Brutally honest question about reading textbooks

[distancia]

Please, don't berate me for asking...I have always wondered about this!

 

I notice that some of the textbooks mentioned on this forum are really long, complicated, wordy, and/or difficult to comprehend. I am talking 800- page math, 900- page history, and 1100- page science textbooks.

 

Do students actually read these textbooks, word for word, and do the problems, review pages, and labs associated with the text? If so, how do they manage to complete 4 or 5 advanced classes along with leisure activities and non-academic activities [jobs, volunteer work, hanging out with friends, sports, etc.]?

 

If the student were to read every word in the book, stopping to look at the table, graphs, examples, glossary, as needed, it would seem to me that each days' focused and concentrated reading, along with working problems and/or doing labs, would take at least a couple of hours. You multiply this by 5 classes and you are already at 10+ hours of schoolwork a day. This does not include prep time, etc.

 

We know that in a traditional classroom setting the instructor extracts the key ideas from the text and presents them to the students, leaving the remainder of the text as a supplementary reference for those students who want more insight into a concept or need clarification of a particular idea.

 

How is this done differently in a homeschool environment? How do you take a 6 lb textbook and make the material manageable?

[AngieW in Texas]

900 pages divided by 180 schooldays is only 5 pages/day. That's not an unreasonable amount to read in a textbook. You should easily be able to read through 5 pages in 30 minutes and that includes working through example problems. The assigned problems should take 30-60 minutes (in general), so that's about 1-1.5 hours. Labs are generally no more frequent than 1x/week and can last anywhere from 30-90 minutes (sometimes labs last longer than that, but the longer are usually labs where you are supposed to take a reading every 10 minutes or so for several hours and don't require actual focused attention except when taking a reading).

 

The texts that are heavy-duty are usually for science and math.

 

My oldest likes to make her schoolwork drag on for the entire day. She spends more time avoiding her work than actually doing it, so I'm going to use my middle dd as an example.

 

I know how long it took my middle dd to do her schoolwork last year.

 

She used Lifetime Health (one semester course, about 500 pages), Holt Biology (about 1000 pages), American Vision (about 1000 pages), Jacobs Geometry 3rd edition (about 800 pages), and lots of smaller books for English. She worked from 9am-5pm on M/Tu/Th, but generally stopped at 1pm on W/F. She had 4 chapters left in her biology textbook that she finished over the summer. We do math year-round. She started Jacobs Geometry in April of 8th grade and finished it in April of 9th grade. She started Algebra II after that.

[Grace is Sufficient]

I also think those books are unreasonably long. It seems that the appearance of what schools are doing keeps getting more and more impressive, while for most of them the reality is increasingly lame (e.g. percent of classes with the label AP versus the number of passing scores.) But as homeschoolers, it's easy to feel pressured to keep up with the appearance of what schools are doing and run our kids ragged trying to match it.

 

Since it has been clear for a while that neither of my students are driven to excel academically, I'm willing to settle for 'good enough.' As for the overlong textbooks or overly ambitious lesson plans, I usually either avoid them or spend a lot of time paring them down to reality.

 

I want my kids to have some time to live life and be involved in other activities. Obviously some people have students with a more academic bent, and they will have a different response.

 

Blessings,

Debbie

[Robin in DFW]

:iagree:

 

Thank you for your brutal reply...I agree 100%.

[regentrude]

The heavy duty reading with graphs and worked problems are typically the science and math books. We do one hard core science a year, plus math. The other subjects involve less technical reading.

I find teaching my children to read a science textbook effectively one of the most important skills for college preparation. As a college instructor, I notice that one of the most common factors contributing to student failure is not reading the textbook. So I find time learning how to work with a textbook well spent.

The student needs to learn how many notes to take and what to omit. If it takes insanely long, often the student is writing down too much, drawing too pretty figures, wasting time somewhere. OTOH, worked examples in a physics text for instance should be worked through.

If there really is not enough time, I would rather not cover the whole textbook material in a cursory fashion, but do selected topics thoroughly.

