Square peg
So very often in my life I feel a bit like a square peg in a round hole. The things I enjoy doing, the books I read, the choices I make are more often than not a bit outside what is usual. In some instances they are a lot outside what is usual. Since I cannot remember I time I didn't feel like this, it is usually something I don't bother much about.
And then there comes along something that highlights how very different I view things. Now, I hope you all know that I don't think everyone should homeschool. I am totally fine with every family making an informed choice about what is best for their family and going with that. I happen to think homeschooling makes a lot of sense and has real benefits, but that would make sense being the educational road we chose. I'm happy to talk about our educational choices and very often do here, but you'll get no grief from me if you have chosen differently.
There are some things that I happen to believe, based on a lot of experience raising a wide variety of children and doing a heck of a lot of reading on the topic of education. The views I hold I did not come to lightly and are backed with real research. This is particularly true when it comes to the preschool and early elementary years. I will admit to being heavily influenced initially by my father whose first career was as a kindergarten and first grade teacher. He watched the wave of academics being pushed down into kindergarten and hated every single bit of it. Not being willing to teach kindergarten that way played a significant roll in taking early retirement when it was offered.
What the start of school in the fall is going to look like is a huge question mark for most people. (Even homeschoolers are not immune to this as co-ops and homeschooling groups are needing to grapple with what is going to happen.) It probably won't surprise you that many parents are seriously considering homeschooling as an option until schools can move back to regular in-person classrooms. On the various homeschooling groups I'm on, there has been a significant increase in parents who will be first-time and rather reluctant homeschoolers at least until life goes back to normal.
As a result, there is a huge concern about children not falling behind. I get it, I do. If you are planning to return you child back to school when it is possible, then you don't want your child to pay the price for your decision to homeschool by not being where their peers are. To those parents I want to say that this decision to homeschool isn't quite as radical as it might feel. Helping your child learn things, being diligent in that effort, and adding in some personal learning is unlikely going to cause them to fall behind. It makes me think that they have never really critically looked at a set of text books for elementary school, because if they had they would realize that most textbooks spiral. This means that topics are taught over and over again at each grade level in order to help the student refresh their memory of what they have done before. I find math and grammar texts to spiral so heavily that I actually skip an entire grade when we move to the next one, only doing every other text book in a given series. For example, if a child just finished a 3rd grade math book, then I will put them into a 5th grade math book next. If there was a topic that we missed my skipping 4th grade, the text will cover it again. I promise. I've been skipping textbook levels like this for years. I wish the parents would give themselves more credit for being able to help their children learn.
This is more understandable to me than the group that leaves me both speechless and so full of so many words that it does seem as though my head is going to explode. (I'm tying all these things together here, I promise.) This group is the parents of incoming kindergartners. Never have a felt so much a part of a different universe than reading their concerns about homeschooling kindergarten. (I may also be stepping on some toes, here, so prepare yourselves.) The panicked desire to find a curriculum that won't cause their kindergartner to fall behind. The need to focus on academics. The stating of what the child already knows and how that trajectory needs to keep going. How they cannot teach their child so have to have something already written out. Etc., etc., etc. It makes me want to shout, "It's kindergarten for heaven's sake! Naps and snacks! Playing! Hands-on exploration! Stories! It's not differential calculus, get a grip." But I don't because that might not be helpful, though boy, would it feel good at that very moment.
This would be bad enough, but inevitably it is followed up with how their child doesn't seem to enjoy learning. It is a struggle. How are they going to keep their five year old on task so they don't fall behind?!? My knee jerk response that I don't say out loud is, "Gee, you think? They're four or five years old. Good golly, you've focused so much on academics at such an early age that you've already burned them out." And I go pull weeds to take my irritation out on them, wondering how people could have so completely missed how these two problems go hand in hand.
How did we become a people so terribly focused on achievement at such an early age? It is so backwards to what is good for a child and how they actually learn. I do not understand what the race is, much less what someone wins. I just don't get it. It seems we have collectively both lost faith in our abilities to transmit what we know and in allowing our children to be children. We put so much pressure on ourselves and our children is it any wonder that as a society we are collectively breaking down? How do we stop the madness and allow both us and our children time to just be?
This little rant is probably fueled in part by my new book, Play=Learning: How Play Motivates and Enhances Children's Cognitive and Social-Emotional Growth, written in 2006. Things have not seemed to improve in the intervening 14 years. From the introduction:
"The data are incontrovertible. They have been telling the same story throughout the last 40 years of research. When children are in environments where learning is occurring in a meaningful context, where they have choices, and where they are encouraged to follow their interests, learning takes place best. Ironically ... we have adopted a metaphor of the child as 'empty vessel': pour in the facts and the child will passively absorb the material. However, the research tells us exactly the opposite. In preschool, when children are pressured to learn in schools with 'academic' as opposed to developmentally appropriate curricula, they report being more anxious and perfectionistic than their more playful peers. They are no more ahead in first grade academic achievement. [Bolding mine] Such programs also have the effect of reducing children's motivation and making them have lower expectation for their academic abilities, less pride in their achievements, and more dependency on adults -- regardless of social class. Children who have been schooled to think that there is one right answer and that learning is memorization are also dependent on adults for their learning. They have not learned how to learn." (p. 9)
And then there comes along something that highlights how very different I view things. Now, I hope you all know that I don't think everyone should homeschool. I am totally fine with every family making an informed choice about what is best for their family and going with that. I happen to think homeschooling makes a lot of sense and has real benefits, but that would make sense being the educational road we chose. I'm happy to talk about our educational choices and very often do here, but you'll get no grief from me if you have chosen differently.
