Interesting education article

[ElizabethB]

Some interesting things, pro homeschool:

 

http://www.theatlantic.com/education/archive/2014/01/kids-are-different-there-are-lots-of-different-ways-to-educate-them/283157/

 

I would be interested to know if you can really do a whole year's worth of work in 3 weeks and what was used for that. I guess if you worked 3 weeks x 40 hours that would add up to 120 hours. I like to percolate more, but interesting...

[regentrude]

I would be interested to know if you can really do a whole year's worth of work in 3 weeks and what was used for that. I guess if you worked 3 weeks x 40 hours that would add up to 120 hours. I like to percolate more, but interesting...

 

The author is talking about high school... well, that would be a level of high school coursework that would be very low in conceptual depth and poor in complex literature.

Difficult concepts need to sink in; the student needs time to mull things over and THINK. The brain is still working on the material even when the student is not actively working on the subject. This time will be missing.

So, an in depth understanding of abstract concepts will be hard to develop. More complex literature will be hard to absorb.

Imagine: read and discuss Iliad, Odyssey, Aeneid, Greek tragedies and Plato in three weeks, for a full ancient literature course? Speed reading abilities assumed, the course would be shallow at best.

A complete math course in three weeks? I have yet to see the high school student who can do concentrated work on mathematics for eight hours a day (single minded math geniuses exempt)- unless the problems are ridiculously easy. (We sometimes spend two hours on a single problem and are exhausted afterwards.) And again, mastery requires practice over time. I doubt the student would still have those skills one year later.

I'd also be concerned about the quality of a foreign language instruction that is done in three weeks and then not touched until the next school year; if there is no continuity, there won't be long term retention.

 

I would be interested to hear if this student managed to become proficient in her foreign  languages learned with this method, what great works of literature were studied, and what difficulty level her science and math instruction was.

 

I can easily see the method working very well with certain high school programs that are basically read text-fill out worksheet-take quiz -forget everything. With only easily accessible short reading assignments. (But then, a friend of mine completed the entire "college prep" high school education of a popular correspondence school in 18 months.)

 

It would not be possible for what *I* personally consider a quality college prep high school education.

But to each their own.

 

[ElizabethB]

The author is talking about high school... well, that would be a level of high school coursework that would be very low in conceptual depth and poor in complex literature.

Difficult concepts need to sink in; the student needs time to mull things over and THINK. The brain is still working on the material even when the student is not actively working on the subject. This time will be missing.

...

 

It would not be possible for what *I* personally consider a quality college prep high school education.

But to each their own.

 

I agree, and that's how I learn best, and I want that level of education for my children.  But, it might work for certain subjects or for people who have different goals.  Also, maybe a good model for people who are more procedural and not deep thinkers?  

 

I do think that more choice in education is good and that may be a good choice for some. 

[Hunter's Moon]

I could definitely see a year's worth of Health fit into three weeks. Not so much with History, English, Math, Science, or Foreign Language.

[shawthorne44]

A summer college class is 5 weeks long.  So, 3 weeks of intensive work on a high school sounds about right.  She just worked on one class during that time period. 

 

[Farrar]

Well, this certainly describes us to a T, though we're in DC:

 

 

 

...if you are in a market like New York, say, where the public schools are lousy and the private schools are ridiculously expensive, then homeschooling provides an opportunity for people who don’t have enough money for private school but value their kids’ education too much to send them to public school to still live in New York as opposed to having to move somewhere else. I think those are all similar problems for people in a lot of different areas.

 

The three weeks for a course thing is a bit silly to me though.  I've seen summer school courses.  They're mostly very remedial or bare bones.  They may pack a lot in, but not with the quality or depth that a good year-long course might have.  You simply cannot read the sheer number of serious, dense, literary books that a solid high school course should have for a bright student in three weeks.  Perhaps in a three week long English course you can read enough Cliff Notes to pass a bunch of multiple choice tests and dash off a bunch of formulaic essays with quotes gathered off the internet.

