Building Our Homeschool Foundation - Introduction

I like to imagine spending days with my children like this, untethered to the typical rigidity of having to adhere to scheduled lesson plans, unaffected by social pressures such as fierce academic competition, and unaware of the large blocks of time we spend doing things we love while learning. This scholastic utopia seems a little out of reach to me at this juncture, mainly because I've yet to figure out how I'm going to successfully pull this homeschooling gig off, and partly because we haven't decided which direction we're going in. I'm glad I started planning this long before my kids are even ready for preschool, because it's clearly going to take a lot of effort on our parts to construct an at-home program that we're comfortable with.

The most difficult choice involving homeschooling our kids hasn't been arriving at the decision to educate them from home - that part came fairly easy. The difficulty is deciding which method would best suit our family and our kid's learning styles, which honestly - at two years and 17 months of age, I've yet to fully identify with. We're still figuring that part out. I found after a rudimentary scrub of the internet that there's a LOT to choose from. I've researched them till I was blue in the face, and I'm pretty certain that we're not going to bank on one set method, but rather customize our own program using the features that resonate with all five of us, as a family unit. That is to say, I'm taking everyone's considerations (including the kids) into perspective and doing my darndest to choose what will be the best fit. And I'm allowing LOTS of room for revising, redoing, and completely changing our minds as we grow and learn together.

 What began as a personal research project (using the internet, books, and virtually EVERY blog I could find on the subject) turned into a 5-part blog series, because I'm thorough as hell and like to have material I've paraphrased available and at the ready, should I decide to change gears mid-school year.  Please note that this was NOT written to critique other people's homeschooling methods. What works for others may not work for our family, and vice-versa. I simply journal'd my findings so that it will help our family decide which teaching model we're going to use to educate our children when it's time. Lucky for me, I've still got TWO years of the terrible-twos to contend with first, which is really just an incredibly long string of diaper changes, tantrums, and food being hurled in my general direction. Oh, and cheering on my husband as he toils and labors at remodeling our 2-car garage into something resembling a classroom before our schooling begins. But I'd be wise to not pressure him about that particular up-and-comer project, as right now he's in the throes of building the MOTHER OF ALL swingset/playhouse/backyard-fun-ensembles that we're hoping will be ready by Easter. That's going to be a whole other post. GOOD TIMES!!!

But back to the not-so-perfunctory task of choosing a homeschool method - below are my (highly opinionated) reviews of a few of these education methods, and what I feel are the pros and cons where the style of teaching and curriculum are concerned. I'll be adding to this as my drafts are completed.

Links to Parts I-IV:

Building Our Homeschool Foundation - Part I: The Charlotte Mason Method
Building Our Homeschool Foundation - Part II: The Classical Education (Trivium) Method
Building Our Homeschool Foundation - Part III: The Montessori Method
Building Our Homeschool Foundation - Part IV: The Unschooling Method

Building Our Homeschool Foundation - Part IV: Unschooling

I've saved the best for last.

Getting a grip on all the homeschooling methods has taken hours (literally, months) of research. I first began combing the internet to find resources, materials and homeschooling blogs to use as my starting point. While I was positive I wanted to teach our children at home, I had absolutely no idea where to begin or how to set up a curriculum. It was all very interesting, albeit quite overwhelming. I eagerly but ignorantly began copying and saving Pre-K and Kindergarten worksheets, exercises and teaching materials. I copied and saved other homeschool mom's schedules, ideas and activities. I bought a binder and began calculating our calendar year, our time allotments for each subject, and started pricing ready-made curriculum bundles that included textbooks, workbooks and materials. Then I quickly realized that one thing I was positive that I didn't want to do was recreate the public school classroom at home. I wanted something different, something eclectic, something that would set my kids apart from (no offense to other parent's children) - the tools that the public education system was spitting out after 12 years of compulsory schooling.

It was at that point that I got away from the vanilla programs like the K-12 Virtual Academy and many of it's competitors. Determined to think outside the box, I began finding more interesting bloggers who lived and breathed the methods they taught their children by. The more I read, the more I discovered about my own intentional parenting style, and how it would tie in to our learning. About halfway through these deliciously fresh, revolutionary homeschooling philosophies, I was linked to a series of podcasts that contained the lectures of ex-school teacher John Taylor Gatto, and since I stumbled upon them by accident, (typical while internet hopping from one related subject to another) - I bookmarked them for later viewing.

