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Dear JenB,

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.

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