By Susan Howard
Founder, LessonMinder.com
I am going to give you some very important homeschooling advice: Don’t take anyone’s homeschooling advice. I know that sounds like a logical conundrum, but let me explain. In a world where everything has been studied, analyzed, broken down and defined, we begin to think that we know more than we do. We start to talk about our emotions in terms of chemical reactions, define reality as perception and categorize behavior in terms of disorders. Parenting becomes process and teaching becomes method. Soon, we will all need advanced degrees to eat, breathe and sleep. I am not suggesting that knowledge is irrelevant. How could I be a home educator and suggest that? What I am suggesting is that full knowledge will always remain beyond our reach. The world is too big, too miraculous and too complex for any of us to ever have the whole picture, regardless of our credentials. Furthermore, no one pursues knowledge immune from the influences of their own subjective experience and point of view. That subjectivity colors the results we get in our so called objective research. And so we must balance the subjectives of professional educational, psychological, metaphysical and scientific knowledge with our own personal experience, research and knowledge.
Home schooling is nothing if not subjective. Its purpose is to personalize the educational experience to respond to our children’s interests, personalities, strengths, weaknesses and family culture. Perhaps one family rejects evolution, while another find logic an essential component of a good education. A family with and ADHD child may choose to protect him from the institutional pressure to use behavior modifying chemicals, and another with an intellectually advanced child pursue courses beyond his so-called “grade level”. Homeschooling is all about customization. But there are professional home school advisors, educational consultants and child psychologists who enthusiastically try to promote a particular method of instruction.
I just received a newsletter from one such “expert” exhorting me to never teach my child, but rather provide an environment in which she can learn. Are the two really mutually exclusive? Perhaps they were for her children. But my children are not her children. The homeschooling movement is not a movement against teaching or teachers. It is a movement against the systemized manufacture of performers for the purpose of employment. It is against group-think. It is against one size fits all education. It is deeply subjective. I am sure you remember at least one teacher in your own educational history whom you respected and admired, and to whom you are deeply grateful. I have several. Teachers, mentors, masters, coaches, camp counselors…they are an important component in everyone’s educational development. Not only do I enjoy teaching my children, but they enjoy learning from me. (Truth be told, we learn together!) And, I believe that others outside the home can also serve that role for my children in a constructive way. That may not be true for your children, and that is my point.
In most cases, no one knows children better than their own parents. If you do enough research and preparation for making the decision to homeschool, you will no doubt come across a variety of conflicting opinions on how to proceed. Use what you can, and throw out the rest. I nearly gave up homeschooling because I was not as organized as one particular expert suggested I needed to be. Everyone has to adapt to their own lifestyles, strengths and weaknesses.
¨
©2011 LessonMinder.com All Rights Reserved.
No comments:
Post a Comment