PeterPan Posted July 15, 2010 Share Posted July 15, 2010 Cloud child, what a thought-provoking analogy! Well Karen's dd isn't a Cloud child even. She's more like a thunderstorm, deep and heavy and intentional, loaded. When I mentioned significant projects to dh, he agreed they are good for dd, but he said not to make them too long-term. Right now she doesn't stick to something long-term like that (weeks as opposed to months or a full year). So in that sense she's different from Karen's . But she's seriously interested in stuff. That's why I thought if I picked a handicraft and worked through a book on it, focusing on it for just one month, we could make serious tracks. I have real reservations about dissociating my dd from the ability to do a textbook. I don't feel like that's my track for her. I don't know that that's necessary for her. I GET it that Nan's kid needed that, and I'm all in favor of it for Nan's kid. I get it that Karen's dd needs something different. But what remains to be seen is what my dd can do. I mean it's not like all kids like her are utterly unable to read a textbook and survive. Ok, here's an easy (haha) question. Is her extreme opinionatedness on methodology and style and what she does, A) because I have been lax and too fluid with her, solicited her opinion too much, and just generally opened her up to the idea or even expectation that she could have an opinion on things, or B) because she's keenly, if naively, self-aware and trying innately to signal what she needs? In other words, is she being BAD or GOOD when she bucks something? I don't know how you know the extent to which your dc is a cloud child. I mean I know you SHOULD know, but I'm not as aware as some people. And maybe some kids are big puffy cumulus clouds while some are just stratus and have whisp of cloud to them, kwim? Degrees of cloudness. Wish I didn't miss things. To use Karen's corner analogy, I'm the blind one who finally figures out which the traffic was going so I can walk (blind people listen at intersections and walk against the traffic), and then the traffic changes direction. About the time I figure out what dd needs and open myself up to it, she has a growth spurt or changes and wants something else! A year ago she begged me for TruthQuest, to just let her read history using the book and topic lists. Now that I'm finally comfortable with it as a method and see how I would implement it, she doesn't want that at all! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest Posted July 15, 2010 Share Posted July 15, 2010 (edited) I do think this is heart of the problem for me!!! It is easier to have a map to follow rather than blazing your own trail. Blazing a trail takes a lot more energy than walking an already smooth and defined path. And you know the path will get you to where you want to be...... the trail I'm blazing might lead me over a cliff. With children like my daughter, it isn't at all clear that the map will get us to where I want her to be! That is the huge, perplexing problem that started me off the marked trail. It is definitely easier to have that detailed road map in front of you. It is easier in one way, that is. What isn't easy is the massive resistance and struggle you get when trying to make your non-standard child follow that road when she doesn't want to go there. So although in some ways, blazing your own trail, writing your own manual, however you want to think of it, is far more difficult, in others it is the most astonishing, enlightening, and wonderful release. You don't have to drag your child -- the kind of exernal motivating work I call lifting elephants; neither do you necessarily blindly follow their lead. But it becomes a different, joint kind of journey altogether, and in my house it has so greatly reduced the stress that both of us felt when trying to conform to a more conventional idea of education. The hard parts: you have to research a lot (I find this the fun part). You have to be flexibile and ready to abandon something that produces undue resistance and stress in your child. You have to be learning alongside that child, whose interests will probably not be conventional in nature and may not overlap with anything you know about. My daughter very cleverly hit on three things as her enduring passions that I know zip about: horses, musical theater, and science fiction/fantasy. (Not only do I know nothing about horses, but they scare the bejeebies out of me.) So the parent is back to beginner status. And what is hardest for me is that you have to let go of your beautiful plan for the perfect education and learn to respect and value your child's passions. You have to learn how to use those interests to help her acquire and hone more conventional academic skills within the context of those passions. David Albert (The Skylark Sings With Me; Homeschooling and the Voyage of Self-Discovery), whose children had very untraditional educations based on their enthusiasms, says he found it extremely hard work to find mentors for his kids, or modern-day versions of apprenticeships: opportunities for them to acquire and use their new skills in real world places. He had to learn to call lots of people, get used to their knee-jerk "That's impossible; she's too young." He had to learn to be assertive, when to persist, and for how long. He had to interview lots of people to know whether he felt comfortable with them and the way they would work with his daughters. Then he and his wife had to drive them to all kinds of other places in the community where they met and worked with these people: to opera company rehearsals, lectures, wildlife parks, gymnastics studios, musicians' studios, mountaintops where local astronomers were meeting. This is really hard, particularly with multiple children -- even the round of one-sport-per-child can be hugely time-consuming, so the idea of having the very foundations of kids' educations require this kind of outreach and effort is pretty overwhelming. Both the Albert parents modified their work schedules, something that definitely is not an option for many people. But Albert's books are especially worth reading for those of us thinking about the educations of our middle-school and early-high-school aged children, because his whole take on adolescence is that it is precisely during this time that kids need to make meaningful connections with other adults who will become models and mentors. In his opinion, kids need to participate in the larger world, to do work for which they are valued and in which they become competent. He also thinks they should have a say in what they learn: not only a choice or voice in their curricula, but also in how they learn it, when they learn it, with whom they learn it. In contrast, the conventional model of education does exactly the opposite. At a time when kids crave more responsibility and more meaning in connection with their work, the typical education gives them expanded monitoring, a load more testing, and puts them on a rigid track of fulfilling requirements for college entrance. With my daughter, I do something related to Albert's approach, but I'm not as committed a radical as he is (I once e-mailed him and had an exchange in which he talked about how he's always just been the kind of person who can shrug off what other people tell him is best/right). I use my daughter's interests as a doorway to more conventional skills, as some people have discussed doing; but it is also a way to more traditional subject MATTER, completely outside of conventional subject-studies. For instance, when my daughter was at the height of her Star Trek obsession, we covered politics and forms of government (amazing how much science fiction revolves around this), mythical references, Shakespeare (followed up on quotes from Shakespeare in The Undiscovered Country), astrophysics, the history of computers and space travel, psychological tactics during times of war, and -- believe it or not -- grammar. For this last, I read her a couple of chapters in a book by a linguist who was intrigued by the Klingon Language Institute and its annual convention. She discusses the way Klingon was invented (for LOTR fans, there's material on the invention of Elvish too) and what its defining characteristics are from a grammatical and linguistic point of view. We talked about how the linguistics and grammar reflected Klingon characteristics and values, and then talked about what Klingons would say about "earth grammar"/English. This led to all kinds of discussions about conjugating verbs, how word components and order vary across languages, etc. And it was fun. I am now cross-eyed from writing so much and sure I have said more than anyone wants to know about what I'm thinking. Edited July 15, 2010 by Guest Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Capt_Uhura Posted July 15, 2010 Share Posted July 15, 2010 With children like my daughter, it isn't at all clear that the map will get us to where I want her to be! That is the huge, perplexing problem that started me off the marked trail. It is definitely easier to have that detailed road map in front of you. It is easier in one way, that is. What isn't easy is the massive resistance and struggle you get when trying to make your non-standard child follow that road when she doesn't want to go there. So although in some ways, blazing your own trail, writing your own manual, however you want to think of it, is far more difficult, in others it is the most astonishing, enlightening, and wonderful release. You don't have to drag your child -- the kind of exernal motivating work I call lifting elephants; neither do you necessarily blindly follow their lead. But it becomes a different, joint kind of journey altogether, and in my house it has so greatly reduced the stress that both of us felt when trying to conform to a more conventional idea of education. My DS is more middle of the road leaning toward the difficult side. He is doing ok w/ where we're going but I think changing things up a bit, based on this thread, he'd be happier. The only real struggle we have is math. He's good at math. Likes it for as long as it's new and he figures it out, but refuses to do the work to cement the knowledge. Now that he's getting more into algebra stuff, he's getting more enjoyment out of math. David Albert (The Skylark Sings With Me; Homeschooling and the Voyage of Self-Discovery), whose children had very untraditional educations based on their enthusiasms, says he found it extremely hard work to find mentors for his kids, or modern-day versions of apprenticeships: Yes, I've had the very same conversation with a friend. It is hard to find those mentors. I'd LOVE LOVE LOVE to find mentor for DS to work on LEGO Mindstorms. I enjoy learning but if I could just outsource ONE thing, I'd do it rather than being the go to person for everything. At a time when kids crave more responsibility and more meaning in connection with their work, the typical education gives them expanded monitoring, a load more testing, and puts them on a rigid track of fulfilling requirements for college entrance. I know I haven't read the of which you mention but I've read the very same thing elsewhere regarding reponsibility and meaning with their work. Scratching head..... For instance, when my daughter was at the height of her Star Trek obsession, we covered politics and forms of government (amazing how much science fiction revolves around this), mythical references, Shakespeare (followed up on quotes from Shakespeare in The Undiscovered Country), astrophysics, the history of computers and space travel, psychological tactics during times of war, and -- believe it or not -- grammar. For this last, I read her a couple of chapters in a book by a linguist who was intrigued by the Klingon Language Institute and its annual convention. She discusses the way Klingon was invented (for LOTR fans, there's material on the invention of Elvish too) and what its defining characteristics are from a grammatical and linguistic point of view. We talked about how the linguistics and grammar reflected Klingon characteristics and values, and then talked about what Klingons would say about "earth grammar"/English. This led to all kinds of discussions about conjugating verbs, how word components and order vary across languages, etc. And it was fun. OH MY OH MY OH MY JUMPING UP AND DOWN! Please please please provide me with a link to that book! My DS loves language and I bet he'd get a kick out of learning about Klingon language. On my summer reading list was The Ethics of Star Trek and The ???? of Star Trek but the summer is flying by. . Capt_Uhura Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
rwjx2khsmj Posted July 15, 2010 Share Posted July 15, 2010 I am so blessed to be here. I read breadth vs. depth and the greedy part of me stands up and yells, "YES!" I want it all for me and for my children. The possibilities that TWTM opened to me were thrilling. It's so good to know that I'm not the only one suffering from greed and facing reality. I keep reminding myself that my dh and I, neither of whom had breadth nor depth, have done well. We are successful, content and self-educating. There is hope. That doesn't keep me from striving to provide more for my children. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest Posted July 15, 2010 Share Posted July 15, 2010 The book is called In the Land of Invented Languages, by Arika Okrent. Just came out in paperback. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest Posted July 15, 2010 Share Posted July 15, 2010 That doesn't keep me from striving to provide more for my children. Yes, we all are striving for this; the question is, which "more" out of all the mores there are? If that makes any sense. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
rwjx2khsmj Posted July 15, 2010 Share Posted July 15, 2010 Yes, we all are striving for this; the question is, which "more" out of all the mores there are? If that makes any sense. I'll be greedy and answer, "YES!" again. I love it all. Why, why, why do I have to choose?! Really though, I'm trying to create life long learners. For myself I've chosen breadth in some areas and depth in others. I expect over time my dc will do the same. I suppose I see it as a buffet. I offer and they select. There are some things they must take the required "three bites" of and others with which they will choose to fill their plates. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
