trying for specifics

That last post was so vague that I don't know if it clarified anything at all. So I decided to pick up the Thomas Jefferson Education Home Companion to look at; I remembered it being much more specific and practical, so I thought perhaps I could use that as a springboard for writing out some more practical thoughts on the matter.

I just read the first article, called Off the Conveyer Belt, by Diane Jeppson who has four daughters. The idea of the "conveyer belt" is of course parallel to unschooling's concept of "assembly line" education. JT Gatto is a vehement critic of the factory-driven model of education, as well.

Here then is a list of the things she mentions that she has found to work towards an individualized education designed for excellence. This are things that we tend to do around here as well:

• Careful record-keeping (either formal or journalling -- but it's been a pattern of mine to record extensively)
  
• Reading plenty of classics yourself (the parents) -- seek recommendations
• Discuss the books --take them seriously.
  
• Have family readings and conversations.
• Design the childrens' academics to support their reading, understanding and appreciation of the classics.
  

Some other ideas she mentions that we don't do as much in this family, at least not exactly the way she describes, but that might be helpful for some:

• When a child decides to study a topic, help him plan objectives, and then design a tutoring system to help him reach his goals. In some cases the mother might be the best tutor; in other cases, the father; in other cases, siblings or people outside the home. (This sounds a bit like the community-based style of education that is described in As the Skylark Sings. (We do this, I suppose, but usually much less formally. We are not people who usually get inspired by logistics, so we do it more the rabbit-trailing, circle and then zone in type method).

• Plan discussion groups with likeminded families. I would like to do this sometime. I always like reading about Love2Learn Family's activities in this area. In the meantime, we have a few friends who love to talk about the same books and movies that we do, and we also rely on the internet to exchange and hear thoughts on the Great Ideas.

• Make room for leadership opportunities. I suppose it is the language that defeats me here. Diane Jeppson mentions craft fairs, running seminars, and things like that for leadership. The idea is to let the kids practice adult life skills while they are still in the nest. I guess we do some of that too, but I usually don't think of it so much as "leadership opportunities" -- more of just expanding, sharing, developing interests and gifts.

Even though Diane Jeppson does use that type of more formal language, she says that in practice she usually tries to keep it as organic as possible. For example, she expanded a simple morning devotion time into a more full-blown reading, discussion and research hour, but she took care not to impose it upon the kids like a ton of bricks, but rather to let it develop more naturally.

My children don't mind being assigned things, usually, but they do seem to heartily resist being molded. I think it runs in the Celtic temperament they get from both sides of the family. So some of the most "relaxed, fun" type of curricula are often the ones they hate most heartily, and some of the more structured ones actually appeal to them more.

Maureen at Trinity Prep School has pulled together some Thomas Jefferson Education carnivals. I think I will try to read through some of them this vacation.

But when I was writing my last post I felt convicted about spending too much time theorizing and not enough time just being around my kids. So that's step one, definitely; just being there!

Clare is baking a cake and listening to Anna and the King of Siam. Paddy and Liam just came in from a walk outdoors in the snow (Liam with photos to show); Sean has been timing his football 40's. And Aidan is trying to talk Kevin into cutting down a Christmas tree!

How to Classically Unschool -- I Wish :)

I was looking up "Classical Unschooling" on Google. Someone asked me about how we do it and of course! my first response is to go research, not just say how we do it like anyone else would.

I see that my blog comes up third on the search, following Melissa and David. Here's also a post by Nose in a Book and one by Nerd Family.... .all about classical unschooling or the balance between the two in some form.

That doesn't seem to help me with "how I do it". : ). Sure, I could write out a typical day; in fact you can see a bunch of them over at Schola et Studium. It would look like a form of Charlotte Mason, which it is. It would probably look like way too many "requires" for most unschoolers, and way too much freedom for many classical types. Often it's provisional -- it's not exactly what I would want.

My ideal is that:

1. I act as a mentor, coach, guide to help the kids develop their talents and interests.

2. They learn from me and go further than I can take them.

3. They end up capable of living a good, meaningful life and being able to support themselves and reflect on their choices and on the society around them, and change what is theirs to change.

On a given day this is not what is happening on the surface. Most often, it's hidden underneath, at best, with glints of the real thing occasionally. As time goes on, though, more of the real value comes through. It's like prospecting, or fishing (I guess I am an Alaskan!)

Maybe a better approach is to list what I try to keep in mind as I plan:

• The student is the primary agent in learning; teaching is a secondary role, and often works best informally rather than formally.
• Inspiration is probably the key to any kind of "teaching" that takes place. "Requirements" are contingent to that. In other words, requirements can provide a sort of map, but they are poor as pilots.
  