 

For some subjects, even if the book is thick, you don't cover the whole book in one year. For instance, for history, we are using Short History of Western Civilization which is dense and heavy. BUT the material she covers this year is Ancient Greece and Rome only, so it comes to one chapter per month.

 

In math, the texts typically involve lots of worked examples. We use AoPS, and the kids work through every single example- that's how they learn. DD finished only 510 pages of her math book last year, but this material she mastered. Skimming through the math book in order to get to the end would have been useless.

[2cents]

We school year round so that helps a lot too. So if you take that 900 page book and split it up throughout the year it is a very easy amount of reading. I do require they read it all though. I don't like skipping around especially when I pay outrageous prices for high school and college texts. :)

[TerriMI]

I'm not berating you. But I have my own question for you: Isn't school about what OUGHT to be done rather what CAN be done? So I shoot high. Whether I acutally achieve it all is not as important as this aiming high. We go further that way, we achieve more, learn more. Just asking in case you need encouragement to not give up TOO MUCH!

[Guest]

My daughter briefly attended a private school last fall that bills itself as the top academic school in the county. I can tell you that they did not read every single chapter in any of the expensive textbooks we had to buy. Nor do most schools require kids to get through the entire textbook. They skip chapters, skim over certain aspects of the subject, and in some cases -- history was the prime example at this particular school -- they use the textbook only sporadically. By December they'd read only about 150 pages of the enormous thing; they did outside research and read newspaper articles, etc. for the rest.

[2cents]

My daughter briefly attended a private school last fall that bills itself as the top academic school in the county. I can tell you that they did not read every single chapter in any of the expensive textbooks we had to buy. Nor do most schools require kids to get through the entire textbook. They skip chapters, skim over certain aspects of the subject, and in some cases -- history was the prime example at this particular school -- they use the textbook only sporadically. By December they'd read only about 150 pages of the enormous thing; they did outside research and read newspaper articles, etc. for the rest.

 

:iagree: This very reason is one of the main reasons we took our son out of private school and began homeschooling. The last year at private, they used Saxon for math and the teacher was so disorganized and flaky and the school year so broken up that they did less than 1/3 of the book for the whole year. I ended up doing a crash course over the summer with ds. :)

[distancia]

I'm not berating you. But I have my own question for you: Isn't school about what OUGHT to be done rather what CAN be done? So I shoot high. Whether I acutally achieve it all is not as important as this aiming high. We go further that way, we achieve more, learn more. Just asking in case you need encouragement to not give up TOO MUCH!

 

I agree, in theory.

 

In practice, however, I am learning that to do a job very, very thoroughly as it ought to be done--according to the textbook--doesn't fit into daily life. Something has to give! What is it?

 

For the past 2 weeks I have pretended to be the student and I have gone through the textbooks, word for word (looking up new words in the glossary and memorizing them, writing them on index cards), done the problems, drawn the graphs, gone to the suggested websites, looked over the animations and video materials/tutorials, done the chapter review. etc. I have timed myself (a smart college grad from a none-too-shabby college!) and I am finding that if I want to do the job "right" it is taking me a good deal of time, more that I had ever imagined.

 

I would say the sciences are taking at least 2 hours per day. Foreign language (advanced, unchartered territory) is about 2 hours a day, and that includes textbook AND workbook AND listening to the audio/visual component as well as written assignments (i.e. 3 paragraph essay). This does not include tests or quizzes, or prep thereof.

 

It amazes me that some students can do this, sitting for 9+ hours a day, focused and concentrating, producing consistent quality work. How does the homeschool parent (instructor) keep an active, energetic child sitting and doing the work for such a long period of time, without getting a "square butt"?

 

I am looking for tips, tricks, and hints on how to do this!