After a few weeks of burnout pouring through blog after blog of how moms (and sometimes dads) educated their kids from home, I took a break and decided to lurk in some teacher's forums to get an idea of what kinda mojo they were jerkin' to be able to work with kids day in and day out and not only love their jobs, but inspire the students. I was surprised at how hearing them describe their days sounded eerily similar to, say - a very disenfranchised industrial worker, or a corporate burnout. They spoke of frustration, of in-fighting and discord among administrators, of politics, and lots of F-bombs (not literally, but you could read between the lines) regarding the much-hated Common Core. I decided to listen to those podcasts I'd saved for a rainy night, as it had a catchy title: Weapons of Mass Instruction.

Not that the coffin needed any extra nails on my end already - but if I hadn't already decided to not send my kids to school, I'm absolutely, beyond any doubt certain that John Taylor Gatto's lectures would have compelled me to not to. It was eye-opening, it was candid, and it all made perfect sense. I won't give away any spoilers, but it's accurate to say that the public education system has been failing for a long, long time.

The Unschooling method seemed liberal almost to a point of carelessness upon first glance. Although I could grasp the philosophy behind child-led learning, the idea of not setting up a schedule, a curriculum, or have any "tests" to measure my kid's comprehension seemed reckless. I was closely following education.penelopetrunk.com, which seemed like the most radical free-for-all out there as far as raising "free-range" children go. What surprised me was that after reading about a hundred entries, it became clear that there was something pure, natural and blissfully unrestrained about having children discover the knowledge they need on their own.

While there's no set of rules or any exact guidelines to follow for Unschooling, the main characteristics is that it's organic, interest-driven, and completely self-directed by the "student". It's allowing your children the freedom to learn at their own pace, led by their own curiosities, and towards their own goals. They are able to pursue interests that they feel passionate about without being tethered to a classroom schedule. Most successful unschooling parents report their kid's progress in odd stages - perhaps one decides to become a music aficionado early on, while another is fixated with numbers, yet doesn't learn to read until they're 10-years old. Does it truly matter what order we learn things in? A question that kept popping up from skittish parents who couldn't imagine letting go of the reigns was, "What if all they want to do is play video games all day?". The unschooling parent's answer: "You let them". Now, before you clasp your hand over your mouth and recoil with horror (like I did) imagining your child bouncing around from one seemingly worthless activity to another, I urge you to read a few entries of some successful unschooling parents so that you can truly see the "progress" they report. I was shocked to learn that kids have a natural tendency to want to know as much as they can about most everything, and even more flabbergasted to discover that some seasoned "unschooled" teenagers were actually applying to colleges early and boasting huge accomplishments in subjects you'd think they wouldn't have touched with a 10-foot pole, since it was all voluntary on their parts. John Holt had it right all along - it's not the children who crave structure - it's the parents. And that's because we were taught in our own compulsory school careers to behave and submit to what we were being groomed to be: obedient, compliant, unremarkable "workers" for a society that doesn't appreciate uniqueness and will NEVER reward freethinking revolutionaries.

Despite that appeal, I'm pretty certain that I wouldn't implement unschooling until I was confident that I'd dutifully taught my children the basics up to at least a 5th-grade level. After that - I could totally visualize our homeschool life evolve into an interest-driven, student-directed affair. I'd like to think that I'd have instilled a love of learning and a good academic base to spring forward from, so that my children would be passionate enough and self-governing enough to "write" their own curriculum. And I'd like to think that I'll know them well enough to trust that they'd see it through to be able to follow their dreams and go as far as their aspirations will take them.

My three kids, as of this writing, are under 3-years old. The idea of them learning at home makes me absolutely dizzy with pride and excitement. Knowing that they aren't being tossed into a system that has very little concern about their individual progress or accomplishments puts me at ease. While I realize that the next decade and a half of my life is going to be centered around making sure they are receiving all the stimuli and encouragement they need to succeed as adults, I embrace the challenge -  intimidating as it may be - and look forward to being a part of their journeys.

Building Our Homeschool Foundation - Part III: The Montessori Method

The Montessori Method

Photos of Marie Montessori just brings to mind the smell of rose petals, a warm and comfortable lap, and the feeling of being nurtured in an environment tailored especially to children. I'm speculating on her choice of fragrance and her body temperature, but this woman encapsulated the idea of placing children as the masters of their education.

