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Monday, November 17, 2008

Satire

One of my childhood friends, “Johnny,” was extremely clever.  He didn’t come by his cleverness by environment, although his environment gave him opportunities to demonstrate it.  He was born clever, with a jaundiced eye of the world.  When he was three years old his mother took him home to meet the relatives.  Even at his young age, he was all too aware that he was “on show,” so he behaved like a dog.  I don’t mean “dog” in the scum/bad manners sense.  He LITERALLY behaved like a dog.  When spoken to he’d only bark in response.  When food was served he’d lap it up, face in the plate.  He did this despite being black and blue from being pinched and spanked by his mother… and he did it for three entire days and only stopped barking when they got on the plane home.

It still makes me laugh… and I still admire Johnny’s tenacity.  He didn’t care what others thought of him and that is a rare trait. 

When he was in high school he had to do a paper on Japan.  He stayed up the night before and adorned himself as a Japanese actor.  He had the full catastrophe of wardrobe, the black wig, the full make-up.  He went to school like that, turned in his paper on Japan with a flourish, and said absolutely nothing.  He spent the entire school day dressed like that, with no comment.

He’s spent his entire life mocking the world and when folks try to figure out his motives, or find some inner meaning in what he is literally doing, he just gives his wry, “gotcha” kind of laugh. 

That kind of satire and living life in a kind of purposeless artistic statement, is something that most folks don’t understand.  Most folks have a fairly high investment in what others think of them, or an inherent shyness or timidity that keeps them from doing that sort of thing.  They can’t relate at all. 

So, too, with most satire or dark humor.  H.L. Mencken took it to high art in his essays, using the language and ideas like a boxer uses his fists.  He did it to get a rise and reaction out of people, to see if he could push their buttons.  He “won” when they got upset or took it personally or seriously. 

For satire to be effective, there has to be an element of truth to it.  It has to take someone’s sacred cow and then gore it, mercilessly. If there is no blood, it isn’t satire. In our politically correct world, this is all too rare, and folks who do it are far and few.  Ann Coulter does it, in her own way, making folks on the Left incensed about her callousness, and folks on the Right not wanting her on the team.  She doesn’t care.  She’s clever.

The folks who get upset about that sort of thing are the same people who thought that Tom and Jerry cartoons were too violent, and set about to get them taken off the air under the guise of being bad for children.  They’re only “bad” for stupid children and their stupid parents.

Clever children, children who were born seeing the irony in all things, don’t have a lot of opportunities these days.  Cartoons were once the bastion of the ironic, teaching children how humor could be used as a weapon.  The folks who didn’t get Tom & Jerry make me giggle, in the same way Johnny did… and that’s the point, really.

Creators 1.  Nanny-banners 0.

Trying to explain humor is nearly impossible.  Satire is even more difficult.  Most folks understand comedy (in the modern definition) because they go to see hacks like Gallagher and actually laugh.  They watch things like Benny Hill and think that’s funny, too. I’m actually grateful for people like Gallagher and Benny Hill, but maybe not the way people think.

Years ago there was a golf tournament (the details don’t matter) that was incredibly difficult.  The hole placements were making it impossible for the professional golfers to make par, and most ended up looking like amateur players, and they lost their ability to remain calm and cool under pressure.  When the course manager was confronted by one of the players he was asked what he was doing, “Are you trying to embarrass the best golfers in the world?” he asked.  To which the course manager responded, “No, sir.  Just identify them.”

Gallagher and Benny Hill are like that.  They allow us to separate the fools from rest of the herd (the chaff from the wheat), so in that sense, they do us a service.

Humor and satire, not comedy, have that as their only purpose.

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God grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change; courage to change the things I can; and satire to keep me laughing as we fall over the cliff to our deaths.

Educating Your Children VIII:  Learning Inventory

As I’ve mentioned many times in this series, you have to have Goals and Objectives.  It is what you use as the basis for finding materials, evaluating them, as well as a method to test you and your child’s success and progress.  What are your educational goals?  Well, I don’t know what YOUR goals and objectives are.  I can’t evaluate if they’re good or bad, or if you’ve chosen good sources.  What I’ll attempt to do in this post is provide a list of goals and then expand it.  You will have your own lists, but can use this as a model for developing your own.

