Home Learning Year By Year by Rebecca Rupp

This is the 7th post in my series about books related to teaching, learning and homeschooling. 

(See my earlier post for a description of the series.)

"There are many roads to an educational Rome," writes Rebecca Rupp in her book, Home Learning Year By Year: How to Design a Homeschool Curriculum from Preschool Through High School. While she isn't the first to advocate moving away from a one-size-fits-all approach to education, she is the only experienced homeschooler I know who has written a comprehensive book aimed at helping those who want to design their own course of study.

I remember when I first came across her book. I was feeling anxious, eager to try something new but not entirely sure how to go about it. I hadn't been homeschooling for long, maybe a few months, but I had already reached a point where I knew the curriculum I'd borrowed from the school wasn't going to work for us. The pre-planned activities were contrived and unrelated to my daughter's interests, and she quickly became bored with the worksheets and textbooks. Now what? I wondered. My trouble was that I had no experience with designing my own curriculum. I'd been assuming I'd be able to depend on McGraw-Hill, Pearson and Houghton-Mifflin to lead the way.

Home Learning Year by Year was just what I needed at the time. It offered me guidance without being prescriptive. Instead of mandating "What Your First Grader Needs to Know," it outlined a typical program of study while allowing for individual differences. Her goal was to help parents become familiar "with the general course of the standardized educational curriculum," but only so that they could use it "as a reference point and a guideline rather than a set of predetermined assignments."

And that's exactly what I used it for: a reference and a guideline.

As a reference, the book offers recommendations for books, websites, games and more. While the recommendations—particularly the URLs—are mostly out-of-date now, they were incredibly helpful during the pre-Internet years, back when I first started homeschooling. Thanks to Rebecca Rupp, my kids and I were introduced to:

• Funny history books by Kathleen Krull and Jean Fritz
• Entertaining math stories, creative hands-on activities, and the remarkable Marilyn Burns
• Janice Van Cleave's science experiments (for all grade levels)
• . . . and much more

As a guideline, Home Learning Year By Year was essential to me because my kids straddled multiple grade levels throughout their homeschooling years. I would skim the chapters to get a sense of how my children were doing in various subjects and adjust my plans accordingly. For example, if at the age of seven my daughter was already comfortable with "fourth-grade" mathematics but hadn't yet figured out how to use a dictionary, I might spend a little time showing her how guide words work instead of recommending yet another math game to her.

Home Learning Year By Year was a book I turned to again and again because it comforted me to see that even though I wasn't dictating what my children should learn from one year to the next, they were always making progress, mastering different skills each year. I took Ms. Rupp's wise advice to heart, and I share it with you here:

"No parent should view the standardized curriculum as cause for worry. Children vary, and homeschoolers inevitably will find that their more-or-less first grader isn't quite standard. . . . The standardized curriculum can indicate academic areas in which kids need extra help and support—or creative substitutes and alternatives, or stress-reducing periods of being left alone. Variation, though, is normal, and our many individual differences are what make the world the interesting place it is. Kids are natural learners, and each will find his or her own best way to learn."

The Art of Education by Linda Dobson

This is the 5th post in my series about books related to teaching, learning and homeschooling. (See my earlier post for a description of the series.)

Imagine that all the books I'm writing about are having a conversation. Here's what the books I've written about so far have had to say: 

• Homeschooling for Excellence says it's possible for kids who do not attend school to excel academically. It provides an example of one family's approach to homeschooling.
• Family Matters makes a compelling case from various points of view (emotional, familial, academic, social, political, philosophical) for choosing to homeschool.
• Learning All the Time argues that children are typically born knowing how to learn and will continue to do so if we don't get in their way (similar to the way an object in motion will continue in motion unless an outside force acts upon it). 
• In Their Own Way explains why it's important to consider how someone learns, their preferred learning style(s), before you try to help them with what they want to learn.

The Art of Education by Linda Dobson adds another voice in favor of homeschooling. Unfortunately, the first six chapters come across (in my opinion) as unnecessarily inflammatory, reactionary and specious. For example, she writes:

" . . . public school programming has managed to create a society void of internal moral motivation and filled with hate, violence, and distrust." 