An Italian physician, Maria dedicated her life to educating children. Her ideas and methodologies are alive today for good reason. Independence, freedom within limits, and child-led decision making are the main philosophies behind this learning style, and it has been successfully implemented in both the private and public education sector, with homeschoolers quickly following suit.

There's a wealth of information regarding specifics on how to set up a classroom, which is a very child-friendly environment with all materials strategically organized to be at the child's eye-level, using bright and vibrant colors to stimulate their senses and give them enthusiasm as they navigate the materials laid out before them. The Montessori method places an emphasis on aesthetics as it is pleasing to the child, not as it's convenient or orderly from an adult perspective. Unlike a traditional classroom where children are assigned seats and are admonished for getting out of them whenever the mood strikes, a true Montessori environment encourages freedom of movement and allows the child to decide which activities they choose to learn with. Rather than over-killing on textbooks, worksheets and structured subject study, the student is free to choose from a variety of stimuli that isn't interrupted by a "bell" or a timed schedule. The student isn't ordered to work via direct instructor of a teacher. They are coaxed by "facilitators" into discovering concepts by lots of hands-on manipulation of materials by the child at their own pace and discretion.

While there's not a lot of historical demonstration of Maria Montessori's methods past the elementary and middle school academics, there's been a wide adaptation of Montessori being applied on the high school level. A large part of Maria's vision centered around connecting the children to nature, and she stressed that reaching adolescence was a time of much "difficulty" for children (boy, what an understatement), and urged that they be led to a quiet, naturalistic setting in order to thrive. Granted, during her time, adolescents weren't as "plugged in" and technologically dependent on their electronic devices as they are now, so I'm not so sure how well that would go over - but I can certainly see the wisdom in giving them space to exercise all the angst that goes along with hitting the cusp of adulthood.

Right after high school, I worked at a day care center that employed a Montessori teacher part-time for the four and five year old groups. I remember the kids being led to her classroom for a couple of hours each day, and although the concept was completely lost on me at the time, I remember marveling how the children conducted themselves in her room. Where they ran willy-nilly/pell-mell throughout the rest of the daycare center, they seemed so relaxed and self-composed in her class. They prepared snacks for each other, carefully and methodically put away their materials when they were done "playing" with them, and they did this with very little prodding. While the rest of us daycare workers literally exhausted ourselves trying to keep the kids entertained and pacified enough to not completely spazz out and climb the walls with all their excess energy, the self-composure and maturity these four and five-year old kids exhibited in that classroom was remarkable. I never forgot it.

While researching the Montessori method, it became apparent that a homeschooling family with limited financial resources would have a tough time recreating a full-blown Montessori atmosphere at home. I can certainly appreciate that you really can't put a price on your children's education, but if we were going to embrace the much-appealing Montessori applications in it's entirety, we'd be better off paying for private instruction in an accredited Montessori academy. Not that it's an option for our family of five on one income (though I could always go back to work to help fund it), but I recoil at the fact that considering this option kind of undermines the entire purpose of putting myself in a take-charge, fully-immersed and involved role in my children's education.

We'll definitely be borrowing from the Montessori philosophy, as I hope to have lots of tactile, hands-on activity centers when we complete the renovation of our garage into our learning arena. I'd definitely like to incorporate the "Mom-As-The-Facilitator" versus "Mom-As-The-Teacher" into it, and I can only hope and aspire to be as enthusiastic and dedicated as the late Maria Montessori was.


Building Our Homeschool Foundation - Part IV: The Unschooling Method

Building Our Homeschool Foundation - Part II: The Classical Method

Classical "Trivium" Education

To be completely forthright, we have no intention of choosing this method for our homeschooling ventures. However, I've included it in our Building Our Homeschool Foundation series because there was definitely a point in time where I fancied that someone (probably not myself, because I'm not that hard-nosed) would be classically educating our children in the most rigid of all possible methods, as I had huge fantasies aspirations for them being intellectually "trained" to become great philosophical scholars who ranked right up there with the likes of Aristotle and Euclides. Then I realized (thank goodness, while my firstborn was still in utero) that pressing one's parental desires too firmly into the foreheads of our offspring would likely backfire, and they'd rebelliously choose to usurp my well-intentioned plans by pursuing a career in the custodial arts, or partake in the kind of interpretive dance that is centered around a stainless steel pole. If they choose to be hardcore scholars who actually prefer and respond well to that sort of pedagogy, then I'll do my level best to help facilitate them as they pursue it. I'm just not going to shove it down their throats until they're ready to decide that it's how they want to roll where their education is concerned.