As I’ve included before, here is Thomas Jefferson’s goals for public education, and they were OUR goals (as I saw no reason to reinvent the wheel):

• To give to every citizen the information he needs for the transaction of his own business;
• To enable him to calculate for himself, and to express and preserve his ideas, his contracts and accounts, in writing;
• To improve, by reading, his morals and faculties;
• To understand his duties to his neighbors and country, and to discharge with competence the functions confided to him by either;
• To know his rights; to exercise with order and justice those he retains; to choose with discretion the fiduciary of those he delegates; and to notice their conduct with diligence, with candor, and judgment;
• And, in general, to observe with intelligence and faithfulness all the social relations under which he shall be placed.

The above were the goals for our home-school, at the point when we determined if we were “done.” Education is never “done” but we’re providing a cutting off point equivalent to a high school diploma.  The above list is the last point in our home-school, but it is age specific. 

By exploding each point, we can establish objectives.  They will be broader, more like milestones than learning objectives.  Let me illustrate with the first one:

To give to every citizen the information he needs for the transaction of his own business;

• Arithmetic, bookkeeping, accounting, and taxation
• Marketing, sales, and advertising
• Law, licenses, and permits
• Fiduciary responsibility
• Correspondence and contracts
• Hiring, mentoring, and payroll

If we take the above to an extreme, it could lead to Masters in Business Administration or it might involve focused studies in Agriculture, Manufacturing, or the Arts.  That’s not our focus in K through 12.  What we’re wanting to provide in K-12 are the foundation skills, and more theoretical and practical knowledge.  That is our end point with each of the above provided broadly.

If our child is five years old, we’re not going to try to teach them accounting, or even bookkeeping.  We have prerequisites to learn, before we can get to those subjects.  But that’s the direction we’re heading, with the prerequisites as learning milestones.

Let’s look at ONE of those, arithmetic.

Can the child write?  Does he have the small motor skills to hold a pencil?  Has he demonstrated that he understands the concept of numbers, beyond the ability to recognize and name the shape?  Has the child demonstrated that he understands the difference between a whole and a fraction?  Does he have the ability to count, beyond simply mimicking? 

The entire discipline of mathematics, of which arithmetic is a basic building block, is a language.  It is a language, just like English or any other spoken and written language.  It has rules, the equivalent of grammar, and exceptions.  Beyond the basics of it as a language, the ability to perform it (beyond understanding it theoretically) requires mental calisthenics (calculations).  Those building blocks can be further broken down, such as adding, then subtracting, then multiplication, and then division.  All of those skills have rules and special symbols and words.  You can teach your child to recite “two plus two equals four” but does he understand what he’s saying and what it means?  Does he understand the synonyms of “two and two are four” or “two + two = four”?

That’s a lot to learn! 

But children generally do this so easily and at such a young age that we tend to gloss over just how much language they’ve acquired and understood in order to be able to do it.  How easily they do it depends on how consistent and precise we are with language. 

They also have to be able to recognize and write those symbols, requiring that they’ve developed the small motor skills to hold and control a pencil.  Is the child mature enough to hold a pencil without risk of them sticking it in their eye or eating the eraser?  If not, start with a crayon!  Dexterity and maturity are required.  You’d no more give a six-month old a pencil as you would give a seven year old the car keys and ask them to drive to the store for a gallon of milk.  Even before you teach the child to drive, they have to learn to make transactions with others, understanding the concept of currency, tax, and change.  If you give a five-year old a $20 bill, will they come home with the right change?  How would they know if they were short-changed?

The point of detailing the above is not to be verbose (OK, maybe a little), but to illustrate that there are dozens of dozens of prerequisites to doing things we think of as easy and common.  We might remember the first time we got short-changed, but do we remember how we were taught to do it ourselves, so it doesn’t happen to us again?

In addition to being able to calculate the cost of something and determine if we were short-changed, there are other aspects of language that allow us to engage the seller in the transaction.  “I want a glass of milk, please” told to a waiter is a contract.  Children can learn to state the basics of contracts by having to order what they want at a restaurant.  They learn this by modeling the language and behavior of their parents, which is why it is so important that their parents are consistent in how they do these things.  If one parent always does the ordering (although a common custom in etiquette) the child might get the idea that the parent will always order for them, or use shyness as an excuse not to have to do it themselves.  Did they forget the “please”?  Did they forget to specify the “size”?  Did they forget to include special considerations or preferences, such as “medium well,” “plain,” “ketchup only,” or “no onions”?