swimmermom3 Posted July 15, 2010 Author Share Posted July 15, 2010 Yes, we all are striving for this; the question is, which "more" out of all the mores there are? If that makes any sense. It's this issue of "more" that prompted me to start the thread in the first place. I was drowning in "more": more resources, more plans, more subjects, and way more anxiety. The question of whether it was the right type of "more" loomed large. If I have my son study math, history, language arts, science, foreign languages, logic, art, music, health and PE in the course of a year in the traditional fashion, am I indeed giving him "more?" Or am I giving him the typical American education-exposure with no real foundation. On of the reasons I appreciate JennW inSoCal's blog on gaps is that Jenn reminds us that the real learning is in the living and that maybe I don't need classes for all the subjects. Of course, there is still the whole issue of skills vs. content. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest Posted July 15, 2010 Share Posted July 15, 2010 It's this issue of "more" that prompted me to start the thread in the first place. I was drowning in "more": more resources, more plans, more subjects, and way more anxiety. The question of whether it was the right type of "more" loomed large. If I have my son study math, history, language arts, science, foreign languages, logic, art, music, health and PE in the course of a year in the traditional fashion, am I indeed giving him "more?" Or am I giving him the typical American education-exposure with no real foundation. On of the reasons I appreciate JennW inSoCal's blog on gaps is that Jenn reminds us that the real learning is in the living and that maybe I don't need classes for all the subjects. Of course, there is still the whole issue of skills vs. content. Yes, I was thinking back to your initial question and whole way that "more" is defined as quantity, coverage, getting it all, whatever "it" is. I find it interesting that when we pose the idea of wanting more for our kids, you would think that meant something like quality -- which is the wrong word, but it's late and I can't think of how to define precisely what I mean -- or something more philosophical, maybe, moral, even spiritual? Yet that alternate meaning of "more" gets so quickly swallowed up in the other more, the more that is aligned to our cultural competitiveness and greed aornd the thinking that more is always better: more in size, more in number, more in variety, etc. By the time the question is put on paper it sits there oscillating between those two meanings. I'm now thinking of a different "more" that is less about quantity or about quantification (scores, grades, etc.), but rather is aligned with a core or center. It is aligned with simplicity, with slowness, deliberation, exploration, and learning to value the questions that drive one's self and not those which drive the educational Establishment and the college admissions process (which is so regimented in California by the University system that it controls virtually all of what students do during all four years of high school). It includes learning something very important for kids who do not easily take to standard academic approaches: how do YOU best learn? Who do you best learn it from? How do you motivate yourself? Or even, what is an education? What do YOU see as its outcome? How often do we ask our older kids that question? I notice that one driving fear for many of us is whether departing from the conventional list of subjects and the conventional emphasis on survey-type, coverage courses and honoring instead what some of our kids are showing us as inbuilt, particular drives and passions, will mean that our child is at a disadvantage for The Prize (college admission, a scholarship, honors)? It's natural to wonder this, for so many reasons. But I think it's also important to keep asking, over and over, not only whether we will "gain" the end goal, but also what is lost by going the well-mapped road, the list of subjects, by keeping to the guidebook which tells you not only where your destination is, which we all would like to know, but also tells you what to pack, how to travel, where to place your feet. What is lost, not only in academic terms, but in the ways we are so subtly telling our kids not to trust their thirst for knowledge unless it conforms with our (or other people's) schedules, that it's fine to be neurologically different as long as you can prove you're the same, that you can follow your own passions, but only one your own time or for a certain number of weeks before it's time to move on, you've indulged yourself long enough and now you need to get back to what really counts? Long sentences, bad grammar... I am very tired. Sorry. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Elizabeth in MN Posted July 15, 2010 Share Posted July 15, 2010 Hummm. I can speak for my DD and say that for her depth is easy. She can go over something once and just get it. She HATES going over something time and again. For example; math. She hated Saxon and all the reviews. She loves Singapore and flies through it. So all that said I believe that mastery of the main subjects is the most important objective. We don't, IMO, have to cover every subject because our children have a lifetime of learning ahead of them. I follow most of The Latin-Centered Curriculum and supplement with some WTM. When neither of those guides work I go to Charlotte Mason. This combination, for me, keeps things simple but provided a solid education that fits my child just right :D Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
peacefully Posted July 15, 2010 Share Posted July 15, 2010 . Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Nan in Mass Posted July 15, 2010 Share Posted July 15, 2010 I have to admit that I am counting on my son's for-fun sci/fi reading to provide all the thought provoking "discussion" about government that I feel is necessary, even for future engineers. In some ways, especially for future engineers. My youngest is getting exposed to distopian/utopian ideas via the people with whom he peacewalks, some of how our government (and other governments when he is in another country) works via peacewalking, he read the foundation documents when his older brother did (hopefully he remembers them because I don't want to do them again), he has been exposed to other governments a bit in our history reading, and he will read the Idiot's Guide. This is a fairly good example of a non-textbook-based class in my house. -Nan Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Nan in Mass Posted July 15, 2010 Share Posted July 15, 2010 More... I suggest you redefine "more" to mean more academic skills. I keep telling you, you can have your cake and eat it too. The last batch of posts makes me realize that I had better qualify that. Your child can have his cake and eat it too. You can't. You can make a plan for your idea of a good educatin and force your child to follow it, but I can almost guarentee that it won't work. If it is a matter of making a square peg fit in a round hole, and the hole is small enough, and the peg child maleable maliable? enough, it might. But most of us are talking about putting a round peg in a too-big square hole, or trying to stuff a too big unmaleable square peg into a round hole. What is really sad is when the child picks the wrong sort of hole and tries to stuff himself into it. That is so sad that I think it is really important that as a parent, you help your child see what sort of hole he will be happy in. (Have you ever seen that Star Trek NG episode with Gilgamesh in it? If feel like that alien, with all my metaphores. It is hard for me to explain otherwise, though, so please forgive me.) By the way, I think the part about mentors, and doing something important and adult, and expanding the child's world as he grows is super, super important. Some of you might want to read that global education book. It isn't a very good book, but it makes some important points about teenagers. It also shows what happens when you abandon the standard map. I always think to myself that the author's children must have had very good academic skills, though. So, going back to the more part... When my older one began high school, I sat down and made a goal for his education. By that time, he was well on his way to educating himself into his own idea of educated, and I realized that if I wanted to produce the sort of adult *I* wanted, I had better have a very clear idea of what that was and only work on that because there wasn't much time left. Figuring that out was very, very hard, but in the end I had a short list, about a page long, of goals, things like "able to communicate well" and "optimistic about the future". From then on, all I had to do was make sure we somehow covered the things on the list. Some were hard, like the optimism and the communication. Some were easier because they came naturally to my son. Now I am looking at covering the list with my youngest, who is a very different person. He is making the job much easier for me because he sees what his brother is capable of now and wants some of that for himself. The list was general enough that it is what we (my husband helped) want for both children, so at least with the youngest I don't have to redo that part. By working from this list instead of the standard transcript list, I can be more efficient. If I am covering learning to think logically in math, I don't have to do it in history. If my child is only sort of getting the math and mostly just plugging through algorithms, then I can do it with something else, like a logic program or those Critical Thinking in US History books or TWEM or the scientific method. Communication is a huge octopus that has tenticles in almost every subject, but that frees me up from having to have a comprehensive language arts program. There is a LOT of overlap, once you get away from the standard map. I am planning on letting college cover part of my goals. And if you look at my goals, you can see that they incorporate academic skills. For us, academic skills are a major key to the whole question of "more". People with good academic skills can cover more faster and more efficiently. Besides, when most of us here on this board think "more", we are thinking of things that require academic skills to accomplish in any sort of practical manner. You can find ways to learn just about anything non-academically, but as the skylark man illustrates, it is an unbelievable amount of work. Academic skills are a shortcut. I think academic learning needs to be backed up (or finished up) by experience, but academic learning can be a shortcut for a good big piece of it. And I think that people with good academic skills have an easier time in our culture. I don't want my children's path in life to be difficult. With even moderate academic skills, you can teach yourself about things that are far away or too expensive or too dangerous to experience first-hand. You can access the thinking of long-dead people. You can contribute to the world more easily. You can influence the world and change it. You can do what we are doing here - build on each other's ideas. To do those things, though, you need to be able to find information, find experts, communicate your ideas and your questions, be persuasive, be aware of the possibilities, be somewhat aware of what is already out there, etc. ... in other words, you need to have academic skills. I know people who dropped out of high school who are changing the world and influencing large numbers of people in many different countries. They spend hours on the computer researching, and most of their evenings making speeches and running meetings, and most of their days walking to the next place to tell people there what they have learned. If they didn't know how to explain, remember, research, persuade, they wouldn't be able to accomplish their goals. They had some sort of academic skills mashed into them when they were young and in school, and they aquired the rest on the job. The danger for us as homeschoolers, I think, is that it is possible for us to raise children without even those high-school-drop-out level skills. I know people who have no traditional academic skills whatsoever because they are native people of some sort. In their own world, they have power. They have lots of valuable knowledge. They see the rest of the world in a unique and very valuable (to the rest of the world) way. But they need an interpreter when they wish to interact with the rest of the world. I think we can do our cloud children a great disservice by not forcing them to learn at least basic academic skills. You can do it through their interests, or you can do it separately, but I think you need to over-ride their objections and make them learn them. I either let mine choose the content or I take their likes and dislikes strongly into account for content but *I* control the academic skills. And I do a certain amount of filling in and tieing together of the content they have chosen to learn totally on their own. I keep track of where we are on the traditional map by keeping a notebook for each child during high school. It is divided up into traditional subjects. Every time my children do something, I enter it into the notebook under a subject. In the end, when I made my older one's transcript, I moved some things from one subject to another, looked at what I had, and decided what we had for classes. I also checked periodically on the 4x5's (4 years math, 4 years English, 4 years foreign language, 4 years social studies, 4 years science) to make sure that by graduation, we would have something close to that covered. -Nan Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Nan in Mass Posted July 15, 2010 Share