I think it's important that children are given certain "rights" when it comes to their upbringing, much like we, as adults, hold certain unalienable "rights" where our adult pursuits are concerned. One of the rights - or rather, privileges, that I feel a lot of kids are robbed of is having some sort of say-so in how they are educated. Rarely are they allowed to take different paths in the elementary and middle-school stages if they proclaim disinterest, or boredom, or show any type of aversion to the material handed to them by their educators. Most students who are in the public school system simply flunk out if they don't adhere to the curriculum and pass tests, and are labeled as "underachievers" or "flunkies" for not conforming to the education code thrust upon them. I hope that by choosing to homeschool them, my children are afforded a great deal more input into how they learn to learn. I hope to take cues from them and have them naturally lead me towards the best method to teach them.

While Grammar, Logic and Rhetoric all have their places in the standard education model, this Classical Trivium method is, in my opinion, introduced a bit too early in a child's life to be fully appreciated by the student. While the mastery of fact-learning, memorization and reasoning can absolutely be critically important skills in the latter years of education, I fear that too much spoon-feeding rigid courses on the reading, writing and 'rithmitic necessary to pursue secondary courses (science, history, arts) will render the kids dispassionate about learning, as it would seem more like a drill, rather than an individual pursuit. This method relies heavily on textbooks, worksheets, testing and review. It leaves very little room for interpretation (by either the teacher or the student), and I can't bear the visual of their little noses being stuck between the pages of a boring textbook while they pine to be outside, feeling the sunshine on their face, or learning through more hands-on, tactical methods of discovering what there is to be learned at the elementary level.

Again, I hope to prepare them in the traditional K-6 years to have the abilities to read, write, and have a strong foundation in mathematics - just enough to help them apply what they've been taught so that they can have a broad understanding of the other subjects they'll be interested in very soon thereafter. I'd like them to spend a great deal of their childhood delving into the intrinsic, real-world knowledge of How Stuff Works, Why We're Sympathetic To Others, What Makes The Grass Green & The Sky Blue ... things that every young child yearns to learn naturally, without having to be systematically forced into it with a rigid, pre-set, calculated schedule of events. Would I love it if my pre-teens showed an interest in Latin, ancient history and mathematical theorems far beyond my own intellect? Absolutely so. But I feel confident that I'll know my kids well enough from having spent each and every day with them to recognize when this bridge is ready to be crossed. When and if it is, I would gladly turn them over to educators who could meet their scholarly demands. If things go as planned, I'd hope that at the very least, on a high-school level - they'd have their own faculties in place to take their intellectual virtue as far as their own research and self-led instruction could lead them. I'll be there to cheer them on and challenge them every step of the way.

More thorough information on the Classical Education can be found at The Well Trained Mind website. I'll be honest in reporting that not only does the phrase "well trained" leave a sour taste in my mouth, but they lost me HERE, where the commentary on the first years of education includes:

"...Children at this age actually find memorization fun. So during this period, education involves not self-expression and self-discovery, but rather the learning of facts."

Makes me wonder if they were ever children, or if they ever outright asked a 10-year old (who wasn't so brainwashed already into blindly accepting that learning had to be a systematic series of drills) if they really, TRULY found that memorizing historical battlefield dates (that they'll likely never use again past a test), or memorizing the Periodic Table of Elements (that they'll have no use for after the test if they don't plan on becoming scientists), or memorizing what it exactly it is that makes a participle in a sentence "dangle" ... and so forth ...  is actually FUN.

No self-expression or self-discovery? No thank you. I want to raise free thinkers, not robotic learning machines who aren't confident in their own decisions of how they should acquaint themselves with knowledge. In my opinion, learning doesn't have to be a well-paved, straight, one-way road. It should be curvy, with many turnaround options, detours, and the ability to backtrack whenever needed. There should be time for self-reflection, self-realization, and a heaping dose of the hilarity of childhood humor sprinkled all over the place.