Well, maybe. But I've seen school "programming" that's inspiring, and I've known students for whom school was a sanctuary. It's not a black-and-white situation (school = evil, family-centered learning = good).

I'm glad I didn't give up on The Art of Education after the first few chapters, though, because the book also offers compassionate advice for those who believe homeschooling can be more than simply an alternative way to learn math and science. For instance, I agree with Dobson when she writes:

"Balanced learning with loved ones provides that sense of wholeness it is our nature to seek. Instead of feeling denied, we feel fulfilled, instead of feeling disrespected, we respect Self. Instead of separation, we experience connection."

How I chose to educate my children—striving to respect their choices instead of dictating their lives, for example—has had a lasting impact on the quality of our family relationships, our community of friends, and even how I feel about myself. The point Dobson makes is that homeschooling is not simply a matter of replacing school teachers with home tutors—if we are open-minded and willing to adapt, the experience can be both personally and socially transformative.

"We're free to do things you can't do in school. We can make noise; we can talk to each other; we can help each other [without being accused of cheating]; we can take as long as we want when a topic of book captures our interest; we can follow our hearts and interests wherever they lead; we can make mistakes without ridicule and attempt something new without fear of being graded, judged, and labeled should we reach a bit too high. We can do many of those things research shows increase the odds of children enjoying the learning experience. We can practice the art of education." 

I'd argue that students may also be allowed do these things in schools, where teachers and administrators have worked together to find creative alternatives to the old-school model of lecture, test, grade, repeat. What I like most about The Art of Education is that it pushes all of us to re-examine our priorities, deal with our personal baggage, and become better human beings in the process. 

The Art of Education includes an introduction by John Taylor Gatto, professional educator and author of Dumbing Us Down—the book I plan to review in my next post.

Learning All the Time by John Holt

This is the third post in my series about books related to teaching, learning and homeschooling. (See my earlier post for a description of the series.)

One of the points that David Guterson makes in his book Family Matters (the focus of my previous post) is that the word "homeschooling" is a misnomer, "a newspeak word for the attempt to gain an education outside of institutions." He writes:

"A homeschooler is not really a homeschooler at all but rather a younger person who does not go to school, a person best defined by what he does not do as opposed to by what he does. (It is sometimes used, too, to describe his parents, so that the term has often a double meaning: It encompasses both children who do not go to school and those who guide them in schools' stead.)" 

I've always felt slightly uncomfortable with the homeschooling label, as applied to myself or my children, and I know many others who feel the same way. Half the problem is that the "home" part of the term obscures the diversity of our individualized, out-in-the-world educational experiences. The other half of the problem is that describing education received outside of institutions as "schooling" tends to influence expectations.

If homeschooling is merely schooling at home, the thinking goes, why not expect parents to copy what teachers in schools are doing? In some highly-regulated states, this school-centric bias influences legislation as lawmakers and teachers assume that parents who choose to homeschool should be required to develop formal lesson plans and daily activities contrived to revolve around a standardized curriculum. They insist student progress must be evaluated frequently with timed tests and recorded in percentiles or letter grades.

But here's the problem: some of us who homeschool our children are doing so because the school model isn't a good fit for us. I tried the top-down, mom-as-teacher approach for a while when I first started homeschooling, but it felt wrong to me. Not only was it a struggle to get my daughter to do assignments that were contrived and not what she wanted to be doing, it was also hard for me to believe that I knew best what she needed to learn on a given day. She had been curious, motivated and able to learn without my intervention before we started homeschooling, so why did I now feel compelled to slip into the role of teacher? Why had I stopped doing what had been working so well?

Thank goodness someone handed me a copy of Learning All the Time by John Holt. What he wrote validated what I had been feeling:

"Anytime that, without being invited, without being asked, we try to teach somebody else something, anytime we do that, we convey to that person, whether we know it or not, a double message. The first part of the message is: I am teaching you something important, but you're not smart enough to see how important it is. Unless I teach it to you, you'd probably never bother to find out. The second message that uninvited teaching conveys to the other person is: What I'm teaching you is so difficult that, if I didn't teach it to you, you couldn't learn it." 

