It is gratifying to see that tutoring works best. I did a lot of thinking about homeschooling before our son was born. I thought about how people managed before we had "school" and knew that those from means were tutored and those of less means were taught at home in a variety of ways and yet it seems like people were a lot more intelligent then and we've only gone downhill since. Then I discovered John Taylor Gatto. 🙃
My husband and I chose to homeschool our son for a variety of reasons but foremost was to avoid having him be exposed to whatever the propaganda du jour is and also to minimize the influence of peers. On both of these counts we probably needn't have worried as from the time he could walk and speak he was his own man. LOL! He is not impressed with authority and is capable of making up his own mind.
However, it was still a good choice as he has a high IQ (like his Dad) and combining that with the above description of him would have made him "difficult" in a classroom. Speaking for myself (although my husband would agree), the amount of time we've spent with him has been invaluable. I went into this thinking we'd use some form of "school work" like I had known but that was not to be. The rote process that is used in classrooms would have been the beginning of the end for him. I also discovered how his thinking works especially when it comes to math. It has also been a source of wonderment in watching how he grows and who he is becoming.
Great essay. Have you ever read John Taylor Gatto? I homeschooled all my kids, with a lot of help from a friend. Now my daughter is homeschooling hers. It is a constant struggle to break out of the school mindset, and I don't even believe in it. I stressed that I was somehow leaving my kids behind, failing to bring them up to standards, etc.
Do you think there are innate ability differences between people? I think one of the most important things to figure out when educating a child is what they are actually capable of. If they are not capable of mastering a topic at this time, don't bother pushing it, and don't stress out about it.
For instance, suppose you try to teach a 12 year old algebra, and he isn't learning it. There are 3 possibilities: 1. he has the ability to learn it, but is fighting it. It's a problem of discipline. 2. He isn't ready yet. Back up a bit, and wait a few months or years, he'll get it eventually. 3. He will never do well with this level of math. Don't bother. Discerning which one of those it is will help the educator approach the learning problem.
My take is, you don't need to bother teaching it. If 1 or 2 is true, the child can learn it if he is sufficiently motivated. If he goes off to university and needs it, he can learn it quite easily. This describes me, since I failed algebra in junior high, and never did well with math in high school. I went off to college, and decided, now that I was free from that oppressive school system, I would teach myself algebra. It took one week. I then majored in math and physics and got scholarships and graduated at the top of my class. My early struggles didn't ruin my ability to learn math. I suspect it won't ruin any kids ability to learn math, or anything else for that matter, so long as the child is not psychologically crushed by inappropriate demands to learn something they aren't ready for.
If 3 is true, then trying to teach a kid algebra wastes his and your time, and only adds to frustration. They are never going to need it, and are never going to go into a field that needs it. Figure out what they are good at, and encourage them in that. Let them be.
Gatto was a natural connection for me. Almost everything he said about education I had been arguing both while I was growing up, and then later as an educator.
From your middle paragraph.
1. This problem mostly disintegrates in a healthy environment.
2. Being ready is enormous. When a student has the full foundation of background knowledge, the next step flows like every other, for the most part. There are some skills (fractions) that need more practice than others before mastery is complete, but that's a separate issue and can somewhat be woven into further lessons.
3. There are a few children with true disabilities who aren't going to go far with hard topics. Some others are of personality types that will find other disciplines more interesting, but can still learn the basics of most anything. Some of this can be overcome by a good teacher. When I've taught math to artists, I've found that weaving a more dramatic and creative story into the concept can help tremendously. But I don't know the limits of that method.
When I was 12, I read my first algebra book in a single sitting after getting old enough that I was allowed to ride my bicycle across the highway and over to the library. It sounds like a brag except that the reason that was possible was that my foundation was highly complete and well practiced. I was really picking the book up probably three years later than I should have, and in spending time looking for more, I had worked with most of the concepts in that book already. The next day I read a geometry book (similar story), and then I spent two days with an algebra II book later that week. The last of those three was much more work than the first two.
Being ready is everything.
A decade ago I employed a math major at MIT, Holden Lee, who was top in his class. He told me that before he would take a math course at MIT (he was doing graduate level work at some point during his undergraduate studies), he would have read at least a book on the topic and maybe even taken a class or spent time in a summer program working in that domain. That's the level of discipline of a true mathematician.
I just went back looking for this article which I read a few weeks ago. I needed some confirmation and I think I've found it. My daughter has five children, 3 to 17, and has always home-schooled. I retired from teaching math at the college level two years ago and at that point got involved in the math for the three oldest of these. The oldest child used some Math-u-See, some Beast Academy and some Art of Problem Solving (which is how I became "acquainted" with you). He's an excellent math student as was my daughter and both my sons. My daughter thought that elementary school math was so easy that kids will be able to do it all without help (and if they didn't complain she left them alone). Her second child, a girl, has been a reluctant student and did not read fluently until she was 11 or 12 ( but now reads the Harry Potter books to her younger brother at a speed I can barely understand) . She spent at least two years, maybe more, sitting on the sofa and pretending to work in the Beast Academy books. I saw answers, no work. I became aware of the situation, as she was approaching 12 years old. She mostly knew addition, and multiplication facts, she knew how to add and subtract and that was about all. Now she is 14 and we have just finished fractions and decimals and are into to pre-algebra stuff. I don't live near them, so most teaching has been through a shared whiteboard app, Scribble. I was despairing when I thought about how much she had missed. All of a sudden, though, she is much more interested and it is obvious to me, at last, that she is highly capable. I think i already knew this. And I am encouraged by this article, and some comments others have made, that is not "too late".
