Education: A Science of Relationships

I’m enjoying listening to the audiobook version of For the Children’s Sake by Susan Schaeffer MacCauley.  I read this book several years ago when we first began homeschooling, and it shaped my views of education.  Here’s a quote I heard today that I simply had to stop and record here for you:

“When I was a child, education for me often meant memorizing French verbs or remembering someone else’s answer to a question.  Now I find it helpful and liberating to enjoy Charlotte Mason’s view of Education.  It does not mean that adults think of a child as a blank sheet of paper on which they imprint their ideas, impressions, and knowledge.  Neither does it mean leaving a child unattended, like a weed growing in the sidewalk.  It is a balanced understanding of education as the provision of possibilities for a person to build relationships with a vast number of things and thoughts.  We must take steps to provide a diet which opens doors for each child to build a relationship with God, other persons, and the universe.  If it sounds broad, it is broad.  A child should not be left to stumble upon educational material by chance. Charlotte Mason took great care to provide a wide variety of curriculum, otherwise the children would be deprived of the best of ideas, culture, literature, science, etc.”

Ensuring Your Kids Aren’t “Dumber than Dirt” (and a hilarious homeschool parody video)

I liked this author’s ideas on how to ensure our kids become smarter than rocks. Among other ideas, he mentions turning off the TV, reading aloud to the kids, eating together often, becoming a parent who loves to learn for herself (or himself!) and homeschooling. Personally, I thinking turning off the TV would bring the quickest and greatest educational success to this generation of American children! I just wish I had the guts to chuck the ‘ol boob tube (means something different today than it used to, doesn’t it?! Still pretty accurate description, I’m afraid, only now with a double entendre!).

On the subject of homeschooling, if you haven’t seen this hilarious parody called A Homeschool Family, you’ll laugh. If you’ve been around the homeschooling community at all, you’ll laugh until you cry. Comedian Tim Hawkins made this video with his family and several other borrowed children. His wife is fighting cancer right now, so please say a prayer for her!

Actually, if you need a few laughs, you may want to spend a few minutes looking around Tim Hawkins‘ website. My husband found the video called Cletus Take The Wheel absolutely side-splitting!!

Summer “School”

(I wrote this a month ago and forgot to post it!)

So many people have asked us if we are “done with school yet?” From the cashiers at the grocery stores to friends and family who know we homeschool, everyone asks with eager anticipation for the children if summer has yet begun! My children and I have, for the most part, returned these questions with quizzical stares.

I do understand the reasoning behind this question. It wasn’t so long ago that I experienced Spring Fever year after year — looking longingly out of classroom windows and wishing I could be swimming or even just sitting somewhere comfortable chatting with my gal pals! When asked about summer break for our family, I have found myself tongue-tied, uncertain as how to explain to everyone that my children have yet to experience Spring Fever.

Then I came across this wonderful little post at First Things. Sally Thomas attempts to answer the question “What do you do all day?” by explaining a bit about their holistic view of learning. I thought Thomas’ description may help some people understand how different learning at home can be from going to school to learn. In other words, our little home school is not something that we really need a vacation from — we aren’t beating the children over their heads with giant text books all summer, simply learning and living as we go!

CA Assembly Bill 1236: Kindergarten Readiness Act

Have you ever wondered how Kindergarten came into being?  John Taylor Gatto in Why fix a system designed to destroy individual thought? mentions the origins of Kindergarten and its connections to Socialist philosophy.  I think Kindergarten is a fine option for some, but no one who believes in freedom should stand by and give the government permission to make Kindergarten mandatory.  Please pay attention to the upcoming California Assembly Bill 1236 which would do just that.

 

I received the following in my inbox from Diane Flynn Keith, well-known for her Clickschooling and Universal Preschool websites. I have been meaning to research and write a bit about this bill, and haven’t had time.  I am thankful that Diane gave me permission to re-print a few of her thoughts here:

 

 

Help Stop Mandatory Kindergarten In California & Beyond!