There are some things that I happen to believe, based on a lot of experience raising a wide variety of children and doing a heck of a lot of reading on the topic of education. The views I hold I did not come to lightly and are backed with real research. This is particularly true when it comes to the preschool and early elementary years. I will admit to being heavily influenced initially by my father whose first career was as a kindergarten and first grade teacher. He watched the wave of academics being pushed down into kindergarten and hated every single bit of it. Not being willing to teach kindergarten that way played a significant roll in taking early retirement when it was offered.
What the start of school in the fall is going to look like is a huge question mark for most people. (Even homeschoolers are not immune to this as co-ops and homeschooling groups are needing to grapple with what is going to happen.) It probably won't surprise you that many parents are seriously considering homeschooling as an option until schools can move back to regular in-person classrooms. On the various homeschooling groups I'm on, there has been a significant increase in parents who will be first-time and rather reluctant homeschoolers at least until life goes back to normal.
As a result, there is a huge concern about children not falling behind. I get it, I do. If you are planning to return you child back to school when it is possible, then you don't want your child to pay the price for your decision to homeschool by not being where their peers are. To those parents I want to say that this decision to homeschool isn't quite as radical as it might feel. Helping your child learn things, being diligent in that effort, and adding in some personal learning is unlikely going to cause them to fall behind. It makes me think that they have never really critically looked at a set of text books for elementary school, because if they had they would realize that most textbooks spiral. This means that topics are taught over and over again at each grade level in order to help the student refresh their memory of what they have done before. I find math and grammar texts to spiral so heavily that I actually skip an entire grade when we move to the next one, only doing every other text book in a given series. For example, if a child just finished a 3rd grade math book, then I will put them into a 5th grade math book next. If there was a topic that we missed my skipping 4th grade, the text will cover it again. I promise. I've been skipping textbook levels like this for years. I wish the parents would give themselves more credit for being able to help their children learn.
This is more understandable to me than the group that leaves me both speechless and so full of so many words that it does seem as though my head is going to explode. (I'm tying all these things together here, I promise.) This group is the parents of incoming kindergartners. Never have a felt so much a part of a different universe than reading their concerns about homeschooling kindergarten. (I may also be stepping on some toes, here, so prepare yourselves.) The panicked desire to find a curriculum that won't cause their kindergartner to fall behind. The need to focus on academics. The stating of what the child already knows and how that trajectory needs to keep going. How they cannot teach their child so have to have something already written out. Etc., etc., etc. It makes me want to shout, "It's kindergarten for heaven's sake! Naps and snacks! Playing! Hands-on exploration! Stories! It's not differential calculus, get a grip." But I don't because that might not be helpful, though boy, would it feel good at that very moment.
This would be bad enough, but inevitably it is followed up with how their child doesn't seem to enjoy learning. It is a struggle. How are they going to keep their five year old on task so they don't fall behind?!? My knee jerk response that I don't say out loud is, "Gee, you think? They're four or five years old. Good golly, you've focused so much on academics at such an early age that you've already burned them out." And I go pull weeds to take my irritation out on them, wondering how people could have so completely missed how these two problems go hand in hand.
How did we become a people so terribly focused on achievement at such an early age? It is so backwards to what is good for a child and how they actually learn. I do not understand what the race is, much less what someone wins. I just don't get it. It seems we have collectively both lost faith in our abilities to transmit what we know and in allowing our children to be children. We put so much pressure on ourselves and our children is it any wonder that as a society we are collectively breaking down? How do we stop the madness and allow both us and our children time to just be?
This little rant is probably fueled in part by my new book, Play=Learning: How Play Motivates and Enhances Children's Cognitive and Social-Emotional Growth, written in 2006. Things have not seemed to improve in the intervening 14 years. From the introduction:
"The data are incontrovertible. They have been telling the same story throughout the last 40 years of research. When children are in environments where learning is occurring in a meaningful context, where they have choices, and where they are encouraged to follow their interests, learning takes place best. Ironically ... we have adopted a metaphor of the child as 'empty vessel': pour in the facts and the child will passively absorb the material. However, the research tells us exactly the opposite. In preschool, when children are pressured to learn in schools with 'academic' as opposed to developmentally appropriate curricula, they report being more anxious and perfectionistic than their more playful peers. They are no more ahead in first grade academic achievement. [Bolding mine] Such programs also have the effect of reducing children's motivation and making them have lower expectation for their academic abilities, less pride in their achievements, and more dependency on adults -- regardless of social class. Children who have been schooled to think that there is one right answer and that learning is memorization are also dependent on adults for their learning. They have not learned how to learn." (p. 9)
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