Posted July 15, 2010 Academic skills may look different for your cloud child. You know how an outline is really a tree? Well, your cloud child may need to cover the outline of the book either up or down the tree, not sequentially the way it appears in a book. SQ3R is an example of that, or photoreading (quacky as it seems, it contains some good ideas). I found I had to force my get-caught-up-in-the-details cloud child to read the tree the other way up. I had to look for books that presented the whole picture first, and then filled in the details. Either that, or I had to continually emphasize the whole picture. I don't think it matters whether you do a spider diagram or an outline. They are both organized as trees. You may find that your cloud child has to write by starting right in and writing for quite awhile, then go back and reorganize and fill in the gaps or use what he has written to fill in one of those formats. You will have to work quite hard to teach a cloud child to answer textbook questions because cloud children (and probably all non-textbook-educated children) don't know the assumptions behind the questions. (My youngest was furious when he got wrong a question involving reaction times in science. He said it had taken him years to learn that he had to assume that all children were identical in his math book, that they didn't have any extra marbles in their pockets or something, and that it was unfair to change that without warning him.) I always suspect that this is what is going on when people post that their child flunks the Apologia biology tests. You have to teach the child to pretend he is stupid, and to pick the best answer even if it isn't complete or strictly accurate or if part of several answers are right. Stuff like that. I think it is really important to make or find a list of academic skills and work on it. You don't have to go in order. You can do it on an as-needed basis. Just keep an eye on the list and be aware that some skills take years of practice and need to be started early. I insisted that we do a math book every year, even though it took a lion's share of our time. And then I was really grateful in the end because the one college my cloud child wanted to go to required four years of math, math through at least algebra 2, and he has to do calculus. It may take several tries to get through something uncongenial in college. They may need multiple passes of the material in order to learn it their up/down the tree way rather than the sequential way. My cloud child took calculus twice. Sigh. But he passed with a B the second time. Physics is probably going to be the same way. He got A's in the more applied classes, like engineering design (yikes! for this child???!!!). This, by the way, is my people-child. He is NOT like the rest of my engineering family. Anyway, it is a good thing he learned those academic skills, even if some of them weren't very good, and it is a good thing I didn't say, "well, he just isn't mathy" and let him not-finish his algebra, and it is a good thing that he took some CC classes in high school to transition and to give him some buffer for repeating classes. Hopefully something in all that is helpful to someone. I could go on and on about the details of how we managed. I would love to hear the details of how other people are managing. I am hoping by typing all this out to save someone from making the mistake I made. I spent way too long letting my cloud child not learn some of the academic skills because I didn't recognize what they were, that he didn't have them, and how important they are. I didn't realize he couldn't do some of the things that came so easily to me. He complained they were boring and I didn't know that "boring" "can mean boring OR it can mean very hard. It is boring to do hard things, often times. I wish I had abandonned aquiring content when I first pulled him out of elementary school and just concentrated on building academic skills. I think. And then I argue that many of us are much more creative because we have to work around our non-standardness, that non-standardness is often a gift. Arg... -Nan Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Nan in Mass Posted July 15, 2010 Share Posted July 15, 2010 I agree that there are different types of clouds. And different sizes. And different intensities. My most cloud-like child excells at passive resistance and picks that as a modus operendai (sp?) most of the time, but he can have some fierce storms. The one I think of as the most stormy, my youngest, is the one who explodes in the least exciting way. All three are really high strung and if we hadn't managed them very, very carefully, they would be severely handicapped by that now. Elizabeth, I understand your question about bad/good so well. I wondered the same thing for years. I can tell you what we did, but I am not sure it will be helpful for your family. Once I realized their importance, I chose to be inflexible about learning academic skills. I was inflexible about the input half of basic content (reading an overview of history, for example). I was inflexible about learning the things I thought would keep them safe. I was much more flexible about output and about other content. I was flexible about how we learned those skills. I was really careful to pay attention to how tired or out-of-sorts or stressed my children were, and kept their good will very carefully. This let me guage their explosions. Explosions usually happened when I asked them to do something they weren't capable of doing. Really weren't capable of doing. It usually meant I hadn't built the underneath skills enough. I was open to being told that something was boring-boring, and often enough I modified it, so that they were willing to discuss with me whether something was boring-boring and could be modified, or hard-boring and had to be done anyway. I tried to reward for the hard-boring without taking away from the hard work of doing it. I kept strict school hours so they knew when the hard work would be over. I needed that, too. For my most cloud-like child, I had to take it on faith that the input was going in because he was incapable of giving me much in the way of organized output. He has come out with some amazing things from time to time, but he can't do it right away after he has read something. Sometimes, it is years before something emerges. I found that I can't tell my husband about my day until the next morning, either. We did a lot of work on story-telling before we worked much on writing and it was so, so worth it. It was fun, too. And then my son took speech at the CC before he took comp. We did use textbooks in some things. We appreciated their conciseness for things that we weren't interested in and I was/am really scared that my children would get to college and fail because they couldn't answer textbook-like questions. Have to dash off to the vet, but I'll be back. -nan Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
elegantlion Posted July 15, 2010 Share Posted July 15, 2010 Hopefully something in all that is helpful to someone. I could go on and on about the details of how we managed. I would love to hear the details of how other people are managing. I am hoping by typing all this out to save someone from making the mistake I made. I spent way too long letting my cloud child not learn some of the academic skills because I didn't recognize what they were, that he didn't have them, and how important they are. I didn't realize he couldn't do some of the things that came so easily to me. He complained they were boring and I didn't know that "boring" "can mean boring OR it can mean very hard. It is boring to do hard things, often times. I wish I had abandonned aquiring content when I first pulled him out of elementary school and just concentrated on building academic skills. I think. And then I argue that many of us are much more creative because we have to work around our non-standardness, that non-standardness is often a gift. Arg... -Nan Thank you, your posts are most helpful. My family is in the midst of major transition and transformation. Part of that, for me, is redefining how I look at the education of my child as a person, not just a student. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
PeterPan Posted July 15, 2010 Share Posted July 15, 2010 I spent way too long letting my cloud child not learn some of the academic skills because I didn't recognize what they were, that he didn't have them, and how important they are. I didn't realize he couldn't do some of the things that came so easily to me. He complained they were boring and I didn't know that "boring" "can mean boring OR it can mean very hard. It is boring to do hard things, often times. I wish I had abandonned aquiring content when I first pulled him out of elementary school and just concentrated on building academic skills. I think. And then I argue that many of us are much more creative because we have to work around our non-standardness, that non-standardness is often a gift. Arg...-Nan See Nan, you're expressing the duality of what I see. I think there are some things that can be covered better unconventionally with some kids. BUT I'm very concerned that if I totally toss textbooks and some of the methods she DOESN'T like that I am doing her a disservice by not causing her to find ways to handle those things. Just because she wants to declare BJU and Apologia textbooks ill-written and dry, without enough hands-on and things SHE wants, doesn't mean she's going to be able to avoid them for the rest of her life. So what I've tried to do is do a bit of each approach each year. So we've done some things that were textbooky (perhaps too many?), as a way of keeping those skills moving forward. They ARE skills and things that grow over time. And we've done some subjects more loosely (perhaps not enough?). And it sounds like, to quantify it, you found success with having that balance be *1* thing ugghy and the rest great. That seems very reasonable, lol. Perhaps that would have saved us. For me, I found one thing great with skills and wanted to do more. :) See now I DON'T think I'm insane for thinking that tossing inhibition to the wind and doing every single subject the Cloud Way would leave my dd without some skill holes. I just wasn't quantifying it quite as well as Nan. That's a new thought for me. You know what bugs me though? Even though I've been to college, been to grad school, I'm not sure I really know WHAT SKILLS I'm looking to develop. I know I had some serious holes. (I was taught in a Cloud Way at the school I went to, btw.) So I've been very congnisant than kids taught with very good curriculum, do develop good skills. They might not remember the content or learn to love the subject or develop a zeal for learning, but they know how to play the game! And some of them come out with much more thorough knowledge than I did. So I'm going to chew on this thought of having one subject where you work on skills and letting the rest be Cloud. Now I'll tell you, my dd finds it frustrating when I connect skills and the things she loves. Of course I think that's a bit of laziness and rebellion and just the sheer challenge of using the skills. I also think some of that might change with the vision therapy. Her handwriting has done a 180, so maybe other things will? However what I've tried to do over the years is purposely DISCONNECT her skills and content, which is the exact opposite of what you normally tell people to do. When we outline, we outline. When we do history, we do history. When I try to merge the two, she acts like I'm killing the subject and her in the process. Ok, since I have your ear and we're talking about Cloud Children, how in the world do you help them find writing easier? I found it totally fascinating that they could write and then go back to reorganize. That's a new idea, and actually it's sort of what I do. (You can tell the posts where I don't, hehe.) With my dd, it seems like any time she tries to encapsulate her thoughts they are like flies all over. If I force her to outline the original source (book for the book summary, CW model, whatever), then suddenly it all becomes clear for her and comes right out. She just hates being forced to do that and bucks it, even though it's plain as day it helps everything congeal in her head. Hmmm, would that translate into a study method to use with traditional textbooks??? