Posted on 06/08/2010 7:44:05 AM PDT by SwotSonOfSitetest
I wore my high school ring for more than 40 years.
--SNIP--
I wore the ring (and will wear it again) because although I have degrees from two Ivy league schools and have taught at U.C. Berkeley, Johns Hopkins, Columbia and Duke, Classical High School (in Providence, RI) is the best and most demanding educational institution I have ever been associated with. The name tells the story. When I attended, offerings and requirements included four years of Latin, three years of French, two years of German, physics, chemistry, biology, algebra, geometry, calculus, trigonometry, English, history, civics, in addition to extra-curricular activities, and clubs — French Club, Latin Club, German Club, Science Club, among many others.
--SNIP--
Sounds downright antediluvian, outmoded, narrow and elitist, and maybe it was (and is; the curriculum’s still there, with some additions like Japanese), but when I returned home I found three new books waiting for me, each of which made a case for something like the education I received at Classical.
--SNIP--
[S]he [Leigh Bortins] proposes a two-pronged program of instruction: “classical education emphasizes using the classical skills to study classical content.” By classical skills she means imitation, memorization, drill, recitation and above all grammar, not grammar as the study of the formal structure of sentences (although that is part of it), but grammar as the study of the formal structure of anything: “Every occupation, field of study or concept has a vocabulary that the student must acquire like a foreign language . . . . A basketball player practicing the fundamentals could be considered a grammarian . . . as he repeatedly drills the basic skills, of passing dribbling, and shooting.” “Every student,” Bortins counsels, “must learn to speak the language of the subject.”
(Excerpt) Read more at opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com ...
This ping list is for articles of interest to homeschoolers. I hold both the Homeschool Ping List and the Another Reason to Homeschool Ping List. Please freepmail me to let me know if you would like to be added or removed from either list, or both.
The keyword for the FREE REPUBLIC HOMESCHOOLERS’ FORUM is frhf.
Here are some classical education homeschooling resources:
http://www.welltrainedmind.com/
I got this when it first came out and I had already been homeschooling. It was a great guide.
Here are some good catalogs that are classically inclined:
http://www.veritaspress.com/
http://www.memoriapress.com/index.html
http://www.greenleafpress.com/
And this one is literature based.
http://www.bfbooks.com/
Here is a Catholic resource.
http://www.motherofdivinegrace.org/
Laura Berquist is wonderful! Just saw her at a conference this weekend. Always enjoy her stuff.
By classical skills she means imitation, memorization, drill, recitation and above all grammar, not grammar as the study of the formal structure of sentences (although that is part of it), but grammar as the study of the formal structure of anything:
i fully buy into the above, and this is how my boys have learned just about everything...
"When I get a little money I buy books; and if any is left I buy food and clothes. " ERASMUS
But, if we'd started out with a more classical approach, maybe this all would've been easier and gone much more smoothly. ;-) There's a private school nearby that uses the classical approach. It seems like a great school. There are also some nearby homeschool cooperatives that use a classical curriculum, too.
thanks for this, this will be good for our homeschooled children
I think my parents used an accidental semi-classical style with us in the first six years or so anyway and I’m at least considering something similar. I know I don’t want a package curriculum or anyone saying “do twenty minutes of spelling then thirty minutes of history”. That’s totally missing the point of homeschooling IMO.
My husband and I have great discussions about schooling and what we want the kids to get out of it all the time. It’s a lot of fun.
We used a “box” for the first five or six years for our sons. Specifically, we used the Calvert School curricula.
We'd read books on classical education, and had decided that that was the approach that we'd take. I recognized this educational model, since it's pretty much what I received when I was little and went to Catholic elementary school.
The Calvert curricula, especially for the early grades, was very much in sync with this approach, and that's why we chose it. Before we made our choice, we actually visited the Calvert School in Baltimore and sat and spoke with the faculty member in charge of liaison to homeschoolers. We went to their offices where they warehouse their curricula and spent the better part of a day reviewing the materials for first through third grade (and even a little beyond).
What we found was excellently-made curricular materials that covered well the subject matter laid out in the syllabi for each subject for each grade. We found a curriculum that was very rigorous, that took (whether intended or not) a classical approach, in the early grades, very heavy in promoting mastery of subject material, rather than mere competency. Lots of exercises and drills, memorization, learning of fundamental concepts (the “grammar” of things). The breadth of the curriculum, as well, was excellent.
Nothing told us, though, how many minutes to spend on this or that subject. The goal was to work through the material until the student mastered it. The material was broken up in to “daily” lessons, but this was primarily for planning purposes. If you found yourself regularly taking two or three days for each lesson, that might be a hint to re-evaluate your approach to homeschooling, including the possibility that the curriculum might be too difficult for your child (we knew a few homeschoolers where this turned out to be the case).