Edited August 16, 2010 by distancia

[2cents]

Tips...hummm...well having taken one through hs and into college I can say that he didn't spend 9 hrs a day on schoolwork. He took upper level mathematics and 2 years of Latin and the sciences. I am wondering what your scheduling looks like. Is it possible you are not spreading out the work most efficiently? Is there a possibility that there is some inefficient use of the study time? The times that you are coming up with seem excessive based on what I've experienced. We do a lot in our hs and supplement quite a bit too and I've never had days that long on a consistent basis. I'd like to try to help but I'd need more info. I suspect the key may be somewhere in scheduling and efficient use of study time.:)

[regentrude]

For the past 2 weeks I have pretended to be the student and I have gone through the textbooks, word for word (looking up new words in the glossary and memorizing them, writing them on index cards), done the problems, drawn the graphs, gone to the suggested websites, looked over the animations and video materials/tutorials, done the chapter review. etc.

 

I am looking for tips, tricks, and hints on how to do this!

 

Not sure what subject you are doing, but I'll give it a shot. What I would change is:

No flash cards. Taking notes on the reading, new words and definitions in color, should suffice.

Careful examination of what website/video tutorial has to offer - those can be time sinks: Have I understood the concept from the reading? - if so, I do not need to watch every animation.

Can I work the problems with the help of the book examples? If so, I do not need to follow along with a video tutorial.

In my experience, the textbook publishers (on college level, but I suppose it is similar for highschool) supply a variety of auxiliary resources such as tutorials and websites in order to help students with different learning styles and in order to give themselves a market advantage over very similar books. This does not mean that every student needs every one of those resources.

[Guest]

You know, I've read several books about pressurized high school students in "rigorous" schools, and they all report kids staying up until the early morning hours to get done what they are assigned. The authors also report intense use of caffeine by the kids -- multiple Starbuck's drinks during the day and evening -- and the occasional use of something stronger. Some of the kids are so pressed for time that they report college as being incredibly freeing and relaxing in comparison. This is not typical for all high schools, but it seems to be the pattern at the elite end of things, whether the school is public or private.

 

That said, I know that class time itself often used inefficiently. My daughter, who "got" algebra and physics, spent hours upon hours while the class went over homework problems the other kids didn't understand; the teacher didn't assign the next homework set until afterwards, so she couldn't even work ahead. She wasted time just sitting there. I suspect that rather a lot of this goes on.

 

However, this does mean that there were an awful lot of other kids who were struggling, and who did spend the entire class time trying to keep up, besides having new homework piled on at the end of the day.

 

I agree with the OP that the way textbooks lay things out, doing everything conscientiously would indeed take up far too many hours in the day. I doubt many people do absolutely every single suggested thing, make every graph, work through every problem, write out every vocabulary word. As you said, it's physically just about impossible to do with five or six subjects.

 

Not only that, it isn't even a guarantee that the student will understand at more than a superficial level. There's a fascinating book about a physics teacher in the most highly ranked public school on the West coast; he moved away from the textbook and gave his most advanced class a six-week, hands-on project which involved predicting very accurately the path of an Alka-Seltzer rocket. On the final day, outside judges from tech and science industries watched while the kids presented slides of the math behind their work. Then the teacher placed a hula hoop at a random place in a huge double gymnasium. The kids had to use the math they had worked out to figure out what launch angle to use for their rocket, how much water to add, etc. Only one group made three hits out of three. The group made up of the highest-scoring kids in the usual textbook part of the class failed entirely. They hadn't even gotten the math done; they didn't know how to work without a problem set up in a textbook.

 

I'm not anti-textbook; I just consider them one tool -- not even necessarily the best tool -- in a much larger educational toolkit.

[DarlaS]

As for the overlong textbooks or overly ambitious lesson plans, I usually either avoid them or spend a lot of time paring them down to reality.

 

 

:iagree:

 

I wholeheartedly agree with reality. :D

[DarlaS]

Not sure what subject you are doing, but I'll give it a shot. What I would change is:

No flash cards. Taking notes on the reading, new words and definitions in color, should suffice.

 

 

I am going even planning to buy a set of highlighters for my rising high schooler. It pains me greatly to do this, but I think he should write in his books. Maybe... Taking notes is painfully inefficient for him. He has issues with handwriting due to mixed dominance (left handed/right eyed etc).