What Holt describes as "uninvited teaching" was what I had been doing when I'd been following a curriculum. I'd gone from being a mother who shared ideas and showed my daughter the world to being a teacher who said, "This is what you need to know, and this is how you will learn it." No wonder my daughter was getting angry: I wasn't trusting or respecting her choices.

Holt gave me the confidence to go back to being the person I was before I started thinking I had to be a schoolteacher. The way he wrote about children resonated with me because what he described matched my own experiences with my own children:

"Children are passionately eager to make as much sense as they can of the world around them, are extremely good at it, and do it as scientists do, by creating knowledge out of experience. Children observe, wonder, find, or make and then test the answers to the questions they ask themselves. When they are not actually prevented from doing these things, they continue to do them and to get better and better at it."

Intuitively, I knew I didn't need to force my daughter to learn; I just needed to avoid getting in her way. The best way to help my child, Holt explained, was to do what already came naturally to me as a mother.

"Like a naturalist, an observant parent will be alert both to small clues and to large patterns of behavior. By noticing these, a parent can often offer appropriate suggestions and experiences, and also learn whether the help and explanations already given have been adequate."  

John Holt changed the way I thought about education. He helped me to see the difference between being responsive to my child's needs—essentially, being the kind of mother I wanted to be—and being intrusive, turning my home into a school.

For More Information About John Holt and Learning All the Time

• Who Was John Holt? (Growing Without Schooling, JohnHoltGWS.com)
• A Conversation with John Holt (The Natural Child Project)
• FUN Books (formerly John Holt Bookstore)

Bridging the Divide Between Amateurs and Professionals

Benjamin Spock

For a while now, I've been writing about home education, online resources, and creative learning experiences. However, a few weeks ago, I saw a post in a Google+ forum that unnerved me—I haven't written anything on this blog since then.

Was the post hostile? offensive? obnoxious? No, it was polite and vaguely solicitous, written by a professional educator who mentioned she had a PhD as she wrote about her desire to instruct home educators. Although she had no experience with homeschooling, she was about to start homeschooling her daughter, and she was enthusiastic about the idea of helping other homeschoolers learn how to become better teachers.

I like to think I would have been open and receptive to this woman's kind and charitable intentions on a better day, but my immediate, less admirable reaction was anger and annoyance. "What makes her think she can start dishing out advice to home educators when she has no experience with homeschooling?" I thought to myself. I then became painfully aware of the hypocrisy in that question, because for quite some time I had been imagining that I (an amateur, home educator) might have something worthwhile to add to the ongoing conversation among professional educators about how to make teaching more effective.

Ye Without Training, Proceed No Further

Disheartened, I began to scrutinize everything I'd said or written about education while wondering how a professional educator might view my attempts to contribute. During this period of intense self-doubt, I began to question the entire premise of this blog and my tentative plans for working in partnership with faculty and students to create effective online content.

I was disillusioned even more when I read a post by respected author and consultant Tony Bates, who questioned the effectiveness of faculty who have received no training in teaching methods ("Online Learning, Faculty Development and Academic Freedom"). He writes:

" . . . [W]e don’t allow pilots to fly commercial aircraft without training, we place very high standards on doctors before they are allowed to practice medicine, and we wouldn’t tolerate engineers building roads, tunnels or bridges without very high levels of training. Then why is it OK for faculty to spend 40% or more of their time doing something for which they have had no or minimal training, and which for most students is the most important thing they are paying tuition fees for?" 

Now, of course, I don't imagine Dr. Bates was aiming his question directly at me—most likely, he wasn't thinking about home educators at all—but as I read his words I started to construct a rebuttal. I recalled the talented professors I've known who had become insightful instructors without explicit teacher training; the trained, certified teachers I've met who were uninspiring; and all the non-professional educators (like me) who have no formal training but who somehow do a decent job of nurturing learning in others.