[JustEm]

hmmm 3 weeks seems short but if you are only focusing on one subject I can see it being possible for many of them.  I thrived in 5 week college courses and they weren't barebone at all.  They were jammed with work and doing much else was not really an option if you wanted to get the most you could out of the class

[Clear Creek]

I guess I have different educational goals for my children than Mr. Reynolds had for his daughter.  I do not see high school as a series of check-the-box courses; I see it as the time to provide a foundation for my children to enter into the Great Conversation; to develop critical thinking skills, to learn how to problem solve, to learn how to do hard things, to investigate and learn something on their own that didn't come from a book or the internet but from experimentation and research, to learn what makes a nation grow and what makes a nation fall, to effectively communicate their thoughts, feelings, and position on an argument, to experience the thoughts and ideas of thousands of years of authors by reading their words, to learn how to create something beautiful, to gain intimate understanding of the world around them, to find beauty in math, to learn how to communicate in the language of the people of a foreign country, and to read, read, read.

[Farrar]

hmmm 3 weeks seems short but if you are only focusing on one subject I can see it being possible for many of them.  I thrived in 5 week college courses and they weren't barebone at all.  They were jammed with work and doing much else was not really an option if you wanted to get the most you could out of the class

 

For a course that's really about the skills and a particular set of content, I could see this working fine.  For a course that is about enriching readings and depth of discussion or about research or a lab course, I don't know how one could really do the same amount of work in such a short time, even if it was the only course and you spent all your focus on it.  I get that you could get somewhere worthwhile, but the same place in three (or five) weeks as in 36?  It just seems difficult to me.  But I'm definitely coming from a humanities perspective on this.  And from the perspective of having had an extremely rigorous high school education.  Reading from sun up to sun down there's no way I could have finished my senior year English reading list in three weeks, much less processed it and written about a dozen seriously researched literary essays about all that work.  I mean, sure, could I have prepped for the AP Exam enough to scrape a 3 or maybe a 4 if that had been my sole focus?  Probably.  But that's not the same thing.

[regentrude]

.  But I'm definitely coming from a humanities perspective on this.

 

I am coming from a science & math perspective ;-)

Cramming an entire math course into three weeks and then not touching math for a whole year? Not going to work.

[kubiac]

 

 

...if you are in a market like New York, say, where the public schools are lousy and the private schools are ridiculously expensive, then homeschooling provides an opportunity for people who don’t have enough money for private school but value their kids’ education too much to send them to public school to still live in New York as opposed to having to move somewhere else. I think those are all similar problems for people in a lot of different areas.

 

Similar circumstances in Los Angeles. I can't fathom doing the monkey dance necessary to get into a private school here, much less pay the tuition for 13 YEARS. (~$32,000 not counting inflation x 13 = $416,000 ha ha ha) And the public schools appear to be prisons (of mediocrity and petty bureaucracy and general malaise).

[kiwik]

At high school we had 4, 1 hour classes for each subject. 36 weeks or so equals 144 hours a year. Most of them at least for the first 3 years were shallow and trivial, requiring no mulling over or deep thought. I think i could have done the years work in 3 weeks if i could have sustained enough interest.

[kitten18]

A summer college class is 5 weeks long. So, 3 weeks of intensive work on a high school sounds about right. She just worked on one class during that time period.

In college we had "pre-session" summer courses that were 3 weeks long.

I didn't know anyone who took pre-session classes that were important for their major, but for some general classes that just had to get done, they were great.

[Harriet Vane]

My dd took a 3-week course in Chemistry. In her case, the hyper-focus helped her understand it much, much better. The course was taught at a private high school by the same teacher that teaches the full-year course. They used the same books and covered the same material. It was a great experience. It's definitely possible to master a year of material in three weeks.

[Lara in Colo]

I like to learn this way.  I like being immersed in a subject and not having to switch gears.  I learn so much better.  However some subjects do need mulling and continual review.  I try to a "front burner-- back burner" approach here.  We do a front burner subject for a few weeks (every day, for the first half of the day) then move it to the back burner.  For instance grammar--- MCT every morning with lots of discussion and progress (usually for three hours) then after a few weeks (once we get it under our belt ) move it to the afternoon and do the practice things and review the vocabulary (30 min/day)    Move American revolution to the front.

 

[Incognito]

The problem with changes in the direction the article is talking about lies in regulation.  In our area there are many alternatives, but the government oversight of them is difficult and they are trying to reign in some groups because they do not meet the goals the government wants in education in a format that is pleasing to the government.

