Ebenezer - Homeschool Blogger

In which I have an epiphany

Wed, 12 Nov 2008 12:57:00 -0600

I just realized that even though every personality test I've taken categorizes me as an introvert, I think I'm actually an extrovert or at least a fence-sitter. It's just that the conversation topics I'm interested in are not at all the same as most of the population, and I like to dispense with the small talk it takes to get to know new people.

In which I remain a lazy blogger

Wed, 12 Nov 2008 07:47:00 -0600

I've been homeschooling for more than three years now in part because of statements like these made by my son's teachers:
Education Week blog

More on Charles Murray's thoughts

Tue, 7 Oct 2008 10:05:00 -0500

Karen Chenoweth critiques Charles Murray's ideas, ones I referenced in a previous post. I agree with her concerns. But why can't we take the kernel of truth -- that intellectual differences are just as real as differences in skills in physical, musical, artistic, leadership and empathetic areas -- and say: All courses of study are AVAILABLE to all who want to try. NOT all courses are required. We encourage everyone to try with the knowledge that they can change course if it doesn't work out. But it still is ridiculous to REQUIRE four years of high school math for EVERYONE. Core requirements should be what is necessary to function independently in society. Consumer math. Budgeting. Understanding credit. Interest. Basic investing. Also civics and community service. Home ec, maybe, though it saddens me that many children aren't learning cooking, cleaning, and simple repairs at home any more. But: College prep should not be core requirement. Requiring those who aren't able or don't care dilutes the difficulty and value of the class. Those students are welcome, but should not be forced into it.

In fact, why don't we make things like auto shop required courses and precalculus/12th grade math an elective? I wish now that I had taken shop in HS. Let each child, with family guidance, chart their own educational course in high school, exploring interests and pursuing passions. That's why I'd like to keep homeschooling through high school.

In which I profess my career aspirations

Fri, 22 Aug 2008 11:59:00 -0500

In her book At Large and At Small, Anne Fadiman writes in praise of the familiar essay, the literary form I would most love to spend my time researching and writing. Such essays are simultaneously jocular and erudite, winsome yet full of the highest, best and most precise vocabulary-stretching language. Their authors examine everyday subjects, topics we think we may already know all about, yet, through slightly self-deprecating personal anecdotes and research of trivia, make them seem entirely new.

Really what Fadiman describes are the best blog entries you've ever read. They can be about life's minutiae, but they are not dull laundry lists. Rather, they straddle the line between the academic paper and the diary entry, putting the personal in the context of the universal.

Though she doesn't reference blogs, she does contrast the familiar essay with other types of "essays, " including the type of writing that appears on too many blogs:

If I were to turn [essayist Charles] Lamb's 1821 "Chapter on Ears" into a twenty-first century critical essay, I might write about postmodern audiological imagery in the early works of Barbara Cartland. If I were to write a twenty-first-century personal essay, I might tell you about the pimple on my left earlobe that I failed to cover with makeup at my senior prom....(snip) ... But I don't want to write -- or read -- either one of those essays. I prefer Lamb's original, which is mostly about his musical ineptitude but also about the sounds of harpsichords, pianos, operatic voices, crowded streets, and carpenter's hammer: in other words, about the author but also about the world. (p. xi)

As such a woman of letters, then, Fadiman presents a dozen of her own familiar essays, a genre she previously featured in her collection Ex Libris (a book I own perhaps only for the piece on what happens when you marry and must merge your personal libraries). Her topics include coffee, ice cream, American flags, lepidoptery and Samuel Taylor Coleridge. Imagine the best dinner conversation you've ever had: that's what it's like to read these essays.

He's right about some things

Wed, 20 Aug 2008 07:19:00 -0500
The More Child discusses Charles Murray
Charles Murray has come under fire for tying achievement disparities among races to fundamental intelligence instead of (or at least more than) differences in opportunity, but I do agree with him that abilities -- academic and otherwise -- fall on a bell curve (not tied to race), and that not everyone can or should go to college, and that our push to allow everyone to do so has diluted the meaning of a college degree.

Curriculum, 2008-2009

Tue, 12 Aug 2008 13:07:00 -0500
COMET, Fifth Grade, Age 10:

Tapestry of Grace, Year One: Creation to Fall of Rome, dialectic level: includes history, literature, geography, arts/activities, Bible, philosophy

Catechism: Continue Training Hearts, Teaching Minds by Starr Meade

Writing: Classical Writing- Homer, part 2; TOG Writing Aids

Latina Christiana II

Finish Key to Algebra, Singapore Challenging Word Problems 6, to be followed by a mix of Singapore New Elementary Math and Art of Problem Solving curricula

Rod and Staff English 5

Spelling

Current Events (curriculum designed by me)

Typing

Life Science -- Oak Meadow spine, monthly dissection labs at the Homeschool Building, labs from Janice Van Cleave books and The Science of Life by Frank Bottone, miscellaneous projects, web activities and library books

Piano lessons

Co-op art class

Co-op PE class

Possible regular service days at Kids Food Basket

Evening read-alouds from fiction and discussion of Philosophy for Children

DANCER, First Grade, age 6

Tapestry of Grace YI, upper grammar level

First Language Lessons, part 2

Singapore Math 2B and 3A

Writing Aids

Spelling

Life Science using a free online curriculum I found plus as much involvement in Comet's activities as she wishes, and lots of library books

Violin lessons

Co-op art class

Co-op ballet class

Co-op Spanish class

Co-op PE class

Catechism

Possible service days

Evening read-alouds and selected philosophy using children's books.

