[How Instruction Impacts Learning]

7 minutes ago, Emily ZL said:

I feel like this comes more easily to homeschoolers, especially homeschoolers who don't have the time or inclination to be top-down lecturers. My kids have to work fairly independently because there are so many of them. Then we solve problems on a one-on-one basis (the tutoring model). I don't think I own a single curriculum where I use a teacher guide to "teach" or lecture to my kids. We use Math Mammoth, and similar programs. They all show great skills for self-directed learning and I didn't really teach that either.

 

I would love to think that all kids can be self-directed and self-teach, but I have found that this is just not true.  My older was, my younger so isn't.  Some of my students are and some of them are NOT. Part of what I try to do is get them self-directed and capable of self-teaching, but I am definitely having mixed results with this.  My younger boy in particular seems to require interaction to learn, and basically can't do much of anything on his own.  

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The question (in my opinion) is, how do you get that for kids in a public or private school? They are in a large group setting. 

It is impossible. I'm kicking around doing a PhD in education, and every time I think of topics I'm interested in, they require a 1 on 1 instructor/learner model.  Kids in school fend for themselves.  One of the research questions I am interested in is how self-regulated learning varies between students and whether it can actually be impacted in any meaningful way without tons of one on one time.  I'm just not sure it can be. And even with tons of one-on-one time like with my younger, I am only just now with him starting 11th grade, getting even a small hint of this capability.  It will be my full focus for the next 2 years, over any content goals.  He will fail at uni if I cannot get this done. 

[How Instruction Impacts Learning]

48 minutes ago, square_25 said:

I’m on my phone, so the essay will come later. But in my experience, at least in math, the belief that you can do the work comes partially from how thoroughly and deeply you’ve assimilated the content. So it’s not unrelated.

I’m somewhat of a constructivist in my math teaching, anyway, though. So I’m very rarely a top-down teacher.

I agree that content assimilation and self efficacy are related, but not really with learners who have struggled in the past and believe that they can't do it.  It takes time and carefully well-placed comments to build up the belief in self.  I do this all the time with my younger and with my tutor kids.  

One of the things I do is discuss with a kid what their strengths are.  So for math I have a new kid who is really good at algorithms and has NO understanding of what she is doing. For her, I've started saying "well, you have a beautiful lay out of this algebra," while thinking to myself, OMG what a disaster because you have only memorized your way through math for the last 2 years.  I tell my younger and my tutorees what specific skills that they can own as special to them even their learning is one hot mess.  When parents call me an say that their kid has a terrible attitude and is failing and is convinced they can't do the work, I tell them "I can turn attitude around in 2 months, but fixing the math will take at least a year." Kids have to have a good attitude to actually engage in the work in a meaningful way.  Bad attitude equates to only basic learning, because there will be no self-regulated learning. 

So I think that as an instructor, my first goal is to develop a positive attitude. I can do this with positive interaction with content, but I can't develop a positive attitude with 'get it done, stop complaining' approach. When I tried this approach with my younger last year with mechanics for physics, he got the work done and mostly stopped complaining, but there was not joy and no engagement and everything was forgotten within a month.  However, on the other side, I have had many people on this board shocked that my dysgraphic boy is willing to work on his writing for 2 hours a day.  This is because I work every single day on planting seeds for a positive attitude.  And this positive attitude means that he owns the work and is thus motivated to do it. 

My second goal as an instructor is to teach how you how to make connections between content. I had a homeschool friend who helped me to understand this.  He bough his kids a massive TV monitor for their computer that could display 8 sheets of paper at once.  He told me that to be a high end learner you must make connections.  And to make connections, you need to see the different pieces of the puzzle all at once. 

So when I 'instruct', I'm actually not thinking that much about how to teach the content, I am much more thinking about how to create a positive attitude and skills at connection.

[How Instruction Impacts Learning]

As promised I'm keen to keep our more interesting discussions alive. This is a topic that I've been thinking about for a while.