 

[AngelaNYC]

Beginning defensive rant:  I just wanted to throw out there that New York (City) has over 400 public high schools that all NYC children to choose from.  About 250 are good, about 100 of those are really good, and about 50 of those are outstanding.  So, when people say NY (I'll assume they mean NYC because they usually do), "where the public schools are lousy", then they haven't really done their homework.  Rant over.

 

Ok, carry on. 

[stripe]

I seriously cannot imagine doing one subject for 8 hours a day. Yikes. Although in college I did take a summer language course that met for maybe 6 hours (but we had a long lunch break), and it was very effective because it was so immersive. I even started to dream in the other language, which alarmed my TAs. ;)

 

I remember when I was in high school looking (not for very long, more out of surprise) at some school that had very short courses, for 3 weeks or so.

 

I am familiar with programs for working adults that condense what is supposed to be a semester's worth of work into, say, 6-12 days worth. I think some things are lost in the experience just due to exhaustion.

 

But my favorite phrase in the article is "that way we didn’t have to do the homeschooling. "

 

ETA: I also remember watching a Frontline program called Dropout Nation (which we discussed in this thread), about at-risk high school students in Houston, Texas; the school was set up so students could take online courses. I never quite understood the system but there were kids who had tons of credits to make up and it was, according to the administrators, entirely possible to do in a short period of time.

 

[La Condessa]

Thinking back to my own high school education at quite a good public high school, I think that it totally would have been possible to complete the work for the normal, required courses to graduate in three weeks. For the interesting, higher level classes that kept all of high school from being torture? No way. The classes that were really worthwhile took way more than 144 hours of work, because you were learning and working for most of the class time, and then you would go home and spend another 1-3 hours studying and learning on your own.

[EmilyGF]

A lot of honors kids at my high school got their fluff classes out of the way during summer school. I can't imagine doing Calculus in 3 weeks - your brain needs time to adjust! But Health, or just enough of a foreign language to get you over the bar in to the higher level, or even Econ, which was a complete and total waste of time at my high school, made a lot of sense to do over the summer.

 

(I love econ, but apparently the admin at our school thought it a good place to store athletics coaches.)

 

Emily

[Korrale]

They didn't really say what the course was. But I could see if happening.

Yes, with something like math they need to keep doing it. But if the class was algebra I it does't mean that algebra II would be taken the next year. I would assume it would be taken directly after.

Likewise if it was Spanish I, or Ameican. History I.

[Farrar]

Beginning defensive rant:  I just wanted to throw out there that New York (City) has over 400 public high schools that all NYC children to choose from.  About 250 are good, about 100 of those are really good, and about 50 of those are outstanding.  So, when people say NY (I'll assume they mean NYC because they usually do), "where the public schools are lousy", then they haven't really done their homework.  Rant over.

 

Ok, carry on. 

 

Yes.  I feel the same about DC.  Things have changed so much since it was time for my boys to start K.  At that time, it would have been a stretch to send them.  Now, if we wanted to and believed in institutional school, we could make it work.  There are some great options here now and even the "bad" schools have drastically improved.  But it did allow us to make decisions about where to move without considering the school district and to begin our education journey without fighting over charter spots.  This stuff definitely makes the difference.

[lewelma]

It is illegal to homeschooling that way here in NZ. The law requires homeschooling to be done "as regularly and as well" as public school. Three weeks is certainly not as regular as our forty week school year. You would fail a review.

 

Ruth in NZ

[Farrar]

It is illegal to homeschooling that way here in NZ. The law requires homeschooling to be done "as regularly and as well" as public school. Three weeks is certainly not as regular as our forty week school year. You would fail a review.

 

Ruth in NZ

 

Well, in all the examples given - both in the article and from people here - it's the schools that are doing things that way here in the US.  Online charters allow you to learn this way sometimes.

 

I appreciate hearing from people who say this style of learning worked for them.  I've definitely had intensive learning experiences that have benefited me in my life in ways that more slow and steady traditional experiences have not.  I guess it seems like a good idea for some things.  Particularly as an adult, I appreciate those sorts of experiences more.  I mean, if I want to learn a new art style or a specific skill such as a programming language, I'd much rather do a short term boost kind of experience to learn it.  But I don't really want to kid myself either that the amount of material covered could be the same.

[Harriet Vane]

It is illegal to homeschooling that way here in NZ. The law requires homeschooling to be done "as regularly and as well" as public school. Three weeks is certainly not as regular as our forty week school year. You would fail a review.