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

California School Borgs
Launch Mandatory Kindergarten:
Is Resistance Futile?

In lock-step with the California Teachers Association, and marching to the beat of the do-it-for-the-global-economy-and-new-world-order drum, California Assembly Member Gene Mullin (Democrat, South San Francisco) introduced the heinous Assembly Bill 1236: Kindergarten Readiness Act that will be heard on Wednesday, April 25th before the Assembly Committee on Education. The bill:

1) MAKES FULL TIME KINDERGARTEN MANDATORY UNDER PENALTY OF LAW for children who turn 5 years of age by September 1st of any given school year beginning in 2011. The state is going to force parents of little, tiny kids to put them in school. When did we all agree that the state should have the responsibility for educating our babies? How can anyone in a free nation go along with the idea of FORCED government schooling of defenseless and vulnerable children? Where’s the freedom and liberty in that?

2) In direct opposition to the will of the people of California who voted against Prop 82 - The Universal Preschool Initiative in June of 2006, AB 1236 REQUIRES school districts to offer KINDERGARTEN READINESS CLASSES (also known as universal preschool) for all children one year before they are enrolled in kindergarten. While these preschool classes will be offered as voluntary at first, mandatory preschool is the next specious step.

The MINIMUM school day for 4- and 5- year-olds in kindergarten readiness classes and kindergartens will be 3 HOURS A DAY, 5 DAYS A WEEK! This time is to be filled with state-concocted, developmentally inappropriate, rigorous academic content standards for both kindergarten and preschool programs in math and literacy. The bill requires assessment (also known as TESTING) of tots!

The push to detain young children in preschool and kindergarten is driven by imprudent and corrupt political and social agendas that advance the globalized future. How could there be any other explanation when policy makers IGNORE early childhood education experts such as the signers of the declaration of The Call To Action On The Education of Young Children who warn against too early and too highly structured education in preschool and kindergarten saying:

“If such practices were effective for five-year- olds, we would have seen better long-term results by now. We call for a reversal of the pushing down of the curriculum that has transformed kindergarten into de facto first grade.

Current trends in early education policy and practice heighten pressure and stress in children’s lives, which can contribute to behavioral and learning problems.

This well-intentioned but misguided policy may actually put children at increased risk of school failure.“

While the monolithic, corporatized school system may be a formidable opponent, I call on all parents to protect California’s (and every state’s) 4- and 5-year olds from politicians who mindlessly and robotically introduce and pass legislation that is not in the best interests of young children. Their hearts and minds have been assimilated by what I can only think to refer to as “school borgs.” They care more about money than they do about kids. Let’s stop them in their tracks.

Since a resistance movement is most immediately needed in California, please take one or all of the following actions:

FAX or send by U.S. mail a letter of opposition to “AB 1236: The Kindergarten Readiness Act” to the members of the Education Committee. (If you want to email them, click on their names, go to their websites, and fill out the email contact form there.) Or telephone their offices and let them know you are opposed to AB 1236. Here is the contact info for each member:

Mike Eng
FAX: (626) 450-6117
Phone: (626) 450-6116
Address: 9420 Telstar Avenue, Suite 103, El Monte, CA 91731

Lori Hancock
FAX (510) 559-1478
Phone: (510) 559-1406
Address: 712 El Cerrito Plaza, El Cerrito, CA 94530

Bob Huff
FAX (909) 860-5664
Phone: (909) 860-5560
Address: 23355 E. Golden Springs Drive, Diamond Bar, CA 91765

Betty Karnette
FAX: Call for Fax #
Phone: (310) 548-6420 or (562) 997-0794
Address: 3711 Long Beach Boulevard, Suite 801, Long Beach, CA 90807 or
461 West 6th Street, Suite 306, San Pedro, CA 90731

Alan Nakanishi
FAX (209) 333-5333
Phone: (209) 333-5330
Address: 218 W. Pine Street, Lodi, CA 95240

Jose Solorio
FAX (714) 939-8986
Phone: (714) 939-8469
Address: 2400 E. Katella Avenue, Suite 640, Anaheim, CA 92806

If Mandatory Kindergarten or Universal Preschool is looming in your state, you can find the contact information for your legislators HERE.