I've been a homeschool teacher for 16 years and been tutoring kids in math, science, and English for 5 years, and I have been working through lots of ideas about instruction vs learning.  Now I'm working my way through Learning Theories by Schunk https://www.amazon.com/Learning-Theories-Educational-Perspective-8th/dp/0134893751/ref=sr_1_1?keywords=learning+theories%3A+an+educational+perspective&qid=1578339612&s=books&sr=1-1

I've come to believe that teaching is not learning.  This seems like an obvious statement, but I used to top-down teach content in the most organized manner so that students (mine and others) could learn in the most efficient manner. I'm starting to believe that the development of attitude, motivation, and self efficacy are way way more important than content production and delivery. Two of my sisters are teachers (private HS science and Prof in Engineering at CC) and one is a counselor. The 2 teacher sisters decide what content to cover (unless dictated by AP exam or UVA engineering), produce and record lectures, produce handouts, design labs, and write and grade assessments.  My counselor sister sits one on one with clients and discusses their issues, suggests alternative ways to interpret, and gives them homework in the form of journalling to help them change their perceptions of self and how they face their problems.

As a tutor and a homeschool teacher, I have found that I am WAY more like my counselor sister than my 2 teacher sisters. And I have also found that as a tutor I am cleaning up the messes that the teachers are giving the kids in the form of content that needs to be processed. Unless you want your kid to just memorize or comprehend, then kids must do the complex task of integrating, analyzing, and evaluating content from multiple sources and with the previous knowledge that they have in their head. This task requires that they believe that they can actually do this work (self efficacy). For my kids (mine and tutorees), content understanding is the easy part; the hard part is the motivation to do the work, the belief that they can, and the executive function to accomplish their goals.  This is called self-regulated learning, and as far as I have experienced in the 20+ kids that I have tutored for 250+  hours each, it is NOT taught by teaching and assessing content. 

This leads me to the question of what kind of instruction can actually help with learning.  I'm thinking about a bigger understanding of instruction than just top-down teaching content.  I'm interested in the role of us as homeschool teachers in developing an environment that encourages learning.  So what is learning and how can you help it happen?

Ruth in NZ

[What does it mean to be educated?]

49 minutes ago, square_25 said:

 

Wow, @lewelma. That sounds like a disaster. I'm so glad you managed to catch up. 

You know, it occurs to me that I didn't read until I was 12, either, in some sense... at least, I didn't read in English! We moved to Canada when I was 11, and reading was really hard for a few years. I was a fluent Russian reader (I had learned by 4, I think), which helped some, but it certainly wasn't enough. I think it took something like 10 years for my verbal intelligence to catch up to my mathematical intelligence. 

I caught up because I was *driven*. Driven to keep up with my older sister who set a crazy high bar.  She went to Duke at 16 and at 20 was valedictorian of Duke engineering (and a woman to boot). That probably helped me get into duke the following year.  🙂 By 24 she owned a patent on the MRI. 

My high school experience was: work on the bus to school, do homework during all classes where the instruction was not good, go to Track/Crossing Country after school and RUN, drive home, eat dinner, work from 6:30-10:30 every night on homework. Sleep 8 hours, wake up and do it again.  I brought my homework to the all day track meets on Saturdays and worked inside the parked bus.  I worked all day Sunday except for church and youth group.  I just worked. ALL THE TIME. Came in 7th out of 400 in my graduating class. 

I got to Duke, and it was easy in comparison to the crazy hard schedule I had had to keep in high school. 

My math intelligence was also far ahead of my verbal skills, which is why I think they thought I was smart.  This led to my skipping a grade when I could not read and led me to being passed through school with not a thought to holding me back.  In our society, if you are good at math, you are SMART. I think that was all that was considered in my situation. 

[Schools with an MIT vibe?]

6 hours ago, FuzzyCatz said:

My kid applied to CM too.  That also would have been very expensive for us.  We're paying about 1/3 what Michigan or CM would have cost us.  

DS got a 40K/yr leadership scholarship for CM.  But that was the only money available for middle class families.  As far as I remember, financial aid was for lower income families, but you would need to see how they defined income level. 

We were very impressed with CM and U of M.  I've also heard great things about Ga Tech.  And my nephew is at Va Tech and loves it. 

[Schools with an MIT vibe?]

1 hour ago, Roadrunner said:

funny. I was told Princeton was focused on handful of genius kids. That’s all they cared about. 

I heard  this about the Harvard math department from a NZ kid who attended. 

[Schools with an MIT vibe?]