 

Ruth in NZ

 

This does not make sense to me. It's the same amount of time, and the same work is completed. The work is just organized in blocks than in a mix of small doses. How is that not regular or well?

[lewelma]

I'm sure it would depend on how it was done. But the education review office has interpreted the wording of the law to mean that you cannot consolidate a year's learning into say half a year. It is simply not allowed. By my calculation, if you rotated six subjects and completed each in three weeks you would be done in 18 weeks. Sorry, illegal here.

[Arcadia]

But, it might work for certain subjects or for people who have different goals. Also, maybe a good model for people who are more procedural and not deep thinkers?

There are courses that can be done in intensive 3 weeks courses. For example if the student have informal lessons/prior knowledge in a 2nd language, then it is possible to do a "crash course" version of high school first year in that language because it is more of filling the gaps compare to requirement of the coursework.

Another is a programming language course. If a student already know a programming language, it is possible to do the beginners coursework for another programming language in 3 weeks.

Another coursework that comes to mind is high school accounting. It is possible to cram with prior knowledge or a studious person.

[Korrale]

I wonder how NZ schools are... I just don't know.

 

But as a comparison American highschools are very different than Australian highschool. American schools are credit based. And certain classes have different credits. And there are a lot of credit requirements... A certain amount of math credits, English credits, foreign language or studies credits have to be met before graduation. If a highschool student doubles up classes or does summer school they can graduate early, just as soon as they meet all their credits. I don't know how often one is to select new classes, hubby is downstairs... Someone here will know.

 

In Australia it is very different. You take the same subject for 2 years. In grade 9 and 10 you have the compulsory subjects such as math, science, English, Health/PE, then you have electives that you take for 2 years. One has to be either History, Geography or Civics.

In grade 11 and 12 you also take subjects over 2 years. When I went to school only English was compulsory. But I think they were to change that by making math and possibly a science class compulsory.

 

Math was always intergrated. There was no pre algebra, algebra I, algebra II, geometry, trigonometry, Calculus (or however they do it) sequence. It was just Math that had to be done for 2 years.

I know my husband covered English requirements by doing a class in highschool called Women's studies one year. But in Australia it was just enlish for 2 years.

[Korrale]

There was no flexibility to graduate early in Australia either. We all graduate at the end of the year at the same time because we all take the same number of classes.

[lewelma]

Until the age of 16, you must be in full time school or homeschooling for 40 weeks per year. So 'as regularly' means 40 weeks. My son did four math classes last year each taking about ten weeks, but he still worked on math for forty weeks. I'm not an expert on ERO's interpretation of the law, but as far as I know you cannot do a three week intensive math class and call your math done for the year.

 

When you are reviewed by ERO, they want to see what you have done in the past six months, and it must include the seven learning areas -- math, English, social studies, science, technology, the arts, and PE. This does not mean that you must take a full class in each, technology can be integrated, and you could study the arts inside is SS, etc. We only do a half class in history. After age 16 (or 11th grade) you can specialize. I personally don't know anyone who has gone through a highschool review, so I might be off here, but this is definitely true up to age 13.

 

There is no standardized testing of homeschoolers here or a required curriculum that must be followed, so saying you must study the seven learning areas in a regular manner every year does not seem onerous to me or anyone I know.

[stripe]

There are courses that can be done in intensive 3 weeks courses. For example if the student have informal lessons/prior knowledge in a 2nd language, then it is possible to do a "crash course" version of high school first year in that language because it is more of filling the gaps compare to requirement of the coursework.

When I took a summer language course, it was 9 weeks long to get one college year's worth. It was very intense, and we covered the EXACT same material. I know, because the department used a ton of different instructors and TAs and so was completed regimented and planned out so that everyone did the same thing. But that wasn't any three weeks, and I got one year's worth of language credit for it. It wouldn't 

 

 

Another is a programming language course. If a student already know a programming language, it is possible to do the beginners coursework for another programming language in 3 weeks.

 

I think the example of computer languages is not really relevant to most high school students' experience. I speak as someone with a computer science minor. Once I knew the first two, it was indeed easy peasy to learn more. But when I had to pick a language and learn it on my own, I didn't get any extra credit for it; it was one component of an upper division (college) programming language course. I didn't get academic credit for each single language that I learned, nor do I believe I should have.

