My parents mostly kept me out of public school, and the little church-schools I went to were actually quite nice. I was never bullied, and the school culture was overall a decent, healthy one. My brief interludes in public school were a terrifyingly stark contrast!
Like you: a few really excellent teachers that I learned a lot from. But still mostly a waste of time. I never fit in socially, nothing was intellectually challenging, and I still had to work at the same excruciating snail's pace as everybody else in the class, to make sure nobody was falling behind. My Dad taught me to read and do basic arithmetic. I remained far, far ahead of grade level on reading and English for my entire school career. Math didn't catch up with me until fourth grade, and then long division clobbered me over the head hard, because I was 9 and it was the first time I'd ever had to *work* at anything in school. After that, went back to basically daydreaming and reading through classes until high school. So. Much. Time. that could have been spent doing *anything* else. I could have been outdoors. I could have been in the library. I could have been chasing weird hobbies. All of those would have been a better use of the time!
I try really hard with my own kids, to remember what the biggest deficiencies were in my own preparation for independent life, and make sure to fill them in on those things. How often to change sheets. How bank accounts work. How loans and credit cards work. How to balance your checkbook. How to keep track of your spending and calculate your real income (minus taxes, minus costs imposed by the job). We even use ledger books :) We of course do the usual round of subjects, but the focus is different. It's way more important to be able to manage your own money, and make a professional-sounding phone call, than to understand plate tectonic theory, you know? So the great thing about homeschooling is, we can breeze over things like plate tectonics, just enough so they know what's being talked about if the subject comes up in conversation and don't look like rubes, but no further unless it's a subject of interest to them. Otherwise, it's basic skills and literacy that we focus on: math, reading, and good literature (if you're raised on good stuff, crap literature is intolerable!)
But when we hit on something that truly interests them, we can go as in-depth as they want to go! My 10yo knows more than most non-pilot adults about how airplanes work, wind resistance, flight dynamics, all the instruments in the cockpit of an airplane, etc. because he's fascinated by it, and we buy him whatever books he wants, including actual flight manuals, have sent him to aviation camp, and that's a thing he pursues with tremendous devotion and energy. While pursuing that very single-minded thing, he's learned quite a lot about physics, history, maps... and if he holds onto the pursuit long enough, it'll probably involve some advanced math. Second kid has a love affair with maps, and surrounds himself with atlases, studies his globe, and is becoming very knowledgeable in geography, without any nudging or lessons from me. I just make a note of it in his school log now and then: "Studied maps of Africa, discussed colonialism and the changing countries and borders". Some kids learn that best as a historical narrative, and some kids approach it better as a study of maps from different times, and studying it in a way that grabs your imagination means you'll remember more of it. As parents, we try to do less classroom-style teaching, and more discussion and just overall... resource aggregating. Kids don't have much access to transportation, money, and resources, so that's the part we have to do for them, more than anything. Get them books, take them to the library, help them figure out where to find the stuff they want to know.
They're not, BTW, allowed on the internet yet. So "how to find it" is, you know, not just "google it" but for real, how to round up real-life actual resources and get access to people who know more about it. When we get a question that's way out of our league, it's like "let's figure out *how to get an answer* to that question" The resource-literacy, IMO, is far more important than any little facts we impart to them.
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Date: 2022-07-28 04:32 pm (UTC)Like you: a few really excellent teachers that I learned a lot from. But still mostly a waste of time. I never fit in socially, nothing was intellectually challenging, and I still had to work at the same excruciating snail's pace as everybody else in the class, to make sure nobody was falling behind. My Dad taught me to read and do basic arithmetic. I remained far, far ahead of grade level on reading and English for my entire school career. Math didn't catch up with me until fourth grade, and then long division clobbered me over the head hard, because I was 9 and it was the first time I'd ever had to *work* at anything in school. After that, went back to basically daydreaming and reading through classes until high school. So. Much. Time. that could have been spent doing *anything* else. I could have been outdoors. I could have been in the library. I could have been chasing weird hobbies. All of those would have been a better use of the time!
I try really hard with my own kids, to remember what the biggest deficiencies were in my own preparation for independent life, and make sure to fill them in on those things. How often to change sheets. How bank accounts work. How loans and credit cards work. How to balance your checkbook. How to keep track of your spending and calculate your real income (minus taxes, minus costs imposed by the job). We even use ledger books :) We of course do the usual round of subjects, but the focus is different. It's way more important to be able to manage your own money, and make a professional-sounding phone call, than to understand plate tectonic theory, you know? So the great thing about homeschooling is, we can breeze over things like plate tectonics, just enough so they know what's being talked about if the subject comes up in conversation and don't look like rubes, but no further unless it's a subject of interest to them. Otherwise, it's basic skills and literacy that we focus on: math, reading, and good literature (if you're raised on good stuff, crap literature is intolerable!)
But when we hit on something that truly interests them, we can go as in-depth as they want to go! My 10yo knows more than most non-pilot adults about how airplanes work, wind resistance, flight dynamics, all the instruments in the cockpit of an airplane, etc. because he's fascinated by it, and we buy him whatever books he wants, including actual flight manuals, have sent him to aviation camp, and that's a thing he pursues with tremendous devotion and energy. While pursuing that very single-minded thing, he's learned quite a lot about physics, history, maps... and if he holds onto the pursuit long enough, it'll probably involve some advanced math. Second kid has a love affair with maps, and surrounds himself with atlases, studies his globe, and is becoming very knowledgeable in geography, without any nudging or lessons from me. I just make a note of it in his school log now and then: "Studied maps of Africa, discussed colonialism and the changing countries and borders". Some kids learn that best as a historical narrative, and some kids approach it better as a study of maps from different times, and studying it in a way that grabs your imagination means you'll remember more of it. As parents, we try to do less classroom-style teaching, and more discussion and just overall... resource aggregating. Kids don't have much access to transportation, money, and resources, so that's the part we have to do for them, more than anything. Get them books, take them to the library, help them figure out where to find the stuff they want to know.
They're not, BTW, allowed on the internet yet. So "how to find it" is, you know, not just "google it" but for real, how to round up real-life actual resources and get access to people who know more about it. When we get a question that's way out of our league, it's like "let's figure out *how to get an answer* to that question" The resource-literacy, IMO, is far more important than any little facts we impart to them.