Enter, the Power of Participation

All of these thoughts about what it means to be "qualified" were on my mind as I spent the past few months exploring articles and TED Talks about "cognitive surplus" (to use Clay Shirky's term) and the power of online participation. Initially, my focus was on preparing for upcoming classes (Thriving in the Digital Age), so I hadn't planned to connect what I was learning about collective intelligence to my concerns about being an amateur in a professional field (i.e., education). Fortunately, as I continued to read and browse, the connections were impossible to ignore.

One of the major concerns addressed by Clay Shirky, Howard Rheingold, Steven Johnson and others, is whether amateur participation is a good thing. "Won't all those lesser contributions to online content," the reasoning goes, "merely add to the already overwhelming volume of information without improving the overall quality?" Put another way, aren't we amateurs just adding to the noise and making it harder for people to find the truly useful content?

It's a valid question. What makes Jane Average think her blog is worth reading? Why should people regard a news report tweeted by the guy next door as noteworthy? Or, getting back to my original quandary: What makes a home educator think her experiences and curated content might be valuable to those who already have years of training and experience as professional educators?

Shirky et al argue that the benefits of expanded participation more than make up for the "noise." So, even if my naive reflections and nascent thoughts about education aren't revolutionary, perhaps what I share will help someone else make an important connection. As Matt Ridley explains in his TED Talk ("When Ideas Have Sex"):

"What's relevant to a society is how well people are communicating their ideas, and how well they're cooperating, not how clever the individuals are. [. . .] It's the interchange of ideas, the meeting and mating of ideas between them, that is causing technological progress, incrementally, bit by bit. [. . .] Because through the cloud, through crowd sourcing, through the bottom-up world that we've created, where not just the elites but everybody is able to have their ideas and make them meet and mate, we are surely accelerating the rate of innovation."

In Conclusion

I began this post with a photo of Dr. Spock intentionally, because he was a professional who advised parents to trust themselves. His book, Baby and Child Care, came out at a time when people seemed to have stopped believing in their own ability to be good parents.

"Before [Dr. Spock] came along, advice to parents was very didactic. He opened the whole area of empowered parenting. He gave parents choices and encouraged them to think things out for themselves" (T. Berry Brazelton, quoted in the New York Times).

Giving people choices and encouraging them to think for themselves is what I believe education is all about, too.

I don't care whether you're an amateur or a professional. If you're passionate about learning and helping others to learn, then we already have something in common. Let's exchange ideas and work towards making the world a better place. If any of my writings are useful to you as we learn and grow together, I hope you'll let me know.

Thank you.

Excuse My Absence: November Is National Novel Writing Month

For the past couple of years, I have set aside time during the month of November for National Novel Writing Month. Although I've yet to take my "novels" to the next stage to have them published, I have enjoyed the process immensely. One of the highlights of my years of home educating has been to participate in NaNoWriMo with my kids.

I have to thank my kids for this. They were the ones who discovered NaNoWriMo. When my oldest daughter was around 15 and an avid writer, she successfully completed the challenge: writing 50,000 words in 30 days. Her younger siblings, who were only nine and twelve at the time, entered the competition, too. Although they didn't reach the 50,000 word goal that first year, they got a taste for writing that stayed with them.

When Should You Pay for Learning?

"When should you pay for learning?" is a question most of us ask at some point in our lives. Home educators, who generally strive to keep expenses low, constantly perform a cost-benefit analysis to determine whether a particular resource or class will be worth the money. Parents, whether they homeschool or not, wonder if their kids would benefit from a private school or extra tutoring. High school seniors, planning for the future, wisely ask whether it is worth the high cost of tuition to attend college full time. Similarly, older adults weigh the expense of extra courses or special training against the opportunities for pursuing a new career or enhancing their weekly paychecks. 