But while we used the curricula, my wife often spent additional time with material that the guys found tough, and ran through more quickly material that they mastered easily.
We abandoned the curriculum after our older son completed 6th grade, as, by this point, it had strayed from the classical foundations of the earlier grades and had become more politically-correct and less focused on the goal of teaching students what should be learned to be fully human.
From there, we made it up as we went along until they each finished 8th grade.
However, by that point, we'd been homeschooling for some years and felt confident that we could move forward without the boxed curriculum.
And that is one of the great things about the box. My wife was very new to the idea of homeschooling as our older son spent a wasted year in Kindergarten. The boxed curriculum gave her the ability to homeschool effectively right from the getgo.
For many of us who have been homeschooling for a while, we're the first. We were all educated in regular schools, our parents in regular schools. Many of us were the first in our families to educate our children thusly. Many of us took a lot of criticism, a lot of heat initially to do what we did. Boxed curricula gave us a place to start. In some sense, it probably did make our homeschooling experience look more like a “traditional” school experience, although we didn't see that as a necessarily bad thing.
But you're the next generation of homeschooler. You, yourself, were homeschooled. It's not a strange and new concept that you will approach with fear and trepidation, uncertainty and concern that you may really be lousing up your kids’ lives with this new-fangled (at least to us) idea.
The box gives folks new to homeschooling a lot of benefits. If carefully selected, it provides a curriculum consonant with the goals and philosophy of the parents. It doesn't require “reinventing the wheel” on the part of the parents. If well-selected, it provides a good, solid, tested educational program that will help parents properly and reasonably educate their children.
The box is often the thing that enables new homeschoolers psychologically to cross the bridge from what 98% of the rest of society is telling them to do to something new, kinda scary, very different, but ultimately, extremely rewarding.
I wouldn't expect someone like you to use a boxed curriculum, JenB.
But the box has an important role to play for the other 98% of folks who haven't yet jumped in to the world of homeschooling.
The box is good.
sitetest
Boxes are good for the people you mention. On the other hand, my mother started using several subjects’ worth of box curriculum with my younger brothers and I think it was a bad thing compared to her carefully selecting different sources of curriculum as she did for me.
In addition as a mixed marriage we’d have trouble agreeing on any box, I think; I’m not likely to like Calvert, my husband wouldn’t be too pleased with Abeka, and who wants an explicitly secular curriculum?
You’re right, second generation homeschooling is very exciting. It’s great to say “Ok, here’s what your mom did, here’s what my mom did, what do we want to steal and what do we want to change?”
“Boxes are good for the people you mention.”
Yes, which just happen to be most folks who homeschool, LOL.
“...and who wants an explicitly secular curriculum?”
Not sure what you mean by “explicitly secular,” but if it means one that teaches math when the subject is math, and not religion, well, I'm raising my hand for that one!
“You’re right, second generation homeschooling is very exciting.”
I'm crossing my fingers that most folks who were homeschooled will take it to the next generation. From my own limited experience, it seems that most will. I know that both my sons want very much to homeschool their own children. There is a large homeschooled family that we know whose two oldest daughters are off to college in the fall, and I know that each of them is hesitant to take out any college loans, because they have no desire to spend a couple of decades in the workforce - they want to be stay-at-home, homeschooling moms. But one of their younger sisters wishes to have nothing to do with homeschooling when she marries and has children of her own.
It will be interesting to see how things unfold.
sitetest
I don’t like those programs that mix Bible verses and arithmetic, they tend to be really lame. But if I were getting a whole packaged curriculum it would either have a specific Christian worldview or it would not, and neither alternative appeal to me.
Most of the homeschoolers I knew growing up did not use packaged curriculum. Not sure what the percentages are but it can’t be too heavy a majority, or there wouldn’t be the sheer variety of materials out there that exist (needing a trip to a good curriculum fair before too long here...)
I don’t have close contact with most of the homeschoolers I knew growing up but I think most of them are planning to homeschool, unless they have other reasons for not wanting to, like some of the older daughters of large families that aren’t even so sure they want kids, let alone to homeschool them. I do know the dilemma of not wanting to take out loans but I think no woman should be without the ability to provide for her family if necessary; I was fortunate not to need to take debt in order to get my degrees and merely enjoyed my several years in the work force, but other women have different priorities.
My husband’s family also homeschooled; so far his two older siblings are homeschooling their children and we’re not sure about his youngest sister; her husband is a private school teacher so their future offspring might go that route. My own siblings aren’t married yet but I do expect they’ll homeschool too. And a lot of the “fence-sitters” I think will choose homeschooling when they realize just how bad the public schools are.
Agreed - it has been a virtual desert out there for homeschooling material for high school students as far as math and science...really for all subjects. A lot of the homeschool curriculum companies focus on gradeschool level. Saxon math doesnt work for everyone and history has been a real issue for us. Fortunately, Ive been able to look at a variety of things because of forums like FR and some blogs I like to read.