5 hours ago, GoodGrief1 said:

Not any less difficult to get in than MIT, but Princeton engineering has that cooperative culture described above, and has an undergraduate focus making involvement in research easy. Another nice thing there is that students don't select their majors until sophomore year so it is simple enough to change course. The school is exceptionally generous with need-based aid and people who don't necessarily qualify for much other places can get significant aid there. My daughter (who is definitely the nerdy sort) is a senior electrical engineering major there and has had an exceptional experience. Might be worth looking at if she is early in putting together a list.

Kind of an aside since OP is looking for higher acceptance rate schools, but last I checked, Princeton did not count house value when considering financial aid, but MIT does.  We pay way more for MIT than my richer-than-me sister does for Princeton because we live in a high COL area and our 650sq ft apartment is worth double her big house, and seriously affects the cost we pay. So look at how a school calculates aid. 

 

[Schools with an MIT vibe?]

DS also applied to U of M and CM. Both had good vibes. CM had money to draw lower-income top kids away from the elites. But little money for high-ish middle income people. 

[Schools with an MIT vibe?]

What my ds says makes MIT special to him is that it has a cooperative atmosphere.  Most Psets are done with friends and in his math classes he just has to say who helped him with each problem. There also is no class rank which reduces competition. He has found that the mixed-year dorms are key because freshman are integrated into the existing culture of the hall, and interact and get advice from older students. Also, anyone can get involved in research if they want, that experience is not competitive. Just ask, and professors will find you a project. So when looking for a university like MIT, it is not just the techie focus but also the culture that you should consider. 

[Independent Homeschool Options for Freshman]

What do you mean by 'rather independent'? We have had a few discussions on the board recently about this exact issue, so it would be helpful for you to define what this phrase means to you so we are all on the same page. How do you imagine your kid's day playing out and what are your educational goals?

[What does it mean to be educated?]

6 hours ago, square_25 said:

OK, now I'm curious: what do you mean about not reading until 12? 

2nd grade (7): I remember *learning* how to read with Dick and Jane books.  See Dick Run. Run Dick Run. See Spot Run. etc

3rd grade: For some horrible reason I skipped 3rd grade when we moved state.

4th grade (8): I could link words to pictures and have my 4th grade human body cut out with parts labeled in my handwriting. I also clearly remember reading a "Nancy Drew" book, where the first page was a half page with big print.  I counted 20 words on that half page that I could not read. I also remember being in church in that state, crossing out all the words in the bulletin that I could not read, and then laughing to myself as I read what was left "the...and...its...how..."  

5th grade (9): My parents sent me to an after school program to teach me to read. I attended for a full school year, but it didn't seem to help much.

6th grade (10): I remember copying phrases onto a poster linked with images about how much items costs. I do not remember reading *anything* that year, and certainly not a book, and my parents didn't read to me either. I never wrote a paper or even a paragraph.

7th grade (11): I moved to my 5th state at the beginning of 7th grade and remember learning Latin and loving it, but also remember being completely unable to read any worksheets given to me in any subject for homework. I do not remember reading anything in 7th grade except Latin. I remember doing everything by ear, but I also remember fill-in-the-blank single-words tests so I'm kind of unclear as to my level at this point. I did a lot of math. I was still never assigned a paper or even a paragraph to write. 

In the summer before 8th grade (12): my dad tells the story that I spent 3 *full* months for *many* hours a day trying to read The Hobbit.  He says that I learned to read with that book. It is the first book of *any* kind I remember reading in my life. No readers, no picture books, no little novels. Nothing before The Hobbit. 

8th grade (12): I read about 10 easy fantasy novels that year. I remember being assigned my first paper every in my schooling career and being completely unable to write it.  I still remember asking and asking and asking my mom over the period of hours and having her finally say "I will NOT write this for you, Ruth." That was my first paper, and my mom was clueless as to my struggles. My guess is that I had been hiding things for years and the schools had just been passing me forward. 

9th grade (13): One year later, they put me in honors English because I was one of the 'good' kids.  They gave me 1984 as my first book, and I remember being *completely* unable to read it. At this point I also could not spell about 50% of words.  

The rest of high school was just a massive catch up. I say age 12, because that was they year that I worked so hard to learn to read with The Hobbit. It was a long hard road for me and I was in private school for 3 of those years (4th-6th) and had 2 parents with PhDs.  I'm just not quite clear on what happened. I'm just one of those kids who slipped through the cracks. 

 

[What does it mean to be educated?]

1 hour ago, square_25 said:

I'm jealous of the education that @lewelma's son got because it sounds like despite his passion for mathematics, he had time for other passions.