• The human being has a natural, driving desire to know. All the great educational methods have been based on an understanding of that truth. You can foster, support, develop that desire or you can make war on it. ..."despise, hinder, offend" it. Obviously, it's better to foster it.
• Plan for strewing -- an unschooling idea that has great value in any kind of family life. Also, "planting seeds" or "preparing a banquet" -- both something like strewing. Basically, giving the child lots of opportunities to learn, while avoiding the extremes of force-feeding or overstimulating and scattering.
• Non Multa sed Multum -- not many, but much -- seems to be opposed to the strewing and planting and banquet ideas, but isn't. It reminds me to keep my priorities in order. Reminds me that scattering trivialities that distract the child is not the same as planting seeds that flower and bear fruit.
• As for what the priorities are: they are (1) "tools" (the kind of learning that helps you do more learning on your own) and hmm, I guess I don't really have a word for it -- but (2) "elements" -- the groundwork for the subjects -- the primary principles. So for literature the primary elements are enjoying lots of good books, for science it is respect for and observation of nature, for history -- well, that is a bit like literature actually, and I think the old tradition was to put them together as "humanities" -- wisdom acquired from past events and reflections upon those events. Composition -- comes from expresssion, verbal and written. And so on.

In practice, you see me trying all sorts of things based on this. I look for "consent of the will" -- consent is a nice term that for me means more than passive compliance -- it means an effort combining heart, will and mind.

Obviously you will usually only see bits and pieces of this on a typical day in the homeschool. Say, my 14 year old wakes up and comes downstairs immediately to do his Greek and Vocabulary. This is a nice example of his will being brought to bear on his work. Some of his mind and heart is involved, but not all. He would probably prefer to be doing something else, but he has internalized that this work is important and part of his daily duties.

Again, you see a child who loves to read fantasy books. His motivation is primarily of the heart and imagination. He obviously makes a willed decision to sit and read instead of kick his heels, and he is using his mind to understand. So there's a combination. But he is primarily directed by "delight".

In actual practice, I sit down and look at my kids and look at what I think is important in education. Then I try to get the two together.

1. If a child has an interest in something or a gift, I try to provide space and support.
2. If I am presenting something that simply is not working. I try to figure out what is wrong. Is it a matter of will, heart or mind? Often an educator will tend to focus on just one of these and treat every difficulty as a failure of that particular area.
3. For all the middle ground things --the things that I am introducing but the kids are all right with -- I am tweaking and kitbashing. I am trying to make it work a bit better and also trying to just continue with the follow through (my tendency is quick discouragement and lack of persistence).

My efforts probably go about 50 percent towards thr third scenario; 20-30 percent towards the first; and I try to keep "really not working" to about 10 percent or less. The missing 10-20 percent is my simple incompetence or just personal sloughing-off. Actually it probably measures higher than that. I would like the first to be higher than 30% -- that is I would like to be better at working interactively and responsively with the childrens' own interests and talents. That is why I admire unschoolers. I'm happy with the 50 percent for #3 but would like to be better, more skillful, at it. This is where my interest in Method comes in. I would of course like to keep my sloughing-off to almost zero. But that made me think of a fourth category.

#4 Mother Culture (Charlotte Mason term) -- what Stephen Covey calls "sharpening the saw". Thomas Jefferson Education has a word for it too, but I forget what it is. My own lifetime learning. This probably ideally should infuse ALL the other areas but certainly needs a bit of its own space as well. It is not at all the same thing as sloughing-off, though for me they can overlap. I love to study and so I can use that as an excuse for ignoring everything else.

I would like to think this might be helpful, sigh -- but it is a mess, and my five year old is "really really really really hungry". I need to teach Algebra before it gets too late in the day. Anyway, I'm going to post it so my depressed post stops heading my blog ;-). So here goes.

The Value of Retelling, and a keyword map

But, it will be said, reading or hearing various books read, chapter by chapter, and then narrating or writing what has been read or some part of it,––all this is mere memory work. The value of this criticism may be readily tested; will the critic read before turning off his light a leading article from a newspaper, say, or a chapter from Boswell or Jane Austen, or one of Lamb's Essays; then, will he put himself to sleep by narrating silently what he has read. He will not be satisfied with the result but he will find that in the act of narrating every power of his mind comes into play, that points and bearings which he had not observed are brought out; that the whole is visualized and brought into relief in an extraordinary way; in fact, that scene or argument has become a part of his personal experience; he knows, he has assimilated what he has read. This is not memory work.

I just came across this again in Charlotte Mason's Philosophy of Education. I wanted to put it on here because it strikes me as quite true. I have been testing it out on different books the past few days -- among them, Sean's school books and CM's Parents and Children -- and I find that after doing this, I can not only remember the passage I read, but I can almost visualize the train of the argument as if it were in a book in front of me.

I was less successful in narrating and remembering in the past, though. When I narrated, it took a mighty effort and it was usually vaguer -- I had to check back again to verify various lines in the argument or information. But I recently read a few books on studying -- one of them was Super Reading Secrets and another was called, originally enough, Effective Study (and is OOP, but the way I understand it, the author invented the SQRRR method which is well known nowadays?).

Both recommended developing a habit of jotting down a key word or so per paragraph -- sort of like an IEW keyword outline but even more brief; then "retelling" from this skeleton. I think they both said it was better to write down the note AFTER you read because then the recall is more active -- you don't become dependent upon the notes.