 

I am totally not a fan of this system for most things, and I am completely in understanding of why New Zealand and Australia would not allow this. I really don't think traditional US schools work this way either. What I saw in "Dropout Nation" was, in some ways, a school district frantically trying to get at-risk students to stuff a bunch of credits in their curriculum (during after school and online sessions) to get them out the door before their worlds collapsed. It did not look to me like an educationally rich experience.  I suspect more programs for working adults and at risk students get into this style because there is a perceived rush to get through things.

 

Here is an article from the Frontline website about another technique used in Texas, and now that I read this, I do remember a part of the program: some students are pressured to move towards what are claimed to be diploma mills, in order to bring schools' dropout rates down, because a student who transfers to such a "school" counts as a transfer, not a dropout. The "schools" have students take an exam for a fee (several hundreds of dollars), and in return, receive a diploma. They were originally developed for conservative Christian homeschooling families.

 

It appears that these three institutions are the main (only?) 4 year colleges that use a block schedule:

http://www.cornellcollege.edu/one-course-at-a-time/index.shtml features charming terms such as "Learn Authentically"

http://www.tusculum.edu/academics/block.html

http://www.coloradocollege.edu/basics/blockplan/

[Dmmetler]

One question I have is-were the courses ones where the student already had a lot of prior knowledge, and only needs to take tests? I know a family that does K12 through a charter, with an accelerated learner. The girl finished her complete coursework for 2nd grade by October, and is essentially unschooling the rest of the year (two co-ops, choir, cheer team, mythology club, arts and crafts, independent reading, etc) to fill out the required time she has to report to the charter. Because her DD is ahead of the class, she doesn't have to do the class connects, and as long as she's doing well on the state tests, she doesn't have to do Study Island.  Next year, she'll do the same-have her DD test on everything she already knows, and, again, will probably be done with a "year" of school early in the year.

 

The single hardest class I ever took in my life was a children's literature graduate course, crammed into a 4 week session.  I love children's literature, read a lot of it, and thought the course would be fun. And over 16 weeks, it probably would have been. Over 4 weeks, it was a  TON of reading and writing every single night and living in the library, with several hours of discussion every day. I have to wonder what the failure rate was, because a lot of people just stopped coming, and the withdrawal period in a 4 week summer session was only about a week long.

 

 

 

 

[Harriet Vane]

I'm sure it would depend on how it was done. But the education review office has interpreted the wording of the law to mean that you cannot consolidate a year's learning into say half a year. It is simply not allowed. By my calculation, if you rotated six subjects and completed each in three weeks you would be done in 18 weeks. Sorry, illegal here.

 

I find that sad and unfortunate simply because some people learn more quickly than others. If the work is done, then I don't see why there need be a fuss about spreading it out longer than necessary.

 

That said, most of my kids' classes are studied in the "normal" tradition of doing a little every day. My dd's Chemistry course opened my eyes to the potential of block scheduling, though.

[regentrude]

I think the claim refers just to high school level coursework, not AP/IB/DE or math beyond A1 (which contains a lot of review and units that were in pre-A in my day).  I could see a well traveled, well read child of two PhDs who has an excellent memory easily able to do gen ed coursework in three weeks at the high school age.  When you consider gen ed high school English is just three-four novels, a grammar test and the ability to write an essay...it's no suprise that  a child who has seen these productions on stage, probably summered in Europe and learned French from the nanny, reads quality writing, and learned to write an essay in elementary school would have little trouble doing a quick review before testing out.  I think he's just making the case that gen ed high school is not appropriate for wealthy, traveled children who are native English speakers...and if his child was in private high school, likely would not be working at the gen ed level.

 

But then it begs the question: why descend to this level for homeschooling? Why not homeschool at a level that is appropriate for this student? Why even subject the student to these three-week-chunks of mindless busywork instead of learning something new and challenging?

 

[Farrar]

I find that sad and unfortunate simply because some people learn more quickly than others. If the work is done, then I don't see why there need be a fuss about spreading it out longer than necessary.

 

It's interesting to me...  because it sort of gets to what is the point of education.  Is it a series of pieces of information and skills that have to be checked off?  If so, then I totally agree.  I mean, if you need to learn a longish list of skills and key information to graduate high school, then once you learn it, you're done, right?  Whether you finish in a couple of weeks or four years is irrelevant.  You learn the basics, you're finished.