Yes, this is the gift of homeschooling. I required he work with me for 2 hours per day to pound through English and Science (1 hour each). The rest of his daylight hours were for math and violin - 4 to 5 hours.  Night time hours were for reading - Literature and Economist/National Geographic/Scientific American. He felt empowered to follow his passions and he had the time to do it.  

At this point, he is so broad that he is just starting to consider Scientific Ethics as his field rather than Physic Researcher.  This is still in its infancy, but there is joy in his eyes when he discusses the work he has done in philosophy, ethics, and risk. 

[What does it mean to be educated?]

1 hour ago, square_25 said:

This is an interesting question for me, because I'm not sure whether to classify myself as well-educated or not. Over the years, I've discovered that I make a lousy generalist. Traditionally siloed subjects leave almost no mark on me. Almost all the history I remember is from fiction and other leisure reading; I remember almost no Canadian history at all, despite having taken it at school for the requisite number of years. I know a minimal amount of biology and chemistry, despite having good grades in them in high school. I speak no French, despite years of learning it. 

On the other hand, I tend to do the things I do passionately very well. In high school, I thought that was only going to apply to mathematics (which I was passionate about at the time), but it turned out to be generally true. My interest in mathematics produced an IMO medal and a Ph.D from a prestigious institution. My interest in translation resulted in me publishing three different translations of Russian science fiction books, despite having no background in translation whatsoever. My interest in babywearing meant that I got really into wrapping, invented new ways to wear a baby using a wrap, and starting a thriving and now very large babywearing Facebook group. My interest in math education has resulted in me rewriting an AoPS class and now creating my own math curriculum. 

I'm jealous of the education that @lewelma's son got because it sounds like despite his passion for mathematics, he had time for other passions. I simply didn't have enough hours in a day to do anything well in high school except math. Aside from that, I had to sit in hours and hours of lectures that I mostly tuned out due to boredom, and then I had to do hours of busywork after school. I didn't aspire to excellence in anything other than mathematics, and I wish I'd had the time to do so. I'm pretty sure I would have not only gotten more depth as a result: I would have also gotten more breadth, because the "breadth" I did get in school didn't stick. For me, at least, it was pointless. 

 

It is so interesting to me to hear about your schooling experience.  Because I did not read until I was 12, and aspired to follow my sister to Duke by age 17, my high school career was intense, and what I learned was how to work crazy hard and to study effectively.  I don't remember any of the content, but my skill set was superb so that when I went to Duke, it actually seemed easier to me than high school.

I do remember being bored in certain high school classes, and that is where I learned the very useful skill of writing upside down and backwards in cursive at speed so I could take notes. That is a skill I still remember, but I'm not as fast as I once was. 🙂 

[Getting a PhD]

Hi Chris and welcome to the board! 

I'm not clear on what you are planning to do.  Are you saying you plan to do a PhD type of research project that you hope to complete independent of a university?  Also, I'm not super clear on what your dissertation is focused on. My guess is that doing it on your own means that you will NOT want it to be interdisciplinary as that will be incredibly hard to do without an advisor (ask me how I know!!).  What field/subfield does your question fall within?  Once you know that, you will have a better chance of finding journal articles that support and expand your interests. 

Good luck!

Ruth in NZ

[Math Remediation Ideas]

Math facts are not math, they are just memory.  So I would run two streams at separate times of the day, one for math and one for memory. 

[Our World Congress of Herpetology adventure]

I hope you have a great time at the conference!

Unfortunately the smoke from the Australian fires is hitting the South Island.  The photos of the sky are all orange even at 10am. 

And yes, the bird come in all the time. No screens here, so if you open a window, you can have a friend.  There are always birds flying around in the grocery stores. 🙂 

[What does it mean to be educated?]

6 minutes ago, maize said:

what you are wrestling with is the closing of your window to most impact your son's education....

I would question myself regarding what I perceive as being most important for this particular child at this time, what will best prepare him for his next steps, prepare him to continue his own learning away from your direct influence, and focus most of you energy there.

Outstanding advice.  I had not actually recognized this as a closing-of-the-window-of-influence quandary. And the key is that I need to "prepare him to continue his own learning away from your direct influence." This is not a content goal. I'm focusing on the wrong thing. 