Math + Holidays = Fun, Fun, Fun!

I receive a daily email from ClickSchooling, each with a recommended website. I love bookmarking these websites for rainy days or when we need a little extra for a certain lesson. Today’s featured site is all about incorporating math into the holiday season. There were so many fun ideas I just had to post them here.

Following is the today’s Clickschooling email:

Recommended Website:
GoogolPower: Christmas Math

GoogolPower.com (the makers of my favorite math songs) have created a Family Math curriculum page themed around Christmas. This is a delightful way to incorporate learning into every aspect of the holidays. When you get to the site you will find all kinds of links to fun Christmas activities for families to do together that build math skills and comprehension too. They
include:

*Baking - Find recipes & recipe converters.
*Budgeting - Discover how to fill out a spreadsheet.
*Holiday Lights - Learn how many watts of power they use.
*Wrapping Presents - Use your tape measure to determine package dimensions.
Make tessellation wrapping paper.
*Trees & Snowflakes - Measure the height of a tree, and investigate snowflake symmetry.
*Christmas Cards - Make a card with a cryptarithm or a tangram.
*Ornaments & Decorations - Make your own polyhedras to put on the tree.
*Santa Claus - Find out how Santa uses math to circumnavigate the Earth.
*The Twelve Days of Christmas - Learn what the song has to do with Pascal’s Triangle.
*Christmas Worksheets & Math Problems — Includes dot-to-dots, mazes, logic problems with candy canes and much more!

Don’t forget to bookmark this website and come back after Christmas to explore the many math lessons and activities that incorporate learning about other subjects too.

Have fun!

Diane Flynn Keith
for ClickSchooling
Copyright 2006, All Rights Reserved
http://www.Homefires.com
http://www.Carschooling.com
http://www.UniversalPreschool.com

Note: We make every effort to recommend websites that have content that is appropriate for general audiences. Parents should ALWAYS preview the sites for suitable content.

Click Schooling (Clickschooling) is a Federally Registered Trademark.

Homechooling a preschooler? For FREE activities visit: http://www.UniversalPreschool.com

Shortcut URL to this page:
http://www.yahoogroups.com/community/ClickSchooling

Stupid in America Returns!

Thanks to a tip from Spunky Homeschool, I just became aware that John Stossel’s program Stupid in America will be re-airing tomorrow evening on ABC. And (isn’t the Internet amazing?) if you don’t want to wait until tomorrow night, you can view the program in its entirety right there on YouTube (no commericals!)

My thoughts on schooling in America have been heavily influenced by John Taylor Gatto, especially his collection of essays entitled A Different Kind of Teacher. Gatto was Teacher of the Year for both New York State and the city of New York in the 90’s, before he finally threw in the towel. Gatto has respect for teachers, a love for our youth, and serious disdain for our educational system. I was shocked to learn first from Gatto how our schooling system is set up in the manner of Germany and Prussia (and can I say that I think we are headed toward the kind of mass mind control that set Germany up to be accepting of Hitler?).

Both Stossel and Gatto think the way to success in education will come from a more “Capitalist” view of schooling, and to stop Government from micro-managing our education.

You can read a few of Gatto’s essays online. I recommend The Six-Lesson Schoolteacher and Against School. Gatto’s newest book, The Underground History of American Education is also available online.

If you watch Stupid in America, or read any of Gatto’s works, I’d love to hear your opinions of these.

(See ABC’s article on Stupid in America here).