 

But if education is about reaching your potential, joining the great conversation, furthering your curiosity about the world, deepening your knowledge as much as possible, then it does make more sense to go by time and mostly ignore that list and not allow kids to simply cover the basics and get away with the minimum.  The "checklist" is a minimum amount of competence, but the real meaning of high school is that you've spent this amount of time learning as much as you can and emerging with whatever skills and knowledge you managed to garner during that time.  And, thus, maybe a student could do a crash course in a language or in algebra or in writing literary essays or whatever in a certain amount of time, but then they would need to keep learning to solidify skills as much as possible.

 

It does seem though that if it's about time, you ought to be able to break the time up however you like.  If a student's learning style is to focus intensively on one or two subjects at a time, then I could see that working...  But for only three weeks, all your math or reading for the year?  Seems like not enough practice with math and not enough reading for English.

[ElizabethB]

Here is another article about his book...it looks like she went to college when she finished high school.

 

http://legalinsurrection.com/2014/01/review-the-new-school-by-professor-glenn-reynolds/

[Harriet Vane]

It's interesting to me...  because it sort of gets to what is the point of education.  Is it a series of pieces of information and skills that have to be checked off?  If so, then I totally agree.  I mean, if you need to learn a longish list of skills and key information to graduate high school, then once you learn it, you're done, right?  Whether you finish in a couple of weeks or four years is irrelevant.  You learn the basics, you're finished.

 

But if education is about reaching your potential, joining the great conversation, furthering your curiosity about the world, deepening your knowledge as much as possible, then it does make more sense to go by time and mostly ignore that list and not allow kids to simply cover the basics and get away with the minimum.  The "checklist" is a minimum amount of competence, but the real meaning of high school is that you've spent this amount of time learning as much as you can and emerging with whatever skills and knowledge you managed to garner during that time.  And, thus, maybe a student could do a crash course in a language or in algebra or in writing literary essays or whatever in a certain amount of time, but then they would need to keep learning to solidify skills as much as possible.

 

It does seem though that if it's about time, you ought to be able to break the time up however you like.  If a student's learning style is to focus intensively on one or two subjects at a time, then I could see that working...  But for only three weeks, all your math or reading for the year?  Seems like not enough practice with math and not enough reading for English.

 

Education is both, unfortunately.

 

We have to check off certain things on the list in order to meet the requirements to go to college. Once in college, a student has to check off some things on the list just to graduate, even though those classes will not prove useful in their career.

 

My dd will not be going into a math or science related field. Therefore, classes like Chemistry or Physics are things to just get done. Her courses are all college prep and in that sense, definitely rigorous. It worked rather well for her to just get her Chemistry course over with so that she focus on the subject areas that are applicable to her long-term goals.

 

 

Education is also learning and growing as far as that person's potential can take them. That is why my dd does advanced work in her language arts, history, and foreign language courses. With the time that we have, she is studying at the highest level at which she is capable, not to check off requirements from a list, but to prepare her for the life and the career that she will live.

 

So many on this thread are making the assumption that one cannot fit in a rigorous amount of work in just a few weeks. That assumption is false. It is completely possible to fit in a semester or a year of work--it's just a question of having the right teacher and having a student who is willing to work at it. It's a valid educational option that will work for some and not for others based on their personality, learning style, and willingness to work.

[Farrar]

So many on this thread are making the assumption that one cannot fit in a rigorous amount of work in just a few weeks. That assumption is false. It is completely possible to fit in a semester or a year of work--it's just a question of having the right teacher and having a student who is willing to work at it. It's a valid educational option that will work for some and not for others based on their personality, learning style, and willingness to work.

 

Books and other works I had to read during my senior year in high school English:

* All of Canturbury Tales

* Gulliver's Travels

* Heart of Darkness

* Hamlet

* Macbeth

* Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead

* Jane Eyre

* Wuthering Heights

* Equus

* The Importance of Being Earnest

* To the Lighthouse

* Beowulf

* Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man

* Dubliners

* School for Scandal

* Howard's End

* I know we read a Dickens...  I'm so sure, but I can't remember which one...  Probably Tale of Two Cities

* substantial selections from The Fairie Queen and Paradise Lost

* pretty much all of the poetry in the Norton Anthology of British Literature Vol. 1

* literary criticism essays about many of the works we read

 

I consider that a relatively rigorous one year curriculum.  I think it would be sheer absurdity to do it in three weeks.  You'd have to read the entirety of each work in a day.  And, maybe, just reading from morning to night, you could do that.  Probably, actually if you were focused.  But what if you additionally had essays about each one?  By the end of it, would you remember anything at all?  It would just be grueling.

