Irritated

I'm more tired than normal. On Monday and today I spent all day at a weaving class learning a weave structure that was pretty cognitively challenging to figure out initially. Yesterday I caught up on the things that didn't get done on Monday and had dinner with two good friends, putting me home a little later than usual. 

But does being tired stop me from writing a slightly opinionated post? No, no it doesn't. It is actually the catalyst as my margin in a bit thinner than usual. 

And what has irritated me today? The idea that to educate a child, all you need is a good curriculum. As I read about new homeschoolers asking over and over (and over and over and over) for a good curriculum that is going to teach their children everything they need, I'm actually surprised I haven't started to scream out loud at the insanity I it all. 

Because here's the deal, while a good curriculum can be a fantastic tool, without a good teacher (and for homeschoolers, I'm assuming this is the parent) to go along with that curriculum it's actually pretty worthless. This is particularly true if this is all online and the parent thinks they can plop a child down in front of a screen and check 'educate child' off their to-do list. Learning doesn't work this way even if the online curriculum publishers tell you it is. 

Learning happens best with actual objects to manipulate and actual people with whom to talk to and discuss things. It's not actually terribly difficult and possession of a library card is pretty much all you need. Learning isn't something that is done to someone. Education is so much more than filling out a worksheet or clicking the right answer. Learning and education are ultimately relational. You can't have a relationship with a computer though people certainly try. 

I suppose the corollary to this is that if you are going to homeschool, it's actually going to take some effort on the part of the parent. I'm the last to suggest that parents should make their homeschool into a traditional school. That way madness lies. This whole, 'I don't know what I'm doing so going to off load all responsibility to a computer ' is ridiculous. I'll let you in a secret, no homeschooling parent actually felt as though they knew what they were doing at first. We tried things (sometimes they worked and sometimes they didn't), we made mistakes, we learned along with our children, and slowly figured out what worked for us. And we didn't ruin our children. The only way we wouldn't have figured it out is if we didn't try. 

If I ran the world, I would not allow new homeschoolers to go anywhere near curriculum for the first two years. Instead I would hand them a library card, a map to area parks and museums, and supplies for creating things... regardless of how old their child was. My guess is that after those two years they would no longer be so dreadfully desperate for something to teach their child because they would have discovered that it wasn't needed. 

But I don't run the world... so I'll just continue to gnash my teeth and write irritated blog posts.