 

I haven't actually done it yet, but I'm psyching myself up for it. He's going to be writing in his $$$ college textbooks in a few years anyway. I may as well get used to it now. :tongue_smilie:

[regentrude]

I haven't actually done it yet, but I'm psyching myself up for it. He's going to be writing in his $$$ college textbooks in a few years anyway. I may as well get used to it now.

 

It makes a lot more sense to write in the expensive college texts and actually USE them than to return them to the bookstore in pristine unread condition :-) I wish my students read their textbooks... honestly, it would make so much of a difference. They pay for them anyway, might as well actually use them.

 

For my kids I try to buy a lot of books used (older editions are great) so they CAN and mark write in their books (as opposed to library books).

[Myra]

"There's a fascinating book about a physics teacher in the most highly ranked public school on the West coast"

 

Do you remember the name of the book as I'd love to check it out!

 

Myra

[Guest Cheryl in SoCal]

We do all of science and math. I have several of the big college text books that I use with my history curriculum, which is research based so they are used for research and not "added on" to my curriculum. We don't read every page of every book but instead read what is applicable. We also listen to lectures, watch DVD's, etc. I'm not a read this 1200 page history book for history kind of girl, though I do strive for what should be done instead of what is done (which is why we finish every science and math book).

[DarlaS]

For my kids I try to buy a lot of books used (older editions are great) so they CAN and mark write in their books (as opposed to library books).

 

I've done that. The pre-highlighted ones are the best--and cheapest! :001_smile:

 

My 16 yo refuses to write in his books despite my repeatedly telling him it's okay. He is (and always has been) very fastidious.

[vonfirmath]

For the past 2 weeks I have pretended to be the student and I have gone through the textbooks, word for word (looking up new words in the glossary and memorizing them, writing them on index cards), done the problems, drawn the graphs, gone to the suggested websites, looked over the animations and video materials/tutorials, done the chapter review. etc. I have timed myself (a smart college grad from a none-too-shabby college!) and I am finding that if I want to do the job "right" it is taking me a good deal of time, more that I had ever imagined.

 

I would have one notebook to take notes into -- and only looked up words I didn't know/understand from the reading. And put them in my notebook, not separate index cards. I would not go on the Internet to look at anything unless I felt I needed it to understand what I had just read (and then I'd probably write myself a note to do it later, all at once. The Internet is a huge timesink for me!)

 

Glance at the chapter review and answer the questions in my head/using my notes. Go back through the chapter if I missed something and wrote extra notes ON THAT QUESTION.

 

Do enough problems in math to make sure I can do it. Perhaps start with the ones with answers in the back so I can check my work. Use additional problems if I have problems with the first. Make sure I do problems at the end of the set since those tend to be the hardest/the ones that extend on the information that was taught.

 

(personally, I can't write in a book. I can barely bring myself to write in my Bible!!! But the mere motion of writing something out on paper helps it stick in my head even if I don't go back and reread it later. But this is a personal how I study best thing)

Edited August 16, 2010 by vonfirmath

[stephanier.1765]

We too are writing in our books this year. And he is also having a hard time doing that after years of mom telling him not to. :lol: I copied the first chapter from his text books onto paper to help ease him into it.

[MBM]

I am looking for tips, tricks, and hints on how to do this!

 

Here are some tips that have helped my afterschooled children, who are now ages 13 to 26:

 

Bite off no more than can be chewed well, so to speak.

 

Study for 20 to 30 minutes and then take a short break of maybe five minutes or so. What is studied at the beginning and the end of a session is what tends to stick.

 

Review. They don't belabor the process by rewriting notes, but review often in short increments while on the bus, before class, while eating breakfast, etc.

 

Exercise is an important part of learning. If you want to learn more about this, I'd recommend reading Spark: The Revolutionary New Science of Exercise and the Brain by John Ratey. Fascinating stuff.

 

Always get plenty of sleep. We believe staying up late is counter productive.

 

Eat well and consider adding a good fish oil.