I - and I hate to sound critical of my parents - consider the first two of my three high school years to have been a the waste other than Saxon and some of my enrichment activities. The curriculum she used for me was fairly useless. What good it did was in essays I wrote or books read; most of the assignments were a waste. My last year of high school we figured that out, transitioned me to community college, and spent the year reading things like the writings of the Founding Fathers and writing essays and research papers. Much more useful, but not what we could have achieved.
I personally love Saxon and plan to use it with my kids but I know not everyone does.
It’s going to be really interesting for me starting to homeschool; my parents’ new kids (adopted from foster care) are 18 months and 3 years older than my daughter. I might steal resources from my mom, or suggest different ones for her.
Worldview. I understand what you're saying, but my own experience with the Calvert curricula is this: In the early grades, the “worldview” that came through, in the few areas that it came through, was that of a promotion of western civilization, with an occasional generic, but noticeable Protestant tilt.
Thus, history was centered on western civilization. Art history revolved around European art. Etc.
We're Catholic, so when the history book started glorifying the wonders of the Reformation, we obviously added our own correctives. But hey, we're homeschoolers, we can do that.
In the middle school years, the curriculum became more forceful in presenting a worldview, and this was one of generic political and social liberalism.
By that point, we'd been homeschooling for half a dozen years and felt comfortable foregoing the box after that.
At least with the Calvert curricula, in the lower grades - when we needed a box the most - the curriculum was too much about teaching how to read, write, do arithmetic, learn geography, very basic science, very basic history, etc. to get heavy into a particular bias.
As to what most folks use - I suspect it's not all this or that. Even when we abandoned the Calvert curriculum as a whole, we still bought the math packages. I don't see that much of a difference between folks who buy one big box with everything in it and folks who buy a package for math, another for science, etc.
I think that folks who prepare most or all of their curriculum from scratch are likely relatively small in number.
“I do know the dilemma of not wanting to take out loans but I think no woman should be without the ability to provide for her family if necessary...”
It seems to me that this has the hidden premise that one needs a college education to support a family. But that aside, at the college level, I think that most folks live places where there are open enrollment state schools with very reasonable in-state tuition. I know that the University of Maryland, College Park, runs around $8K per year (although it's not quite open enrollment). That's something that someone could largely pay out of pocket if he worked his way through school.
And a degree in an employable field from a place like Maryland will certainly enable a person to obtain work that will enable someone to support his or her family.
But the two young ladies to which I referred earlier, being highly successful homeschoolers, were accepted to universities a bit pricier (and with better academic reputations) than Maryland. In both cases, tuition + room and board came to nearly $50K per year. But both received scholarships that basically precluded the necessity of taking out any loans at all.
“And a lot of the ‘fence-sitters’ I think will choose homeschooling when they realize just how bad the public schools are.”
Or even many private schools. We sent our older son to a Catholic Kindergarten. Before we sent him, I'd discussed homeschooling with my wife. She thought I was a nutjob. By Christmas of my son's Kindergarten year, her attitude was “I can do a better job than that!”
And for the next eight years, she vindicated that statement many times over.
We gave our guys the option of homeschooling for a couple of years of high school or of going to my high school alma mater. They both chose to go to my old high school, which is, in many ways, a very special place. But if my old high school hadn't been available, I'm not sure that we would have given them the choice of any regular school.
sitetest
Thanks for those great links! I am “after-schooling” for now (and hoping to homeschool at some point), and your links have some great resources.
Having been homeschooled, I think you’ll have an advantage in knowing more about what to expect and how to go about it. I agree that a schedule that is too structured, modeled after school, is not the best way.
FYI: For awhile, each year, the homeschoolers here would recommend books and resources they liked, and the list would be updated each year.
The final list is right here:
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-chat/2346553/posts
JenB, Am so sorry for getting back to your answer so late - have been out of town for the last few days - Saxon was good for introducing my daughter to math concepts but about middle school was when she got bored with their method and I had a very difficult time finding another math program that she could jump into and encourage her developement. The Key To series worked very well for that time period I think, although we didnt cover everything. Right now am looking to get her into dual-credit classes as well. Will you be using the Well Trained Mind curriculum ie classical training? I love the Story of the World series. Have been raving about them to a relative who is pulling her child out for homeschooling. Ive also discovered K12 online.
We’ll probably use some classical homeschooling ideas, but not a strict classical program. I’m not sure that would work for us. I am really rabidly fanatic about homeschooling and consider it my highest priority, and have no doubts I can do well at teaching my kids, so I am eager to tailor education for each kid as they’re ready, even changing things out partway through the year depending on what works.
Except Saxon, I think; my husband and I both loved what Saxon did for us.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.