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest Posted July 15, 2010 Share Posted July 15, 2010 (edited) I wonder if the coverage vs. child's interests dichotomy is one that not so mutually exclusive for most kids. I also have a child who tends to be a bit obsessive in his interests. For a few months, all he wanted to do in his spare time was learn about the oceans. Marine life, food webs, marine habitats, different species, etc. Your son sounds like a great kid, and it's wonderful that you give him so much time to explore his interests. But the key phrase for me here is "in his spare time." I have a friend who wrote her dissertation on the split many -- her research said nearly all -- homeschoolers make between "school" and "fun," or the pursuit of a child's individual interests. It's the idea that "school" consists of a curriculum determined by someone else, who has determined what the child needs, in what order, and to what extent. Anything else goes outside that box. It's not as though we're necessarily saying this child-selected work is not important, doesn't "count" somehow, or has to be a hobby. But we're making a clear distinction between academic, formal study and a child's self-pursued study in a way that I still think is hierarchical for most of us. Why, for instance, does our program usually come first, in the mornings, so that it gets finished, and only then is the child free to follow his own pursuits? Because we think it's more important for us to have the child finish that work we have laid out. I totally agree with you that in many areas of their passions children don't want or need us to be in there, tidying up or "extending" their interests with math tie-ins, or projects, or workbooks. It's great that you set him free to go as far as he wishes. It sounds as though you have found a balance between a sit-down, formal curriculum and space to learn on his own, and that's the place to which a lot of us eventually find our way. But what I've been trying to articulate all along is that this interest of your son's IS the center of his education in so many ways. A child's powerful, self-determined interests -- and many kids have interests that are surprisingly academic in nature -- are limited by our trying to fit them into curricular order. Okay, so is the only other model of education then to have a split between our ideas of what they should learn and why and how much and in what order on one hand -- formal school -- and "free time" on the other? Why is it that this self-directed investigation of depth and rigor can't be an integral part of the way we think about school? I'm interested in the philosophical knottiness of this issue rather than the practice, because clearly your son and my daughter and the kids of everyone who is chiming in on this thread do some more formal schoolwork and lots and lots of independent exploration. What I am trying to think through, though, is why our idea of an education is so resistant to allowing the child's part in this to be central. Why do we talk about education as something we instill, something we teach, and everything else as an interest the child does in his free time? David Albert has a chapter in one of his books in which he talks about the centrality of outside, amateur societies and activities to the "Oxford experience." He basically claims that as vaunted as the tutorial teaching system is there, as elite as the university itself is, the most essential part of one's educational experience there is finding and working with people who share your most arcane passion. Oxford has no formal, university-sponsored theater program for instance, or a poetry specialty; yet it is famous for the actors, theatrical producers, and poets who come out of its hallowed halls. There are societies for people whose greatest desire is to discover the next genetic piece of knowledge, or the next chemical element. They work together outside official university curricula. For all these interests and a lot more really bizarre ones he lists, there is a general recognition on the part of everyone involved -- claims Albert at any rate -- a curriculum would be a restriction, do a disservice, not allow people the scope and freedom they need. So if people in diverse fields such as neurology, psychology, education theory, and the like all recognize the central importance of self-driven learning outside the mainstream curriculum, why don't we give it a central place WITHIN our concept of education? Are academic skills really so hard that we need years with which to hammer them into our reluctant students' brains, or is this difficulty a function of when and how we try to do so? Do those skills -- communication, both oral and written; basic math competency; logic -- take so long to acquire that we're still racing madly when our kids are 17 or 18 to "finish" them up? And to what extent do we need conventional subject distinctions and curriculum to instill them? I am not at all an unschooler; I also know I've got a strange and very different child; there's no way anything I follow with her could be a template or a model or a larger theory of education that would fit a whole bunch of kids. But the larger question is to what extent we value children's own selected interests and whether or not we dignify them with an understanding that these interests can be "work," pursued with discipline equal to what we are hoping to develop in them, just as tied up in acquiring and practicing the skills of communication, observation, logic, research, and working with others as we would be thrilled to see in other areas. It's a question of to what extent academic goals can be fulfilled largely and centrally through the pursuit of these interests over time. Can specific skills be acquired and practiced, certain breadth requirements be met, through the ways in which the child's self-selected focus plays out? Can goals of breadth be met through a child's pursuit of detailed investigation OVER TIME -- outside the specific number of weeks we are willing they might devote to it in a school environment before we need to nudge them gently back to regularly scheduled programming? Instead of seeing the two as a dichotomy, or laid out in a certain order (breadth before depth; general knowledge before specific), can we see them as lying on a kind of intellectual Mobius strip, where one inevitably and repeatedly intersects with the other? What sorts of structures of order are available for someone whose learning habits and instincts are not chronological, not survey-oriented, not tidily incremental? Is one form of order necessarily more productive and efficient than another? And are efficiency, order, and competency in learning best reached through explicit, structured teaching of a curriculum? Edited July 15, 2010 by Guest Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest Posted July 15, 2010 Share Posted July 15, 2010 So I've been very congnisant than kids taught with very good curriculum, do develop good skills. They might not remember the content or learn to love the subject or develop a zeal for learning, but they know how to play the game! OhElizabeth, please tell me you don't mean this is a desired outcome! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
JennW in SoCal Posted July 15, 2010 Share Posted July 15, 2010 BUT I'm very concerned that if I totally toss textbooks and some of the methods she DOESN'T like that I am doing her a disservice by not causing her to find ways to handle those things..... .... However what I've tried to do over the years is purposely DISCONNECT her skills and content, which is the exact opposite of what you normally tell people to do. When we outline, we outline. When we do history, we do history. When I try to merge the two, she acts like I'm killing the subject and her in the process. Speaking of organizing thoughts -- here goes a quick, off the cuff response as I have to get out the door. Elizabeth, your dd is still young. Many of the things you are talking about will come with maturity. Being able to tackle a textbook comes from being a good reader, not of every word, but from being able to skim and note the highlighted text and putting what is highlighted into the context of the whole. It doesn't take 12 years of dragging a kid through dry texts to get there, it just takes a mature young mind. I didn't use text books until high school science, and they are the only text books I've used. There is nothing wrong with disconnecting skills and content if it works for your dd. But there is also no need to make one subject "traditional" and another free-form/ interest led (not sure if that is what you meant.) The set of skills isn't that unwieldy. The ability to read for pleasure, for information, for meaning; the ability to recognize fallacies and bad logic; the ability to form opinions and articulate them logically and persuasively through speaking or writing. To me, that's about it. Well, I have to add research skills -- how to judge internet sites, knowing how to use the library and reference materials. Foreign languages and math are another matter entirely -- skill sets that need to be taught and reinforced. Out of time....must dash Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
PeterPan Posted July 15, 2010 Share Posted July 15, 2010 OhElizabeth, please tell me you don't mean this is a desired outcome! No, just more of a jealousy I had of the kids who DID get a solid textbook education. Not every kid is so extreme and happy to have an extreme education one way or another. The school I went to had us sit around discussing instead of giving us textbooks (shudders!) and when I went to college I was ill-prepared. And you'll see comments like that from kids (normal kids, not neurologically atypical) whose moms taught them say with all unit studies and the kid wished she had tried a bit less hard and just given him a textbook. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
PeterPan Posted July 15, 2010 Share Posted July 15, 2010 Jenn--Maturity is the thing I can't account for, since we haven't gotten there yet. I think we're probably right on the cusp of that happening, say in the next year or two. I kind of see inklings of it as I watch her now, that there could be this Great Shift. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest Posted July 15, 2010 Share Posted July 15, 2010 Jenn basically said what I was going to, Elizabeth, regarding textbooks. Just because reading and coping with textbooks is going to be something your daughter will need to do in a few college classes doesn't therefore necessarily mean she must start working on those skills immediately, and that some subjects must be studied through textbooks over the years or she won't get it. Earlier is not always better, or the only way to approach a later need. That's why extensive discussion, summarizing, narrating, learning how to find main points and how to distinguish between main ideas and supporting evidence or other information are all developed during upper elementary and middle school years. Like Jenn, I never used textbooks at all until in 8th grade my daughter wanted to learn physics from a textbook. At the same time, she rejected history textbooks. We looked at different textbooks, talked about what they had in common and how they were different, how they were laid out, what kinds of structures they had when you were used to fiction and the associated types of narrative structures of literary books. We talked about why she liked the physics but not the history in textbook form, and about how she liked her history. You can have these discussions for a few years in high school, and your daughter will have the underlying abilities and skills to bring to them which will make it easier. Plus, by high school, many kids appreciate the direct instruction from textbooks, at least in some subjects, that earlier they resisted. Also, I just wanted to throw in one more complication to the whole larger issue we are discussing. Nel Noddings has a curious but very thought-provoking book called Critical Lessons: What Our Schools Should Teach. In her list of topics or issues she feels are vitally important are the psychology of war (what participation or observation of war does to people); domesticity (including why it is important on a personal as well as global scale that we consider people's relationship should be to things like where their food comes from it, whether and how they cook, whether they clean up after themselves or hire someone else to do it, how the labor of raising children is viewed by individuals in a relationship and by the state); sociology and psychology (understanding others); advertising and propaganda; gender issues in our society and around the world; global religions, the problems of conflicting values within a society; our relationship to the natural world. Noddings suggests that conventional critical and academic skills can and need to be developed with the context of a series of investigations and discussions of such topics that impact the quality of life for all of us. If we think (and I do) that indeed these topics are vital and urgent ones that we want our children to consider in some depth over time, to think critically about and to act upon, then how do we fit this into an educational schedule already over-stuffed with subject content and skills acquisition? Do we say that conventional academics comes first, that we practice and refine critical thinking in those subjects, and then and only then do we begin to discuss other issues in our "free" time? Do we make distinctions about which are more fitted for a formal academic curriculum, and if so, how do we do that? And now, being hopelessly conflicted about everything I've written about, I'm off to make my daughter do algebra (from a textbook). Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Corraleno Posted July 15, 2010 Share Posted July 15, 2010 Do you think part of the problem is that it requires significantly more out of us as educators to utilize flexibility and creativity to tailor an interest or passion into some semblance of education? I think it definitely requires more creativity and flexibility, but then a lot of us are (I'm assuming) pretty flexible, creative people outside of school, so I don't think that's necessarily what holds us back. What I think some of us feel like we don't have enough of, is confidence — the confidence that we (little old me, with no training or expertise in education, with a quirky kid I don't even fully understand as a mom let alone as a teacher) can really figure out what's best for each child, even if that means hacking an entirely new path through the jungle. What if we get lost? What if our kids emerge from the jungle 4 or 6 or 8 years later, able to identify all the edible berries but unable to sit at a table and eat with a knife and fork (i.e. function in college)? I love the creative, flexible part of homeschooling, that was a big part of the attraction for me, beyond the fact that DS clearly needed to be taken out of school. But, ironically, the more I read about homeschooling, the more I saw what other people's kids were doing, the more frightened I became that being creative and flexible and focusing on the joy of learning would leave DS unprepared for college. And then when I looked at what his chosen major requires (double major, actually), and tried to work backwards from that, I thought, wow he really needs to be doing HS science in 6th grade. So I brought out the textbooks and tried to get it to work. Even when it clearly wasn't working, I thought: well, we're just going to have to keep pounding these books until it starts working. Duh. I want to write more about this, but I'll do it in a separate post.... Jackie Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