 

Well, that's what we do, and so far, it seems to have worked. Good luck! :)

[DebbS]

Another idea is to use sticky notes instead of highlighting. You'll have to remove them eventually, but only after you've got a section of the book down pretty well.

[Hunter]

Something has to give! What is it? I would say the sciences are taking at least 2 hours per day. Foreign language (advanced, unchartered territory) is about 2 hours a day, and

 

I said this same 2 hour thing in another thread last week :-0 I don't see how most classes can be cut back, and still have a student test well.

 

What my children did, was skip all the tests, and just found out the least they needed to know, to excell at the junior college. We were pretty shocked to see how little they needed to prepare for classes in comparison to the tests.

 

The junior college only used placements tests in English and math. Many of the science and social sciences only required basic math and English skills, not a background in the material to be covered in the course.

[choirfarm]

I agree, in theory.

 

For the past 2 weeks I have pretended to be the student and I have gone through the textbooks, word for word (looking up new words in the glossary and memorizing them, writing them on index cards), done the problems, drawn the graphs, gone to the suggested websites, looked over the animations and video materials/tutorials, done the chapter review. etc. I have timed myself (a smart college grad from a none-too-shabby college!) and I am finding that if I want to do the job "right" it is taking me a good deal of time, more that I had ever imagined.

 

I would say the sciences are taking at least 2 hours per day. Foreign language (advanced, unchartered territory) is about 2 hours a day, and that includes textbook AND workbook AND listening to the audio/visual component as well as written assignments (i.e. 3 paragraph essay). This does not include tests or quizzes, or prep thereof.

 

It amazes me that some students can do this, sitting for 9+ hours a day, focused and concentrating, producing consistent quality work. How does the homeschool parent (instructor) keep an active, energetic child sitting and doing the work for such a long period of time, without getting a "square butt"?

 

I am looking for tips, tricks, and hints on how to do this!

 

Oh my goodness, I don't know any student at all who does this... Now granted, the math I use has a lecturer and so he watches it and then just does the problems just like he would in a regular class. For science, he read and highlights the material. He does the reviews and practice problems. Sometimes he does the web stuff. He makes out a study sheet for himself and takes the test.

 

As far as foreign language and/or any textbook, NO PUBLISHER EXPECTS YOU TO DO EVERYTHING IN IT!!!!!! It gives you choices various things to do to understand the material. You aren't supposed to do it all. I personally think foreign language is the hardest subject to do at home by ourselves. My choice has been to do the SOS Spanish on computer and then for him to take a CC course the next year. I can't imagine doing everything you listed for that!!! Part of what you have to learn when you study is how to determine what is important and what isn't. If you get that interested in minutia in college, you will NEVER, EVER make it. You must determine what is important.

 

I'm really curious about which textbooks you are talking about.

 

Christine

[Pamela H in Texas]

I guess there are a few thoughts here:

 

1) Rarely does a school do EVERY single chapter of a science or history book. I think it's a good aim, but if you don't get every single page done, relax. We are text finishers ourselves, but everyone can do as they please.

 

2) 5-7 pages per day per class of reading doesn't seem obscene to me. Neither does another 45min to an hour of working problems and/or answering questions. Seriously, public schoolers have 30-40 minute lectures then homework. What's the difference?

 

3) Different students work at different paces. What you took 2 hours to do, my daughter probably could have done in an hour or less while my son would have taken 2 days.

 

4) Sometimes the work needs to be at a different level. I *generally* choose not to have my son doing work that would take him 2 days when it would take the average person 2 hours. My daughter used outside classes and graduated early (and probably should have done so sooner).

 

5) And if you believe it's obscene, it's perfectly okay not to run your household that way. This is TOUGH, believe me, because there is so much pressure; however, you set the priorities in your home. Never would I have my kids regularly doing 8 hours of schoolwork. Here and there would be fine, but not regularly. In fact, usually it wouldn't come even kinda close to 8 hours. That was our choice. Lots of homeschoolers have their high schoolers doing just a few hours a day. You won't be weird going that direction :)

[Michelle in AL]

My kids concentrate on certain subjects, usually those that are most important to them and the ones they have an outside teacher for. They will study 2 hrs/day for biology if needed, and 1 hr for math, 1 hr for spanish, but there are certain things they would skip-like the audio portion of spanish. History usually takes 30-45 minutes.

