For those of you teaching high school or getting prepared:  If you're familiar with Barb Shelton's book "Form-U-La" you know that she used some curriculum and used alot more "non curriculum" type items to teach her children.  She has a website and a forum and I came across an email that I received on the forum site last year and saved because of the content and I wanted to share it with you.

A reader asked a question about high school history and the fact that when she made up her own choices for teaching history, it seemed so easy compared to two main company textbooks on a high school level.    Here's the response she received from one of the forums monitors:

"The point of an education is to learn, not to choose by 'difficulty level'....as though the more one struggles to learn, then it must follow that more learning is taking place.  Rubbish!"  "A high school education, in particular, must be tempered by the calling on your child's life that the Lord has.  This may take some time to reveal, or it may take an adjustment on your part to really see what the Lord has placed there.  Curriculum isn't the deciding factor.  Curriculum is a resource to develop the calling."

I couldn't agree more (that's why I still have this email)!  If my child is learning then he's learning! No. I'm not going to give my son simple math facts and call it Algebra.  But there are some subjects that are just knowledge - pure and simple.  History, English, Science, and probably many more are examples of subjects where anything you learn is a benefit.  If you haven't learned something by highschool and so you study it in highschool - does that make it void?  Not to me!  There are many things I still don't know.  There would be nothing wrong with calling learning - learning. 

Like she said - it doesn't have to be beyond comprehensible to be considered worthy of teaching.

Use God as your guide - not the NEA!

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