I have been thinking a lot about the differences between the ideals of classical education, Charlotte Mason and unschooling.

The Classical Approach

I've already read most of the classical education books out there - The Well-Trained Mind, Teaching the Trivium, etc. I think it sounded most palatable to me as a newer homeschooler because it sounds more like traditional school than anything else.

However, it is very, very stressful, rigorous, and especially in the early years, extremely tedious for the student at times.  All that copywork and drills and required recitation and everything else. We used First Language Lessons by Susan Wise Bauer for a few months in the first grade and tried everything else they recommended.  It was too rigid and, frankly, too repetitive and boring for us.

We still love The Story of the World, but since PJ has such severe attention and auditory deficits, I had to wait until he was skilled enough to read at least some of the material on his own in order to use it. I thought that Ur and Mesopotamia were very inaccessible subjects for the average 6-year-old, the age range recommended for Vol 1 of the series. Instead, we did a lot of studying of the general topics covered in Vol 1 and 2. Now we love Vol 3 as we use it formally, and use it more as a unit study on history and geography.

For example, the chapter about France's Louis XIV yielded a desire to study about Paris, the Louevre (which PJ, ever keenly interested in art and art history, is literally desperate to visit), the French Revolution, the musical Les Miserables, the French language, French cuisine, and extensive reading about France in the child's atlas we have. There were also numerous discussions about social castes and social justice and how today's French socialism has reactionary roots in the excesses of Louis XIV. That's how it goes for every chapter in that book. We are now on Germany/ Bach/ nationalism/ you get the idea.

As a result, here we are in May and we are not even halfway done with Vol. 3. We will probably keep going through it in the summer and just pick up Vol 4 whenever we're done. We just have a lot of fun with the book. Otherwise, classical education was way too counterintuitive and frankly condescending of the child. There is a sense in classical education that the child is an empty vessel who must be filled with ideas by us, the superior adults. The reality is that children are better at learning than we are! There is a certain contemptuousness, I find, a removal between parent and child, in the classical approach. It wasn't for us.

Unschooling

The other end of the spectrum is unschooling. I have been reading The Unschooling Handbook by Mary Griffiths. I am nearly done, and feel more sure than ever that this approach is not for me, even as I agree very much in the basic principle that one learns best what one enjoys learning. However, I think that this particular book, and perhaps unschooling in general, takes that idea and makes some fairly unsupported conclusions. Despite touting itself as the most universally applicable approach to education, I find it is very narrow in scope.

For starters, there is a presupposition of the parent as a competent, well-rounded resource.  If an unschooling parent has no idea how to do an Internet search, or doesn't really know how to suggest all the educational ramifications of, say, baking a cake or buidling a treehouse or mailing something at the post office, or hasn't set foot in a library in 20 years, that parent is going to be an inadequate "facilitator" of quality educational experiences in any guise. I know a few "radical unschoolers" whose parents are neither well-educated nor good at making those kinds of intellectual connections between knowledge pools, and their kids are very ignorant in general.  There is one 13yo in particular who is functionally illiterate. "He'll pick it up when he needs to!" says his mother. I hurt for that kid, I really do.  He probably has some learning disabilities that no one has discovered because no one has ever sat him down with a workbook and pushed him in a direction that would reveal his very real limitations.  There is a young woman who is now struggling and struggling as a first-year medical assistant student because her mother never made her do any math, ever. It's just so unnecessary.

The book is scarily vague about how you can tell if your child is being adequately educated. "You just KNOW!" it says, over and over. Many of the testimonials given by kids flout parental authority - there is an account of a 12-year-old, for example, "deciding" to go to school, much to the pain and consternation of his parents, who are apparently physically incapable of saying no.  This is treated with sympathy by the author, but she nevertheless doesn't suggest, oh, being a parent and putting your foot down.

I am a Christian and I believe, as the Bible says, that it's my responsibility to "train up my child in the way that he should go."  But this is bordering on cruelty according to Mary Griffith. The book also politely skirts the questions such as "How will a child know how to put together a well-constructed essay?" and "How would anyone know they're good at physics if no one has ever had them learn advanced mathematics or study physics as a subject?" and "What if the kid never practices the instrument you paid hundreds for, and never makes any progress, but still insists on taking lessons?" and "What about kids who are naturally inert and really WOULD spend all day, every day, playing mindless video games if left to their own devices?" and "Okay, fine, 'you just know,' and you have to 'trust the process,' but how can you really tell if they are going to be academically competent enough to enter a university if your homeschooling logs consist entirely of things like watching PBS specials, sewing a bookmark, and emailing? Seriously now."