 

I have one dd who if she has a load of hard classes will work 10hrs/day, but she splits that up with some hrs in the evening and she enjoys studying.

 

I have another dd who if she had to study that much would probably crumble.

[Guest Cheryl in SoCal]

Oh my goodness, I don't know any student at all who does this... Now granted, the math I use has a lecturer and so he watches it and then just does the problems just like he would in a regular class. For science, he read and highlights the material. He does the reviews and practice problems. Sometimes he does the web stuff. He makes out a study sheet for himself and takes the test.

 

As far as foreign language and/or any textbook, NO PUBLISHER EXPECTS YOU TO DO EVERYTHING IN IT!!!!!! It gives you choices various things to do to understand the material. You aren't supposed to do it all. I personally think foreign language is the hardest subject to do at home by ourselves. My choice has been to do the SOS Spanish on computer and then for him to take a CC course the next year. I can't imagine doing everything you listed for that!!! Part of what you have to learn when you study is how to determine what is important and what isn't. If you get that interested in minutia in college, you will NEVER, EVER make it. You must determine what is important.

 

I'm really curious about which textbooks you are talking about.

 

Christine

Are you talking about just foreign language textbooks or all textbooks? It seems like the "or" is extending what you wrote to every textbook, I apologize if I'm mistaken. Text books written for schools may not be written for everything to be completed but many (maybe most) textbooks written for homeschoolers aren't, especially math. I think a common mistake homeschoolers make is to skip things in homeschool textbooks because that is standard practice in school textbooks and then our children end up with holes.

[Ester Maria]

My husband tells me that they loved American textbooks in the university and beyond... You know why? Because they explain everything as if you were dumb, with an example for everything, and a generally digestible writing style.

On the other hand, Italian textbooks tended to be a lot more dense, one had to think twice as much while working with them, because they assumed certain preknowledge, would often not go back to the basics, and would provide examples only for genuinely new concepts, not really for routine.

 

The catch is the following: the textbook market is a MARKET, never forget that. It's in their INTEREST to sell you 5 books to learn something rather than to sell you 1 book with that same content condensed, because that's where they draw their profit from. It's also in their INTEREST to make it colorful, print it on high quality paper, and generally make it long, elaborate, with minutiae and various suggestions for activities - all of that adds to the size and the price.

And in most of people's interest is, frankly, to minimize thinking and "filling the gaps" - so they want the most "complete" materials as possible. They want their Organic Chemistry textbooks to start at Chemistry - not to start at Organic Chemistry, if you get what I mean. I notice more and more how teenagers have difficulties with dense texts - becasue they no longer encounter them regularly. They don't have to learn from a 500-page book, but from 1000-page book, approximately the same content. Their texts are filled with solved examples, minutiae, pictures, way too much exercises, then answer keys, accessories, and there are both positive and negative sides to this.

 

I don't think one should feel guilty for not going sloooowly as those textbooks are written, and for just picking the meat out of them; I DO think one should feel guilty for not having picked all meat out of a course because they were too busy with minutiae.

Exercises are the crucial part - skip the "routine" ones (that are all made by the same scheme), and focus only on the schemes of exercises that are difficult. That way you save a lot of time. From assignments, pick which ones to focus on. If the text starts ab ovo, go to the middle. That's what we do here to spare the time and the nerves.

[EKS]

Most high school textbooks seem to be filled with fluff, so that what starts out as a 1000 page book is in reality only 500-700 pages. Really! Many college level textbooks intended for a one semester introductory course (essentially what a high school level year long course is) are much, much thinner.

 

In high school textbooks, you'll find an overwhelming number of suggested activities and assignments. The key word there is "suggested."

 

If it seems like there are too many problems or exercises, there probably are. This gives the teacher flexibility about what to assign, but as a homeschooling parent, it makes me nuts because I'm not confident that I know what is important.