[s/o Esther Maria "rigor thread" --finding a hs community that supports your "rigor"]

On 12/30/2019 at 8:17 PM, square_25 said:

I'm not homeschooling a high-schooler, so I don't really belong on this board, but I've worried about this a lot. If we put DD back in school for middle school or high school, it would be for the community. I was assuming there'd be lots of academic homeschoolers in NYC... and so far, that hasn't been my experience. We like the classes we take, I like the classes I've been teaching, but very few people seem to be doing this for academic reasons or to be taking academics particularly seriously. It's fine when DD is 7, but is it going to be fine when she's 13? I have no idea :-/. 

My older boy never found an academic community in high school. He actually wrote about this for one of his admissions essays. I'm copying it here because it shows so clearly how a non-academic community made a massive difference in his life and goals. 

deleted

 

[What does it mean to be educated?]

5 minutes ago, Little Green Leaves said:

 

These threads have been really helpful in my long-term planning -- please keep them coming : )

That is actually why I am starting them.  I am experienced enough in education to wander through this process on my own in the next month while I am planning this summer, but I figured that some of you may want to watch a bit as I meander before coming to a conclusion. 

Maybe one way to get some breadth at that age is to go cross disciplinary? Projects that combine literature with history, or that combine music with math, etc?

I agree. This is what we are doing with Problem Based Learning in Geography.  In our projects we combine: History, Comparative Government, Law, Ethics, Sociology, Psychology, Statistics, Earth Science, and Economics.  So I kind of have the social sciences down.  I am more dabbling with what I want to accomplish with the humanities and sciences.  What kind of breadth vs what kind of depth. 

Science: We are doing Chemistry over 2 years.  Do I want to throw in Physics? Bio?  If so, how? 

Humanities: I'm thinking right now of listening to audio books with my ds while he works on his hook rug.  I'm trying to pull him off the screen, so I'm thinking that I have 3 nights a week when my dh does not read history to ds, and this might be the time to go after books like Pride and Prejudice (which he loved). I'm also thinking about family movie night and getting the Shakespeare adaptations or movie adaptations of classic novels we have read.  So grabbing some breadth and exposure, but in a fun non-schooly way. 

[What does it mean to be educated?]

7 minutes ago, 8FillTheHeart said:

The proximate educational aims are, first, to develop all the powers of the body and soul. It’s the whole man that is being formed: his body, senses, memory, imagination, intellect, and will. It is developing, disciplining, and directing all the capacities of the human personality. 

I'll bring this list up with him. He is definitely better at some than others, and by seeing them laid out, he may be interested in improving his weaker ones. I like it!

[What does it mean to be educated?]

42 minutes ago, Little Green Leaves said:

I love these questions. 

I think the opposite of education is superstition. Someone who is NOT educated is ruled by irrational fears, has a clannish mentality, and can be easily led. Someone who is well educated has the ability to gather and weigh information; they also  have the ability to communicate their point of view to others. An education should be broadening, not limiting -- it should equip you to speak to people from different backgrounds than yours. That's why foreign language is important (because learning one foreign language teaches you that languages work differently); it's why history and literature and art and music are important. Science too; I may not remember much physics, but it gave me another way to look at the world.

That is a very interesting way to think about it. Another way to look at the world.  I like it. I will bring that up with him.

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That said, you're planning for 11th grade, and by that stage education is probably going to look really different for different people. An 11th grader is ready to specialize and make decisions on their own about what they're going to learn. Obviously keeping in mind their future plans and requirements for university / job training etc.

I have his last two years laid out for school diploma requirements. 2 years each of: Calculus, Chemistry, Geography. Haha.  Not nearly as hard as what you guys have to do.  🙂  For my homeschool requirements for 11th and 12th grad, I throw in History, Music, Drama, Literature. 

It is my homeschool requirements that I want to tweak.  None of it counts for a diploma, and he knows it. So to get buy in I need to make it valuable.  I am currently thinking about what I have time to do for the last 2 years to make him truly educated. Thus, this thread. And I am wondering if I should spend my remaining time on breadth. Would it be a valuable addition?  I'm not sure.  

[What does it mean to be educated?]

47 minutes ago, beaners said:

From my point of view there are a few main requirements to be educated. There is a lot of overlap between the categories. These are also our main goals in our family. 

It is knowing enough about the world beyond your life that you are able to look outside of yourself. Languages, history and science jump into this category.