I’m not suggesting that children learn “the hard way” for everything, forcing them to live with the consequences of a hamburger delivered with onions, but these things are learned gradually, with lots of prompting and reminders from the parents.  If the child can say “I want a hamburger, please” they should be congratulated when they do that (with a big smile and nod of approval the first time they do it).  The parent can add “plain, please” and then tell the child at a later point that they can say “I want a plain hamburger, please” to make sure it gets to them the way they want it.

When we order something at a restaurant we have engaged in a verbal contract with the business.  When we order something we have committed to paying for it, even though we don’t say “I would like a plain hamburger for $2.95, and I will pay for that hamburger if it is delivered within a reasonable time, and as specified.” That’s implied.  Does the child know that yet?  If they bring a peanut butter sandwich instead, do you have to pay for it, if you ate it? 

There is also a contract with the wait-staff.  We are required, even though it isn’t written down anywhere, that we will pay them 15% to 20% in tip, if they deliver it to our table.  How much above 15% we tip them will be based on the quality and speed of the service.  Does the child know how to determine quality or speed?  Does the child know that the tip percentage is different (10% to 12%) if it is a buffet service?  What about “to go” service at a traditional restaurant versus a fast food place?  What are the standard rules for tips and when they apply?

These are social customs, combined with legal customs, based on an honor system.  But it is complicated!  Children can learn about those customs by seeing them modeled and being asked to take the money and the check to the cashier, and having to bring back the right amount of change.  Does the parent review the check, making sure that they were charged only for what they ordered and received, or to see if the tip was included?  Are you explaining what you’re doing when you look at the bill?  Can your child do it?

These concepts and customs make up the basics of a civil society, and provide the basic building blocks to understanding boilerplate contracts and the idea of “unwritten rules.”

When looking at a menu with pictures, parents can talk about the fact that the Fruity Tootie special doesn’t look exactly like the picture when the pancakes arrive.  That’s marketing and advertising basics.  “Yes, the picture looks appealing, but if you’ll remember, you didn’t like it the last time you ordered it.” This helps a child learn about deceptive advertising, and matures in being able to short-circuit their impulsive instincts, which prepares them to read the small print in contracts.

In providing a learning inventory by age level, the above illustrates how much more is learned and required in order to do things we think of as simple.  A child isn’t born knowing that you must add a minimum of 15% to a restaurant check, nor are they born knowing how to calculate percentages. 

Playing a restaurant game with the child and parent taking turns acting as the waiter, creating a menu, having a cash register, etc., are GREAT ways to teach a child these things, including having the savvy to be able to be able to speak up for what they want.  What happens when the waiter leaves the table, and goes to the kitchen to get your order?  These things don’t happen by magic.  The parent or the child can become the restaurant chef, preparing the order, and then having one person of the role players deliver it to the waiting customers.  If the parent complains about how the food was served or that it took too long, the child learns empathy, and has an understanding of how long it takes to prepare food, and to be able to gauge the speed and quality of the service they receive (quality is an abstract concept).

But as you can see, I hope, playing games like this with your young children provide them with skills they will have to have to get along in the world, as well as providing a foundation for skills and knowledge they will have to learn later.

You can play all sorts of games with young children to prepare them for their social engagements.  You can play the restaurant game above, going to the grocery store, and play department store from the clothing in your closets.  You can learn about taking inventory of your pantry, before you go to the store, to make sure you buy only what you need and like. A child can learn about sales and how to calculate markdowns, by putting little stickers, such as “10% off” or “50% off” on different drawers and racks in their closets, and then give them monopoly money to buy a wardrobe.  The list of preparatory games is endless!

One of the games we played in our house, which has endless benefits for a child (once they’re ready for it), was “The Bank of Mom.” I’ve written about this before, but we gave each of our children a check register (we all have extras laying around).  It was a checkbook with only the check register (no checks).  Each of our kids were given an allowance each week.  Out of that, they had to buy everything (except their school books and groceries).  They had to buy EVERYTHING else from their accounts: their clothing, entertainment (toys, games, movies), basic toiletries (deodorant, toothpaste), etc.  This meant that they had to take their checkbooks everywhere, and their transactions were totaled and paid for separately.  I actually paid for everything, but the amounts were subtracted from their balances.  I had veto authority, of course, but I didn’t have to exercise it very often.  It teaches a child the basic mechanics of household budgeting, but it also teaches them (very quickly) to be wise shoppers.  They learn another very important lesson:  they recognize the amount of money being spent on them, versus the things that are provided to them.  They see the amount of the grocery bill and realize they didn’t have to pay for it. 

