Most popular posts of 2013

I’m going to hijack this thread. Everybody keep your hands in the air. We’re flying to end of the year affirmations.

I do not always agree with PT. I am annoyed by circular proofs, “evidence” that isn’t, and links that go to disproofs of the thesis of the link. I do not believe that letting your kids play video games all day is superior to having them in school (truthfully, I’d wager it’s about even), and haven’t seen any real evidence that supports that theory.

That said, this is still my favorite homeschooling blog. I find PT’s ideas interesting and thought-provoking, and this blog has attracted a group of regular commenters whose agreements, disagreements, and screeds almost always add something to my thoughts and to my understanding of what I’m doing with homeschooling.

It’s always changing, homeschooling. Some people go into this dark forest with the map of a fixed curriculum. For some of them that leads inexorably to the other side (for some it fails utterly). I say what’s the point in that anyway, if what we’re trying to find is our own way and what we’re trying to develop is skill at finding one’s own way in a forest. So we draw maps as we go along. And sometimes we crumple them up and start over again.

This year we sat down as a family (Mom, Dad, and the 9 year old) and talked about goals. At work, Mom does this every year, and so did Dad when he worked. This year we are trying it at home.

One of the things I know I’m moving towards in homeschooling, which seems self-evident to me, is an end to the category of “special things the kid has to do because he’s a kid, but adults don’t have to do.” That was school, and is one of the failings of school. Children naturally want to become adults, and if the adults they know don’t do school, then naturally they don’t want to do school either, and many of them soon cotton to the falseness of the idea that school is something they must do to become adults. What children naturally want to do are the things they see their adults doing all day, be it work, gardening, or fiddling about on the computer. Our child becoming an adult is not a matter of fixing a deficiency in him, but in us all growing closer together with common purpose and improving our world together. Anybody who thinks he doesn’t have as much to teach me as I have to teach him is just not living in the same world we are.

We’re trying to take a concrete step towards that vision in sitting down as a family to set goals for which we are responsible, to ourselves and to each other. We came up with goals for ourselves, helped each other define them to make them concrete, measurable, and achievable, and also agreed on goals for each other. We surprised each other. We will hold each other accountable. This isn’t a special penalty for childhood, it isn’t a remediation of the deficiency of childhood, it’s a fundamental skill for all of us, a key element of forest navigation.

So here’s another part of the map we’re creating for ourselves, and I share it with you, as many of you have shared with me, helping me understand what I’m doing here and helping me come to this point. My children are happy, we’re all having fun, and we embark upon 2014 with excitement and joy. I wish you all the best in your homeschooling journeys in 2014.