Precious Promises

Now that my homeschooling years are over and my 3 daughters are all done with their college years, I can share my philosophy which I was always reticent to talk about when they were still homeschooling. Somewhere early on I ran across a statement about how in studying, we remember the first 5 minutes and the last 5 minutes and forget the middle, and this quote that has been attributed to Albert Einstein: “Anyone with a functional brain can soon become an expert in any field if he or she would simply study that subject only 15 minutes a day.” He also said, “Education is what remains after one has forgotten everything he learned in school,” and, “The value of a college education is not the learning of many facts but the training of the mind to think,” So I applied these principles by choosing to have minimalist requirements in the different subject areas, 15 minutes a day in each area, and my main goal was to be sure they were developing the ability to learn. As long as they were reading and writing, I knew they were absorbing good English language skills without having to know all the names for each part of grammar. I knew they’d be able to learn specific subjects in more detail, especially in college, if their homeschooling ended with their love of reading and of learning intact. Keeping the formal education to 15 minutes per subject per day early on and allowing them the time and freedom to follow their own interests seemed to work well. I gave the required standardized tests to them myself each year through age 16 when the state no longer required anything, using a set of testing materials I bought, and that was the only test they took (and always did well, validating my approach).

All we did formally for the elementary years was work through the Core Knowledge Series books, What Your -Grader Needs to Know, reading together at first and them doing it themselves once they were reading well, and I bought a Big Workbook for hands-on practice and handwriting skills, and we kept BrainQuest cards in the car and used them when out and about (all available on Amazon now). I figured out how many pages per day in each section of the Core Knowledge book and the workbook would complete them in the 180-day requirement. I used only the flashcards from Hooked on Phonics (out of a $200+ set in 1992 dollars and later found just the flashcards available for $10! Now available for $2.95 on the HOP website under the Pre-K replacement parts.) I found that by keeping the easy Dr. Suess books on hand (or any Bright and Early Books on Amazon would work), they wanted to read them and once they sounded out their first books, it was easy and natural from there. Math was the biggest challenge. I’d use Singapore Math from the beginning if I had it to do over (see Why Before How on Amazon).

I went to work outside the home when my younger 2 were 10 and 15, so it was necessary for them to be able to learn independent of me being a hands-on teacher, which I never was even when I was home with them. There are plenty of resources for homeschoolers to use to teach themselves, more so now than when we did it, though the internet was already invaluable by the time they were teenagers. Finding printed resources was a challenge early on, having to rely on homeschool fairs primarily and feeling overwhelmed with the options. Now everything is available online – how handy!

My main reasons for homeschooling were to protect them from the mentality of learning for the sake of grades, to avoid burnout and distaste for learning and reading, and to avoid the negative effect on self-image that either good or bad grades produces (superiority- or inferiority-complex). They each started college doing dual-enrollment at age 16 at the community college and proved to themselves and to me that my goal for them had been met as they all proved their ability to learn. They all still love to read, are good writers, and are curiosity-filled learners. So as I look back, I can say with confidence that we somehow muddled through with the best balance we could figure out, and it worked out better than I had reason to hope for.

I’m especially thankful for the opportunity to spare my daughters the experience of being institutionalized for 13 years with age-mates who are often a stronger influence than parents are able to overcome, which has always struck me as a very unnatural arrangement and is of course a very recent development in the history of man. I am unabashed about wanting to protect my children as much as possible from the negative peer pressure and humanistic and anti-God culture that permeates the public school system from the top down. Sure, I’d do some things differently if I could go back, and I never fooled myself into thinking that it was possible or wise to shelter them completely from the world. In fact, I knew they needed to experience the reality of their own sinfulness and need for God before they made any decision to become a Christian, and I tried to avoid any pressure to hurry that decision along. I just wanted them to be older and more ready to handle the temptations I knew would come, temptations that have invaded younger and younger ages in public schools. And yes, my daughters have certainly experienced the full brunt of the world’s pull and have learned plenty the hard way, as I knew they would. But the quality I see in them that I hoped would develop is their personal sense of freedom to be their own person coupled with the sense of responsibility to accept any consequences of the decisions they make.

I’m so proud of each of them. And I’m so thankful for the freedom that the North Carolina Department of Nonpublic Instruction has safeguarded which has encouraged and enabled parents to retain responsibility for the education of their own children.  

Filed under: Personal Subjects | Tagged: Albert Einstein, homeschooling |