Education In My House

Taking a break here from all of the digging and researching, the sifting and sorting to make sense of buried facts and threads that unravel in chilling directions, to post an "off-the-top-of-my-head" opinion piece about the purpose of education, why I believe that standards-based, high-stakes testing assessed education violates what should be the purpose of education, and why, therefore, my children are not and never have been in a public school.

As a disclaimer, I'd like to say a few things first.  I believe that any child can get a decent education anywhere - even at the worst school in the worst school district in the worst state for education - as long as his or her parents are involved.  My way isn't the right way for everyone.  I realize that not everyone can homeschool, wants to homeschool, or even should homeschool.  I chose to homeschool my children because doing so was the path of least resistance toward providing my children with an education that matched my philosophy about the purpose of education.  I probably could find some sort of charter school that would work, or I could have struggled to do so within the parameters of a traditional public school.  I didn't want the uphill battle, though.

My goal as a homeschooler is not to teach my children everything.  It's impossible anyway, no matter where your child gets his or her education.  When my youngest child reaches adulthood in 13 years, I know I will have achieved success as a homeschooler if:

1. I have preserved my children's natural love of learning
2. I have honored my children's God-given talents by giving them the freedom and flexibility to explore as widely and deeply as they desire into their passions
3. They each have ownership over the directions that their educations have taken, without interference from me
4. I have taught them how to learn, so that when the times come that they must learn something new, they have the skills and know-how to figure out what it is that they need to know, which resources will best help them acquire that information, and the ability to learn it

Notice that nowhere in there did I say anything about success looking like an A+ or a 100% on an exam. A test will tell you what a student is able to remember and retell at the moment the test is given.  A test does not measure mastery of a subject, nor does it measure the intelligence of the test-taker.

As I see it, the purpose of education is to take a human being from dependent infancy to becoming an independent, competent, contributing, adult member of society who has garnered the knowledge and built the passion to fulfill his or her destiny.  I find the idea that every person must learn the same things as everyone else, at the same time everyone else learns them, and to the same degree that everyone else learns them absolutely ludicrous.  Not only is that destined to fail because people are not machines that can be programmed exactly the same way right down the assembly line and society actually does need people with different dreams and skill sets to perform all of the tasks it takes to run a modern community, it should fail because it's also immoral and cruel to strip someone's soul of his or her natural yearning to be who he or she is.

The primary goal of education in my house is to preserve my children's natural love of learning.  Successful and happy adults never stop learning.  If education fails to preserve that love of learning, education has failed. A child who grows to hate what was once a natural endowment will never truly learn anything.  A child who learns that education and learning are frustrating and boring experiences will miss out on so much of life.  A child whose natural love of learning has been squashed like a bug under the foot of "Big Education" is a victim, not a student.  Does this look like a child who loves learning?

Preserving a child's natural love of learning means allowing them the freedom and the flexibility to explore what interests them.  Since they are home and their days are, by and large, not broken up into arbitrary subjects that start and finish when someone else deems them to start and finish, education in my house looks like four people (because I too am constantly learning) during the day pursuing the information and skills to do what we want and need to do right now to be who we are right now and to prepare ourselves for who we want to be in the immediate future.  My 15 year old will often be found with his nose in a book.  My 12 year old will often be found with her pencil in her hand and a sketch pad in front of her.  My 5 year old will often be found playing with numbers out loud, saying things like 2 + 2 + 2 - 1 is 5 (don't ask me how she knows that stuff cold like she does, because I have no explanation other than "it's her thing").  My point is that most of the time, they have the time to explore what's on their minds until their curiosity is sated.  My children will know themselves.  They will know what their strengths are and how to play to those.  They will know what their weaknesses are and how to adjust for those.  They will know what lights them up inside.  They will know how to suffer through something unpleasant to achieve something that they want more than they want to avoid the unpleasant.

When children are in a traditional classroom for five or six hours a day, and they have an hour, two, or more of homework every night, when do they have the time to learn something of their choosing?  When they've been told what to read, when to read it, and how to respond to it, when do they ever read for pleasure and to engage their imaginations?  When the bell rings and science is "over", what does that do to the child who excels in science and who would rather be conducting experiments than just about anything else?  When the unit on World War Two is over, what does that do to the child who wants to know more about Normandy or Hitler?  What message does it send to the child who wants more information but is told that the lesson is over?  When nearly every single thing that children will be taught in school gets boiled down to a high-stakes test, what does that do to the children who don't take tests well?  What does it do to the joy that should be taking place in making new discoveries and connections?

In my house, my children have discovered that learning is fun and exciting, and each bit of information they master opens new doors for them.  They learn that they have the power to mold and shape their own destinies.  In my house, my children learn the same way adults do.  They first identify a want or a need to learn something.  Then, they seek out the resources and materials to learn what they want or need to learn.  Finally, they do it.  First, though, is the why.  Why do I want to learn this?  If the reason is compelling enough, the learning gets done.  The learning gets done faster and better.  There are no fights in my house about things like memorizing math facts or learning to write reports.  I trust that life will prepare my children each and every day for the next, and I simply wait for my children to recognize for themselves a desire or a need to learn something.  They then ask for the resources to do it, and I either provide them or I help my children find those resources themselves.  My 15 year old, who hated to write just a few years ago, figured out that some of the merit badges he wanted to earn required written reports.  He didn't know how to write a written report.  Guess what?  He does now...and he earned those merit badges...and our relationship wasn't damaged in the process by me demanding of him that he learn something he didn't see a need or a desire to learn.  When the time came to learn to write reports, we were partners.  I was a guide and a resource, helping him achieve what he wanted.

When children are told what to learn, when to learn it, and to which degree they must learn it, do those children learn that they have that power to mold and shape their own lives?  Do they learn to think critically about things?  Do they learn to question what is presented to them?  When children are told that they must learn something but they fail to internalize a reason (what I call the why) for doing so, do they really learn the information, or do they "learn" it well enough to pass the test before they forget it?  When children are given a set of standards that isn't developmentally appropriate and told that they must comply with those standards, do they feel empowered and smart?

I get a lot of "what if" questions from people who don't understand my philosophy of education.  What if my children don't learn what they need to know in order to get into college?  The short answer is either they don't go to college, or they get on with learning whatever it is that they need to know before they can go to college.  Either way, it will be their choice, as it should be.  What if my daughter never memorizes her math facts?  Life will come to an end.  Just kidding.  It'll take her longer to do math problems.  So what?  When and if that is an issue for her, she'll figure out a way to either memorize those math facts or compensate for not knowing them cold.  What if they don't get "enough" science?  Enough science for what?  I took three years of science in high school and I couldn't tell you a single thing that I supposedly learned, and clearly, it hasn't negatively impacted my life.

What will happen to my children is that they will learn how to take responsibility for what they want to learn, be, and do.  What will happen is that my children will not ever measure their self-worth according to a test. What will happen is that my children will never be made to feel stupid because of confusing questions and developmentally inappropriate standards, like those imposed by the Common Core.