 

So, to some extent I've made peace with textbooks by not feeling as though I need to have my student do every last thing or even most things. I take what seems valuable and leave the rest.

[creekland]

My boys read every last word of every book. It's a must here. We don't necessarily do all the extras like labs (esp if they are basic) or other assignments (web or otherwise).

 

Our ps definitely doesn't cover whole books and leaves many holes in their education. It's part of why I pulled mine out when the oldest reached 9th grade to homeschool. All three of mine test well nationally and "quiz" well with people from local friends to college profs when they like to "quiz" homeschoolers. They are well known as the "smart" ones among their friends (mostly ps kids).

 

They aren't nose in books 24/7, but they do spend a bit of time on school. We break it up and don't have a traditional daily schedule. Instead, they know what work needs to be done and do it as they want (with some reminders that "x" needs to be done at times). They could be working at 10pm, but have taken the morning off to do something else.

 

I believe in education purely for the sake of education. I believe the more you know (in general) the better - on a variety of subjects.

 

I don't plan to change.

[Pam L in Mid Tenn]

Usually the reading is not a big problem. It is all the assignments that can be so very time consuming. My kids will read the whole book (that is the goal anyway), and I will pick and choose the assignments very carefully.

[MBM]

Well, I do agree that many textbooks have been dumbed down, but that's not true for all American universities and high schools. For example, the textbook our high school uses for the ninth grade advanced physics class -- not Advanced Placement -- is less than 500 pages and is used by some universities. All chapters and then some are covered, and the text does not have too much extraneous fluff. Having said that, I can't stand the grammar text my son's school uses which is peppered throughout with *fun and zany* illustrations yet is possibly the most convoluted, illogical text I've ever seen.

 

Two other points to consider:

 

If a student has touched upon the material before, that will make it easier to learn advanced concepts later on. (Mr. Obvious says, "Well, duh!") For example, my son studied biology in seventh and will study chemistry and physics in eighth. Our junior high Science Olympiad team, which recently placed in the top 5 nationally and often takes first place at state, routinely studies excerpts from both high school and college texts. Those kids study a lot, and many are in other advanced classes -- music, math, languages, etc. My point is that many of the kids in the public schools who are taking advanced courses have already studied the basics, and, yes, they put in the time.

 

Another option is to study during summer. I did this at Northwestern U (post grad) and was able to catch on to subtle points and ask in-depth questions later during class. I really felt like I got my money's worth from those classes.

 

Whatever stage your child is at, just try to help her do the best job she can. It does take effort and time, but most things worthwhile do. The tricky part is balancing studying with other parts of life. Good luck!

[Storm Bay]

Here's my brutally honest answer--I think it depends on the dc, on the book in question and your timeframe. Some long books are redundant or boring, some are brilliant. Not all shorter texts have been dumbed down (depends on the subject & how it's been handled) and many can be augmented by better materials than any text could offer. Some dc are better at doing the reading than others, or are faster readers than others. Some dc don't learn best by reading so a shorter book with some live or video instruction might be far more beneficial.

 

In our house we do books cover to cover. An exception was Conceptual Chemistry which is very long for one semester with everything else. However, you only need 12 to make a course (in the IG) & dd read more than 12. In her case, she was lollygagging even though she enjoys the subject.

Edited August 17, 2010 by Karin

[Stacy in NJ]

Tips...hummm...well having taken one through hs and into college I can say that he didn't spend 9 hrs a day on schoolwork. He took upper level mathematics and 2 years of Latin and the sciences. I am wondering what your scheduling looks like. Is it possible you are not spreading out the work most efficiently? Is there a possibility that there is some inefficient use of the study time? The times that you are coming up with seem excessive based on what I've experienced. We do a lot in our hs and supplement quite a bit too and I've never had days that long on a consistent basis. I'd like to try to help but I'd need more info. I suspect the key may be somewhere in scheduling and efficient use of study time.:)

 

Just curious, 2cents..did your oldest also read the great books ala TWTM, complete logic, and another foreign language?