Parallel to your words "not ready", when people get interested in topics the often learns more by themself, by fr excample borrowing books - if parrents can't help - and end often end knowing more than the teacher. Or as for example Einstein who by himself started to speculate, and went in front af everyby by self study. Or concerning mathematic, the Indian Ramanujan (same time as Einstein), also by self stody, ending as the number one, had no money for in university only to study mathematic.
As mom to a kiddo whose mind works non-traditionally re math, this is in red refreshing and reassuring to read. We have spent nearly the entire school year learning the multiplication facts. According to typical school standards, they are rather “behind.” But I continually repeat to myself that (1) they ARE learning and it is REAL learning/understanding and (2) everyone says they can learn the math they need if/when they actually are ready for it and need it. Whew.
We have added in a bit of hands-on geometry w a straight edge and a compass, just to break it up and because this particular geometry workbook is largely self-exploration and discovery, which suits him well.
👏👏👏👏👏🙏🙏🙏 you are another brilliant example of why humanity is amazing!
How wrong the convoluted, egotistical hierarchy, called system/admin/education/corporation, that has stopped so many wonderful humans reaching their innate highest potential.
Mar 22, 2022·edited Mar 22, 2022Liked by Mathew Crawford
Yes indeed. A corporatist model, beating the spirit out of children, making certain both parents have to work so as to destroy the family unit after having separated the family from community, now every person in competition with every other. Separating those who are now the PMC, weaponizing race, gender, misogyny, bigotry, xenophobia to batter the working class and poor deplorables with.
My college professors wanted me to pursue a doctorate and teach. But I could see how race was being weaponized by professors and students while they were getting fleeced by the ever expansionist administration. All that debt too I presumed to be about forcing people to sit quietly at a desk for Corp, Bank or Gov. No thanks.
"Let them eat training," sayeth the Liberal Democrat, about the destruction of farming communities, about the evisceration of our productive capacity and those tens of millions of middle class jobs lost for people without a college degree.
I work among the working class, in maintenance. I find most of them to be more sovereign thinkers than most PMC I know, immune to the moral panics and overt authoritarian impulses of the "highly educated". The latter supporting mandates and lock downs from their zoomer jammies, their hatred of the working poor evident in their blithe and banal indifference to widespread suffering. Projecting onto the unvaxxed their own eugenicist predilections.
So many reasons to homeschool... I did well with the traditional school system, valedictorian at my high school, but I thought it was a stupid system. When I was 11, my neighbors with little ones planned to homeschool and I knew then that that is what I would do. My husband was homeschooled and we homeschool our 8 kids. They do the basics in the mornings and then play, explore their own interests, participate in social groups, work, etc.
We ripped our daughter out of public (charter) school for a variety of reasons - pitiful approach to "gifted" kids education was probably the main reason.
When researching the appropriate pedagogic approach, I came across Bloom's 2-Sigma paper. I was fascinated by the mastery learning approach (which Kahn Academy uses), but ultimately realized that, in his quest to find the best method, he had already defined the gold standard as one-to-one learning (tutoring).
Tutoring therefore became one of the foundations of our approach to homeschooling. For those who argue that tutoring is expensive, I point out that (according to the Census bureau) the average annual cost of education (pre-K to 12th grade) in the US is greater than $13000. This could purchase about 5 hours of tutoring each week on a year-round basis (assuming $50/hr.).
Now, if we could only get teacher's unions out of the way, and let teachers become independent contractors. (Milton Friedman is smiling in the background).
__________________
Lastly, let me pile on to some of the other comments - John Taylor Gatto should be required reading for every parent or guardian of school-age children.
Another great read, thank you. Be prepared to get continuous and generous amount of flak from everyone, including relatives, neighbors, spouse, and complete strangers if you break from the norm. Staying home and at times home-schooling my children was a no brainer to me. This is actual work though it is not recognized as such. Closely overseeing the nurturing and education of young ones is priceless and you can't go back and make it up years later. Habits, trust, and attentiveness are essential and little ones will thrive under good care and direction. Happiness and intellectual success were the result, and I would urge parents to consider the long-term consequences of their decisions regarding their children's upbringing.
Yup, starts with breast-feeding. Family, friends, and Society so keen to get that plastic teet in and get the mum back to working and being taxed asap. Often while she barely makes a profit after paying a stranger to watch her baby grow up.