Lately, the proliferation of free, online courses has encouraged people to think harder about what they are paying for when they pay for learning. Personally, my own experiences with online courses (both free and fee-per-credit ones) have been mixed. When I evaluate online courses, there are five factors I consider:

1. Content: How informative and engaging is the actual course material? Does it include only text and images (similar to a textbook) or are there also embedded videos and interactive experiences?
2. Expertise: Will I have access to a subject matter expert?
3. Social learning: Are there opportunities to learn with others who share my interest in a subject? What type of forums are in place for online discussions?
4. Motivation: Do I have enough self-discipline and interest to work on my own, or do I need a coach to push me?
5. Credentials: Am I studying this subject to improve my understanding or to improve my chances of being accepted into a program (or job) that requires a specific set of credentials? 

Course providers still seem to be in the learning phase, trying to design courses to meet a variety of needs. I believe online courses will continue to improve over time, and many are already quite good. Still, few succeed in doing everything well. That's why it's important to consider exactly what a course offers before spending any money.

www.AcademicEarth.org

Academic Earth, MIT OpenCourseWare, the Open Learning Initiative (from Carnegie Mellon University), iTunes University (with courses from  Stanford, Berkeley, and many other colleges and universities)—all these provide access to content in the same way that libraries give us access to books, but without the due dates or patron ID requirements. I can "take what I like and leave the rest," picking and choosing the lectures or subtopics I need from as many courses as I want. I can then remix the content to suit my own learning goals. If my main interest is in educational content, these free repositories serve my needs well. 

Free courses offered by providers like Coursera and EdX are similarly open to all, but they follow a predetermined schedule so the pacing is less flexible. While it is possible for students to participate as much (or as little) as they want to get what they need from the courses, the experience is less like accessing a library and more like attending a class—which can be a good thing, depending on what you want.

Fee-based online college courses (such as those offered by the Community College System of New Hampshire) package content in an inflexible way that limits access: I have to pay for an entire course, even if I'm interested in only a few topics within that course. "By the module" or "by the hour" options are not available, at least not yet. That's why, when I consider whether it is worth paying for a course, I consider how much of the course content will be of use to me (or my teenage son, who has also taken online courses). I'm also aware that my grade—and any credit I may be hoping to earn—depends upon how well I complete all of the assignments, even the ones that may not be of use to me (for example, if they cover material I have already mastered or have no interest in learning). 

When it comes to accessing expertise and social learning, neither MOOCs (Massively Open Online Courses) nor formal college courses have a monopoly. Quality in either case varies from course to course, just as it does on any college campus. As a consumer, I'm going to seek out the best experiences I can find, wherever they might be. The professors and students who participate in an online program at an accredited college might be uniquely engaged and knowledgeable, and thus worth the expense. However, since I have had some positive experiences with free online courses, I would also consider them as reasonable options for learning. I wouldn't assume a free online course is inferior just because it isn't expensive or accredited.  

If I'm looking primarily for extra motivation, I'm going to need an instructor or peer group that keeps me engaged. For example, when I wanted to be sure I would set aside time every day to write, I enrolled in a formal writing program. Likewise, my son enrolled in a formal Latin course with teacher support when he was required to study a second language because he knew he'd never do it on his own. The course helped him to stay on track. In contrast, when he was looking for a course in programming, a subject he was highly motivated to learn on his own, he chose to enroll in a free online course (MIT 6.00x: Introduction to Computer Science and Programming). The free course lacked formal teacher support but offered forums for asking questions and participating in peer-to-peer interactions. 

Depending on your goals, perhaps credentials are the most important consideration. We've all suffered through at least one boring, ineffective course just to get the grade or degree we wanted. Still, I doubt I'm the only one who believes it would be best if students could choose from the most engaging, educational courses available—regardless of where the courses were offered or how little they cost. But in practice students are inclined, or perhaps required, to choose the expensive course for credit over the free one for no credit. (Not long ago, I saw this truth in action when I audited an undergraduate course at a small liberal arts college in my area. There was no fee for auditing: I simply asked the professor if I could, and he said yes. The subject was interesting, the teacher was good, and overall it was a great learning experience. "So, why don't more people audit classes?" I wondered. I still don't know the answer, but the reaction to my decision to audit a class was revealing as astonished students asked me, "Why are you taking this class if you aren't going to get credit for it?")