Their allowances were quite high, because this wasn’t just “mad money.” The allowances were not directly tied to a punishment/reward system either, so there were no punitive dings if they didn’t do their chores.  Chores and household responsibilities are required, and that was the basis for their having their food and shelter covered, not coming out of their individual accounts.

Since they paid for things, they treated their clothing and personal items with a great deal of respect. 

The “Bank of Mom” also had an end date.  Our children knew that once they reached the age of 16, the Bank of Mom and their allowances ended.  They had years of experience knowing exactly how much they needed to live on, and so when they got their first jobs, they knew that the $50 or $60 they were earning a week wasn’t going to enable them to live like millionaires… and let me tell you, when they saw the amount of money that was deducted from their paychecks in FICA and other taxes, they were PISSED.  They also understood that Mom and Dad weren’t going to continue to pay for their basics once they had the ability to earn money.  Their food and shelter would be paid for (as long as they were in school and contributing), but they had to pay for everything else.  Springing that on them, at age 16 or 18, before they’ve had any experience with budgeting and forecasting is TOO LATE.

They quickly transfered those skills to managing their real bank accounts and debit cards.

(In the last year, our daughter had to quit working because of her school schedule and her responsibility of chauffeuring her brother to and from school.  She doesn’t have to be told to appreciate the small allowance she now receives again, nor how to manage it.  While she might moan a bit about having to run errands for us, or drive her brother hither and yon, she does it, because she realizes these things were done for her, and it’s “payback time.” She thanks us every week for the small amount of money she receives, not seeing it as any sort of entitlement, but as a gift.  She can be sent to the local club store with a grocery list a mile long, with my debit card, and I have no fear that she’ll run off to Hawaii with my debit card.  That trust was earned and the skills diligently taught.)

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The above explained the concepts of prerequisites applied to long term goals, broken up by skill set and age appropriateness.  With those caveats, the following is a basic guideline of what your children should be learning, and by when:

Toddlers:

• Small motor skills (to hold a pencil, dress themselves, turn the pages of a book, navigate and use objects, such as the sink, toothbrush, towels, and washcloths)
• Spacial concepts (pouring, setting their place at the table, holding fork/spoon and serving themselves)
• Sit quietly and attentively (5 minutes or so)
• Number and letter recognition
• Basic language skills (sentence structure: noun, action and multi-actions, such as put on your shoes AND socks, get a bowl AND pour cereal/milk) and engage with strangers in social settings (ordering at a restaurant, for example) and demonstrating basic etiquette of “please” and “thank you.”
• Arithmetic readiness
• Basic organization skills: knowing where things are stored in their rooms (clothing/toiletries/toys) and in the organization of the kitchen (knowing where the milk, cereal and other items are stored and put away)

Age 5 (or about)

• Basic writing skills
• Basic reading skills
• Arithmetic language
• Use more advanced objects in the house (the toaster, TV/DVD player, radio/stereo, and basic computer skills, such as the use of a mouse, inserting and removing CDs/DVDs)
• Respecting the property and privacy of others (awareness of body)

Age 9 (or about)

• Reading and writing
• Awareness of self and others (children, by age 8, should have a strong sense of self, different from their parents/siblings, ie, their thoughts are not their parents thoughts, nor are their preferences the same as their parents, and they should recognize and understand pecking orders, sufficient to understand that rules are different for adults/children or their siblings from themselves, with REASONS)
• Tell time/read a clock and awareness of time in how long it takes to get dressed, cook a meal, etc.
• Engage in the world in small interchanges (buy something and get the right change, recognize forms of currency and be able to add up the cost of something before going to cash register to pay for them)
• Spatial:  Basic inventories and the ability to measure ingredients, manipulate objects
• Manners:  Be able to sit quietly through a movie, use proper table manners, and be able to cut their own food.  In addition, they should be able to make basic introductions and understand the appropriateness of clothing to a particular occasion, and buy and plan for presents, Holidays, and other social interactions, including setting the table, meal planning, and serving and seating arrangements
• Begin writing and reading cursive, composing notes, cards, and letters and the appropriate contents thereof

Age 13 (or about)

