Human beings have been sharing information and skills, and passing along to their children whatever they knew, for about a million years now. Along the way they have built some very complicated and highly skilled societies. During all those years there were very few teachers in the sense of people whose only work was teaching others what they knew. And until very recently there were no people at all who were trained in teaching, as such. People always understood, sensibly enough, that before you could teach something, you had to know it yourself. But only very recently did human beings get the extraordinary notion that in order to teach what you knew you had to spend years being taught how to teach.
– John Holt, Teach Your Own
While I have been a mother, and therefore a teacher to my children, for over six years now, I have only recently begun to truly contemplate where I stand in the spectrum of homeschoolers. On one end you find those who choose to do “school at home,” sitting at tables reading textbooks and taking tests to receive grades. On the other end, you find the unschoolers who prefer to learn directly from life, instead of a curriculum. I am definitely closer to the unschooly end of things, but crave structure at this time in my life. Not that unschoolers have no structure, more that I am looking for some guidance in planning my day-to-day life. I may not always need or want this, but it feels good right now to follow a planned routine.
As for age-grades and letter-grades, I see no reason for them – at least not at this age level. My kids are who they are regardless of what labels you put on them. Margie was tested early in her kindergarten year as reading at a second-grade level (and grade levels change according to each educational philosophy, too), yet she is considerably “behind” in writing and spelling. What grade would YOU put her in? Since she is not restricted to a class full of kids her age, a grade does not matter much, does it? What matters is that Margie be able to learn at Margie’s speed. Similarly, I see no reason for letter grades, or for tests, at this young age. I can see how much they know simply by how we live, the conversations we have, and they questions they ask. As for the traditional school year and breaks? Again, not my personal style as I would like my children to be learning continually, yet able to take a break when our personal lives get too hectic or we feel too overwhelmed. (All that aside, she got straight A’s in kindergarten. Because we use a charter, which helps us out with supplies and money for classes, we have to humor them a bit in these areas. I choose generally to ignore the categories my kids are put into.)
Our current plans for the school year are to follow the Oak Meadow curriculum for second grade. Oak Meadow is a Waldorf-style curriculum which is, in my opinion, a magical balance between unschooling and following a boxed curriculum. Waldorf education has always intrigued me and there was a time when M was young that I wished I could afford to send her to the local Waldorf private school. I no longer wish that, for many reasons, but there are still many things to love about the philosophy.
Primarily, I like that they wait to begin traditional studies until the children are much older – they are still working on introducing letters as late as first grade. I have long thought that the US (and possibly the Western World in general) is wrong to push education at such a young age. My son knew his entire alphabet before he turned three, but I do not feel that this is normal or even proper for his age. Perhaps it is a leftover feeling from the Red Scare of the 50’s or perhaps it began before that, but our schools and the entire society is pushing education earlier and earlier every year. I am happy to let my children be children and I feel that they have many years ahead of them to learn everything it is they need to know.
In this society (and being a rather unsure person to begin with) I often begin questioning myself and wondering if I am doing the right thing by being relaxed about schooling. Luckily for me, kids are freaking amazing and mine continually remind me to just let go – they’ve got it under control. When M was not interested in reading around 5 years old, I got hold of a copy of How To Teach Your Child to Read in 100 Easy Lessons. But we never got to use it because she had pretty much learned to read overnight all on her own (I feel that part of her brain The Waldorfs speak of must have been “ready”). I never sat down and “taught” her to read. I just provided books and read to her. Similarly, I was concerned that she was not yet writing – and to try to get her to do so was a chore. I had her school order us Handwriting Without Tears for the fall, but over the summer she began writing well all by herself. Again, her brain just decided it was time. So you see, kids really don’t need to be taught so much as given the opportunity to learn.
Conversely, Waldorf has some strange ideas about when children should learn things and I don’t agree with any of that 100%, either. They believe pushing to learn something before a child is ready is harmful to their little minds. And that I do agree with. But when my son still was not speaking or walking by 18 months old, I felt we ought to get him an evaluation because if there was a problem, early intervention was more successful at overcoming disabilities. There was no problem in his case, but I do not think it was detrimental to his development to have him in therapy all those months.
I also like the variety of the curriculum covered by the time they graduate a Waldorf school. I read through the local school’s lists of topics learned each year, and I have to say their eighth-graders are more worldly and educated than I am.
Waldorf also places emphasis on arts, crafts, seasons and nature which I feel is very important. Their kindergarteners learn to bake bread and knit, study fairy tales, and play with beeswax clay and wool toys. It’s magical, beautiful, and good for the entire Earth. It’s also a bit pricy so we just do what we can do. our family does, however, make a point to visit the local school for their May Faire and, hopefully, also for their Fall Festival. You can see our photos from the last two May Faires here and here.
There’s a brief overview of Waldorf as I understand it. If we are not a “school-at-home” family and we are also not an unschooling family, are we a Waldorf family? No. If for no other reason but that we watch too much TV to be Waldorf. That is, we watch some TV. I feel it can be a valuable resource and my kids both love shows like Reading Rainbow and Time Warp Trio (thanks, Claire!). M is getting old enough to enjoy documentaries like Planet Earth and sometimes also shows like Meerkat Manor or Orangutan Island. In my opinion, TV, when used responsibly, can open new worlds otherwise not easily accessible.
I guess that makes us Eclectic Homeschoolers as we pull a little from here or a little from there and mix it all up in a way that best suits our own family. The really excellent thing about homeschooling is that it can suit us and it can change whenever we need it to.
So what is our current plan? Click here to find out.
