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Just curious because I've been told - by several people - that Thomas Jefferson Education is the *only* way to homeschool and be truly successful.

 

Have you heard of it?

 

Do you know what it is?

 

What is your opinion, if any, of TJEd?

 

Teaching methods not only have to work for the kid, they have to work for the mom. TJ Ed does not work for ME. Long-term, it does not give me confidence about my child's readiness for college. And not everybody wants to raise junior statesmen. There are other things in life and other methods. I guess the blush is off the rose on that fad, at least for me.

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The seminar I went to was run by local homeschool moms and dads who had been homeschooling the TJEd way long enough to have kids in college-selective ones. It was general and had several "day in the life of" kind of examples because so many people with large families participated and wanted that kind of information.  They discussed different kinds of  interest driven projects their younger kids were doing, (very similar to what I've heard from unschoolers whose kids have projects going on) they talked about classics their kids were reading, (very similar lists to Trivium and Circe and Charlotte Mason) and they talked about internships and apprenticeships their teens and young adults were involved (unlike anything I've heard from any other sort of homeschooling approach.) They didn't charge any fees but they were selling A Thomas Jefferson Education by DeMille and the Companion Book by Jessup (I think that was the author's name.)

 

There are people who would argue that there's a culture of conformity in Utah that's a whole lot stronger than in other subcultures across the US.  I don't know if that's true or not, but I have heard LDS friends make comments along those lines. I got a bunch of them when I told people I was taking my older two to hang out with Shannon Hale and her fans for a weekend in Provo 8 years ago. I know that's not southern Utah.

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By the way, we're looking to relocate to the Southeast--any tips on homeschooling as an LDS family in the Bible Belt?

We live in North Carolina (originally from Montana). The vast majority of people here, and all the home schoolers, have been very welcoming to us as an LDS family. One of the first things people ask here is "Have you found a church?" when they find out you're new to the area. Not one person has been anything but positive when I tell them what church we belong to, which is an improvement over Montana where there seems to be some hostility from some evangelicals towards Mormons.

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We live in North Carolina (originally from Montana). The vast majority of people here, and all the home schoolers, have been very welcoming to us as an LDS family. One of the first things people ask here is "Have you found a church?" when they find out you're new to the area. Not one person has been anything but positive when I tell them what church we belong to, which is an improvement over Montana where there seems to be some hostility from some evangelicals towards Mormons.

 

Sending you a PM...North Carolina is at the top of our list :)

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There were and probably still are TJEd seminars. They were called Face to Face with Greatness. I went to one about math, taught by DeMille. I studied through multi-variable calculus in college, but I was interested in hearing how math is taught the TJEd way. I remember asking lots of pointed questions, seeking clarification on the more preposterous points. Like, DeMille went on about Plato and how one doesn't equal one because one fish doesn't equal one army. I asked him a question about how to teach math if one doesn't equal one. He smiled smugly and wrote on the board "let 1 = 1." Ok, buddy. That's pretty obvious (or should be). Word problems that require students to keep track of labels will take care of that. My 2yo knows one jelly bean isn't the same thing as one bag of jelly beans.

 

Anyway, there was also stuff about reading classic literature and the bible and stopping to do the math bits that pop up. Also, you should read Newton's Principia Mathematica. Right. Um....

 

But I've always loved a good math textbook, so perhaps I was too corrupted before arriving at his seminar. (Textbooks are bad.) :-P

 

Wasn't he also the guy who said that you should teach your kid Spanish by plunking down a copy of Don Quixote and making them translate it? 

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