Makes me even happier of being a chronic truant through my teens.. not a single regret for any adventures had playing hookie even without knowing there was educational upside!
So spend decades convincing everybody that being a stay-at-home parent is an inferior position. Arrange a wage structure, patterns of consumption and income insecurity that discourage families from depending on a single income so that they are willing to "store" their children in large government schools. Voila! The "mandarins" are limited to 20%, while the rest are left behind with most rebelliousness and curiosity suffocated.
Yes. Don't forget to flood that ghetto with a very expensive, very addictive drug so you can drain the ghetto of savings and use the proceeds to fund covert activities in other countries, while keeping a less expensive, less addictive alternate substance illegal.
Where would one start in developing an approach for educating one's children? We started home schooling when the Covid madness hit and continued after realizing that the CRT madness is a problem as well. However, I feel like we're still following the form that was set by the government schools with mixed results. I have a sense (and your article confirms - THANKS!) that a better way is possible that more closely matches the interests and capabilities of our kids with an approach to teaching them, but I don't know how to close that gap...
First, be sure that basic skills are covered in terms of language and math education. Second, be sure that your kids learn to handle their boredom with books, tools, and other productive time. Third, give them ample free time and time to run around and be kids. I don't know if there is an exact healthy mix, but judge as you go.
Have a good set of rules, and revisit them once in a while carefully and out of sight of the kids where you can be most objective.
We are also two years into our homeschooling, and I agree it is a near constant challenge to leave the traditional mindset.
I’ve read many unschooled blog posts over time. We don’t unschool, but it helps my mindset to read those who do. Read John Gatto and John (?) Holt’s books about education and how children learn. Connect with other homeschooling families for practical and moral support. We have a few other likeminded families - from our former school, actually - with whom we meet 2-3 afternoons a month. Just for kids and moms to hang out. And we get to encourage each other as moms. We all have quirky kids who weren’t doing well anyway in a traditional environment, so we get to remind each other of the goodness of what we are doing with our kids and to pick each other’s brains for new ideas.
Similar, I'm a Montessori fan so three columns are
1 follow the child (physically, emotionally, and interests)
2 Practical life (cleaning, cooking, dressing, organising)
3 Freedom (within limits)
So after a year of home-ed our 7 year old is in school as he's interested in school kids and friendships and didn't gel with our local home-ed children. And his elder brother and sister are a decade older.
But we're 6 weeks through a visit to Mexico in school term time. Understanding head appreciates the high end of year results our boy adds. Our kid likes ants, so we're having a six week tour of Mexican ants. Tracking down leaf-cutters to the target leaves and back to their nests. Trying to taxonomy other species. Etc. Interesting stuff.
I have wondered how some of these other schooling options such as (good) Montessori schools handle extended absences, whether they have mandatory attendence policy similar to government schools.
There's almost no Montessori schools in the UK, so it's more an ethos we're aware of and follow than anything formalised. From letting our toddler wander around freely onwards. UK school is fairly flexible now, just £50 fine per child per parent (oddly!?) for taking more than 5 days out. Our head waived it (has discretion) for us, but friends went skiing for week with two boys £200. Minor stuff in our village.
Right on! What I would have given to have such an education, rather than enduring the pendulation between mind-numbing drivel and humiliating, traumatizing treatment. I coulda been somebody! I coulda been a contender! Lol.
This is excellent info Mathew. I am rather passionate about this topic because I have been homeschooling my kids for a decade. I started when my oldest went from an engaged and curious kid to hating school in Kindergarten. We had always done a lot of exploring and learning in the community since he was little because he seemed to need a lot of stimulation. We spent our days at area MetroParks (utilizing their free and low cost programs) Zoo, Art Museum, Library, etc. When my son was more worried about the clothespins being moved on the classroom behavior chart than anything he was supposed to be learning and was so scared to make any kind of mistake and deal with the humiliation of having his pin moved, I ended up yanking him.
He also had some significant health issues (from post-MMR regression) and homeschooling helped me schedule all all of the therapies he needed to recover his muscle tone, balance and coordination. Because we could take morning appointments, we were able to get PT, OT, Sensory Learning therapy, vision therapy (x2), Brain Bright therapy, HBOT, and even TKD classes and work around his schooling.
My boys are 16 and 13. Today they did some Teaching Textbooks mathematics, used CK12 for science content, used the DuoLingo app for language practice, and each had some novel work from Language Arts (I am working on The Giver with the 13 year old and we read Braiding Sweetgrass and are currently reading Apocalypse Never with my oldest son). They practiced their instruments and then took their bikes to the park to play soccer together.
My daughter is 9. She uses Mammoth Math and some handwriting and phonics books and after those things were out of the way today she spent several hours completing Let’s Make Art projects side by side with her Grandma. We kept her out of the rat race of all day school and it has bought her tons of time not just with us but with her beloved Grandma who plays board games, does arts and crafts and teaches her to bake.