I suppose that this could still be a sort of crutch; that children starting from Day One on CM methods would not need to do this; though I do remember Karen Andreola suggesting that the parent make a similar brief notes outline to help a child narrate, at least in the beginning.

I have been having my 14 year old try this too -- narrating without notes, and then with keyword notes, to see if there is any difference.

I find that for me at any rate, this acts as a sort of map -- I am a very visual-spatial thinker and so perhaps that is part of it. Once I've narrated, I don't even need the map anymore. It just helps me maneuver through the original retelling. This morning, I can still remember what I read yesterday; I'm going to experiment a bit more with longer-term recall. Anyway, I thought I'd mention it in case there are others out there who have been not entirely successful with CM's test quoted above.

Skeleton Key to the Treasure Chest

On a classical list I am on, someone asked about what your "bare bones" priorities would be if you could only homeschool, say, half time or less. Hey, that is what my homeschool has been like regularly ever since we have started. I should have some sort of graduate degree in crisis homeschooling.

Anyway, here is what I wrote --posting it here because it fits in a bit with recent posts:
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Interesting topic because we used to have to do this cutting back at least once a year (pregnancies, new babies, medical crises) and even now when things are smoother I find it helpful to regularly consider what's essential to me and what's not.

• Math -- because it's the hardest to learn naturally for my kids at least, and it's of key importance
• Latin -- same as above and also it incorporates most formal language arts --grammar, vocabulary, logic, and composition/narration/copywork. For younger ones (primary) it would be phonics rather than Latin.
• Literature -- which is a broad enough category to include history and science and religion as well as the childhood fictional classics.

You already mentioned spiritual training -- which would include religious instruction and character formation and some incidental vocational training, I suppose.

Harder to describe for me but important-- setting an example for "how and why to learn" -- (I guess this is where my unschooly side comes in) -- discussion, stories about family culture, modeling research skills, strewing resources and reading materials and reading aloud to them. This would fit in odd corners of the day.... this is not formal ... basically I would call it "discipling" or "mentoring" or "enculturation" -- simply making it a priority to share what I am and what DH is and the "keeper" parts of our family and cultural heritage. Some moms do that enculturation naturally; I have to think about it and be aware of its importance.

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Sites I find helpful for my minimal liberal arts educational method:

• Robinson Curriculum
• Ambleside Online Emergency Lesson Plan
• Ruth Marshall's site -- particularly her review of the Robinson Method, but there are many more articles and helps on simplifying, and homeschooling a wide age range.
• Trivium Pursuit: Ten Things to Do with Your Child Before Age Ten

I usually go back to these whenever I'm feeling mentally cluttered or overloaded.

• Once I did this interview about Homeschooling Through a Crisis with some strategies for dealing with difficulties.
• Also, I just wrote out this Checklist of Priorities for my learning notes site.
  

The Role of Retrieval

I thought this article from Eide Neurolearning -- When Knowledge, Creativity, and Retrieval Diverge ---was interesting.

Information retrieval is not as catchy a notion as attention these days, but it is a distinct process in the brain, and it what you are asking students to do when you ask them to repeat back what they learned in class or from their homework. ....

....although a student may be very good at synthesizing information (parietal), he can also be quite weak or slow at retrieving stored information from memory (prefrontal). This in fact is more the norm than the deviation for high IQ kids. Their prefrontal lobes are slower to develop.

Charlotte Mason appears to have placed quite a bit of emphasis on retrieval, without using the term, because narration and the exam process are both examples of two different types of retrieval -- short term and long term. Several of my children have disliked immediate calls for retrieval (narration) but have fared better with a longer-term form of retrieval.

I read that Waldorf, for instance, has the child listen to a "main lesson" one day, retell the next, and produce something the day after. In other words, knowledge/retrieval/creativity are separated into three distinct processes. The Ignatian method has the prelection/review/demonstration of mastery paradigm (sorry for the jargon, it just slips out) which probably is a way of ensuring that retrieval is built into the process. To put it in English! the Ignatian method explicitly sets an example for retrieval. I think that Charlotte Mason might possibly think this too "teachery" but I can see a place for it, particularly for those children with a very rich interior life who have trouble bringing it up to the surface.

Some of my children have been quite blank when asked to give a narration on a particular book, but later have shown that the book was pivotal in their development. The example that comes to my mind is my daughter and St Thomas Becket. We studied him when she was eleven. At the time I remember being discouraged that there was almost no visible impact. Years later she could narrate the whole study and reflect on how it shaped her ideas.

HomeschoolJournal is down presently for maintenance, but Ragamuffin Rosie has a post called Just Breathe which is her musings on how this process works in her family.

And JoVE recently blogged on Testing in response to my post on exams. We are both interested in the "organic" aspect of the testing situation -- how it can be helpful in the natural learning life of a child (rather than being an invasive, artificial ranking system, as it so often becomes in institutional schooling systems).

Tribe of Autodidacts wrote about testing too (I am collecting these as I come across them on my Google Reader)

Another philosophical post, when I am really supposed to be writing my story! and around the USA at least, everyone is probably sitting back and relaxing after Thanksgiving....sigh.