swimmermom3 Posted July 15, 2010 Author Share Posted July 15, 2010 There is a significant disadvantage to being on this board and being on the West Coast; by the time I check in, I am several excellent posts behind.:tongue_smilie: Nan, all I can say for the moment is "Yes!" to the academic skills. I know this lesson. I am so painfully aware of it and yet, I still lose sight of it for my youngest because I get caught up in the curricula dance. KarenAnne, you asked about my daughter. Her experience relates directly to what Nan and JennW inSoCal are talking about concerning academic skills. My dd (our oldest) has never been homeschooled. She was in a private school for K-6 and has been in the public school system since 7th. Up until 6th grade she was a teacher's dream: a great student, cheerful, and compliant. I have since learned that all of my children to some extent use 6th grade as a melt-down year. It's as if they need to go through this messy process in order to rearrange the pieces into a new foundation. Fortunately, while she hated school, she loved swimming. As Nan mentioned, this gave her an area to practice hard work and self-discipline. My kids explain swimming this way. If they work hard, they can nearly always see the results of their hard work in their times. There is a direct connection for them. To make this shorter because I have to run, it took us most of middle school to figure out that dd was bright enough that up until 6th grade, minimal effort was required from her. It's an old story for many children. She had failed to acquire the necessary skills to succeed in learning more demanding skills. We spent two years and thousands of dollars in a tutoring service. Unfortunately, we were at the beginning of our home school adventure and I didn't yet see how I could help my dd and left it to the "experts." I drove, supervised, and paid. Is there a kicking yourself emoticon? She earned a 4.0 her freshman year in hs and then the rocky decline began. We received a phone call from a dear friend who has known my dd since first grade and fortunately is a licensed counselor. She gently suggested we explore the possibility of depression. That was almost two years ago and each semester we teeter between going to college brilliantly or not being able to graduate from high school. School and anxiety around school (academics) are the major contributing factors to the severe depression. Ugh! Out of time. Please , when you consider skill-development, it's not just about the core math and communication skills, it's about organizing materials and time, being able to estimate how long a project will take, prioritizing the work load, knowing that yes, one should take notes while reading the science text, asking for help when it's needed, and knowing where to find information. Middle school is the time to solidify these skills. I am so grateful to all of you who are keeping this conversation going. My head is reeling (with possibilities) but in a good, solid, get moving kind of fashion. Nan, KarenAnne, and Jenn, I have questions for you and hope to catch up later.:grouphug: Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
PeterPan Posted July 15, 2010 Share Posted July 15, 2010 I have since learned that all of my children to some extent use 6th grade as a melt-down year.... consider skill-development, it's not just about the core math and communication skills, it's about organizing materials and time, being able to estimate how long a project will take, prioritizing the work load, knowing that yes, one should take notes while reading the science text, asking for help when it's needed, and knowing where to find information. Middle school is the time to solidify these skills. Thanks for such a practical list!! Our VT place said the same thing, that 4th/5th gr is a very common age for kids to come in, because it's when their natural strengths can no longer compensate for the increasing loads. Have you seen "The Organized Student" ? It's pretty practical and states things other people find obvious. Revolutionized my desk, if that means anything. Although I think maturity can help kick these skills in, I think maturity doesn't ENSURE the skills will come. They DO improve with effort, small efforts, in bits, over time. There's a big difference between asking my dd to read a little bit of a textbook each year, learn the skills, and then jump into a middle school text vs. just jumping into the middle school text. Now as I look at this little list of Swimmer's skills, I see them two ways. In the context of very tailored instruction, they could slide nicely a pleasant spine, a self-driven plan, a custom-selected set of tasks, etc. But inherent to that accommodation is the pleasantness, the never getting pushed beyond yourself. Oh no, but we said the dreaded PUSHING word! And yet it IS true (at least according to sages who post here like GVA) that homeschoolers are infamous for not meeting a deadline, pushing against assigned topics and wanting alterations, etc. etc. There's a difference scheduling your own choices vs. scheduling something that pushes you out of your gourd a bit. Your own things aren't as likely to STRETCH you. We could ponder whether that stretching is necessary or good or whether the dc would get to the same place even without an early stretch. You know, it's curious to me how outsiders view homeschoolers. I have met a couple "professionals" (medical, not educational) lately who want to develop "independence" in dd and get her to do things for herself. I hawk her on things I know she's not going to do adequately, and I never assume anything. But she has plenty of independence and self-driven stuff in other areas. So maybe we have blind spots or maybe they're just looking for things we're not, at least not on the same timetable. Or to bring it back to education, I do think it's possible for schools to throw this independence stuff, the tasks that need the skills Swimmer lists, before the kids are ready developmentally or before they have been thoroughly taught. And that might be where homeschoolers who have gone through high school are coming from, that they know they can hold their hands a bit longer or more carefully and still get them to where they need to be in the end, don't know. I mean that's a pretty absolute thing to say a kid NEEDS to learn those skills in junior high. Is it in the WTM? Is that list somewhere else?? I sort of feel like it's another one of those obvious things that everybody else knew and I MISSED. Not even arguing that it shouldn't be. I'm just thinking it's another sign of me doing a lousy job and not preparing enough! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Corraleno Posted July 15, 2010 Share Posted July 15, 2010 Being able to tackle a textbook comes from being a good reader, not of every word, but from being able to skim and note the highlighted text and putting what is highlighted into the context of the whole. It doesn't take 12 years of dragging a kid through dry texts to get there, it just takes a mature young mind. Jenn basically said what I was going to, Elizabeth, regarding textbooks. Just because reading and coping with textbooks is going to be something your daughter will need to do in a few college classes doesn't therefore necessarily mean she must start working on those skills immediately, and that some subjects must be studied through textbooks over the years or she won't get it. Earlier is not always better, or the only way to approach a later need. That's why extensive discussion, summarizing, narrating, learning how to find main points and how to distinguish between main ideas and supporting evidence or other information are all developed during upper elementary and middle school years. Yes, this is just where I was heading in my previous post. DS can absolutely handle HS/college level content, but using a textbook is a completely separate skill — which he doesn't have yet. Trying to make him learn that skill (extremely difficult for him, given the way his brain works) at the same time he's trying to learn some really complicated, advanced content, was crazy. I know he will absolutely need to be able to use textbooks — not just have minimal skills to get by, but to effectively and efficiently absorb and process information from really dense science texts. He just can't handle the skill and the content simultaneously in middle school. I think the idea of working on these skills separately is brilliant, and serves two purposes. First, he can learn the skills using much simpler content, especially in an area or two where he's already familiar with the content. He can learn the content (e.g. in biology) the way he learns best — documentaries, video lectures, hands-on experiments and observations and dissections. Then, when he has to put the two together in HS, he will have honed the skills AND he will already be familiar with a lot of the content, so what he needs to get from the textbooks is more "filling in the gaps" of the foundation he already has, rather than learning an entirely new subject. I think what I did with him this year (biology textbooks) would be analogous to someone handing me a trigonometry text in Spanish. I'd be in tears, too! I'd need to learn the skill (reading Spanish) by starting with simpler content I already knew combined with explicit instruction in the skill; then I'd need to learn the content (trig) in a language I understood and a format that works with my learning style (like LoF). Then later, after mastering the skill and the content separately, I could go back and tackle the Spanish trig text. The set of skills isn't that unwieldy. The ability to read for pleasure, for information, for meaning; the ability to recognize fallacies and bad logic; the ability to form opinions and articulate them logically and persuasively through speaking or writing. To me, that's about it. Well, I have to add research skills -- how to judge internet sites, knowing how to use the library and reference materials. Foreign languages and math are another matter entirely -- skill sets that need to be taught and reinforced. I'd add a few specific skills to the list: the ability to take notes from lectures, the ability to highlight/annotate texts, and the ability to revise for exams. For most kids, those things might be natural corollaries of the general skills, but I know that for DS I will need to teach them explicitly. I think math and foreign language are the two subjects that are hardest to tweak for really idiosyncratic kids; at some level you just have to say "do it" unless they truly can't do it and won't need it for career/college/life. The way I'm dealing with those two subjects are (1) trying to make math as visual and conceptual and hands-on as I can at this level, and (2) starting early and going slowly with a single foreign language (Spanish), with the goal of having him pass a 4th semester Spanish class at CC in his senior year of HS. All I ask is that he take that one semester (after 5-6 yrs of home study) on a pass/fail basis, and pass, to get the university requirement out of the way. Jackie Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Nan in Mass Posted July 15, 2010 Share Posted July 15, 2010 I can't answer your questions in general, but I can answer them specifically for my own family. I, too, have a divided homeschool, but my division isn't one of academics/child-interests. We have two divisions going on. One of them is things-I-want-you-to-learn versus things-you-choose-to-learn. The other one is things-that-will-go-on-the-transcript-for-college versus things-that-won't-go-on-the-transcript. This last one only showed up when my children turned 14. We set school hours, but that doesn't mean that only the things I want them to learn show up in the school hours. The school hours are to guard my children from me trying to do too much with them, and to guard their working time from the rest of the world, and to ensure that I am available to work with them. Some things I put in the morning, first thing, because I need energy to deal with them and have a tendency to skip them if I put them off. It is a sad fact that I am more available to help with things in the morning. I let my children decide what order they want to do the rest of whatever we are trying to do. As far as their own projects go, if they are academic in nature, I try to give them school time to do them. Why do my things take priority? Because I am the grownup and I do a better job of judging whether something is going to be useful in the future. My children are now grateful that I made them finish a math book every year. As far as how long those skills take to teach, if you have a cloud child, some of them can be very, very time consuming. Like writing. Ug. Many things are better taught a little bit every day. Some things have developmental windows. These aren't ways a cloud child will necessarily choose to learn something left to his own devices. We drop whatever I had planned if the child is involved in something equally important. It is pretty normal for me to say, "Do you want to do that for school?" Sometimes, they just want to mess about with it on their own. If they say yes, then they have to document their learning somehow. If it is a big enough something to go on their high school transcript, then we need to come up with a name that describes it accurately. If it has a standard name, like biology, then we need to look at what expectations are normally associated with that name and fulfill those expectations somehow. For example, my son spent hours and hours of non-school time figuring out how to mold small warhammer figures. He spent so much time doing it, that my father noticed and asked him to make some rubber computer feet for him, and my husband asked him if he wanted to visit a model-maker and look at his molding facilities. My son said yes. At that point, I asked if he wanted to do this for school and offered to put half a year of molding on his transcript. He said yes, knowing that if he did, he would then have to add some things to his project. He certainly has put in enough time. He hasn't, however, done anything but his own type of molding or documented it in any way. So I had him