What a gift for my kids. I’m glad I have done it. Few people question me because I have a masters in education and many years under my belt teaching public schools. My kids all have some learning disabilities as well and I felt like I would be throwing them to the wolves if I sent them to public schools.
Feelin' you on the dreaded 'clip chart', gave my poor son when in kinder so much anxiety. I love reading the Corey Digs articles about public schools' investments in 'social/emotional' learning- basically educating kids in the art of docility and compliance with the system.
My son was trying to crack the code. Every day he would give me a report of everyone whose clip was moved and why. And every day he’s say “It was my 87th (or whatever) day of Kindergarten and my 87th day on Green!” I was extremely unhappy with how much mental space he was using on the damn clip chart and small mistakes of his classmates. Very distracting from actually learning.
Anecdotally what you’re saying is true for our family and specifically our 23 month old, that is much further along than children 4-5 months older than him. He’s had one on one care his entire life—with us and his nanny. There’s no other way for us to explain his development.
Going forward we’ll be utilizing nanny shares and learning pods for homeschooling so we also give him the proper socialization. We will make it work because there’s no way we’re putting him in public school. The “shares” approach really helps reduce the cost.
There are many solutions and intermediate steps that are not cost prohibitive. My nieces do coop homeschooling two days a week. Still not my "perfect world", but so much closer. Also, individuation of some pieces of learning is more important than others, quite clearly. Good luck!
I agree, these other approaches are not perfect but much better than the alternative.
As an aside, I’ve seen “readers” from before the advent of compulsory education (I believe schools were subscription based) and it’s shocking to see what elementary school students were reading back then—probably comparable to high school or college levels today.
I think that a major potential variable in Britain and America is discipline. Chaotic classrooms and being afraid of your peers are important factors in how much a child learns. On a slightly different tack, what do you think of Katharine Birbalsingh and her free school, Michaela, in London. Her three pillars of education are 1. knowledge based curriculum (rather than skills based), 2. Dicipline 3. Kindness. It seems to work, but I don't know how it measures against the ideas above. Presumably if a class is calm, because the overall discipline and atmosphere of the school is good, then the teacher has more chance to provide at least some individual feedback.
I've followed her a bit. I like some, but not all of what I've seen her say on social media.
I think that knowledge-based curriculum should be explained as the building of a foundation. Later, process-based exploration gradually overtakes that foundation in importance. Because of that, it irritates me mildly to erect it as a pillar without further explanation. Maybe she gives that explanation or agrees with me, but I'd have to spend time that I don't have finding out her full philosophy?
Similarly, I dislike "discipline" without further explanation. There are many kinds of it, and some are far more valuable than others, and disciplining the wrong approach is poisonous. I also worry about the use of discipline as a school-focused paradigm. Modern schools were designed as prisons. Even a "better school" is the wrong approach, so why focus discipline toward that?
I think that educating parents about discipline is preferable to a school-centric approach to it, aimed at children.
Great to talk about something other than THE COVID, but I understand it is our time to beat them down with the facts and prevent it from happening again to us. Root out the tyrants.
In regards to the subject of teaching, The time and ability of my wife and I to teach our kids is about an hour a day. At 6 years old that is already showing positive effect on them. So many little tricks I teach them how to do math and read. Thanks for the supporting evidence that we are on the right track.
Another non-genetic yet seemingly "heritable" variable that determines academic success is culture, but a slightly different culture than is outlaid in the article. It's the peer groups kids are surrounded by growing up. I've found that upwardly mobile, intellectual adults come from upwardly mobile, intellectual peer groups as children and teens. If your peer group thinks studying, doing extracurriculars, being a high achiever, and a success in life is "cool", so will you.
This has been demonstrated in the research of Judith Rich Harris, in which she showed that peer groups were actually far better at instilling values than parents were.
I often say that "culture is the platform of social technology."
While peer groups are great at instilling values, I think that horizontal value transfer is a dangerous base. Vertical value transfer allows for less ideological indoctrination that would have to be unlearned as mental habit. I think that's partially why we're in this Woke postmodernist mess we're in.
Yes, the central divide between the ruling classes and everyone else, has always been access to effective and/or classical education, perhaps corrupted by power considerations, but they wanted to deny this to everyone else. And after denying everyone else access, they ascribe it to heredity, Darwin’s “fitness”, etc, while saying the ignorance of the masses is natural and expected. The pivot is access and development of the self-educating method whereby one can bootstrap the rest very rapidly.
Bottom line, Genius can be taught, and the elites don’t want the rest of us to know that, or how it works. Certain discoveries multiply, not merely add, but they usually hide in thinking about our thinking process in general, with a self-aware aim to improve it, willfully. The pivot is to get the student to that point, to fight for insights as a way of life, that spark of wonder. The rest is easy.