• Reading and writing to express abstract thoughts and ideas (understanding the abstract morals of stories, distinguish fantasy/fiction from facts, and basic logic in writing)
• Grammar fundamentals and language rules (including spelling)
• Expanding vocabulary
• Budgeting and forecasting money and time
• Humor, story and joke telling, literary criticism, and summarizing key points and restating important elements, and the ability to make bulleted lists and create outlines (categorization and inventory)
• Basic route planning, map reading, calculating distances, with time and various travel-modes with fuel consumption
• Health, hygiene, and basic maintenance (they should be doing their own laundry and maintaining their wardrobes and room organization, for example, changing their own sheets and making their beds, and keeping their rooms reasonably tidy, coordinating outfits, and keeping inventory of the disposables they use/need)
• Keeping their word and commitments, and to negotiate time and responsibilities
• Self reliance:  ability to cook small meals for themselves and siblings (using the oven, microwave, and stove top and follow recipes, ability to sew on a button, wash the car, complex chores such as watering/mowing, follow basic instructions to assemble toys), use tools, and make all purchase types
• Participate and carry on conversations with adults, showing respect, deference, proper manners, and inquisitiveness
• Basic attack and problem solving skills

By the time a child is 13 (or about), they should be self-functioning individuals, with the mechanics of the broad disciplines of the Three Rs.  What they haven’t learned entirely is to override their impulses and instincts, to be safe in all situations, but the above basics will prepare them for when their hormones begin raging, and when they’ll need your guidance, kindness, and patience the most.

Age 14 and beyond will be addressed in the next post.

Sunday, November 16, 2008

Educating Your Children VII:  Curriculum Recap

In the last three posts in the series I talked about curriculum, testing, and learning styles.  I did this from the perspective of creating your own courses.  The real benefit of understanding these components is in evaluating the courses designed by others, and being able to execute what others have done.  We have a lot of hours in each learning day, and we need to fill it.  But with what?

In my profession there are lots of “trainers.” Lots of people think they can teach.  It’s not that difficult, really.  If we go with the broadest definition of education, it is the transfer of knowledge, but how effectively we do it is where we separate the novices from the pros.  Also in my profession there are lots of people who think that being able to entertain a classroom of students, to get them to like them, or keep them from falling asleep, is the mark of a “good” trainer/teacher.  It is no such thing.

Most folks have attended some sort of training class.  At the end of the session, the trainer will hand out a course evaluation sheet.  These are usually a single page with questions such as, “Did the trainer demonstrate they understood the course content,” “Were the materials well organized” or “Was the classroom comfortable.” Training organizations often evaluate the trainer based on these evaluations.

In the training world these are called “Smile Sheets.” They have no purpose other than to judge how popular and friendly the trainer was.  They serve no educational purpose whatsoever and do not test anything important.  The only important measurement is if the trainee is able to do what was taught, and we won’t know that with any certainty until they leave the classroom, and go back to their jobs to demonstrate they’ve learned what was expected of them.  You don’t have to “like” your teacher for them to be effective, nor does the “comfort” of the training room mean that knowledge transfer occurred.  But because these are often the only testing instrument used to evaluate the trainer, trainers know how to get high scores on these evaluations.

Similarly, when you evaluate your child’s progress in home-school, often parents will judge their effectiveness by how happy or attentive their children are.  This, too, has no educational purpose.  That is not to say that a happy and attentive child is bad thing, only that it is separate from our effectiveness at teaching to the goals and objectives.

A related problem occurs when a person is very knowledgeable about the subject matter.  Just because someone is smart, it doesn’t mean they’ll be able to communicate that knowledge to someone else.

Because of the variables of the learner, however, determining how well we’re doing as educators can be difficult to gauge, so we fall back on irrelevant, dipstick measurements.

Studies like this tell us that, as a whole, home-schoolers are doing an excellent job.  Right?

Wrong.

What those studies tell us is that home-schooled children do better than their public-educated peers.  The comparison is not against how well a child should be doing, or what they’re capable of doing.  Given that home-schoolers are going to be a mixed bag (some great and some terrible), the fact that they are doing better (as a whole) than their public counterparts, is only proof of how really terrible the public education system is.

A typical learning day in the public realm contains two hours of actual education.  Lesson plans and schedules are based on the two-hour benchmark.  The other four or five hours a child spends in school is time spent going from class to class, taking roll, or having lunch and snacks.  There is a considerable time spent on classroom overhead. 

The other dynamic, as we explored in other parts of the series, is that the two hours of learning that day might be for the slow-learners, or a review of something taught previously.  The net time, when something new is taught, will be closer to zero minutes.  Children are held back by their peers and classroom overhead.  Worse, children are told that they’re in school to learn, and the inventory of what they learn each year is the benchmark of their achievement.  They’re being taught that learning very little makes them a good student and “smart.”

