Too Busy Schooling to Learn

by Carolyn Forte

Recently, a mother asked me what phonics programs I would recommend.  It seemed that her five year old son had lost interest in the program she was using.  Content to sound out three letter words with short vowels, he resisted her efforts to move on to long vowels.  She was thinking another program or game might arouse his interest.  On thinking the situation over, it occurred to me that perhaps he needed time to digest what he had begun to learn.  When he is ready for more, he will demand it if it isn’t shoved down his throat prematurely.

Little brains are taking in so much and it all has to be sorted out and filed away for future use.  Adults are often in too great a hurry;  the seemingly unhurried pace of a child often makes us nervous.   We want to hurry them along, cover the material and avoid getting “behind.”  Even those who favor a relaxed approach to schooling can fall into the trap at times.  “How do I know he’s learned it?” is a very common worry.  We want objective proof.  We are impatient and constantly looking for reassurance that Jr. is indeed learning.  Those old school memories haunt us with visions of failure if we don’t make our children knuckle down and produce, produce, produce.

Is that really the way children, or anyone for that matter, learn?  The brain is a wondrous and mysterious thing which no standardized test of any kind can really measure.  Your children speak English, one of the most difficult languages in the world.  How did that happen? Did you quiz your toddler?  Did you stress over his babblings before he could speak clearly?  Did you sit him down for diction lessons and drill him on past, present and future tenses?  How long did it take to learn to say a complete sentence clearly?  How long was it before she could count to 10 accurately?  How much longer before she understood what the numbers actually meant?

Learning takes time – lots of it and the pace varies drastically from day to day and subject to subject.  Learning happens in several stages and children need time to work through all the stages of learning.  If they are hurried, the information will not stick and the time and effort will be wasted.  Those of us who went to school successfully, learned to play the school game.  We learned to memorize what was put before us, at least until the test.  We learned not to ask too many questions.  Teachers are annoyed by using up valuable time with questions.  Especially, when they don’t know the answers.  We learned to second guess the multiple choice questions and to skim the reading selections just to get the answers.  We learned not to get too interested in anything; there wasn’t time and we had to move on.  In the end, we had good grades and not much understanding of anything.  We might be good technicians in math and English, but we had little to write about and no understanding of what to do with Trigonometry.

I don’t know about you, but I got my education after I graduated, not before.  I got it by seeking information on my own because I was interested.  I often felt like the 19 years I spent in school were largely wasted on soon-to- be-forgotten trivia.  I did not want that for my children.  I realized early that they learned easily what they were interested in and that they seldom learned what they were not interested in.  I decided to stop wasting their time pushing trivia and to start helping them learn what they wanted to know.

Nothing in life is disconnected.  You can’t learn to make and sell candies without learning math (how do we make a profit?) and science (how do you keep them from melting before they are delivered?).  You can’t learn how airplanes fly or dinner is cooked without science, reading and math.  The school industry has meticulously compiled thousands of bits of information and sorted them into 13 levels to be doled out in assembly-line fashion.  Through an elaborate PR machine, backed by the assumption that education “experts” with PhDs have superior knowledge and expertise, the school industry weaves their spell on unsuspecting and trusting parents.  No matter what insanity spews forth from the educrats in their ivory tower, most Americans automatically and uncritically accept it.

In the early 1970s that insanity took the form of “Invented Spelling” and “New Math.”  Later came “Whole Language,” “Common Core” and now “Next Generation Science Standards.”  At this point we have random elements of algebra, Cartesian geometry, statistics and even calculus, once exclusively taught in high school, served up as low as 5th grade.  Third and fourth graders are assigned five-paragraph-essays and force fed abstract elements of literary analysis. Kindergarteners are pushed to read and parents are instructed to drill them with sight words, dragging them down with the crippling effects of whole language.  Fifth and sixth graders are assigned “research papers” before they can write a decent paragraph, let alone understand the meaning of research.  This is not to say that a 12 year old couldn’t do a proper research paper, but you’ll search long and hard to find a sixth grade teacher who actually teaches proper research techniques and takes the time to nurture her students through both the research and writing process.  Most students today seem to think research means cutting and pasting downloaded bits of info and including some downloaded photos.