It is gratifying to see that tutoring works best. I did a lot of thinking about homeschooling before our son was born. I thought about how people managed before we had "school" and knew that those from means were tutored and those of less means were taught at home in a variety of ways and yet it seems like people were a lot more intelligent then and we've only gone downhill since. Then I discovered John Taylor Gatto. 🙃
My husband and I chose to homeschool our son for a variety of reasons but foremost was to avoid having him be exposed to whatever the propaganda du jour is and also to minimize the influence of peers. On both of these counts we probably needn't have worried as from the time he could walk and speak he was his own man. LOL! He is not impressed with authority and is capable of making up his own mind.
However, it was still a good choice as he has a high IQ (like his Dad) and combining that with the above description of him would have made him "difficult" in a classroom. Speaking for myself (although my husband would agree), the amount of time we've spent with him has been invaluable. I went into this thinking we'd use some form of "school work" like I had known but that was not to be. The rote process that is used in classrooms would have been the beginning of the end for him. I also discovered how his thinking works especially when it comes to math. It has also been a source of wonderment in watching how he grows and who he is becoming.
Gatto was the best.
Thank you for sharing some of your story.
I could have written this, although we had a few years in regular school before pulling our child out.
And I *love* Gatto.
Great essay. Have you ever read John Taylor Gatto? I homeschooled all my kids, with a lot of help from a friend. Now my daughter is homeschooling hers. It is a constant struggle to break out of the school mindset, and I don't even believe in it. I stressed that I was somehow leaving my kids behind, failing to bring them up to standards, etc.
Do you think there are innate ability differences between people? I think one of the most important things to figure out when educating a child is what they are actually capable of. If they are not capable of mastering a topic at this time, don't bother pushing it, and don't stress out about it.
For instance, suppose you try to teach a 12 year old algebra, and he isn't learning it. There are 3 possibilities: 1. he has the ability to learn it, but is fighting it. It's a problem of discipline. 2. He isn't ready yet. Back up a bit, and wait a few months or years, he'll get it eventually. 3. He will never do well with this level of math. Don't bother. Discerning which one of those it is will help the educator approach the learning problem.
My take is, you don't need to bother teaching it. If 1 or 2 is true, the child can learn it if he is sufficiently motivated. If he goes off to university and needs it, he can learn it quite easily. This describes me, since I failed algebra in junior high, and never did well with math in high school. I went off to college, and decided, now that I was free from that oppressive school system, I would teach myself algebra. It took one week. I then majored in math and physics and got scholarships and graduated at the top of my class. My early struggles didn't ruin my ability to learn math. I suspect it won't ruin any kids ability to learn math, or anything else for that matter, so long as the child is not psychologically crushed by inappropriate demands to learn something they aren't ready for.
If 3 is true, then trying to teach a kid algebra wastes his and your time, and only adds to frustration. They are never going to need it, and are never going to go into a field that needs it. Figure out what they are good at, and encourage them in that. Let them be.
Gatto was a natural connection for me. Almost everything he said about education I had been arguing both while I was growing up, and then later as an educator.
From your middle paragraph.
1. This problem mostly disintegrates in a healthy environment.
2. Being ready is enormous. When a student has the full foundation of background knowledge, the next step flows like every other, for the most part. There are some skills (fractions) that need more practice than others before mastery is complete, but that's a separate issue and can somewhat be woven into further lessons.
3. There are a few children with true disabilities who aren't going to go far with hard topics. Some others are of personality types that will find other disciplines more interesting, but can still learn the basics of most anything. Some of this can be overcome by a good teacher. When I've taught math to artists, I've found that weaving a more dramatic and creative story into the concept can help tremendously. But I don't know the limits of that method.
When I was 12, I read my first algebra book in a single sitting after getting old enough that I was allowed to ride my bicycle across the highway and over to the library. It sounds like a brag except that the reason that was possible was that my foundation was highly complete and well practiced. I was really picking the book up probably three years later than I should have, and in spending time looking for more, I had worked with most of the concepts in that book already. The next day I read a geometry book (similar story), and then I spent two days with an algebra II book later that week. The last of those three was much more work than the first two.
Being ready is everything.
A decade ago I employed a math major at MIT, Holden Lee, who was top in his class. He told me that before he would take a math course at MIT (he was doing graduate level work at some point during his undergraduate studies), he would have read at least a book on the topic and maybe even taken a class or spent time in a summer program working in that domain. That's the level of discipline of a true mathematician.
I just went back looking for this article which I read a few weeks ago. I needed some confirmation and I think I've found it. My daughter has five children, 3 to 17, and has always home-schooled. I retired from teaching math at the college level two years ago and at that point got involved in the math for the three oldest of these. The oldest child used some Math-u-See, some Beast Academy and some Art of Problem Solving (which is how I became "acquainted" with you). He's an excellent math student as was my daughter and both my sons. My daughter thought that elementary school math was so easy that kids will be able to do it all without help (and if they didn't complain she left them alone). Her second child, a girl, has been a reluctant student and did not read fluently until she was 11 or 12 ( but now reads the Harry Potter books to her younger brother at a speed I can barely understand) . She spent at least two years, maybe more, sitting on the sofa and pretending to work in the Beast Academy books. I saw answers, no work. I became aware of the situation, as she was approaching 12 years old. She mostly knew addition, and multiplication facts, she knew how to add and subtract and that was about all. Now she is 14 and we have just finished fractions and decimals and are into to pre-algebra stuff. I don't live near them, so most teaching has been through a shared whiteboard app, Scribble. I was despairing when I thought about how much she had missed. All of a sudden, though, she is much more interested and it is obvious to me, at last, that she is highly capable. I think i already knew this. And I am encouraged by this article, and some comments others have made, that is not "too late".