write a report about the problems he had overcome and take pictures of the things he has been doing. I will have him write up the best method (when he figures it out). He will go on that field trip to the model-maker. He will figure out how to mold grampa's feet. He will talk to his uncle about how sculptures are molded. He will do some sort of overview of other sorts of molding. And that will be his class. He worked on some of his molding during school time, and he certainly got school time to do his documentation, and he will get it to do the research for other types of molding. But I can't put his project at the top of the priority list and let him do it as much as he likes at the expense of learning math because that would prevent him from being able to go to engineering school and being able to do other, more interesting technical projects. I can't even give him most of school time to do his projects because he is cloud-like enough to need lots of time to learn to write, to learn foreign languages, to learn music theory, to learn study skills, and to learn some of the basics of science. Most people I have heard about who have older children who have passions are able to give their children a weekly list of school work that has to be done, the work needed to be accomplished in order to jump through the hoops to get into college, or in order to give them those academic skills and basic content. Their children combine those with their passions and pretty much work all the time. There isn't as much of a dicotomy between school work and passions because they have managed to aquire the academic skills easily and early and are able to become absorbed and interested in their content subjects and in honing their skills. Either that, or they have called the subject done. They are able to work within the traditional subject headings because they aren't quite so focused on learning those skills. The skills get honed as they research and write about the content. Cloud children are different. At least, mine are. Mine need to practise those skills overtly, and in high school, they still haven't gotten to the honing-just-by-doing-in-context stage. Sometimes, they are still struggling with something as elementary as trying to get the paper oriented in the conventional way: holes on the left, big margin at the top. Sigh. Some skills meld gracefully with other subjects, and some are easier if taught on their own. Anyway, I think if you keep in mind how long it takes to teach cloud children standard academic skills (provided you want to), and how most parents divide the list of things to be learned into things-I-think-you-will-need-to-know-as-a-grownup and things-you-want-to-know, you will have your answer to why parents prioritize the work the way they do. I'm not saying children, especially cloud children, can't pick things that are going to be useful for their future. My youngest just spent the winter working on trying to figure out how to remember everything he read because he decided that that would be very handy, both for his own projects and for engineering school. And my oldest astounded us all by deciding that speech would be a useful class to take at the community college. It never even occurred to us to tell him speech classes existed, the rest of us find the idea so frightening. The older they get, the more they are able to make these sorts of decisions. Mine still need me to lend then my self-discipline to get them where they would like to be, and to pay for plane tickets, and to figure out how to bind together all their knowledge. Sometimes they do that themselves, but sometimes they need me to give them school time to read an overview of something. I hope other people will answer these questions, too. I can only answer how my family has dealt with them, and tell you why our school day looks the way it does. -nan Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
PeterPan Posted July 15, 2010 Share Posted July 15, 2010 Karen, yes, I've pondered that discussion approach to textbooks, and I think it's where we're headed. On your Nel Noddings list, I think the unfortunate thing is schools DO cover those. They just don't cover them the way we WANT. They constantly, by their inclusion of certain topics and exclusion of others, teach lessons on gender roles, domesticity, etc. In fact, it totally bugged me that somehow through my education the main thing I got communicated about domesticity was that cooking (and housework in general) doesn't matter, that dishes somehow disappear on a food escalator if you're smart. Then I got married and realized it doesn't work that way. ;) So I think those things were historically (think Anne of Green Gables, one room schoolhouses, way back) covered in the HOME, and as the schools took over parenting (not very adequately, mind you) they also began to take over those roles of indoctrinating and communicating viewpoint, values, and roles. But yes, it's certainly stuff to be aware of. It has seemed to me as a glaring hole that you could have an entire thick book on homeschooling (WTM) and have no mention of dishes and sewing, except to say they aren't likely to get done. To me these other areas ARE part and parcel of their education, because they're teaching them how to LIVE and be HAPPY. That's why I have no qualms spending an entire year focusing on them or any other skills I feel we need. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Capt_Uhura Posted July 15, 2010 Share Posted July 15, 2010 I think the idea of working on these skills separately is brilliant, and serves two purposes. First, he can learn the skills using much simpler content, especially in an area or two where he's already familiar with the content. He can learn the content (e.g. in biology) the way he learns best — documentaries, video lectures, hands-on experiments and observations and dissections. Then, when he has to put the two together in HS, he will have honed the skills AND he will already be familiar with a lot of the content, so what he needs to get from the textbooks is more "filling in the gaps" of the foundation he already has, rather than learning an entirely new subject. Jackie That has been my thinking as well. I gave DS the choice of starting w/ Ancients in 5th grade or starting w/ Middle Ages. He has done quite a bit of Ancients, a lot of it self-learned, others at archaeology camps, and a bit from SOTW. However, since I wanted him to start simple outlining, writing his own narrations, essays etc that I felt starting w/ content he was more familiar with and able to go deeper with, might be a good idea. Plus it put him on the same history schedule as his younger brother. He felt this was a good idea. I hope it works out well. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
PeterPan Posted July 15, 2010 Share Posted July 15, 2010 Nan, that was utterly fascinating, thanks for sharing! So with that delineation between what you do with them and what they do to themselves, where do CONTENT subjects fall? You're doing skills stuff with them in the mornings, together? That makes sense. But how do you handle something like history or your GB study? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Corraleno Posted July 15, 2010 Share Posted July 15, 2010 Also, I just wanted to throw in one more complication to the whole larger issue we are discussing. Nel Noddings has a curious but very thought-provoking book called Critical Lessons: What Our Schools Should Teach. In her list of topics or issues she feels are vitally important are the psychology of war (what participation or observation of war does to people); domesticity (including why it is important on a personal as well as global scale that we consider people's relationship should be to things like where their food comes from it, whether and how they cook, whether they clean up after themselves or hire someone else to do it, how the labor of raising children is viewed by individuals in a relationship and by the state); sociology and psychology (understanding others); advertising and propaganda; gender issues in our society and around the world; global religions, the problems of conflicting values within a society; our relationship to the natural world. Noddings suggests that conventional critical and academic skills can and need to be developed with the context of a series of investigations and discussions of such topics that impact the quality of life for all of us. If we think (and I do) that indeed these topics are vital and urgent ones that we want our children to consider in some depth over time, to think critically about and to act upon, then how do we fit this into an educational schedule already over-stuffed with subject content and skills acquisition? Do we say that conventional academics comes first, that we practice and refine critical thinking in those subjects, and then and only then do we begin to discuss other issues in our "free" time? Do we make distinctions about which are more fitted for a formal academic curriculum, and if so, how do we do that? I have grappled with exactly this issue myself — I thought about doing a year-long course in HS focusing on just these sorts of topics, but I looked at the schedule and thought how can I possibly fit this in? What would I have to drop in order to do this? How would I structure it? Is it more important to make sure DS has all the skills & content necessary for college, assuming he can read and think about all this other stuff later? Or should I let some of the typical "academic" stuff go in order to focus on critical thinking about issues that will affect his entire life, not just the few years he will spend in college? This is yet another area where I want to do BOTH — I don't want to give up anything in one area in order to include the other, and yet there are only so many hours in a day, so many books a kid can read and discuss in a few short years. THIS is the hardest part of all this, and what (I think) prompted Swimmermom to start this thread — how do we prioritize this stuff, how do we decide between equally valuable and important skill and content areas, how do we decide how much of each thing is enough? Jackie Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest Posted July 15, 2010 Share Posted July 15, 2010 Dang, the computer just ate my reply to you, Elizabeth. When Nel Noddings refers to domesticity, she's not referring to teaching kids practical life skills -- although that too is vitally important. She's referring to the fact that we need to directly and explicitly examine our cultural habits as a nation: our relationship to the food we grow in terms of its effect on labor, its effect on the land, even its effect on the food itself. It's investigating a topic like domesticity both personally and more communally: what lies beneath all the things we take for granted about how our food gets to our table, what kind of food it is (i.e. Michael Pollan and the investigation of corn derivatives and products, treatment of animals). That sort of thing. Anyway, I think what all of us are doing on this thread is trying to think through the ways that a conventionally structured education doesn't work for our particular kids, and what other models that DO work might look like. There are so many variables, both in our kids and in how we, the parent/mentor/teachers, feel able or simply have the ability (time flexibility, available car, etc.) to work outside conventions and desk-bound learning. As JennW said, some of these skills we're agonizing over are not that difficult. We contribute to making them difficult by insisting that kids learn them in one particular way, by pushing them before the kids are developmentally ready, using materials that are in some way or on some level not individually appropriate, or putting so many finicky steps into the process that they're bored and frustrated. Recognizing that kids can develop and practice these same skills in the context of real-world problems or activities (learning trigonometry through an interest in astronomy, or fractions through reading music, or biology through raising animals) goes a long way toward bridging the artificial separations between a list of content to be covered, kids' own interests and learning styles, skills. One other note: It suddenly strikes me that we seem to be defining "what kids need to know" largely in terms of what they'll need to do well in college. I do not mean in any way to downplay that as a concern; but I think it's a gap of note that we're not talking in terms of what our kids need to make intelligent decisions on political issues, how to think about our roles and the effects of what we do as individuals in relation to the larger community or world... It may turn out that they need to work on and develop the very same skills that college demands; or there may be some crucial distinctions. If we look at the whole issue of breadth vs. depth not in terms of college and future careers, but in terms of what people need to know how to do, and what information they need to have, to make well-informed and thoughtful choices on a political and communal scale, to recognize how their individual actions impact the wider world, what might that look like? What does the WORLD need from us, and from our kids? We have a lot of people currently in positions of power in various fields who presumably had top-notch training in critical thinking, logic, math, science, etc. -- who have been making some VERY bad decisions. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Nan in Mass Posted July 15, 2010 Share Posted July 15, 2010 I'm tumbling all over myself with the things I want to say... and probably going to say them all badly. Elizabeth - You said, "See now I DON'T think I'm insane for thinking that tossing inhibition to the wind and doing every single subject the Cloud Way would leave my dd without some skill holes." Good. That was what I was trying to tell you. If your child can learn the skills in a reasonable amount of time, then I think you are better off doing it. I know the arguments for not teaching them, but I think the people that have them have a real advantage over the people who don't, in our culture, anyway. I think the people who have the skills and have masses of content and never have had to choose content for themselves or think for themselves (but that is one of the skills) are at a disadvantage, too, and I would almost choose no skills and creativity/inovativeness rather than choose that route. I don't have to choose, though. I choose not to spend a lot of time on the skill of spelling because I can see that it would suck up tons of time and I'd only wind up with a barely adequate speller. The problem is more complicated than we are making it sound. It isn't as simple as choosing one or the other. You have to find the balance point between them. You have to balance making your child very good at the things she is good at against making your child adequate at the things she is bad at. There just isn't time to do both. Subjects... I choose one subject in which to teach my children to think, one to do at a challenging, rigorous level, but I teach academic skills in many ways, at many times. I haven't found doing textbooks to be a good way to teach academic skills. I have found doing textbooks a good way to teach doing textbooks. We use textbooks to teach outlining or something like that, but we don't do them properly, as in answer the questions and take tests. Mine have textbooks. They have used them from time to time in the traditional manner. They had them most years for math and Latin and "do" those. (Latin, by the way, appears to be one of those things that teaches multiple academic skills all at once. Lots of bang for your buck as my Dad says, buck being time in this case.) They read Spielvogel. They read some of those Early Times history textbooks. They "did" Conceptual Physics. They do a few chapters of Miller and Levine's Biology. The youngest one is now doing a French history/geography book (many grades below his). Mostly, I used Conceptual Physics to teach the older one how to do a textbook. The younger one is learning using his history/gegraphy book. The whole academic skills list thing is NOT obvious. The skills are covered in TWTM but only sort of obliquely. If they had been covered more obviously, I might not have had to work it out for myslef. I think it is probably such an obvious concept to SWB and JW that they thought they were being obvious but they just weren't obvious enough for me. I didn't ever develop much in the way of study skills because I never needed them. If I had gone to something other than our state university, or had a different major, I'm sure I would have. I, too, value them extra highly because I didn't have them. I have a list that I have made that I would be willing to post as long as people promise to help me to refine it and not to laugh at it. Can you tell I feel really insecure about it? I found the book That Crumpled Paper Was Due Last Week very helpful. I wish I had found it and inisisted that my cloud child adopt the system before he went to CC, so he had a few years to practise and it was firmly in place before he went away to college. I am going to do it with the youngest, over, I'm sure, protestations that he has a better way. I am going to stuff wax in my ears and ignore him. I agree with people that good things happen to academic skills as your child matures. I am glad I didn't try too hard to teach some of them earlier. I know that seems to contradict what I said earlier, but it doesn't really. I have, as I said earlier, no luck with the using-passions-to-teach-other-things method. Have you compared BJU and Apologia with textbooks like Prentice Hall? Have you let your daughter look at both and asked her which she would prefer? Have you looked at that Bio program that consists of a list of labs and a list of questions to be researched and answered? I think that when it comes to science, there might be a halfway point between BJU and unschooling that might make a good compromise. Go to the high school board and read some of the criticisms of Apologia and see if your daughter might be right? I don't know. Neither of those two programs is an option for us, so I haven't looked at them. I just know that some of the scientists on the board say things about Apologia that sound rather like what your daughter is saying. KarenAnne - I love your list. I have been calling this "modern issues" to myself. I think they are of prime importance. They are on my goals list. I have dealt with them mostly by letting my children vanish for months at a time peacewalking in the middle of the school year and then cramming the rest of what I think we need to cover into them the rest of the spring - ug - not an ideal system. I also have made them listen to the Teaching Company anthropology tapes (a textbook might be better, or something else to give an overview of the principles, something that didn't dwell quite so graphically on female circumcision - on the other hand, I'm glad mine have been exposed to it and I'm quite sure they would have skipped that part if they had been left to read about it on their own). I gave them reading to do, also: Don't Shoot the Dog, Getting a Grip, Diet for a Small Planet, In the Footsteps of Ghandi, and others like that. They have discussed these things and thought about them critically, but not generally with me. Jenn - I am happy to read everything you post. Swimmermom - Hugs. -Nan Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Corraleno Posted July 15, 2010 Share Posted July 15, 2010 When Nel Noddings refers to domesticity, she's not referring to teaching kids practical life skills -- although that too is vitally important. She's referring to the fact that we need to directly and explicitly examine our cultural habits as a nation: our relationship to the food we grow in terms of its effect on labor, its effect on the land, even its effect on the food itself. It's investigating a topic like domesticity both personally and more communally: what lies beneath all the things we take for granted about how our food gets to our table, what kind of food it is (i.e. Michael Pollan and the investigation of corn derivatives and products, treatment of animals). That sort of thing. Yes, these are the sort of issues I was thinking of, too — putting together an actual course, called "Contemporary Social Issues" or something. I just ordered the Noddings book from Amazon, I'm really looking forward to it! If we look at the whole issue of breadth vs. depth not in terms of college and future careers, but in terms of what people need to know how to do, and what information they need to have, to make well-informed and thoughtful choices on a political and communal scale, to recognize how their individual actions impact the wider world, what might that look like? What does the WORLD need from us, and from our kids? We have a lot of people currently in positions of power in various fields who presumably had top-notch training in critical thinking, logic, math, science, etc. -- who have been making some VERY bad decisions. I'd love to hear how you (and everyone else) are thinking of approaching this. Nan has mentioned that her kids addressed a lot of these issues through peace walking, which is both a "real life" approach and a "transcript" course. I struggle with figuring out whether to just try to incorporate these issues into other subjects — such philosophy & the history of ideas, which I want to make a focus of our studies, or 20th Century World History (which I'm planning for 10th grade), or whether they deserve a separate year-long study of their own? Jackie Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Nan in Mass Posted July 15, 2010 Share Posted July 15, 2010 At the risk of sounding defensive here, which I am not at all meaning to do, *I* am not meaning just the college skills. The college ones are the ones I tend to talk about most, though, because the other ones have sort of taught themselves doing their own projects and peacewalking, or while we were dealing with the content that I myself want my children to absorb (mostly that modern issues list and natural history and whatever they need to keep them safe travelling and sailing and peacewalking). The college skills are the ones that are more difficult, ones that I need to specifically teach. I always am trying to remind people that keeping your teenager alive far, far outweighs any worries about teaching them to outline. Maybe mine particular children are particularly scary? I don't know. Even as I type this, I worry about my oldest, who just called to tell me that the 3 foot fish he tried to pull into his 8 foot boat while it floated around amongst the ledges had escaped, but that it wouldn't have if he hadn't, with unusual ethicallity (phew!!) tried to pull it in to measure it without gaffing it first in case it was undersized even though he knew it wasn't. I am really glad somebody else is looking at the bigger picture. You want to educate for an interesting adult. Where is Jane? She has a good-dinner-guest definition of educated adult that is great. Are you across the pond? I think you might be seeing some of the results of the fierce competition for interesting colleges in the US, and for scholarships. -Nan Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Corraleno Posted July 15, 2010 Share Posted July 15, 2010 I have a list that I have made that I would be willing to post as long as people promise to help me to refine it and not to laugh at it. Can you tell I feel really insecure about it? Please do post your list, I think this is one aspect of the discussion that has been the most helpful, precisely because books and "how-to manuals" don't really address it — at least not separately from content, and especially not in relation to quirky kids. KarenAnne - I love your list. I have been calling this "modern issues" to myself. I think they are of prime importance. They are on my goals list. I have dealt with them mostly by letting my children vanish for months at a time peacewalking in the middle of the school year and then cramming the rest of what I think we need to cover into them the rest of the spring - ug - not an ideal system. I also have made them listen to the Teaching Company anthropology tapes (a textbook might be better, or something else to give an overview of the principles, something that didn't dwell quite so graphically on female circumcision - on the other hand, I'm glad mine have been exposed to it and I'm quite sure they would have skipped that part if they had been left to read about it on their own). I gave them reading to do, also: Don't Shoot the Dog, Getting a Grip, Diet for a Small Planet, In the Footsteps of Ghandi, and others like that. They have discussed these things and thought about them critically, but not generally with me. You were posting this just as I was asking for it! Thank you so much for the additional detail, I'm so interested in hearing how other people tackle these topics — and quite thrilled, frankly, that others seem to think they're important! Jackie Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Nan in Mass Posted July 15, 2010 Share Posted July 15, 2010 This is what I have been trying to explain how to do. Write out a list of what you want your children to know as adults. Then figure out how you are going to cover all those things. Then buy a notebook and split it into traditional subjects. Then start teaching your list and every time you do something, write it in the notebook under one of the traditional subject headings. Some things, like math, are going to be done the traditional way, probably. They will be the same on your list and in the notebook. Some things, like chemistry, probably won't appear on your list as the subject chemistry. Topics in chemistry might appear more as "know how the natural world works" or "be able to go to college". If you just want to check off the box, then get a textbook and cover the material in that way, efficiently. Otherwise, as you work on how the natural world works, you will cover things like photosynthesis, and as you work on modern issues (KarenAnne's list) you might deal with acid rain (requiring that you learn about acids and bases). To do those things, you will probably find you need to know about valences and electron clouds. You probably will find that you need to read the first few chapters of a chemistry book (possibly from the library) so you will be able to understand the explanation of acid rain. As you do those things, you write them under chemistry. Towards the end of high school, you look at the list for chemistry and you look at the table of contents in a chemistry book or a high school chemistry syllabus (various high schools put them online for their students) and figure out what is missing. Or if your child is headed for science or engineering, then you go find a chemistry class to take. Mine take the community college one. -Nan Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Nan in Mass Posted July 15, 2010 Share Posted July 15, 2010 (edited) I can tell you what I have discovered about writing. I've only been but so successful, so hopefully other people will answer some of that, too. I will come back later tonight and do it. I also think that at this point it might be helpful for me to post how we are doing things. I feel like I am getting credit for being more innovative and out-of-the-box than we actually are. -Nan Edited July 15, 2010 by Nan in Mass Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Corraleno Posted July 15, 2010 Share Posted July 15, 2010 ARGHHH — I'm running late for DD's orthodontist appointment (why don't dentists have WiFi???), but I just want to say that I'm amazed that this thread is not only still going strong, but continuing to get both deeper and broader (ha!) as it continues. I've learned more from this conversation than I have from all the other books on homeschooling (and education in general, for that matter) I've read in my life, combined. This experience has been like stumbling into a graduate seminar on the topic of Customizing Education for Smart Quirky Kids. I'm still kind of stunned! Jackie Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Nan in Mass Posted July 15, 2010 Share Posted July 15, 2010 Here is a post from a long time ago that explains some of what we do. I will come back and explain how I have worked this year, later, and what we are going to do next year. This has helped me to decide that. I am going to make some changes in emphasis. It will probably wind up looking like what we have done all along, but I will prioritize it differently. http://www.welltrainedmind.com/forums/showthread.php?t=110128&highlight=peacewalking -nan Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Capt_Uhura Posted July 15, 2010 Share Posted July 15, 2010 ARGHHH — I'm running late for DD's orthodontist appointment (why don't dentists have WiFi???), but I just want to say that I'm amazed that this thread is not only still going strong, but continuing to get both deeper and broader (ha!) as it continues. I've learned more from this conversation than I have from all the other books on homeschooling (and education in general, for that matter) I've read in my life, combined. This experience has been like stumbling into a graduate seminar on the topic of Customizing Education for Smart Quirky Kids. I'm still kind of stunned! Jackie :iagree: Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