Links to Parts III-IV:

Building Our Homeschool Foundation - Part III: The Montessori Method
Building Our Homeschool Foundation - Part IV: The Unschooling Method

Building Our Homeschool Foundation - Part I: Charlotte Mason Method

The Charlotte Mason Method
Charlotte Mason had to have been the mother of all British schoolmarms. This method of approach is very structured, very disciplined, and very thorough. She was actually a lot more than a schoolmarm - she revolutionized the classic education philosophy of her time and based her methodology on extensive research. It was developed in 19th century England and has become a mainstay as an education philosophy in charter schools, private schools and home classrooms today. Her motto for her students was "I am, I can, I ought, I will". It emphasizes teaching the whole child by nurturing habit, discipline and curiosity. It stresses using "living books" over standard textbooks.It's rigorous, comprehensive, and is adaptable to all K-12 grade levels. More information available than I care to link to, but here's a good starting point: http://www.charlottemasoninstitute.org/

Pros: 

• It's literature-based versus textbook based. They encourage you to siphon out what it is considered "twaddle" (mindless garbage) and focus on the great, classical literary works as a way to teach ALL subjects. I like the idea of gleaning different subject matter from one work and intuitively knowing that kid's natural curiosities will lead them to explore content in a book further than just the subject matter it's written about. This seems like an interesting and productive way to learn history, geography and foreign culture. 
• Charlotte Mason was big on nature, and her lesson plans always incorporated exercise (or "drills", as she called them), teaching to appreciate the natural beauty of the outdoors, and encouraged keeping "Nature Notebooks" during their walks to journal what they'd encounter along the way. I like the idea of keeping a journal as a kind of nature laboratory to index everything they discover outdoors. This seems like something that an independent, spirited young person would take much pride in maintaining and exhibiting to others. 
• Charlotte Mason was a huge advocate for the Rights of the Child, and I personally believe that this is something that often gets overlooked by parents, instructors, and older siblings or family members. Children should be respected, revered, and free to use their imaginations and take initiatives without fear of mockery or reprisal. This, I can most certainly dig.

Cons:

• There's a lot of narration, dictation and copy work. Copy work seems monotonous, and reminds me of the penance for bad behavior by being made to write the same sentence over and over and over on a blackboard. While the "practice makes perfect" mentality does often ring true when learning a particular task, I think I could find more fun, laid-back ways of presenting it other than copy work.  
• The suggested time frames for learning each unit of study varies, but they emphasize 5-20 minutes for early education per unit study, and while practical, especially considering the attention spans of young children - it seems kind of boring and stifling.  
• Another skill it touts for the child to master is "habit":
  "But habit, to be the lever to lift the child, must work contrary to nature, or at any rate, independently of her." [ Home Education - Charlotte Mason ] Teaching good habits is something we instinctively do as parents, but I dislike the idea of "training" children outside of the basic areas such as using the potty, washing hands, brushing teeth, safely crossing a street, etc. I'd like their learning habits to be intuitively grasped by them, as students, as they are figuring out how to process the information presented to them. This is how I personally learned to "study", and it wasn't something I was taught in school. I disagree with Ms. Mason that forming good habits is contrary to nature or independent of the child. I believe it's a natural process that comes about when we instinctively search for ways to make remembering things and being able to apply the things we've learned easier. If anything, it's born out of the inherent, beautiful laziness that every child is "afflicted" with. Kids are more intellectually thrifty than we give them credit for.
• The CM method stresses "perfection", and "excellence" a lot in her tutorials. Striving for excellence is one thing. Doing the best you can at any activity is commendable. But repeating an exercise over and over until it reaches "perfection" would seem to me to be frustrating for a child. I remember when learning cursive writing as a child that I didn't like the traditional cursive "Q" and how I'd always put my own spin on it, which led to bad marks by a teacher, who I'm sure must have been irritated by my rebellious penmanship. I remember getting a note sent home that spoke of my "insolence", all because I didn't have the same aesthetic appreciation of the cursive "Q" that my instructor did. Talk about splitting hairs!

We won't be using the CM method as our definitive guide to educating our kids, but it does have some great ideas and philosophies. We'll definitely be borrowing upon some of the principles and suggested activities, but the overall theme is probably a little more rigid than our lifestyle and sense of humor allow.

The next post in this series will be on the Classical Education Method, or "Trivium" pursuit of education, followed by the Montessori Method and the unconventional Unschooling method.


Links to Part II-IV:

Building Our Homeschool Foundation - Part II: The Classical Education (Trivium) Method
Building Our Homeschool Foundation - Part III: The Montessori Method
Building Our Homeschool Foundation - Part IV: The Unschooling Method

Educating Them For Real Life: What Do They Need To Succeed?