Free Reading

Abebooks announced today that Google is offering .pdf files of many public domain books.  This isn’t anything new – several websites have been collecting and donating to the public oldies-but-goodies for free downloads (for ipod or printing, etc.) for quite awhile now.  However…Google Books is sharp, as Google always is!  For further information about this project, check Google’s blog post on Downloading the Classics.

Eager for more online freebies?  Here are a few more sites offering full texts:

Project Gutenberg

The Baldwin Project

Many Books

Classic Book Library

Penn Library’s Digital Library Projects

Ambleside Online (follow links to specific books)

Literature for Children

LibriVox

Audio Books Online:

Audio Books for Free

Story Nory for Kids

Homeschool Radio Shows (this website sells many audio books and radio programs, but also sends out a free radio program once a week to your email — NOT only for homeschooled children — children and adults of all sorts will appreciate this service!)

Thanks for Voting NO on Prop 82

 

Well, posting links to this article and this one mean I am a day late and a dollar short insofar as helping you decide to vote NO on Prop 82 – I just never got around to posting my thoughts on the Universal Preschool issue.  And what do you know?  Calilfornia voted in good conscience without any prodding from me.  Hmmm. 

The aforementioned article by Diane Flynn Keith of Universal Preschool and Carschooling is still worth reading, as the universal preschool issue is sure to pop up again.  Maybe she'll give you a few more reasons to your list of Why California Should JUST SAY NO to Universal Preschool.

Oh, and while you are at the Universal Preschool website, check out photos of my babies — here and here!  The UNIVERSE is their preschool :)

Ask the Principal

Thanks to Spunky Homeschool, we recently caught wind of a new blog, Ask the Principal.  The author is a public school principal who is encouraging Christians to pull their chlidren out of public school.  He has an interesting perspective, and seems to me to be a voice crying out in the wilderness.

Personally, I am at the point where I think many Christians should go ahead and pull out of public schools. (I cannot say ALL because one never knows what God is up to — He's too big to narrow down too much.  My friend says it like this:  He has His thumb in all the pies.)  As U.S. Christians, we have tried the experiment of sending a few generations of our kids off to be "in the world and not of it" on their own, and it hasn't worked.  Just look at the state of the church, especially our young people.  Read one of those surveys done by Josh McDowell or Barna Group that show what little difference there is in the thinking of Christian v. Non-Christian youth.

I hope it is clear that I am not saying that we should stop being salt and light in the world!  I have just come to see that we can be a salty and lit-up family, inviting the lost into our home or going out into the world as a family unit (Eric Wallace's book Uniting Church and Home is full of awesome encouragement in this area).  The kids need a few years under our wing to learn how its done, and with 6+ hours of public school each day (not to mention afterschool activities, homework, church activities, and television), there isn't much time left for discipleship. 

I propose a new way of looking at evangelism — forget the age-segregation – forget sending kids out on their own or even in packs of peers.  Simply reach out to people around you, everyone you meet.  You can shine the light of Christ to librarians, dry cleaning store owners, Albertson's cashiers, neighbors, old ladies out for walks, aunts, uncles, grandmas and grandpas and cousins, neighborhood latch-key kids, McDonald's workers — all with mom and dad close by, teaching and living by example.  Contrary to what I once thought, homeschooling and evangelism are not mutually exclusive.  And honestly, if your kids don't see you living out your faith, they aren't going to catch it.

Ask the Principal looks promising.  I plan to check back there often.  I know my dad will enjoy The Principal's post called Stupid in the NEA, as Dad has had to endure years of working with/against teacher's unions and the NEA.  (This principal feels your pain, Dad.) 

From comments left on Ask the Principal, I also discovered A Different Perspective (homeschooling dad who is on public school board) and Home School Geek (homeschooling dad who works at a public university).  Interesting, these dads who love the world, are in it and not of it, and see homeschooling as one of the best ways to prepare children for it.

Educational Philosophies

What is your educational philosophy?  Did you know you had one? 

