Not At School Today

Here.

“The Book of 500 Curious Puzzles (PDF ebook) – Here’s a classic collection from way back in 1859 of all sorts of odd and interesting puzzles, riddles, mazes, math problems and oddities to challenge and bemuse puzzle lovers. Are you as smart as the kids of that bygone era? Check out these picture and cutout puzzles, practical paradoxes and brain boggling arithmetic puzzles and see!”

(Only available for a couple of days.)

From Calico Spanish.

This company produces resources to teach children from 5-12 Spanish. Today they are offering 3 free sample songs from one of their CDs, along with PDFs of the lyrics and tips on how to get started with learning the language.

One of the songs is designed to teach children the alphabet in Spanish, and looks pretty good.

Drawing for Beginners by Dorothy Furniss.

“This classic book by Dorothy Furniss is a wonderful introduction to drawing, well written and nicely illustrated. Included are chapters on sketching from life and from your imagination, sketching people and animals, perspective drawing, drawing tools, and much more. Probably not as many illustrations as you could ask for, but the text is every bit as good – if not better – than most modern “how to” drawing guides.”

A small boy was asked: “How do you draw?”
He answered: “I think… and then I draw round my think.”

This will probably only be accessible for a couple of days so go check it out!

Here is an article in the Independant written by one Home Educator who schools in a traditional manner, lambasting those who take an autonomous approach. (A man who also, btw, worked under Graham Badman in the CFHFE.)

For goodness sakes. The comments to the article respond much better than I ever could, but there are so many problems with it. The author, Simon Webb, doesn’t give one shred of evidence or fact, other than his own opinions, to support his argument, and has ignored all the evidence that autonomous education is an ‘astonishingly efficient way to learn’.

There are as many different ways of educating as there are home educators. Just because one way of doing it doesn’t suit you, it doesn’t mean that it is not a viable, legitimate alternative. Home educators in all forms need to stick together at the moment, what with all the flak from the government, rather than starting petty arguments amongst ourselves.

Come on Webb, don’t just jump on the home-educators-bashing bandwagon, just because it’s a popular view with the media and the government at the moment, and it means you’ll get your name in print. Shame on you.

Original letter here.

“Shocking example of education today

It is little wonder we are all ill-educated. My 16-year-old son has just left comprehensive school after having taken 12 GCSEs. A brief assessment of his “education” may explain. In English literature for example he has read no single English novel. He took German but on a family visit to Germany last year found it impossible to order in a bakery, and was very upset about it. His teacher wasn’t surprised since she is obliged to teach, “My bed is next to my desk” and, “I have one older brother”.

He has left school knowing no works by classical composers, has no idea how to cook a decent meal, hasn’t visited any of the local museums or places of interest and struggles to find cities on a map of the UK. In a test, his fellow students failed to find Cardiff, Edinburgh or even London.

Sports lessons wholly avoided using the four tennis courts available, and rarely used the all-weather pitch or athletics track, concentrating on football. The two items he made in “Resistant Materials” (woodwork) had to be planned in triplicate before he was allowed loose on the equipment, not conducive to spontaneity or a mind that works by experimentation.

Although some have their doubts about home education, I would like to suggest that it goes on in every household where parents care about the education their child is receiving in school.

There are such huge gaps and oversights that not to play a part in equipping your child for life would be an abdication of parental responsibility. Rather than home educators being called on to justify their decision, perhaps it should be those parents who send their children to school, without questioning the education, or influences their child will receive, who should be asked how they will be making up the educational shortfall.

Helen-Jane Burton

Brinsley, Nottingham”

Charlotte Mason Musings: Vol. 1 pp8-10

Miss Mason describes a METHOD of education, something which has a definite end object in mind. She asks: “What do you propose that education shall effect in and for your child?” Good question. Just off the top of my head…

1. I want my children to grow up to love God with all their minds, their hearts, their souls and their strength.
2. I want my children to grow up to love learning. I want them to be able to know how to find things out for themselves, to have the confidence and the know-how to do anything that they put their minds to.
3. I want my children to love reading, to be really interested in finding out about different people, times and places.
4. I want them to want to be the best that they can be, always striving to live a life that benefits others; to learn how to care for others and the world that we live in.

With an end in view, you can use all the different parts of the child’s everyday life to bring it about. “Does the child eat or drink, does he come, or go, or play––all the time he is being educated, though he is as little aware of it as he is of the act of breathing.”

The objective of a SYSTEM is more definite, calculable results, for instance how to pass exams. A system requires acting, thinking and working in prescribed ways. But children are not little automatons - they are ’self acting, self directing,’ and the person responsible for their education needs to take into account how best to produce good, to dispense with evil, and prepare children to do their best, depending on the powers inherent in them, which might look very different from the next child’s best.

A system can be a useful tool, but a ’system of education’ produces only mechanical action instead of vital growth and movement of a living being. The limited developments achieved by a system do not constitute a complete, all-round education. A definite, quantifiable, scheme and end result is more appealing to sluggish human nature than “the constant watchfulness, the unforeseen action, called for when the whole of a child’s existence is to be used as the means of his education.” But this method is not so labour intensive as it first appears - it is only necessary to learn a few broad, essential principles which cover the whole field and which Miss Mason will put before us in the course of her book.