So, why do we pay for learning? There was a time when we paid for access to high-quality content and expert instruction. Now, with vast repositories of online information available to us 24/7, we question whether it's worth paying $100 for a single textbook. While we're still willing to pay for expert assistance, we'd like to receive it on our own terms, as occasional tutoring or the educational equivalent of a technical support hotline (especially if those options cost less than hiring a full-time professor for a semester). We'll also pay for coaching to help us stay motivated. And, until other options for demonstrating mastery become more widely acceptable, we're still willing to pay to get official credit for taking classes, even if we wouldn't be willing to take those classes (for free!) without the credit. 

When Play and Experimentation Aren't Enough

I love to watch toddlers at play—totally engrossed in what they are doing, blissfully unselfconscious. While nearby adults provide safe boundaries and may be consulted occasionally for help or encouragement, toddlers are at their best when they are self-directed. For long stretches of time, they tinker with the objects in their environment and use a process of trial and error to discover how things work.

What if people of all ages could learn everything they ever needed to know on their own, simply by tinkering? There's no doubt that we can learn a lot without any formal instruction or assistance, but not all of us have the genius of Michael Faraday (one of "Six Uneducated Amateurs Whose Genius Changed the World") or Kelvin Doe, the African teen who taught himself how to build batteries, generators and transmitters:


The rest of us ordinary mortals usually find that tinkering only takes us so far. Eventually, we get stuck and our learning levels off. Maybe we don't care because we're content with the level of learning we've achieved. For example, I learned all I wanted to know about paper quilling from a Klutz book and a few afternoons of tinkering. Then again, maybe we will care a great deal, because our passion is to become the best writer, mathematician, or musician we have it in us to be. When my music-loving daughter wanted to take her self-taught guitar playing skills to the next level, she sought help from a professional musician.

Nurturing Interest-Based Learning

"On some level we know that if we become really involved with an area of knowledge, we learn it—with or without School, and in any case without the paraphernalia of curriculum and tests and segregation by age groups that School takes as axiomatic. We also know that if we do not become involved with the area of knowledge, we'll have trouble learning it with or without School's methods. . . . you can learn without being taught and often learn best when taught least." —Seymour Papert, The Children's Machine: Rethinking School in the Age of the Computer (1993), p. 141.

Seymour Papert coins a new term, "instructionism", to make a distinction between giving someone directions when they ask for them (instructing) and insisting that someone is dependent upon a constant stream of directions at all times (instructionism). There's nothing wrong with teaching per se—tutorials, demonstrations, and explanations all serve a purpose—the mistake is in the cultural mindset that assumes we can learn only when a teacher decides what, when and how we should learn. 

In a school setting, teachers generally do not have the freedom to allow students to pursue their own interests at their own pace. Classes are organized by age, and curriculums are designed with a specific scope and sequence: in fifth grade, everyone must study U.S. history, earth science, and the metric system. Weekly lesson plans dictate what will be taught (and, hopefully, learned). There's a practical reason for this: when you have large numbers of students to educate, it's more efficient.

Although it's possible to follow a similar approach to homeschooling, and some do, it isn't necessary. In fact, it may even be counterproductive. If your goal as a home educator is to empower your children to learn on their own, why not begin by allowing them to follow their interests and see where they lead?

"Well, sure," you may say, "That's fine if my kids happen to be interested in reading, writing, and arithmetic. But what happens when they aren't?"

"Math-Speaking" Adults as Role Models

To say that parents and teachers are role models for children is to state the obvious. We do our best to avoid swearing, show kindness to strangers, and generally be on our best behavior in front of our kids. But how many things are our kids learning from us that we never intended to teach them? Those of us who spend an unusually large number of hours in the company of our children are perhaps most apt to torture ourselves with this question.

Some might argue that if I had chosen a different approach to homeschooling I wouldn't have worried so much about what my children were (or were not) learning from me. A formal curriculum, one which covered every subject my children "needed" to know, would have provided uniform and consistent lessons that would make irrelevant my personal aptitudes (or ineptitudes). After all, if the textbook publishers and vendors at homeschooling conferences are to be believed, the "right" curriculum is all an instructor needs to be successful.