PeterPan Posted July 15, 2010 Share Posted July 15, 2010 Nan--Ok, now Crumpled Paper is on its way! Yes, we'd LOVE to see your list! And you're right, I was making the assumption that textbooks were the best way to build these skills. What bio program is it that starts with labs and a question/study list? That certainly would be interesting. I think sometimes question/study methods don't go into enough detail or assume a student who has never studied the topic before (I'm talking history here), so they end up not being a good fit. But for biology, where you're really talking about a bunch of terms that aren't likely to stick in my dd's head without some connection to reality, that lab/question approach would be PERFECT. Yes, I have been reading about Conceptual Physics till my eyes are blue. (Don't know why they're blue, but they are. With longing to use it I guess.) Yes, I've seen the PH books mentioned a lot. Don't laugh, but my main concern is my dominant interest toward trending christian, especially in my science choices. However it does narrow down the field. I have no problem with a secular text on some things, and I understand it's an eventuality in all things. And just out of curiousity, do you have a recommended age/grade for Conceptual Physics? I've seen people mention both 8th and 9th. My dd is on the young end of her grade with a spring birthday. I didn't know if there was some maturity for long problems or something that was needed, or if it's simply a matter of exuberance in the topic. Karen--We're surrounded by corn fields. Somehow those issues are more obvious to us or just don't need discussing I guess. But if they did, they're still a personal thing, something for in the home, because to me they reflect your worldview, your opinions, your values (capitalism, free market, politics, etc.). I certainly would never want ANOTHER person teach my kids those things in a school, not unless I trusted their opinion. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
swimmermom3 Posted July 15, 2010 Author Share Posted July 15, 2010 Elizabeth, I will and do say that kids should be learning the skills I mentioned in middle school and then fine-tuning and building on them in high school. If it makes you feel better, I missed them the first time around and the cost was painful for all of us involved but especially my daughter They should be obvious: I don't know why they aren't. You can throw all the content in the world at them (Nan's cloud children) but if you haven't worked on teaching them how to process the information or to discern if they should process the information, it's all for naught. I need to add in here that someone dropping by this thread and reading it casually might think that we have drifted into talking predominantly about children who are "different." Shoot, they are all different whether you have a formal diagnosis or not. There are so many factors that play into this conversation and I am jumbling everything together to get it out quickly. A child who appears to be "normal" can go through puberty and then seem "different." I dislike both these words and am using them for illustrative purposes only. My dd is the product of that traditional, boxed-in educational process and it failed her. We failed her because we could not see any options at the time. I wonder how many young women slide through this system unnoticed, in despair, and going through the motions. We have had two sets of reactions from those around us with regards to my daughter's depression. I was baffled by the angry, almost confrontational aspect of some who asked about our daughter until I realized that they were scared. If our bright, personable, funny, lovely, socially competent daughter can be depressed then there must be some terrible skeleton in our family closet, but since there isn't, this means it can happen to anyone's child. Not a comforting thought for a parent. The other people that have shown up in our lives have been a great blessing. They are the women in real life and some from this board who have shared their stories with my daughter. They have allowed her to see that it is not dd that is broken but perhaps she is incompatible with the system and that it is okay. She sees bright, funny women who have moved on with their lives. Two of them shared their thoughts on school and how they felt about it and they echoed my own dd's opinion on school nearly verbatim. We as a family have had to redefine what education means to us and accept that the path to the goal may look like nothing we have ever seen or experienced before. For much of her life, my daughter's presence in the room had made my heart dance. She is such a joy and a gift. If sharing this (with her permission) prompts a fellow homeschooling parent to look more closely at how they can teach the necessary skills yet not kill of the pleasure and joy of learning, then I sleep easier.:D Of course, in the time it has taken me to write this, I am probably 20 post behind. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
PeterPan Posted July 15, 2010 Share Posted July 15, 2010 I'm considering PACE therapy for my dd after we finish OT (if we ever begin, at the rate the scheduling is going!). PACE works on how they process information, helping build their ability to process in the ways that are weaker, handle distractions (auditory, visual, and cognitive), etc. It's really fascinating. I've seen enough with friends and acquaintances over the years to know that what looks like a little issue in my dd could snowball later, when things are harder. As you say, what is obvious or happens naturally for some kids doesn't for others. But I think as we explore those processes, those skills, those needs, and flesh them out for our kids we make them more clear to others too, others who maybe would have gotten them eventually but appreciate seeing it done for them. We fleshed the marrow and made jello, and they get to eat it. :) There you go Karen, another of my terrible illustrations. :) Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Nan in Mass Posted July 15, 2010 Share Posted July 15, 2010 Jackie - science is my big bugaboo, too. We aren't the only ones. It seems like most of TWTM board uses Apologia (or another homeschooling textbook), checks off the box, and proceed merrily on their way. Either that, or they have scientists for parents. It is those of us who aren't scientists but have children who are going into science or engineering who are having fits over academic skills. Over time, I have tracked down the cause of my nebulous, I can't do this, my child needs major academic skills and I can't figure out how to teach them to him panic spells to science textbooks. I think the whole subject of science for children who are going into science deserves special consideration. I think this is something that is a weird mix of math (with its everything depends on what comes before structure. lending itself to textbook learning); and don't-kill-the-curiosity-with-textbooks and jumping through hoops and testing for college; and the absolute necessity of giving children time to explore and work on their own projects. -Nan Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Nan in Mass Posted July 15, 2010 Share Posted July 15, 2010 Substitute he for all the she's and I could have written this post about my oldest. Mine is a bit older than Swimmermom's, and we are finally, finally, seeing our old son back. Sometimes I remember to tell myself that no matter what we do for homeschooling, it can't possibly produce worse results than our very excellent, nationally ranked, public school. Most of the time I forget. People look at us and say, "How do you have the courage to let your children do what they do?" That is how. Desperatation leads to desperate means. The education we have allowed our younger two is a desperate attempt to keep them from what happened to their older brother. I just don't usually write about it, out of respect for his privacy. -Nan Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
JennW in SoCal Posted July 15, 2010 Share Posted July 15, 2010 (edited) Why do we talk about education as something we instill, something we teach, and everything else as an interest the child does in his free time? Can specific skills be acquired and practiced, certain breadth requirements be met, through the ways in which the child's self-selected focus plays out? Can goals of breadth be met through a child's pursuit of detailed investigation OVER TIME... Instead of seeing the two as a dichotomy, or laid out in a certain order (breadth before depth; general knowledge before specific), can we see them as lying on a kind of intellectual Mobius strip, where one inevitably and repeatedly intersects with the other? What sorts of structures of order are available for someone whose learning habits and instincts are not chronological, not survey-oriented, not tidily incremental? Is one form of order necessarily more productive and efficient than another? And are efficiency, order, and competency in learning best reached through explicit, structured teaching of a curriculum? Don't know if I'll get to all these questions before I'm back out the door, but thought I'd start thinking out loud. I'd love to distill this conversation into an article for my blog, or for SWB's blog, and title it "Customizing Education for Smart Quirky Kids". This thread has gotten intimidatingly long, but there is lots of good stuff here. Karen, your questions I know are mostly philosophical, but I still see practical answers to some of this. Kids learn what they live. We are a group of smart and interesting women who are engaged in the world around us -- our kids have little choice in the matter but to become smart and interesting themselves. This is my favorite story for illustrating this. I've got an Aspie with obsessive interests, but he had to share 18 years with a family whose interests are all over the map. During his early teen years he resisted traveling, visiting or doing anything that the rest of us wanted to do simply because it did not align with his interests. He was utterly mortified one year that he had to spend a week in Arizona and that we'd be going on guided tours at the places we visited. But a wonderful thing happened. He was quiet and hung back on the tours, but he noticed that his parents and brother were actively engaged in what the guide was saying, that we'd ask questions and know answers and make comments. He thought it was wonderful and told us how awesome it felt to have a family who enjoyed learning new things. He saw that others on the tour were passive participants and he "got" finally, what it was that I was striving for in homeschooling -- to produce kids who actively participate in the world around them. He thanks me often for having homeschooled him as he sees his peers as being very lost in the adult world. I'm off again. Maybe I'll have time to think longer and more coherent thoughts later... Edited July 15, 2010 by JennW in SoCal Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
swimmermom3 Posted July 15, 2010 Author Share Posted July 15, 2010 One other note: It suddenly strikes me that we seem to be defining "what kids need to know" largely in terms of what they'll need to do well in college. I do not mean in any way to downplay that as a concern; but I think it's a gap of note that we're not talking in terms of what our kids need to make intelligent decisions on political issues, how to think about our roles and the effects of what we do as individuals in relation to the larger community or world... It may turn out that they need to work on and develop the very same skills that college demands; or there may be some crucial distinctions. If we look at the whole issue of breadth vs. depth not in terms of college and future careers, but in terms of what people need to know how to do, and what information they need to have, to make well-informed and thoughtful choices on a political and communal scale, to recognize how their individual actions impact the wider world, what might that look like? What does the WORLD need from us, and from our kids? We have a lot of people currently in positions of power in various fields who presumably had top-notch training in critical thinking, logic, math, science, etc. -- who have been making some VERY bad decisions. So,in essence, the component that we are missing here is soul, heart, if you will. Grace to make the content and skills glow.:blushing: Well, at least that's how it looks on my wish list. If I have learned one thing, it's that I don't want to live my life nor do I want my children to live their lives as though it's all one big SAT test, kwim? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Nan in Mass Posted July 15, 2010 Share Posted July 15, 2010 I love your story, Jenn. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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