In addition it is having the knowledge and ability to look inside yourself, to be able to act rightly and be a positive influence in that world. Ethics, religion, and also things that fall outside of the traditional school scope like personal mental health work fall here.

You should be able to recognize beauty and wonder in the world. Math, the arts, science all fit here for me.

You should have the ability to provide for yourself and others. Practical life skills, basic home and auto needs, financial education, career training if your passion is not also your job, and a responsible attitude toward work.

If there is a general cultural body of knowledge I feel like that should be included. That influences what we focus on within those categories. Why is geometry "required" but advanced number theory is optional and extra? Why do we read enduring and influential literature rather than writing from an obscure and unrecognized author?

This is a wonderful classification!  Thanks for sharing it! I think I am stuck a bit on your last point with the general cultural body of knowledge.  I achieved that with my older boy, but am not with my younger.  He much prefers deep dives, so the surface coverage is minimal.  For example, he is currently spending 6 months on reading Crossing the Rubicon by Tom Hollands with his dad.  Boy will he know a lot about the Roman republic, but not much other history.  He feels that Crash Course world history 1 and 2 watched numerous times is sufficient for his general knowledge, and that the deep dives have impacted how he can see the details and politics of one small time in the world and how different (or the same) it is from our current time.  

Basically, I have a plan and a good one, but I'm dabbling with adding in this general cultural body of knowledge and classical virtue.  My thought however is that I will tip the apple cart. That what we have now is working, and I should stay the course. 

[What does it mean to be educated?]

3 hours ago, annegables said:

This might be getting off topic, but there is also a difference in "having been educated" and "educated". ....There was much potential there, but their current education and conversations consist of soundbites from the news, romance novels, and pop culture. 

One of the hidden blessings for me in homeschooling was it gave a purpose to my continuing education. ....It is enormously gratifying and empowering.

Yes, I have definitely met people like this. In fact, the ones that continue to learn are the ones that stand out. I have a friend who reads the Mann-Booker award winning novels and some of the finalists every year.  This stands out. My dh went back for a PhD at 40, this stands out. I currently find that most parties I go to with friends from the past are getting more and more boring as no one has anything of value to talk about.  This is why I search out the 20 somethings at these gatherings. 

I often dabble in my continuing education, and I am starting to desire a more organized and focused effort into certain areas. The impact of this is that I really want to read textbooks rather than wikipedia articles.  I need some cohesion, and I need an author with a purpose that is driving the text forward to a goal. Now the thing I need to do is put reading time into my schedule, which is pretty hard to do given how much tutoring I do. Luckily for me it is summer!!!

[What does it mean to be educated?]

7 hours ago, 8FillTheHeart said:

I think you are going to have to turn to yourself for the answer to that question. .....

FWIW, I think you do have your own philosophy and definitions. You do know what you are doing.  

Thanks for your thoughtful response, 8.  I do know my purpose and I am clear on my goals; however I would love to see what others think because it challenges my own perceptions. As I wrote in the other thread, my older boy is back from college, and we have been walking and talking around the volcano for 5 days. Hours and hours of ideas have flowed in both directions.  But what has surprised me the most is that he has come to believe that the purpose of high school education should be the study classical virtue rather than on content that is soon forgotten.  This is a fascinating thought, and is a good challenge to the plans I have for my younger for the next 2 years.  I have been very utilitarian in my younger boy's education -- I want him to be prepared for university and life. But classical virtue looks inside the soul and values development of self.  These to goals may be at cross purposes especially when you have limited time.  

 

[What does it mean to be educated?]

10 minutes ago, 8FillTheHeart said:

"to give a short answer): a demonstrated ability to listen carefully, to think critically, to evaluate facts rigorously, to reason analytically, to imagine creatively, to articulate interesting questions, to explore alternative viewpoints, to maintain intellectual curiosity and to speak and write persuasively. If we add to that a reasonable familiarity with the treasures of history, literature, theater, music, dance and art that previous civilizations have delivered, we are getting to close to the meaning of educated."

Well, I have the skills covered.  🙂  I'm going to think about the treasures of previous civilizations. Good idea for a dinner conversation tonight with both boys. However, I do notice a lack of science in that list of content. 

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Rather than attempting to define what it means to be well-educated, should we instead be asking about the purposes of education?"

So what is the purpose of education?