What studies like that also show is that home-educated children are generally one to two grade levels above their public educated peers.  Take out the overhead and wasted time, and the reasons for this are not difficult to understand.

If a parent, for example, were to spend one hour of quality teaching time with their children each day, with a careful balance of review and new content (based on knowing what the child already knows), the child is almost guaranteed to be above the grade level of their public educated peers.  Meaning, you can practically do nothing, and still do better.

We need to be better than that. We also need to be confident that even if we do a terrible job, our children will still be better off.

You can buy boxed curriculum.  I’ve known a number of home-schoolers over the years who have.  I didn’t actively participate in a lot of homeschool groups (I’m not by nature a joiner), but through a variety of methods, I talked to quite a few.

It’s a totally mixed bag in terms of method and curriculum choices.  Some I would not replicate. Most people buy curriculum packages when they start out.  There are a number of them available, and most have support groups on the Internet.  Most home-schoolers will also share (once you get to know them) that they bought a number of packages, only to abandon them.  Most are boring or more closely replicate the overview learning methods chosen by public schools. 

What many in the home-school realm seek out are old textbooks--materials written before 1950, after which the educational system became the bastion of nincompoops and social re-engineers.  A 1920s arithmetic book will be much more effective than the colorful, maudlin textbooks you’ll find today.  The child’s progress through these old materials will be quick, because the superfluous content and “busy work” included to keep a classroom of children on the same track, won’t be in there.  When a child has completed one of these old textbooks, the parents will often worry that they did it too quickly, so they must have short-changed their child.  WRONG!  It is because it is now done so badly, and so slowly!

(To save you from years of garage sales and book bins, looking for this older stuff, the Robinson Curriculum is [basically] scanned in versions of old materials and textbooks or literature in the public domain.  While I would not replicate this program’s method or technique [I think their sensory deprivation methods and approach are rather freaky], the CDs provide a lot of valuable content to use.)

A set of 1950s World Book Encyclopedias will have more actual, usable content than the 4 years of textbooks children get in public school.  If we’re focusing on science and technology, these older books won’t be very helpful, but if we’re learning history, history doesn’t change!  If a parent were to assign a child to read from the World Book and then discuss the contents (or write about it), the parent has exceeded the educational goals of the public education system, and has provided to the child more meaty and substantial content than they’ll ever find in a modern textbook.  A complete set of encyclopedias can be bought on CD for about $10.  Parents don’t need to buy textbooks to get good content.

Even buying an old-fashioned paper soldier war gaming set, allowing a child to recreate the battles of the Civil War or the skirmishes of WWI or WWII, will result in the child knowing a hell of a lot more about any of those subjects than they’ll find in a modern textbook.

And don’t rule out television.  Networks such as Discovery, History Channel, Science Channel, or Animal Planet provide more substantive content than you’ll ever find in a modern textbook.  The great advantage of these programs is that they focus on a single issue or topic, in greater depth.  Your learning day can incorporate these shows quite easily.  If you watch them in advance (or with your child) you can also design tests to determine if the content was retained, or use them as springboards for further exploration about subjects and issues your child found interesting/exciting.  You can spend $80 for a textbook or buy a complete TV Blue Planet series for $50.  Which do you think will have more content and better retention? 

Civilisation: The Complete Series (1969) can be purchased on Amazon for $60.  (There’s even a book by Clark that details the series contents.) If you use the book and DVDs as the basics, you can supplement with reading material from each period, and you’ll have an entire year of content that will be better than ANYTHING you can buy in a textbook.

What would YOU rather do?  Re-read the history textbooks you read in school, or watch a TV series by Kenneth Clark?  What about a choice between your old textbooks or a year spent reading the dictionary or World Book?  Do you think your kids, by being vulnerable and subject-to-your-whim, will be different? Don’t bore them with modern textbooks or send them the message that by reading those textbooks that they know anything with any degree of substance.

There are a lot of hours in a day and your home-schooled child’s education doesn’t have to be dwarfed by only providing an hour’s worth of repetitive, dumbed-down, crap from a boring textbook.  Be creative and unconventional!  You have enough information from this series now to understand how to design curriculum, how to test if your child learned it, and how to evaluate if your child’s learning styles are causing a problem. 

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Next up, Learning Inventory.