 

I agree that a three week course might work for some topics and subjects.  But I don't buy it for a truly rigorous English class, except possibly for the most gifted of students.

[Korrale]

My college literature class's weren't even that rigorous.

[Farrar]

The above is now considered AP level, not high school level.

 

Yeah, that was an AP class.  But I could have listed my 10th grade non-AP list and it would have had a similar page count - I had to read Anna Karenina that year, plus more than a dozen other books.  My point is that doing that in three weeks would be grueling if not impossible for many kids and not allow for any depth of understanding because it would be too driven by a constant forward push to finish, finish, finish.

[lewelma]

I don't question whether you could get in the hours in three weeks; I question how much of it you could retain long term. Math, foreign language, music performance -- long term retention would be next to impossible if you did not follow up. I'm pretty iffy on science retention too.

 

We did do a focused year this past year in math by "dropping" science and English for six months. However, during those seven months for science he did a six week science fair project and read scientific american. And for English, he read ten classic novels (including Moby Dick), listened to the TTC lecture series on literary analysis, and he worked for months planning his novel. However, he did not study chemistry with his textbook and he did not write anything but math proofs.

 

So I do understand the need to focus on single subjects, I just would not completely drop the other subjects during the rest of the year. So if my son took a three week chemistry class, I would have him spend one hour reviewing every fortnight for the rest of the year. Not an onerous burden, and would greatly improve retention. I believe the NZ education review office would approve of this plan.

[kiwik]

Thanks Lewelma I couldn't remember whether high school was the same number of weeks as primary.

I don't think I could have done maths or english in three weeks but social studies and science in years 9, 10 and 11 probably. I actually did school certificate English at night school as an adult attending one 1.5 hour class a week.

 

However it is similar to the "jet black" karate programme of white to black belt in six months. It is possible but there is stuff you are supposed to learn by training 5 years plus and maturing you are supposed to do that simply doesn't happen in 6 months.

 

Just out of curiousity Lewelma I thought audits weren't done much now - most of the homeschoolers I know are of the unschooling kind whose kids can't read at 8. I find it hard they could prove they were teaching "as regularly and well" as school as some of them don't actually do any work ERO would recognise as such.

[stripe]

Books and other works I had to read during my senior year in high school English:

....

I consider that a relatively rigorous one year curriculum.  I think it would be sheer absurdity to do it in three weeks.  You'd have to read the entirety of each work in a day.  And, maybe, just reading from morning to night, you could do that.  Probably, actually if you were focused.  But what if you additionally had essays about each one?  By the end of it, would you remember anything at all?  It would just be grueling.

 

I agree that a three week course might work for some topics and subjects.  But I don't buy it for a truly rigorous English class, except possibly for the most gifted of students.

We had extended discussions of one book for the whole year, and we also read a Shakespeare play entirely aloud. I can't imagine zooming through Dostoevsky or Shakespeare. 

[regentrude]

I don't question whether you could get in the hours in three weeks; I question how much of it you could retain long term. Math, foreign language, music performance -- long term retention would be next to impossible if you did not follow up. I'm pretty iffy on science retention too.

 

This, precisely.

[Joyofsixreboot]

It would depend on the class and the maturity of the student.  Where one thing builds upon another and needs mastery like mathematics or where the topic is shaped by your deep (and hopefully maturing) thoughts about the material such as literature more time is valuable.  Where it is a matter of just learning the material such as PE, Health, Personal Finance, etc.  I think my 9th grader could accomplish it in 3 weeks.  So much depends on student personality.  Are you a focused learner or do you like variety?  I took many college summer courses because I liked just getting down to the material without a lot of foofaraw.

[shawthorne44]

A lot of honors kids at my high school got their fluff classes out of the way during summer school. I can't imagine doing Calculus in 3 weeks - your brain needs time to adjust! But Health, or just enough of a foreign language to get you over the bar in to the higher level, or even Econ, which was a complete and total waste of time at my high school, made a lot of sense to do over the summer.

 

(I love econ, but apparently the admin at our school thought it a good place to store athletics coaches.)