The Davis family, over at Elijah Company, sent out a wonderful e-journal this week helping homeschooling parents discover and pinpoint their own philosophies.  The thought-provoking questions can be of use to anyone considering their children's educational future, regardless of whether homeschooling is part of that future.

Many years ago, Chris Davis was a pastor who realized he was spending too much of his time in official ministry and not enough in the ministry of fatherhood.  He resigned from the pastorate to work full time with the family business of selling homeschooling materials — The Elijah Company (named so for wanting to have the Spirit of Elijah — turning the hearts of fathers to their sons, from Malachi 4:5-6).  The Davises have been very instrumental in our lives, helping us to see that ministry should be integrated into all of life, and not simply its own separate entity.  Ron and I heard Chris speak last year and ended up buying his book called I Saw the Angel in the Marble — a life-changing book about helping your child become what God has created him or her to be. 

The Davises have been pioneers in the homeschooling movement.  They have helped home educators search for the "ancient paths," instead of simply recreating institutional school at their kitchen tables.  For years they did this through their "catalog," a thick booklet that held reviews on many products sold by the Elijah Company along with several inspirational essays on parenting and homeschooling.  The Elijah Company's catalog was the first homeschooling resource that really hit home – the sincerity, maturity, ingenuity, and spiritual depth of the Davis family were so evident.  Before the Davises, we had seen homeschoolers as a fearful bunch, wanting only to PROTECT their families from The World.  The Davises got our attention with their rich (and grounded in biblical thinking) reasons for wanting to homeschool (including thinking it the best way to PREPARE their children to make a mark on The World). 

This week's e-journal is on creating a plan for educating our children.  The exercises in discovering one's educational philosophy are worthy of looking at regardless of whether you homeschool or not.  The truth is, we are all called to help our children become what God has created them to be, and we need to be purposeful in doing this.  It never hurts to sit down and think about your child’s future and how you can help get him there.  If you do homeschool, I encourage you to read the article in its entirety, and even follow some of the back-links from Elijah Company's site.  Good stuff!!   

What is your educational philosophy?  

Whether you're aware of it or not, you have an educational philosophy–an idea of what comprises a "good" education. And it's that idea that you bring to the table when you start home schooling your children. It's also that idea that causes you to be attracted to certain types of teaching materials.So you might want to ask yourself the following questions:

1.  If I had to tell what I thought was most important for my children to spend their home school years on, would it be…. (Rank from 1 (most important) to 4 (least important)

____(a) Having my children learn a core body of knowledge that is universally recognized as a thorough education so they can be accepted to top colleges and have professional careers.

____(b) Having my children become acquainted with the great minds throughout history and the worldviews that influence history so that they become thinkers, leaders, and problem-solvers.

____(c) Having my children learn information and skills that are of practical use to them and prepare them for real-world living and family life.

____(d) Having my children discover their meaning and purpose in life and be equipped with the knowledge and skills to fulfil their God-given destinies.  

2. What was I taught that I really needed to know? (Take out a piece of paper and make three columns. Label the columns "Academics," "Practical Skills," and "Relationships." List as many things in each column that you were taught that in the course of your life you have found that you really needed to know.)  

3. What do I wish I had been taught that I've found out that I really needed to know? (Do this exercise in the same way as #2, except your list is going to be of those things you weren't taught that you wish you had been.)  

4. What was I taught that I didn't need to know and don't ever foresee needing to know and I've never met anyone who needed to know it? (Do this exercise in the same way as #2, except your list is going to be of those things that you found were a waste of time for you and everyone else you know to learn.)

For more ways to find your educational philosophy, see this week's e-journal. 

Since closing their homeschooling store last year (the Davises are now on a mission to bring DADS back home as well as kids!), the Elijah Company no longer has a catalog, but instead publishes a resource guide called Searching for the Ancient Paths along with the very helpful e-journal.  I thank God for the Davis family, and hope to learn more from them as time passes.