Curriculum Vs Life
January 6, 2012
Tags: homeschooling
Apparently third graders are supposed to know all the states and capitals.
This week for homeschool, Saoirse and I learned all the capitals of all the states. I must admit that while they were taught in my school, I never actually learned them. I’ve managed to live to the age of 37, acquire 2 advanced degrees, support my family, and enjoy bountiful social relationships without requiring this bit of information.
So why did I subject her to it? Because every git who meets her and finds out that she’s homeschooled feels compelled to quiz her on state capitals. Apparently that’s the gold standard for evaluating educational quality among the unimaginative.
I was originally going to skip that section of our curriculum. From the time we began working with it, I have felt behind the ball, and have been trying to catch up. The curriculum matches up homeschool lessons with the conventional school schedule, and in order to meet all the educational goals, assumes daily lessons from early September until the end of June.
For a homeschooling farm family, that’s damned near impossible. We don’t get steady indoor-time until mid-October, and then, the first thing we want to do is take our family on some kind of off-farm adventure. Our fall journeys have included trips to explore Plimoth Plantation, to learn about the Salem Witch trials, excursions to Montreal, to Boston. Every few years we like to do an extended winter trip, too. We’ve taken the kids to Europe, to South America, across country by train. This year, to encourage their continued study of French, we’re taking them to France for 7 weeks. We’ll be back home just before lambing season starts in May, just before our farmers’ market opens and kicks off another hectic growing season.
As I look over the curriculum books, I estimate that maybe, with the time we have available indoors around a table to learn formally together, we can cover half of the material we’re supposed to cover….assuming I adhere to the curriculum’s recommendations of spending 7 ½ hours per day on the required subjects.
Trouble is, I happen to think that is a preposterous number of hours to confine a child to a chair. It doesn’t allow for my kid to go spend time studying French with our neighbor, it doesn’t give me time to play music with her, it doesn’t allow for her to pursue her own interests – painting pictures, studying Greek mythology, making jewelry, weaving friendship bracelets, reading novels, dressing up and acting out fantasies, or hanging out with friends.
I’m the kind of mother who can occasionally get a little obsessed trying to do things right. I chose to fold a curriculum into an unschooling way-of-life because I thought it could lend some structure and guidance. But I see the curriculum standards for third grade laid out before me, and half of me panics that I can’t get them all done (her friends are doing multiplication and long division already….we’re not even close to that yet – Saoirse doesn’t even tell time!), and the other half balks at the ludicrious nature of what we expect kids to know. Telling time means nothing to 8-year-olds who aren’t waiting for a school bell to release them from confinement. Why would an 8-year-old know the antonym for passion?
I don’t reject the importance of what curriculum standards recommend. I want Saoirse to be academically confident. I reject the timeline, and that it fails to make allowances for individuality. Saoirse will eventually learn to tell time and multiply, but not until she is ready to wrap her mind around it. I’ve learned that, by holding back on subjects until she is ready, the teaching/learning time can be reduced by half. Meanwhile, Greek mythology, identifying archetypes in literature and learning to work with her hands are all valuable uses of her time. They may not help her garner top scores on the standardized exams she’ll confront in the next two years, but maybe knowing that Pierre is the capital of South Dakota will.
Comments
January 6, 2012 8:56 AM EST
The concept of having a required curriculum for homeschooling is hard for me to swallow. We unschool, meaning that while my son didn’t learn to read until he was 8 is learning how to extract DNA and dappling in microbiology at 9. Because we’re setting out to raise passionate learners, not fact churning machines. I’m impressed by the balance you are striking when faced with the need to follow both a curriculum and your heart.
– Rachel Wolf http://www.lusaorganics.typepad.com
January 6, 2012 9:09 AM EST
7 1/2 hours per day is crazy. In TN, the requirement is only four hours per school day (180 days) which is pretty doable. Is this a state requirement where you are, or the requirement of a curriculum that you bought?
This is way more school work than kids in SCHOOL do. A lot of the time kids are at school is just wasted time standing in line, moving from class to class, etc.
– shannon
January 21, 2012 2:42 PM EST
my eight year old doesn’t really tell time, unless she’s looking at a digital clock. and to me, that doesn’t count!
– magpie