 

I only ask because sometimes it's a matter of emphasis or priorities; some folks are math and/or science focused and some folks are liberal artsie.

[emubird]

Many texts are huge because they are giving the teacher/professor the option to pick and choose what they want to cover. It would be silly to do everything in a text. The publishers are providing lots of material because they want to sell to the most professors. Then the professors trim it down.

 

There is nothing wrong with this.

 

When I use a science or math text with my kids, I've generally taken most of these courses, or have worked or taught in the field, so I have a sense as to what's actually important: what skills and facts they really need to know to go on in the field, what concepts are the basis of the field. So we skip a lot of superfluous stuff, because there is really no point to trying to fill my kids heads with junk that they don't need and will never use -- if it turns out I made a mistake and they do need it eventually, we will have covered the basics thoroughly enough that they will be able to learn what they need on their own.

 

If I didn't cut things out, my kids would be learning so much stuff that things would start to fall out of their heads. And they would have no way of knowing what was important and needed to be retained. They'd end up with a pretty deficient education as a result. I fear that may be happening with many homeschoolers who are in the "must finish the text" camp.

 

For most classes and textbooks, it would be best to pick and choose - even if you have spent a lot on the book. You'll get a better educational "product" if the student can focus on the important concepts. If you aren't sure what to cut, I'd suggest looking around on the web for syllabi that professors have posted for their classes. If you can find one that follows your textbook and gives actual reading assignments, that would make your life easier, but even if you can't, you can generally figure out what topics are being covered and which are skipped.

 

As a case in point, we were using Destinos for Spanish with our kids. My older daughter insisted she had to do every exercise or she wouldn't have had the full experience. I told her just to do a few per chapter. She just couldn't and insisted on doing all of them. It slowed her way down so she didn't get through as much Spanish as she could have. Then she went to take French in college -- and discovered that the professor was only assigning a couple of the book assignments per chapter. She learned French just fine. So now she advises her younger sister just to skip a lot of the assignments in the textbooks that we use at home. The extra assignments are only there so the professors can choose which they feel are most important.

 

Really, it is ok to skip. That is the intent of many textbooks.

 

And when it comes to many science and math textbooks, we generally don't even do any of the reading. We do the example problems and we then do problems for practice, but reading the text is generally a last resort if the student doesn't understand something. Usually the text with the example problems is plenty of explanation. (This isn't true of biology and other descriptive type sciences but for chem and physics, the important thing is being able to work the problems (unless you're into the descriptive areas of those 2 sciences).) For math, in particular, we've never done any of the reading. The reading generally just confuses the issue.

 

In the college physics my daughter took last year, the professor actually told them he didn't want anyone reading the text. He had them get the book because it had lots of examples and good homework problems, but the actual writing was so atrocious he didn't want anyone reading it and getting confused. If he'd seen a book with a decent text, he would have had them get it, but he hadn't run across one. That's been my impression as well with a lot of science textbooks.

 

And then there's the history textbook conundrum. If you pick one text and only use that, you will never discover that a lot of the material in it conflicts with what folks have written on the topic in other books -- this is the case even in highly respected college texts. So it's probably better to get history from a number of different sources rather than depend on one text, which makes reading one text cover to cover a bit of an impossibility in a single year.

[Maverick_Mom]

I also think those books are unreasonably long. It seems that the appearance of what schools are doing keeps getting more and more impressive, while for most of them the reality is increasingly lame (e.g. percent of classes with the label AP versus the number of passing scores.) But as homeschoolers, it's easy to feel pressured to keep up with the appearance of what schools are doing and run our kids ragged trying to match it.

 

Since it has been clear for a while that neither of my students are driven to excel academically, I'm willing to settle for 'good enough.' As for the overlong textbooks or overly ambitious lesson plans, I usually either avoid them or spend a lot of time paring them down to reality.

 

I want my kids to have some time to live life and be involved in other activities. Obviously some people have students with a more academic bent, and they will have a different response.

 

Blessings,

Debbie

 

Thank you for your honest response. Your situation and philosophy sound very much like mine. :)