As it was, I decided to skip the curriculum-based approach and experiment with various ways of supporting my kids as they learned. I worked to redefine my role as a teacher. Instead of asking how I should teach a subject such as math or writing, I asked myself:

How does a parent who isn't directly teaching a subject, such as math, cultivate an environment that nurtures the type of thinking and skills that the subject requires?

Deciding Who Is Qualified to Teach Our Children

From time to time in New Hampshire, questions arise about the efficacy of allowing parents with no formal teaching qualifications to instruct their own children. Some demand an increase in the regulation of homeschoolers, and it's no idle threat: As recently as 2008, court battles were being fought in California over the constitutionality of teacher certification requirements for homeschooling parents (see Conard's 2009 article in the Drexel Law Review).

Although there is no evidence that parents with teaching credentials would be better at homeschooling (see "The Myth of Teacher Qualifications"), the assumption that children cannot learn unless they are taught by an expert is still pervasive. In "Chapter 7: Instructionism vs. Constructionism" of The Children's Machine: Rethinking School in the Age of the Computer (1994), Seymour Papert points out that this assumption about the causal relationship between teacher quality and student learning leads to a faulty conclusion:

". . . the route to better learning must be the improvement of instruction—if School is less than perfect, why then, you know what to do: Teach better" (p. 139).

What Do Our Children Need to Know?

Every teacher dreams of working with students who are passionate about learning. Every home educator strives to nurture his or her child's innate potential. We observe an abundance of natural curiosity in our two-year-old and wonder how we can preserve or inspire the same kind of enthusiasm in our older children.

It's rarely a challenge to generate excitement for something a child already wants to do, so why not allow a child to follow his or her own interests? Advocates of interest-based learning, child-led learning, and unschooling all recommend this approach.

Sometimes it's easy to go along with a child's choices: when a ten-year-old happily spends every day reading stacks of books, no one is likely to complain. Other times, it's more difficult: if that same ten-year-old devotes hours every day to playing with Barbie dolls or video games, we are likely to think she should stop "playing" and make "better" use of her time.

How much playing is too much? What role should parents and teachers have in setting limits? As a  home educator, I have struggled to answer these questions for myself while also considering the larger implications of how we as a society choose to educate our children.

Why Do We Learn?

I am often asked by parents who are new to homeschooling, "How do you get your kids to learn?" Usually the question is directed at a specific type of learning, as in, "How do you get your kids to do their math?" Or, "How can I motivate my daughter to do her writing assignments?" The assumption seems to be that kids would study what their parents think they should if only they could find a more exciting curriculum or special motivational strategy to entice them.

Contrary to what advertisers might like us to believe, there is no magical curriculum so uniquely inspiring, adaptable and fun that kids will clamor for it day after day, especially if the kids have no prior interest in the subject the curriculum is designed to teach. I tried a wide range of materials when I was trying to "inspire" my own kids over the years, and even when I found something that seemed to satisfy one child's preferences and learning style, my other kids would often prefer something entirely different. Certainly, some instructional aids are better designed and therefore more effective than others, and some books are especially interesting to read, but if I'm asked to name a single resource that I would confidently recommend as "the one to use," I can't do it. My answer has to be, "It depends."

Can Formal and Informal Learning Peacefully Coexist?

Recently, I read Joi Ito's blog post on "Formal vs. Informal Learning,"and I have been thinking about a question he asked in his post:

"Is there a way to support and acknowledge the importance of informal learning and allow those of us who work better in interest[-based] and self-motivated learning to do so without the social stigma and lack of support that is currently associated with dropping out of formal education?" 

For many years now, I have been wanting to get away from the either-or conversation about school. Either you go to school and accept the highly structured, teacher-led style of learning—complete with frequent tests and grading—or you don't. The homeschooling community includes many who opted out of schools because their kids, like Joi Ito, were much happier and more motivated when they weren't confined to a classroom under the constant direction of a teacher. Although it wasn't easy to drop out of the mainstream, it was worth the sacrifice to gain greater flexibility and freedom.