It is so much circular reasoning with little or no pedagological or empirical support. I feel like it is a huge social experiment and the kids are the guinea pigs.  And I'm sorry, no matter how voracious a reader is the child that learns to read fluently at 14 instead of 7, they're missing out on so much. I find so much in every chapter that is inaccurate, illogical and just unsupported generalizations.  And the fact that, at a time when it is estimated that the percentage of special-needs learners among the homeschool population may be double that of the public schools', the book devotes a single passage to unschooling the special needs learner is absolutely shameful.

Charlotte Mason: The Best of Both Worlds

I love the principle of interest-directed learning, but I do not like the principle of child-led learning.  Charlotte Mason's principles of "spreading a sumptuous feast [of knowledge]" for the child is what works best for us. I choose the topics and in what order they are presented. There is a baseline of depth of coverage; past that, if PJ wants to spend hours reading about the history of the orchestra (a current pet subject) I am going to encourage this as much as possible. But I guarantee I wouldn't have a 9-year-old who knows what an overture or a cantata or a counterpoint are if he was left to his own devices, or if he had a mother who had no idea those things even existed.  He would also probably still be dyslexic, still be unable to write, etc. had I not formally taught him about these things. And he loves to read and write now, so obviously I didn't smush his love of learning there.

That said, we do TOO much formal learning now, I think.  I want to do less "To the computer with you!" style homeschooling and do more "real life" learning.  We talked a little today about how I want learning to be all around us.  He asked if window-shopping at the mall (a favorite past time) was educational. I said yes, because we are learning to be good consumers, learning how to conduct ourselves in public, and of course, deal-comparing and things like that.  Today was our fine arts day and we did the following that I consider educational:

• PJ spent most of the morning making his own magazine about his own invented video game, an amalgam of Pac-man and Star Wars. The magazine featured advertisements, a joke section, and many illustrations. After a failed attempt to bind its many pages with scotch tape, we binded it with staples instead. I was given the magazine as a gift. :)
  
• We went for a nature walk around the neighborhood for about 20 minutes.  We identified several species of flowers, including the hybiscus, to which my best friend is allergic.
  
• We listened to several Bach cantatas, as well as a 1980s pop music marathon on the radio.
  
• PJ went with me on a visit to a client software training, and got to witness that. He also got a minor verbal lesson on business etiquette vs. informal social etiquette, which he thought was very interesting.
  
• We read a brief children's illustrated prose version of Shakespeare's A Midsummer Night's Dream. PJ thought it was very, very funny. This version included snippets of the actual Shakespearean dialogue, which PJ appeared to understand. I ordered these paper dolls, which should arrive any day now, and suggested that when they arrived, we could put on the play ourselves using them. I suggested that we could make our own scenery as well. He reacted with great enthusiasm; however, the language really is very difficult, and I am pondering whether I should get one of those versions with the "modern translation" on one side of the page and the regular text on the other from the library.
  
• We had our first drawing lesson from Drawing With Children.  PJ still has a great deal of trouble following spoken directions and he is a bit resentful of "learning to draw" because he says he already knows how to draw. (His drawing is much like his writing due to his dysgraphia - several years below grade level, and yet I don't want to quash either his enthusiasm or his confidence. I am trying to frame it as something we do together "to do even more with drawing." It was a little frustrating. 
  
• We read the first chapter of Luke in the Bible, and discussed John the Baptist briefly.
  
• We sang the first three verses and the last verse of  "O Come All Ye Faithful" as the begining of this week's hymn study. We also sang "I Sing The Mighty Power of God" once through, which was our study from last week. There was some discussion and practical application of good breath control, posture and diction in singing, as well.
  
• We looked through our Spanish for Kids Larousse course, lesson 3, and did the corresponding activities.
  
• We read one chapter from Mrs. Frisby and the Rats of N.I.M.H. out loud.  He thought he'd hate the book when I first told him the premise; after two chapters he was begging me to read "just one more" and asking all kinds of questions about it.
  
• PJ read one chapter of The Sign of the Beaver and two chapters of Introducing Bach independently.  He generally enjoys historical fiction and biographies.

Not bad for a day's work, even though we didn't really do any "formal schooling." I would have liked to have thrown in some art appreciation there - we have a few books about John James Audubon I'd like to get to soon - but, you know, not bad for a day's work. :)