More of Miss Mason’s thoughts on method vs system, from Vol. 2, pp168-9

We hold that great things, such as nature, life, education, are ‘cabined, cribbed, confined,’ in proportion as they are systematised. We have a method of education, it is true, but method is no more than a way to an end, and is free, yielding, adaptive as Nature herself. Method has a few comprehensive laws according to which details shape themselves, as one naturally shapes one’s behaviour to the acknowledged law that fire burns. System, on the contrary, has an infinity of rules and instructions as to what you are to do and how you are to do it. Method in education follows Nature humbly; stands aside and gives her fair play.
A Method is not a System––System leads Nature: assists, supplements, rushes in to undertake those very tasks which Nature has made her own since the world was. Does Nature endow every young thing, child or kitten, with a wonderful capacity for inventive play? Nay, but, says System, I can help here; I will invent games for the child and help his plays, and make more use of this power of his than unaided Nature knows how. So Dame System teaches the child to play, and he enjoys it; but, alas, there is no play in him, no initiative, when he is left to himself; and so on, all along the lines. System is fussy and zealous and produces enormous results––in the teacher!

So far I have been thinking of a system as it applies to the way the majority of schooling takes place in this country (i.e. through the National Curriculum), but I realise I also have to be careful not to let what I do at home become too rigid a system either. There’s a fantastic post from Jen on the AO year 0 List about this - she gives the example of time spent outdoors. If we prescribe a rigid system of 4-6 hours a day outside, or else, then we are bound to fail as life interferes which, in my case, leads to great discouragement and wanting to throw in the towel! We need to cling to the ‘principles and informing ideas’ of what Charlotte Mason teaches, in all aspects of education, and “if we have to adjust the practical working out of those ideas to fit with our modern times and the quirks of our personal family life, so be it. “Method” is flexible enough to allow that. As long as we have our sights set on the end goal and the principles underlying that goal, we will see our way to guide our children to that end.”

This brilliant book can be read online, here.

I’m only 27 pages in, but so far it seems like such a common sense approach, and also quite radical in some aspects. Rumsley begins by talking about all the reasons why a Christian should not homeschool, for instance just because everyone else is doing it, or if the wife’s husband is not on board. She says that of course there are lots of good reasons to homeschool, but for a Christian the only reason should be because you have felt God’s calling on your life to home educate your children. Rumsley then goes on to talk about what that calling looks like, backed up with Bible verses.

Rumsley then starts to deal with stress. She explains the importance of priorities - in her house, they are:
1) Spiritual development
2) Helping around the home
3) Vocational training (including preparing for God’s unique roles for men and women)
4) Academic / Book work.
Everything has a time slot, but if things clash then the higher priority takes precedence. Just having this clear guide can go a long way to reducing stress. Rumsley also gives some practical tips (i.e. get rid of the TV, and even the phone!?), and looks at many different aspects of stress - where it comes from, what the Bible says about it, and how it can specifically apply to homeschooling mums.

That’s as far as I’ve got so far - I will write up more if it’s good!

I was initially sceptical about this book for a couple of reasons. The author, Gareth Lewis, has spent part of his career as a Steiner teacher, and I disagree with many aspects of Rudolf Steiner’s philosophy. Also, although I appreciate autonomous education, that is not really the method I am aiming to follow with our home education. However, this book was available through the library, so I thought I would give it a try!

It is billed as an ‘ideas’ book, a ‘practical guide’ etc, but what I found fascinating was Lewis’ individual take and explanations for his reasoning and thoughts about home education.

Lewis has a very negative attitude towards school, and he is definitely of the opinion that the majority of children would be better off being educated at home, at least until age 11. To avoid a confusing array of ‘carers’, to develop at their own pace, to avoid negative peer pressure, to not lose an innate love of learning, to avoid exposure to negative aspects of our consumer culture – advertising, TV, computers, confectionary etc, and all businesses seeking to exploit our children for profit.

I was especially interested in his explanation of how the institutions of English Primary Schools came about. Lewis says that they were started in the 16th and 17th centuries by minority religious groups of the lower classes (i.e. the Quakers) in order to take control of learning and literacy so they could read the Bible for themselves. By the 19th century the government cottoned on to the reason behind the success of these groups, and decided to end illiteracy for all children. Primary schools were necessary because the parents themselves were not able to perform this function and the schools were an outstanding success – by the 20th century illiteracy was almost eradicated.

However, now the vast majority of parents can read and write and so have the ability to teach their own children. Primary schools have therefore lost their main educational value, and are now used as deficient substitutes for childcare (so both parents can work), and socialising (in an environment contrived and artificial to those a child will face in the rest of his life). Primary schools could provide a valuable role for children whose parents are ill-educated, or for whom English is not a first language, but they are prevented from effectively achieving this beneficial purpose due to concentrating on children who don’t need to be there.

There are many such ‘snippets’ throughout the book, covering all kinds of subjects. I found his practical ideas about reading, writing and maths encouraging and informative also (Lewis was a maths and science teacher in state schools), as well as the sections on arts and crafts, cooking and gardening.

I think this is actually a book I will purchase, and also one I will be recommending to friends with children at school. As long as they can stomach the guilt-tripping, Lewis has lots of advice, written specifically for these parents, about how to combat the negative aspects of a school education. So, in the end, pleasantly surprised and encouraged by this book (which is illustrated by his children, a nice touch!).

… from the ever-fabulous Grit. Enjoy!

On the Well Trained Mind website I came across these brilliant articles depicting Susan Wise Bauer’s day to day life, classically home educating 3-4 small children of various ages.

A Day at Our House

School at My House

I just appreciated reading them so much - I cannot express how true, down to earth, reassuring, encouraging and realistic these days sounded.