When gifted children grow up

Tue, 12 Aug 2008 12:04:00 -0500
I Stumbled across this video the other day which talks about child prodigies and brain differences. It's worth a watch, especially to see young Marc Yu play the piano.

What has stuck with me, though, is the observation someone made about what happens to gifted children when they become adults -- more accurately, how people respond to them. What the child was able to learn when he was very young, to the amazement of others, is no longer so different from what his age peers can now do, so people now shrug and say "so what?" For the child that has grown up in the spotlight, addicted to attention, this is a huge psychological hurdle that can in fact paralyze her if she does not have inner confidence and self-worth.

But, as the video explains, this does not mean that the other adults have "caught up" in innate ability; the person is still able to learn faster. It does mean, though, that the gifted individual needs to be thinking about creative and distinctive output, not just learning quickly.

I don't write this to imply that gifted people should focus on staying in the spotlight to keep their egos stoked. Rather, I'm thinking about avoiding the shutdown in meaningful work, the self-critical "I guess I'm not so special." We need gifted adults to continue creating beauty, meaning and understanding, and we somehow need to provide outlets for significant creativity (see Bloom's Taxonomy of Learning) for our gifted children instead of just filling the cup.

"Overachieving" homeschoolers

Thu, 31 Jul 2008 07:47:00 -0500
Please go read this lovely post at Red Sea School. I, too, tire of people who think I'm pushing my children too hard or who think that I'm being elitist. If you've read my previous post(s), I hope you see I'm just filling a need. Even though my son is going into 5th grade, high school is barely registering in our thoughts. We aren't in a race. We aren't comparing. We just do our own thing. We go --at most -- a year at a time in planning, based on current needs and interests. It's only overachieving when compared to the average student. For my kid, it's just achieving.

And if I may digress a moment: the problem with education is not underachieving, or overachieving. It's the fact that we set the same bar for every student, putting requirements such as three years of high school math on kids for whom trade school would be more valuable and exciting and meaningful, causing them to lose their spark, and not at all challenging students who need it and who therefore lose their spark. There's something to be said for ability-based tracking, especially when children are allowed to have input into what track they're assigned to. If they want to try the academic track, let them go for it, but give them the freedom to move to a technical track or an arts track if it doesn't work out. And vice versa. But we're so concerned with comparisons, or rather lack of comparisons -- that everyone should be equal in all abilities (except sports) -- that we're afraid to let kids follow their passions.

Anyway: Please read this.

Educational elitism

Thu, 26 Jun 2008 17:23:00 -0500
Here is a link to an article in The American Scholar that I will be thinking more about in the next few days:
The Disadvantages of an Elite Eduation

It's difficult to disentangle all the threads that have in some sense dumbed down higher education, but a sense of entitlement is certainly one of them, as is the mindset of pleasing others, or working for a grade instead of the knowledge -- i.e., the lack of a growth mindset. (All traps that made my higher education less than it should have been. Successful by people-pleasing GPA standards? Extremely. Do I feel good about it now? Not so much. I missed out on living because I was afraid to really live.)

So what does this mean for me as a teacher/parent? How do I cultivate a growth mindset in us all whilst still striving for excellence? How do we define success? What spiritual components need to be developed?

From the article:

But if you’re afraid to fail, you’re afraid to take risks, which begins to explain the final and most ****ing disadvantage of an elite education: that it is profoundly anti-intellectual. This will seem counterintuitive. Aren’t kids at elite schools the smartest ones around, at least in the narrow academic sense? Don’t they work harder than anyone else—indeed, harder than any previous generation? They are. They do. But being an intellectual is not the same as being smart. Being an intellectual means more than doing your homework.

If so few kids come to college understanding this, it is no wonder. They are products of a system that rarely asked them to think about something bigger than the next assignment. The system forgot to teach them, along the way to the prestige admissions and the lucrative jobs, that the most important achievements can’t be measured by a letter or a number or a name. It forgot that the true purpose of education is to make minds, not careers.

Yeah -- what she said.

Sat, 24 May 2008 10:53:00 -0500
This about sums it up for me. Except I like to think that I'm a wee bit more gracious about others' achievements. I'm delighted when other people (or, more to the point, other people's kids) aspire to excellence and succeed. But definitions of excellence vary. When I know the child has risen to a challenge -- an honest-to-goodness challenge defined by the abilities of that particular child -- that's praiseworthy. When the benchmark for excellence is something defined by whether a whole classroom of children can succeed but could only be defined as mediocrity for a particular child, then ... not so much. That's when I have to bite my tongue. I don't disparage the level of ability. I disparage the educator who assumes excellence for one child -- typically the average child -- can be construed as excellence for every child, and I disparage the parents who accept that as the upper limit.

I have an internal conflict: I want others to understand why we're different here -- not stereotypical homeschoolers, not stereotypical any-kind-of-schoolers -- but I don't want them to think that I am one of those moms who feels superior because of our difference, or that I'm trying to engineer genius. The difference is just that -- a difference. Not better. Not worse. Just different.

So that's why I'm burying my son's achievement here. (And really, it's not an achievement in the sense that he worked hard at something. It's more of an indicator.) I have told very few people and only when asked why we were in Chicago last weekend. But here it is. My son, a 9-year-old 4th-grader, took the EXPLORE test (i.e. 8th-grade level test) as part of the Midwest Academic Talent Search. The top 5 percent of scorers on grade-level tests are invited to take it. My son's scores were in of the top 1 percent of that top 5 percent. We were pleasantly astonished.

Just one out of every 2,000 4th-graders has a similar baseline for excellence. That's why we do things differently around here. And why we homeschool in the first place.