So we've decided to educate our children ourselves. At home. Without formal tutoring (except for pursuing interests such as music, gymnastics, martial arts, foreign languages, etc.). We're still deciding on whether to adhere to and purchase a ready-made curriculum, or conceptualize and design our own, or use a combination of both. After pouring through reading materials, researching available products and studying education theory by those who have been there and done that, there is a broad idea already forming of how we're going to go about it. Like most projects in the early planning stages, I've only just begun to collect and sort through the myriad of information out there. The end goal here is to identify (and agree upon) our teaching/learning philosophy, choose which method (or methods) we're going to incorporate into our lesson plans (if we go that route), and which materials we'll need to aid and assist us along our journey.
During our talks, my husband and I have found ourselves often referring back to our own formal educations, discussing what we liked, what we hated, what we learned, what we didn't - and comparatively have sorted through what we think we'd like to change about how our children are taught.
One recurring theme of our talks have revolved around how little formal schooling prepares you for real-life situations. It taught us little to nothing about establishing credit, budgeting a household, caring for living things such as plants or pets, how to prepare meals, how to survive if stranded or lost, how to climb out of debt from racking up student loans.... And then we think about the things we learned (often by trial, error and humiliation) from our peers, such as independently forming opinions, how to socialize, how to treat other human beings, modesty, humility, the value of making other people laugh ... the list goes on and on. There seemed to be a pretty stark line drawn between what we learned (or was supposed to learn) at school and what we learned (or was supposed to learn) at home. There were wide gaps in both, and sometimes what was best taught at home was picked up at school by mimicking our classmate's behaviors, and what was best learned at school was independently self-taught, often by necessity, on an as-needed, emergency basis when we were young adults.
While we obviously coasted through to adulthood relatively unscathed, reminiscing on these trials, tribulations and errors helped give us a broader perspective of how we wanted to teach our kids. The term "well-rounded" is so vague and open to interpretation, but we were pretty sure that we wanted our kids to be more informed, more acutely prepared for real life, and more eager to learn via natural curiosity and practical application versus obedient memorization and regurgitation of (mostly useless) facts. A lot of the real-life skills we learned as adults (accounting, carpentry, etc.) was picked up as a hands-on, ongoing training and vocation through jobs we had as young adults.
My husband and I started making babies at a very late age (40 and 45, respectively). It was beyond obvious that what we learned back then would hardly be practical for our kid's generation. We didn't have the internet, with virtually every piece of information available at the click of a mouse. We didn't have the luxury of speaking with people from foreign cultures. We didn't have the technology to have a map, a set of encyclopedias, a telephone, a camera, a video recorder, fingertip shopping, game-playing, social-driven "apps" (the term wasn't even invented yet) on one device that could be tucked into our pocket. Our kids are lucky to be alive at a time when so much technology is readily available. We're going to have to chart the course of their learning based on these conveniences, and take into account that there are certain learned "skills" that are still being formally taught in classrooms that are both seriously outdated, and a waste of time. A couple of examples:
- Cursive writing. Do we really want to spend a huge block of our "school" year on this? Writing print and learning to navigate a keyboard at a young age would suffice, in our opinion. While writing formal written letters may be a lost art, I believe this art could be done on an elective basis, if my children are interested in learning.
- Long division (with or without decimals), memorizing the multiplication tables, algebra, calculus: Is this really necessary in a world where calculators are practically built into every piece of electronics we own? Being able to work out two sets of six-digit numbers multiplied can be done using technology. Same applies to division. Anything beyond the basic elementary mathematical schooling isn't going to be important until the later high school years when they've started getting their own ideas about where their career choices will lead them. This is not to say that the basic fundamentals of math shouldn't be rigorously taught and applied on an elementary level - I just don't think it should be pounded systematically into their heads until either practical application or their own natural curiosity dictates that they need to learn it.
Of course I will prepare them academically if they plan to apply to a college. But I view their high school years as a time when they will have started to develop a good idea of what path they want to take, and we'll need to adjust their studies accordingly. My hope is that by the time they have reached the typical high school age, they will already have much practice at independently learning and researching on their own and they'll be telling ME how THEY are going to design their curriculum. I hope to have cultivated by then enough self-discipline, independence and dogged determination in my kids to be very, very comfortable with the choices they make for themselves. I hope to trust them explicitly with the responsibility of paving their own way long before they reach adulthood. And I hope that they trust me enough to confide in me their choices, even if they decide to pursue something that may seem risky, over-ambitious, or just plain lackadaisical.
Suppose one of my daughters decides to enroll in a top-tier University and rack up $240k in student loans to make a modest $50k a year teaching Philosophy. Do I encourage her to follow her passion even though she will be saddled in debt for most of her young adult life? What if my son decides, despite having a natural penchant for mathematics and engineering to take his love of his garage band guitar-playing abilities on a cross-country bar tour with the hope of getting signed as a *serious* musician? Do I dash his dreams and point out the odds of him ever making it big as a musician? What if my other twin daughter decides to take the money she's saved up working as a teenager and invest it, along with borrowed dollars, into her own start-up company that has a 50/50 chance of succeeding or failing? To encourage her would send the message: I Believe In You. To discourage it would communicate to her that I don't think she has the moxie to pull it off.
While I'm definitely projecting too far ahead with absurd scenarios that may or may not happen, it seems like it's never too early to start considering how their elementary and primary education, coupled with their love-of-learning and passion for following their dreams will affect the way they form the strategic and complicated task of planning for their own futures. I believe it's a fine line between saddling them with our own expectations and letting them freely discover what will best suit them as far as career choices go.
While I think about these things, in the back of my mind I'm planning for more immediate, present-day goals and ventures, such as potty-training them and teaching them to wipe their own butts and wash their own hands. Truth be told, I'm not sure which is more terrifying!