Parallel to your words "not ready", when people get interested in topics the often learns more by themself, by fr excample borrowing books - if parrents can't help - and end often end knowing more than the teacher. Or as for example Einstein who by himself started to speculate, and went in front af everyby by self study. Or concerning mathematic, the Indian Ramanujan (same time as Einstein), also by self stody, ending as the number one, had no money for in university only to study mathematic.
As mom to a kiddo whose mind works non-traditionally re math, this is in red refreshing and reassuring to read. We have spent nearly the entire school year learning the multiplication facts. According to typical school standards, they are rather “behind.” But I continually repeat to myself that (1) they ARE learning and it is REAL learning/understanding and (2) everyone says they can learn the math they need if/when they actually are ready for it and need it. Whew.
We have added in a bit of hands-on geometry w a straight edge and a compass, just to break it up and because this particular geometry workbook is largely self-exploration and discovery, which suits him well.
👏👏👏👏👏🙏🙏🙏 you are another brilliant example of why humanity is amazing!
How wrong the convoluted, egotistical hierarchy, called system/admin/education/corporation, that has stopped so many wonderful humans reaching their innate highest potential.
Yes indeed. A corporatist model, beating the spirit out of children, making certain both parents have to work so as to destroy the family unit after having separated the family from community, now every person in competition with every other. Separating those who are now the PMC, weaponizing race, gender, misogyny, bigotry, xenophobia to batter the working class and poor deplorables with.
My college professors wanted me to pursue a doctorate and teach. But I could see how race was being weaponized by professors and students while they were getting fleeced by the ever expansionist administration. All that debt too I presumed to be about forcing people to sit quietly at a desk for Corp, Bank or Gov. No thanks.
"Let them eat training," sayeth the Liberal Democrat, about the destruction of farming communities, about the evisceration of our productive capacity and those tens of millions of middle class jobs lost for people without a college degree.
I work among the working class, in maintenance. I find most of them to be more sovereign thinkers than most PMC I know, immune to the moral panics and overt authoritarian impulses of the "highly educated". The latter supporting mandates and lock downs from their zoomer jammies, their hatred of the working poor evident in their blithe and banal indifference to widespread suffering. Projecting onto the unvaxxed their own eugenicist predilections.
So many reasons to homeschool... I did well with the traditional school system, valedictorian at my high school, but I thought it was a stupid system. When I was 11, my neighbors with little ones planned to homeschool and I knew then that that is what I would do. My husband was homeschooled and we homeschool our 8 kids. They do the basics in the mornings and then play, explore their own interests, participate in social groups, work, etc.
We ripped our daughter out of public (charter) school for a variety of reasons - pitiful approach to "gifted" kids education was probably the main reason.
When researching the appropriate pedagogic approach, I came across Bloom's 2-Sigma paper. I was fascinated by the mastery learning approach (which Kahn Academy uses), but ultimately realized that, in his quest to find the best method, he had already defined the gold standard as one-to-one learning (tutoring).
Tutoring therefore became one of the foundations of our approach to homeschooling. For those who argue that tutoring is expensive, I point out that (according to the Census bureau) the average annual cost of education (pre-K to 12th grade) in the US is greater than $13000. This could purchase about 5 hours of tutoring each week on a year-round basis (assuming $50/hr.).
Now, if we could only get teacher's unions out of the way, and let teachers become independent contractors. (Milton Friedman is smiling in the background).
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Lastly, let me pile on to some of the other comments - John Taylor Gatto should be required reading for every parent or guardian of school-age children.
Another great read, thank you. Be prepared to get continuous and generous amount of flak from everyone, including relatives, neighbors, spouse, and complete strangers if you break from the norm. Staying home and at times home-schooling my children was a no brainer to me. This is actual work though it is not recognized as such. Closely overseeing the nurturing and education of young ones is priceless and you can't go back and make it up years later. Habits, trust, and attentiveness are essential and little ones will thrive under good care and direction. Happiness and intellectual success were the result, and I would urge parents to consider the long-term consequences of their decisions regarding their children's upbringing.
Yup, starts with breast-feeding. Family, friends, and Society so keen to get that plastic teet in and get the mum back to working and being taxed asap. Often while she barely makes a profit after paying a stranger to watch her baby grow up.
Makes me even happier of being a chronic truant through my teens.. not a single regret for any adventures had playing hookie even without knowing there was educational upside!