Education is not a race and a million bits of disconnected information do not constitute learning.  Only when the bits start to connect does understanding come.  Children need time to connect the dots, to digest and understand the information they are learning.  Structure is good, but too much structure will actually impede progress.  The brain cannot be ordered to march in time with an assembly line.   Like Lucy and the conveyor belt that went too fast, children’s brains will do what they can and discard what can’t be processed, let alone remembered.

Fortunately, homeschool families need not participate in the treadmill.  Each family is free to create it’s own curriculum according to each child’s learning style.  We were not created as clones and a one-size-fits-all “education” serves no one very well.  Each child’s unique talents, gifts, interests and learning style must shape the learning methods you choose.  The mechanics of academic learning, the 3 Rs, take very little time to master once the student is ready.  Anything more is busywork.  The trappings of school:  tests, book reports, endless worksheets and dull predigested information in the form of textbooks have little to do with developing an intellect and shouldn’t be allowed to intrude into a real education except with carefully scrutinized exceptions.

Dr. Raymond and Dorothy Moore spent years researching successful homeschoolers and came up with a formula based on common denominators of success.  They recommend delaying formal academics until a child is between the ages of 8 and 12.  Their formula calls for a combination (in roughly equal measure) of service, work and study.  Notice that study is only 1/3 of a student’s efforts.  That is because the results of study are useless without good character and practical application.

The Moores recommend that students work at or create a real business.  In our homeschool group, children earned money by selling home grown fruits and vegetables, eggs, and homemade muffins and cookies.  Our children earned money by making and selling chocolate candies, babysitting, washing cars and cleaning houses.  They created a company called Fun-Ed and sold games at homeschool conventions.  Each year, they earned all their own spending money, paying for camps, clothes, jewelry, gifts and more.  They learned to budget their money and plan for big expenses. Knowing how to create and run a small business is a vital life skill that is seldom taught or even encouraged in a world that seeks only a “good job with benefits.”  The self-reliance that comes with creating a business is invaluable.

The third element in the Moore Formula is service.  This can mean helping grandmother by raking her leaves, volunteering in a church or business, entertaining in a nursing home or running errands for a neighbor.  The point is to give without thought of reward just because the help is needed.  Opportunities are everywhere and even preschoolers can pitch in on appropriate projects.

Besides providing excellent educational opportunities, work and service projects are fabulous resume builders.  Colleges, employers and scholarship and internship grantors are impressed with an array of extracurricular work and service achievements.  With grade inflation and a reluctance to take homeschoolers’ GPA without outside verification, a history of work and service projects with accompanying letters of recommendation can be very helpful.  Most students leave high school with little or no practical experience in business and many are shockingly lacking in such basic life skills as money management, cooking and home management.  An employer or college work-study administrator will look favorably on a student who has shown initiative in the past.

When our daughters went to college they immediately stepped into service and leadership positions.  With unorthodox educational backgrounds, they were not intimidated by new challenges.  Tenaya earned a sizeable scholarship by operating the soundboard for one of the college’s traveling musical groups.  She had little experience but knew she could learn.  Later, when her scheduled mission trip to Kenya was suddenly cancelled, she accepted an offer to join the first aviation team (she is a pilot) sent to Kenya by Africa Inland Mission.  Her originally scheduled departure was several weeks ahead of the team, so she flew alone to Nairobi and learned aircraft repair under the direction of AIM’s chief mechanic while she awaited the arrival of the rest of the team.

Dutifully following a rigid, one-size-fits-all curriculum will not prepare your child to deal creatively with sudden challenges; that comes with experience.  Children need large chunks of unscheduled time devoted to play, exploration, experimentation and creativity to develop intellectual and social skills.  Answering the stupid questions at the end of the chapter is, in most cases, a waste of time and intellect.  However, discussing issues found in the chapter develop insight and perception.

In general, long term homeschoolers have a natural advantage over their schooled peers because they tend to develop better social and creative skills than kids who spent their formative years as passive classroom attendees.  However, this advantage can hampered by an unbalanced emphasis on academics.  Good grades and top SAT scores will not guarantee entrance into Harvard.  What they and other elite schools are looking for is a “record of distinction.”  Whether or not your child is interested in the Ivy League, don’t waste his time on trivia while neglecting a real education.