'm not aware of. I think I would have been better off learning something that's universally useful, like logic.
Dear Mr. K,
We homeschool and use a packaged curriculum.
Fortunately, the school day usually is over by lunch, or maybe a little later. After that, they follow their own devices (at least on days when they're not in some extracurricular activity).
My nine year-old's interests include astronomy, and he's pretty fascinated with Mars. At his age, he isn't quite advanced enough for integral calculus, but his desire to plan out the colonization of the red planet has caused him to become fairly adept at basic arithmetic. In our homeschool, making the basic functions of addition, subtraction, multiplication and division second nature has been an important goal. He's never liked all the math drills we require to achieve this goal.
However, his own pursuit of the red planet has caused him to master this stuff on his own time. As well, he's begun to teach himself a little geometry, and is solving for "x."
In terms of science, he has a pretty good layman's understanding, at this point, of any number of physics concepts, especially if they pertain in any way to his plans. In that one must have some sort of propulsion system to get to Mars, he's taken his own time to study different systems and energy sources for them. He has a basic understanding of nuclear fission reactors and nuclear fusion reactors. He has a basic understanding of chemistry (at this point, he's sort of "accidentally" memorized about half the periodic table - he's looking up elements so much, that they're sticking in his head without any particular effort to memorize them).
Like I said, he's a little young, so I'm reasonably sure that he hasn't mastered valence shell electron pair repulsion theory.
But give him time.
At times, his own explorations generate science questions that require me to go back and re-acquaint myself with the material, so that I can adequately answer his questions.
My older son, 12, has taught himself a couple of dialects of Elvish (from Tolkien's work), and he's pretty much an authority on all things Middle-Earth. The Elvish may not do much for him, but in teaching himself another language, he developed a certain skill for learning languages, and is now teaching himself Latin. His interests include medieval literature, heraldry, and mythology. He is an excellent writer and artist. None of this is in his curriculum.
In our case, this all happens in addition to our regular curriculum, but I could see it easily replacing a regular curriculum. The interests my two sons have cause them to do more learning on their own than they actually do during their formal schooling time.
In fact, something that I've observed with both of them is that sometimes the formal educational stuff actually interferes with their own self-pursued learning. My older son dislikes the writing assignments given him in his curriculum (frankly, I sometimes think that the curriculum was written with young girls in mind - many of the assignments are at best awkward for boys). This has carried over into his personal pursuits, because he does less creative writing now than he once did. The formal curriculum has turned writing into a bit of drudgery.
Unschooling can be an excellent way of educating one's children.
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