So spend decades convincing everybody that being a stay-at-home parent is an inferior position. Arrange a wage structure, patterns of consumption and income insecurity that discourage families from depending on a single income so that they are willing to "store" their children in large government schools. Voila! The "mandarins" are limited to 20%, while the rest are left behind with most rebelliousness and curiosity suffocated.
And never, ever get close to solving the problem of the ghetto, which spawns those who commit two out of every three violent crimes in America.
The implications are vast and branching.
Yes. Don't forget to flood that ghetto with a very expensive, very addictive drug so you can drain the ghetto of savings and use the proceeds to fund covert activities in other countries, while keeping a less expensive, less addictive alternate substance illegal.
Where would one start in developing an approach for educating one's children? We started home schooling when the Covid madness hit and continued after realizing that the CRT madness is a problem as well. However, I feel like we're still following the form that was set by the government schools with mixed results. I have a sense (and your article confirms - THANKS!) that a better way is possible that more closely matches the interests and capabilities of our kids with an approach to teaching them, but I don't know how to close that gap...
First, be sure that basic skills are covered in terms of language and math education. Second, be sure that your kids learn to handle their boredom with books, tools, and other productive time. Third, give them ample free time and time to run around and be kids. I don't know if there is an exact healthy mix, but judge as you go.
Have a good set of rules, and revisit them once in a while carefully and out of sight of the kids where you can be most objective.
Spend time with them.
Best of luck.
We are also two years into our homeschooling, and I agree it is a near constant challenge to leave the traditional mindset.
I’ve read many unschooled blog posts over time. We don’t unschool, but it helps my mindset to read those who do. Read John Gatto and John (?) Holt’s books about education and how children learn. Connect with other homeschooling families for practical and moral support. We have a few other likeminded families - from our former school, actually - with whom we meet 2-3 afternoons a month. Just for kids and moms to hang out. And we get to encourage each other as moms. We all have quirky kids who weren’t doing well anyway in a traditional environment, so we get to remind each other of the goodness of what we are doing with our kids and to pick each other’s brains for new ideas.
I wonder if you have run across these names or terms - Kerry McDonald, self directed learning, unschooling
Similar, I'm a Montessori fan so three columns are
1 follow the child (physically, emotionally, and interests)
2 Practical life (cleaning, cooking, dressing, organising)
3 Freedom (within limits)
So after a year of home-ed our 7 year old is in school as he's interested in school kids and friendships and didn't gel with our local home-ed children. And his elder brother and sister are a decade older.
But we're 6 weeks through a visit to Mexico in school term time. Understanding head appreciates the high end of year results our boy adds. Our kid likes ants, so we're having a six week tour of Mexican ants. Tracking down leaf-cutters to the target leaves and back to their nests. Trying to taxonomy other species. Etc. Interesting stuff.
I have wondered how some of these other schooling options such as (good) Montessori schools handle extended absences, whether they have mandatory attendence policy similar to government schools.
There's almost no Montessori schools in the UK, so it's more an ethos we're aware of and follow than anything formalised. From letting our toddler wander around freely onwards. UK school is fairly flexible now, just £50 fine per child per parent (oddly!?) for taking more than 5 days out. Our head waived it (has discretion) for us, but friends went skiing for week with two boys £200. Minor stuff in our village.
Right on! What I would have given to have such an education, rather than enduring the pendulation between mind-numbing drivel and humiliating, traumatizing treatment. I coulda been somebody! I coulda been a contender! Lol.
Knowing what to do for your own kids is invaluable.
This is excellent info Mathew. I am rather passionate about this topic because I have been homeschooling my kids for a decade. I started when my oldest went from an engaged and curious kid to hating school in Kindergarten. We had always done a lot of exploring and learning in the community since he was little because he seemed to need a lot of stimulation. We spent our days at area MetroParks (utilizing their free and low cost programs) Zoo, Art Museum, Library, etc. When my son was more worried about the clothespins being moved on the classroom behavior chart than anything he was supposed to be learning and was so scared to make any kind of mistake and deal with the humiliation of having his pin moved, I ended up yanking him.
He also had some significant health issues (from post-MMR regression) and homeschooling helped me schedule all all of the therapies he needed to recover his muscle tone, balance and coordination. Because we could take morning appointments, we were able to get PT, OT, Sensory Learning therapy, vision therapy (x2), Brain Bright therapy, HBOT, and even TKD classes and work around his schooling.
My boys are 16 and 13. Today they did some Teaching Textbooks mathematics, used CK12 for science content, used the DuoLingo app for language practice, and each had some novel work from Language Arts (I am working on The Giver with the 13 year old and we read Braiding Sweetgrass and are currently reading Apocalypse Never with my oldest son). They practiced their instruments and then took their bikes to the park to play soccer together.
My daughter is 9. She uses Mammoth Math and some handwriting and phonics books and after those things were out of the way today she spent several hours completing Let’s Make Art projects side by side with her Grandma. We kept her out of the rat race of all day school and it has bought her tons of time not just with us but with her beloved Grandma who plays board games, does arts and crafts and teaches her to bake.
