August 17, 2002

• Many Thanks -

  
  

  Fugitive redesigned my graphics - didn't she do a beautiful job?  It occurs to me that the best part of having my own personal designer is that I can brag on the look of my site without anyone thinking that I'm conceited. 

  
  

  What Kind of Nut

  
  

  Homeschool is fun.  I love teaching my children.  We have great school toys and good books.  I'm following the "Classical" method of education - also known in some circles as the Trivium.  My school program is divided into three segments.  First is Grammar.  In this stage we cover all the basics, readin', ritin', rithmetic, and keeping Mom supplied with chocolate.  (That last part by the way comes under the heading of proper socialization.)

  
  

  The next stage is logic, and last we do rhetoric.  I started preparing to homeschool my kids when I was pregnant with Michael almost nine years ago.  I read everything I could get my hands on regarding educational method and philosophy.  I studied ways to teach kids to read, and applied myself to knowing how different methodological approaches would work with kids of different learning styles. 

  
  

  I don't know anyone homeschooling today (including myself) who wasn't at one time terrified that her child would be the one who didn't learn to read.  We all have the odd notion that reading is the hard part, that once they learn to read we can assign them pages x-z in book a then quiz them on what they read.  In fact, the grammar stage is the easiest. 

  
  

  When we introduce logic, we start seriously studying science and history.  Oh, they are getting an introduction to those topics now.  Michael is learning about the ecocycle with producers, consumers and decomposers.  And Tucker is learning that the same rule that applied ten minutes ago still applies now. 

  
  

  I've begun to scope out materials for the next section of the schooling experience.  Michael is still at least three years away from the maturity that will allow him to learn and apply logic in his studies.  (Tucker may be a lifetime away from this stage.)  But I've discovered that the difficulty facing me is that in science and history, unlike math, you aren't just introducing them to concepts like 1+1=2.  Evey book on history and science is written from a particular worldview.  My mind is spinning now with the implications of each view and how to lead my kids through that minefield in a way that helps them to not just memorize dates and people, but helps them to understand how each action lead to the next in the chain of events that has brought us to this place. 

  
  

  Frankly, I'm tempted to start writing my own books.  Many of the books published for homeschool families preach "Christian" dogma along with the lessons.  On the other hand, I've been equally offended by more than one secular text that preaches overt atheism and scientism.  In short both sides are embarrassingly anti-intellectual.  Instead of teaching kids to question and evaluate, they are told these are the facts and anyone who asks questions about them is of an inferior moral stature. 

  
  

  Books of history have been written to advance the particular worldview endorsed by the author.  Instead of teaching that people through time have always been a mixture of good and evil, right and wrong, selfish and altruistic - textbooks magnify the men and women who best represent the ideals of the author as larger than life heroes.

  
  

  Books of science are little better.  In spite of the fact that less than 10% of human knowledge can be said to be derived from "scientific process," science is held out as the sole source of "objective" knowledge.  If you can't "prove" it through experiment, then it either isn't true, or isn't relevant.  This system has produced some considerable narrowmindedness in my own generation.  I don't see it getting any better down the road without some radical rethinking on the nature of knowledge acquisition and the value placed on knowledge gained through the humanities and personal experience. 

  
  

  In the classical voice of philosophers, no amount of science will ever "prove" what it feels like to be a bat.  The thoughts and motives of historical figures cannot be weighed in a balance or boiled down over a bunsen burner.  The ideas regarding the better or best choice in politics cannot be evaluated on the basis of past experiment, they must be weighed with the wisdom garnered from the experiences of men and women of the past but they will still be applied in our own time. 

  
  

  Science focuses on the past.  The completed experiment, the tabulated data, or the known quantity.  It is reasonable to say that the best predictor of future experience is past experience, except that day to day to day our world changes.  From Heraclitus who said, "We never step in the same river twice,"  to Santayana who gave us, "Those who do not know their history are doomed to repeat it," philosphers have a long history of pointing out the need for balance between the limited  knowledge of the past and boundless hope for the future.  History and science must be balanced if we are to teach our children as opposed to indoctrinating them.

  
  

  Education prepares the next generation to walk that fine line, to rise up and take the reins of their own time even as we fade and the sun sets on our own.  So I'm not willing to teach my kids in any way shape form or fashion that discourages them from the asking of questions.  I like the way that Yeats put it, "Education is not the filling of a bucket, it's the lighting of a fire."  I hope to light a couple of candles here that will burn into the future instead of pouring water on their spark of curiosity.  That's heavy stuff, man.

  
  

  . . .  I'm going to go back to read in my Big Blue Chair. 

  • 7:54 pm
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