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!

Raising Freethinkers: The Education Conundrum

One of the things troubling me as a parent of 3 children who are just a few short years shy of becoming school-aged is how to begin preparing their little minds for the pliability it requires to soak up knowledge. I think a huge part of it is massaging their already established curiosities, taking every opportunity to satisfy the whats, hows & whys that will soon be brewing at their intellectual surface. I'm certain of a few things already:

• I must give them consistent, varied, and unique opportunities to establish their interests. I want them to have a broad range of stimuli available to them so they can explore whatever piques their curiosities. While we'll be limited in some ways (geographically and financially speaking), it will be important to introduce new things, new places, and new people to them. Kids may thrive on routine, but variety will give them the chance to think outside of their little boxes and appreciate things that are unfamiliar. The hope is that this will foster a love of learning and becoming explorers by their own rite.
• I must give them space to grow. I want to raise them to be independent, rebellious, intellectual thinkers. I want them to question authority - even if it's my own. I don't want them to be systematically programmed to just mindlessly follow the rules and float through life on auto-pilot. I want them to cultivate their own self-discipline and have the guts and audacity to initiate change when they feel it's needed. I'd like them to be innovative, unique and constantly questioning their predicaments, looking for ways to improve themselves and their world.
• I want them to be unafraid and accepting towards those who are different than them. I don't want to raise them in a bubble, surrounded only by Mommy & Daddy's kind. I want them to be steeped in diversity, interested in other cultures, and eager to discover new ways of life alien to their own. I want them to be tolerant of practices they don't necessarily partake in, and I want them to establish early on a sense of compassion, empathy and altruism that will extend not only to their immediate peers, but to the rest of the whole, wide world outside of their zip code. I want them to dream of faraway lands and it's residents. I want them to aspire to travel and see the world when they're grown.

These things I know for certain, and while it gives us a good foundation as to how we hope our kids will turn out, it does nothing at all to help me establish how I want them to be formally educated, or if we want them to be formally educated at all! The current conundrum we're facing now is which direction to go as far as how our kids are taught. We've got a good idea of how we'd like them to operate as Good People, but then there's the ABC's, 123's, History, Science, Geography, Algebra ... 

The hard questions here are: 

• How much do they need to know to be prepared for life? Will they aspire to become academically at the top of their chosen field and pursue college accreditation? Or will they hone in on the arts, or a skilled trade? Perhaps their vision will lead them to want to join the Peace Corps, travel to remote corners of the globe and help others. Maybe the (gulp) traditional 8-5 corporate lifestyle will be their preference. However it turns out, we want to make sure even their early childhood education gives them the proper tools and mindset to be able to both discover and pursue their goals. The onus is on us, the parents, to make sure they're given everything they need to succeed.
• Which learning style will suit them best? We've learned an incredible amount about their personalities that have recently formed to know that our boy is a hands-on kinda guy who gets bored sitting still for too long. Will this change as he gets older? Our twin daughters may look alike, but their personalities are as different as night and day. One is introverted, one is extroverted. Do I lean towards these innate traits of theirs and model their education around it, or do I challenge them to go outside of their comfort zone? The fact is, they're going to change as they get older. We need to be prepared to grow with them and be willing to change with them. I'm pretty sure the public school system isn't going to conform to our kid's changing needs or redirect their curriculum to what suits their current interests. They're going to teach them to be autonomous, obedient, and structured to the point of monotony. And we're 100% positive that is not what we want for them. 

All that established, we've made our minds up that home schooling will best fit our family. I'm fortunate enough to have a husband who both shares my vision and is willing to work hard to provide for our family while I stay home and see to it that our children are well taken care of, beyond their basic needs, and flourish as they grow up. I support public schools, as they provide an education, and meals, and the attention that some kids probably do not have the good fortune of getting at home. It's just not for us.

I've been reading and researching and soaking in every bit of information available on the internet as to which method of homeschooling will suit us. In the posts that follow, I'll be hammering out the pros and cons of each.

Everyone admonishes me for wishing the years away too fast and suggest that I cherish this time while my kids are babies and toddlers. I think it's easier said than done. I look forward to my kids relishing in more concrete activities and interests! As I type this, my two year-old son is celebrating the ability to take off all his clothing and strip down naked as he triumphantly tosses his diaper over the child gate while my twin daughters are practicing the highest decibels of their war cries as they take turns yanking at each other's hair. Sigh.