What a gift for my kids. I’m glad I have done it. Few people question me because I have a masters in education and many years under my belt teaching public schools. My kids all have some learning disabilities as well and I felt like I would be throwing them to the wolves if I sent them to public schools.
Feelin' you on the dreaded 'clip chart', gave my poor son when in kinder so much anxiety. I love reading the Corey Digs articles about public schools' investments in 'social/emotional' learning- basically educating kids in the art of docility and compliance with the system.
My son was trying to crack the code. Every day he would give me a report of everyone whose clip was moved and why. And every day he’s say “It was my 87th (or whatever) day of Kindergarten and my 87th day on Green!” I was extremely unhappy with how much mental space he was using on the damn clip chart and small mistakes of his classmates. Very distracting from actually learning.
Anecdotally what you’re saying is true for our family and specifically our 23 month old, that is much further along than children 4-5 months older than him. He’s had one on one care his entire life—with us and his nanny. There’s no other way for us to explain his development.
Going forward we’ll be utilizing nanny shares and learning pods for homeschooling so we also give him the proper socialization. We will make it work because there’s no way we’re putting him in public school. The “shares” approach really helps reduce the cost.
There are many solutions and intermediate steps that are not cost prohibitive. My nieces do coop homeschooling two days a week. Still not my "perfect world", but so much closer. Also, individuation of some pieces of learning is more important than others, quite clearly. Good luck!
I agree, these other approaches are not perfect but much better than the alternative.
As an aside, I’ve seen “readers” from before the advent of compulsory education (I believe schools were subscription based) and it’s shocking to see what elementary school students were reading back then—probably comparable to high school or college levels today.
I think that a major potential variable in Britain and America is discipline. Chaotic classrooms and being afraid of your peers are important factors in how much a child learns. On a slightly different tack, what do you think of Katharine Birbalsingh and her free school, Michaela, in London. Her three pillars of education are 1. knowledge based curriculum (rather than skills based), 2. Dicipline 3. Kindness. It seems to work, but I don't know how it measures against the ideas above. Presumably if a class is calm, because the overall discipline and atmosphere of the school is good, then the teacher has more chance to provide at least some individual feedback.
I've followed her a bit. I like some, but not all of what I've seen her say on social media.
I think that knowledge-based curriculum should be explained as the building of a foundation. Later, process-based exploration gradually overtakes that foundation in importance. Because of that, it irritates me mildly to erect it as a pillar without further explanation. Maybe she gives that explanation or agrees with me, but I'd have to spend time that I don't have finding out her full philosophy?
Similarly, I dislike "discipline" without further explanation. There are many kinds of it, and some are far more valuable than others, and disciplining the wrong approach is poisonous. I also worry about the use of discipline as a school-focused paradigm. Modern schools were designed as prisons. Even a "better school" is the wrong approach, so why focus discipline toward that?
I think that educating parents about discipline is preferable to a school-centric approach to it, aimed at children.
Thanks for the reply. (I've been following her on twitter because she seemed interesting)
Great to talk about something other than THE COVID, but I understand it is our time to beat them down with the facts and prevent it from happening again to us. Root out the tyrants.
In regards to the subject of teaching, The time and ability of my wife and I to teach our kids is about an hour a day. At 6 years old that is already showing positive effect on them. So many little tricks I teach them how to do math and read. Thanks for the supporting evidence that we are on the right track.
Another non-genetic yet seemingly "heritable" variable that determines academic success is culture, but a slightly different culture than is outlaid in the article. It's the peer groups kids are surrounded by growing up. I've found that upwardly mobile, intellectual adults come from upwardly mobile, intellectual peer groups as children and teens. If your peer group thinks studying, doing extracurriculars, being a high achiever, and a success in life is "cool", so will you.
This has been demonstrated in the research of Judith Rich Harris, in which she showed that peer groups were actually far better at instilling values than parents were.
I often say that "culture is the platform of social technology."
While peer groups are great at instilling values, I think that horizontal value transfer is a dangerous base. Vertical value transfer allows for less ideological indoctrination that would have to be unlearned as mental habit. I think that's partially why we're in this Woke postmodernist mess we're in.
Yes, the central divide between the ruling classes and everyone else, has always been access to effective and/or classical education, perhaps corrupted by power considerations, but they wanted to deny this to everyone else. And after denying everyone else access, they ascribe it to heredity, Darwin’s “fitness”, etc, while saying the ignorance of the masses is natural and expected. The pivot is access and development of the self-educating method whereby one can bootstrap the rest very rapidly.
Bottom line, Genius can be taught, and the elites don’t want the rest of us to know that, or how it works. Certain discoveries multiply, not merely add, but they usually hide in thinking about our thinking process in general, with a self-aware aim to improve it, willfully. The pivot is to get the student to that point, to fight for insights as a way of life, that spark of wonder. The rest is easy.