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Here is what I learned at the Bible Workbench in Boston yesterday:
"the student is the curriculum"
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Perhaps this subject should have been saved for last, because it is so much a part of my family life as to be like my own breathing; and because it is so endlessly fascinating to me that it could take up a great deal of time and space in my journal. However, it is calling out to me to be written about.
Tolkien and Terry Pratchett, memorably, although there must be many others, have put forth the idea that people's stories begin long before they do and continue after. Such is the story of my daughter's homeschooling. During my childhood and college years I was influenced by the educational ideas of John Dewey, Ivan Ilyich and A.S. Neil. Some time in my early adulthood I read E.B. White's The Once and Future King and was enthralled with the private education of Wart, the young King Arthur-to-be, by the wizard Merlin.
Being American, not British, I was struck by the idea of being educated by a private tutor. Wouldn't that be neat, I thought, to be taught one-on-one, and to have one's education tailored specifically to one's abilities and needs? Wouldn't it be wonderful to be able to tutor one's own child?
Merlin's unorthodox, and otherworldly, methods such as turning the Wart into various animals to teach him lessons that he would need to know as king, I somehow translated into the now fashionable American educational concept of an I.E.P. (Individual Educational Plan). Unfortunately, in public education I.E.P.'s are only for students who have been "coded" with some sort of special problem, not for those who are 'average' or even 'gifted' students. So teachers, faced with teaching 20 to 30 students, write "lesson plans" for group learning.
All of these inspirational educational ideas might have remained in the domain of theory for me, if I hadn't run across Teach Your Own by John Holt, a disillusioned teacher, who had finally given up on reforming American public schools. Holt's great strength lay in the fact that he didn't spin theories out of his own head about how children should be taught. Instead, he spent time observing carefully and recording minutely how children learn, which indeed is the name of one of his books. At the time I discovered Holt, my daughter was two years old.
I immediately engaged with the idea, but it took the next four years for me to become committed -- a story for next time.
Tolkien and Terry Pratchett, memorably, although there must be many others, have put forth the idea that people's stories begin long before they do and continue after. Such is the story of my daughter's homeschooling. During my childhood and college years I was influenced by the educational ideas of John Dewey, Ivan Ilyich and A.S. Neil. Some time in my early adulthood I read E.B. White's The Once and Future King and was enthralled with the private education of Wart, the young King Arthur-to-be, by the wizard Merlin.
Being American, not British, I was struck by the idea of being educated by a private tutor. Wouldn't that be neat, I thought, to be taught one-on-one, and to have one's education tailored specifically to one's abilities and needs? Wouldn't it be wonderful to be able to tutor one's own child?
Merlin's unorthodox, and otherworldly, methods such as turning the Wart into various animals to teach him lessons that he would need to know as king, I somehow translated into the now fashionable American educational concept of an I.E.P. (Individual Educational Plan). Unfortunately, in public education I.E.P.'s are only for students who have been "coded" with some sort of special problem, not for those who are 'average' or even 'gifted' students. So teachers, faced with teaching 20 to 30 students, write "lesson plans" for group learning.
All of these inspirational educational ideas might have remained in the domain of theory for me, if I hadn't run across Teach Your Own by John Holt, a disillusioned teacher, who had finally given up on reforming American public schools. Holt's great strength lay in the fact that he didn't spin theories out of his own head about how children should be taught. Instead, he spent time observing carefully and recording minutely how children learn, which indeed is the name of one of his books. At the time I discovered Holt, my daughter was two years old.
I immediately engaged with the idea, but it took the next four years for me to become committed -- a story for next time.
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