 

Emily

 

My Econ teacher (which I took in summer school) told us she couldn't balance her checkbook.  So, she had two checking accounts.  One for even months and one for odd months.  That way she could just look at the starting balance which she switched, and she never had to balance.  Even as a teenager that made me want to bounce my head on the desk.  

[shawthorne44]

I had sort of done something like this for an important class in college.  It was a 5-hour Calculus class for Engineers.  (The second semester was 4 hours and you did 3 math classes your freshman year)

I totally ignored the class until Saturday morning.  Did not even go to class.  The class had been taught by the same guy for forever, and the lectures had been videotaped and could be checked out.  I would do a week's worth of lectures and work on Saturday working until done.  Lecture, homework, lecture, homework...My retention was excellent, and it was very time efficient.  

[regentrude]

I had sort of done something like this for an important class in college.  It was a 5-hour Calculus class for Engineers.  (The second semester was 4 hours and you did 3 math classes your freshman year)

I totally ignored the class until Saturday morning.  Did not even go to class.  The class had been taught by the same guy for forever, and the lectures had been videotaped and could be checked out.  I would do a week's worth of lectures and work on Saturday working until done.  Lecture, homework, lecture, homework...My retention was excellent, and it was very time efficient.  

 

That is not remotely the same thing. If I understand correctly what you are saying, you completed the work of each week on one day of that week, doing so throughout the semester. This means that your brain still had a full week to process the material before the new load, and that you revisited math every week for 15 or 16 weeks.

This is something completely different from covering the entire course in three weeks of non-stop work.

 

[EmilyGF]

Books and other works I had to read during my senior year in high school English:

* All of Canturbury Tales

* Gulliver's Travels

* Heart of Darkness

* Hamlet

* Macbeth

* Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead

* Jane Eyre

* Wuthering Heights

* Equus

* The Importance of Being Earnest

* To the Lighthouse

* Beowulf

* Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man

* Dubliners

* School for Scandal

* Howard's End

* I know we read a Dickens...  I'm so sure, but I can't remember which one...  Probably Tale of Two Cities

* substantial selections from The Fairie Queen and Paradise Lost

* pretty much all of the poetry in the Norton Anthology of British Literature Vol. 1

* literary criticism essays about many of the works we read

 

I consider that a relatively rigorous one year curriculum.  I think it would be sheer absurdity to do it in three weeks.  You'd have to read the entirety of each work in a day.  And, maybe, just reading from morning to night, you could do that.  Probably, actually if you were focused.  But what if you additionally had essays about each one?  By the end of it, would you remember anything at all?  It would just be grueling.

 

I agree that a three week course might work for some topics and subjects.  But I don't buy it for a truly rigorous English class, except possibly for the most gifted of students.

Wow - I took AP English at a top Silicon Valley school and it seemed the goal of the class was more about political correctness than variety of books read. We maybe read half as many books. We did read The Invisible Man, though (and because I changed teachers mid-year, I spent two whole months on it), and spent a month writing our own poems and reading them for the class. I think we also read Hedda Gabler and A Doll's House, but maybe that was 10th grade English - hard to remember.

 

Emily

 

[a27mom]

Ok I read both articles and I think people are really reading a lot into what he is saying about the 3 week class thing.

 

1st of all, the rather well ranked university I attended offered several 3 wk classes every year between semesters. Commonly known in my area as "J" term and May term. These were the same classes as offered for full semesters. And while not very class works in this format, many do.

 

2nd, these were likely 1/2 year and not all full year courses. 36 weeks of school divided by 3 weeks, gives you 12 classes. If we don't include PE, the average high schooler takes about 6 classes.

 

3rd, where do people seem to get the idea that this girl did one class and then never thought about it again, never read another book, and turned off her brain afterwards. In the second article mentioned it says that she worked 3 days a week for a production company doing research for history and biography documentaries. So it sounds like she spent a lot of time involved in humanities studies outside of official "schoolwork"

 

My take is that these parents chose this online program so she could meet the general high school requirements, and not miss anything "required". Then she had the time to pursue her actual education without letting school get in the way. I don't think he is implying that these online courses are the sum total of her education.

 

FWIW I certainly could have completed almost all of my high school classes (with the possible exception of lab sciences) with 3 weeks of focused work. And I probably would have had equal retention.