When someone starts thinking about homeschooling it’s tempting to consider how to reproduce what goes on in school. The reason for doing this is so that the children don’t miss out, that they get a ‘good’ education, that they ‘keep up’ with what their contemporaries are doing in school.
I think looking at homeschooling like this is very limiting and will reduce the quality of any homeschooling experience. A lot of what happens in school has little to do with education and learning because it includes keeping a large number of children in order and keeping them busy all day every day. It also includes ticking all the boxes that unions, interest groups and politicians have put in place, although some of these might not be in the best interests of a particular child.
But one thing that can help is knowing what others who are already homeschooling successfully are doing, and that covers a wide range of philosophy and styles.
Let’s take a quick look at a few of the more popular approaches to homeschooling being used in New Zealand today. Some methods are very formal and others very casual. I’ll start with informal and head towards formal:
Unschooling
This is an unstructured approach, but it doesn’t mean hands off, or uninvolved parents, or children not being taught anything at all. It demands quite a lot from the parent if it is being done well.
The interests of the child would guide and direct what is being taught, with the child being very involved in the voyage of discovery, and the parent acting as facilitator. The idea is that children learn best when they are happy and when they want to learn. Contrary to the idea that an unschooled child won’t learn any academics, children who are unschooled well can be very capable, confident, and knowledgeable.
Delayed Academics
This works in quite well with ‘unschooling’ especially for younger children. It is sometimes called the Moores’ Method because it relies on the research and writings of Dr Raymond and Dorothy Moore; who have been called the ‘grandparents of homeschooling’. Their research indicates that waiting until a child is older before introducing formal academics is better for the child in many different ways. The Moores, also advocate a three-pronged approach of ‘academics, service, and work’ in teaching.
Unit Studies
This covers programmes like Five in a Row for under-nines, also Weaver, Konos, Amanda Bennet’s unit studies. It has been in and out of fashion in schools and in homeschooling circles too. The advantage to this approach is that it can be a lot of fun, children learn a lot of facts incidentally, and a few children of different ages can often work together. The disadvantage is that the parent/teacher often spends a long time in preparation, and it’s probably she who learns most, rather than the children.
Charlotte Mason
This is probably the fastest growing and maybe the most popular philosophy of homeschooling today. It is a philosophy and teaching method based on the writings of an English teacher who lived from 1842 to 1923. Charlotte Mason put a lot of store by quality literature, writings and original sources in preference to textbooks. And because of this people may sometimes refer to a ‘living book’ as a ‘method of homeschooling’. The disadvantage to this approach is that Charlotte Mason’s own work is not easy to read because of its antiquated style, so people rely on the filter of someone else who has read the work, and has worked out their own approach to using Miss Mason’s work. This can be overcome by reading my book, Charlotte Mason Made Easy. In this book I write about an aspect of Charlotte Mason’s philosophy, and then include some pages from Charlotte Mason’s work, so that you have carefully curated, bite-sized pieces of Charlotte Mason philosophy. (www.CharlotteMasonMadeEasy.com )
Classical Education
People who have been homeschooling a while and/or want a more formal approach to teaching with high academics in mind are drawn to this. You can look at the Bluedorn family’s curriculum, or Dorothy Sayers’ Lost tools of Learning, or even The Well-Trained Mind.
It consists of the trivium, which covers:
- Grammar stage (age approx 6 – 10) memorising and collecting information
- Dialectic stage (age approx 11 – 14) logic, discussion, drawing conclusions
- Rhetoric stage (age approx 15 or 16) eloquent and persuasive
Textbooks
This would include programmes like School of Tomorrow, Abeka, Bob Jones, etc. The advantage of this approach is that the parent knows exactly what to do next, when following the curriculum. It also suits highschoolers who want to take formal examinations at ages 16 and 18.
Where do you fit in?
A few people will know exactly where they fit in and what they want to do. Their children will co-operate and off they go.
A lot of others will try one style and when it doesn’t seem to work, they will hop to another style, and so on, hoping to find the style that ‘fits’.
Most people will feel panic-stricken because they don’t know where they fit in.
I recommend that you think in terms of formal or informal.
- What style appeals to you?
- What happens in your family that you like?
- What works well with your children?
- Do they like to sit and read?
- re they creative or sporty or academic?
- Do they respond well to filling in workbooks?
- And where do you feel most comfortable?
Answering these questions will help you work out a direction to consider. Then you can read around the subject and style that appeals to you and see if anything ‘calls’ you. In this way you will start to find your own place on the continuum of formal to informal.
Be careful not to try and incorporate all the best bits of various philosophies or try one and then try another. You just won’t be able to do it, and you will start heading towards confusion and burnout. What you really want is to gradually focus on what you want to see happen in your family and work out how to get there.
For more information like this go to Successful Homeschooling Made Easy