Words from the Wise

Susan Wise Bauer, that is:
(She's considered something of a classical education guru in homeschooling circles.)

One thing classical homeschoolers really need to guard against is a devastating level of elitism: "We are doing the best homeschooling because our young children are doing such advanced work." This kind of elitism is non-Christian, it is unloving, and it is unproductive. I was recently asked, "What do you think of third-graders doing Saxon 5/4?" I said, "I can't think of a single thing you would gain by that. Some of them will be able to do it, but a lot of them aren't developmentally ready for it. You are going to finish advanced mathematics by the end of high school if you keep them on the normal schedule. What's the rush?" What do you gain by asking a seventh-grader to read the Iliad if that seventh-grader hasn't developed the maturity to understand and appreciate what he's reading? Nothing at all. You gain nothing in the way of emotional and mental development by pushing difficult tasks down to earlier grades.

I am not talking about the lowering of academic standards. I don't want them lowered; I am just talking about extending the time needed for children to meet those standards. Children move from grammar to logic stage thinking, and from logic to rhetoric stage thinking, at different times in different subjects. We should focus on this, rather than focusing on age or grade level. And I hope that classical schools will also begin to think seriously about what is being gained in the classroom if immature students are being asked to do work that continually frustrates them. Is our goal to educate as many students as possible, or to identify a small, advanced, elite core of classical scholars? I hope it's the first, and not the second. I think there is a very high level of achievement that all children can reach, given the appropriate amount of time. Keep the standards high, but give each child the appropriate amount of time for those achievements.

from The Old Schoolhouse.

Like every teaching parent, I need reassurance.

We are so far behind in our curriculum that there's no way ds is making it to University by 18! Yes, he's only ten, but my heavens, I calculated today that if we continue school without any breaks, we'll be done this year's curriculum by September 13, 2008.
September 13th?!
No breaks?

We took a long long break in the fall--the entire fall, in fact. We did about three weeks of school in August, and feeling smug and quite ahead of the game (public school doesn't start here until after Labour Day) we took a bit of time off--that turned into a week, that turned into two weeks. Then a month went by, and then another, and then, why, it's almost Christmas, so why not wait until after Christmas? One January 7th, I could wait no longer...the public kids went back to school and so did we.

It's been a tough month.

First, we decided to visit relatives in Montreal and the Ottawa Valley this spring, so I decided it was time to get moving on the Canadian History course I'd partially planned. I've been doing a lot of on-line research in the evenings, pulling together resources here. It's been fascinating, but time consuming.

Second, I've been introducing our curriculum back in slowly. My objective is to do math, latin, grammar and spelling every day. The kids love to do their History (using Bauer's Story of The World, Vol. 2) so they keep me on task to get it done! We added in Art--just to give our poor brains a rest.

I started Bible this week and it was a disaster.
And we did start that Canadian History course.

There's science to add (I have found two great lesson plans for a study on the Human Body) and writing and Bible Study for the younger, and dictation.

I am overwhelmed.

Because we are so far behind, all the planning I did last year seems irrelevant. The schedule, even before we fell behind was overwhelming. I had seven and a half hour days planned for the ten year old, and only an hour less for the seven year old.

It just doesn't feel possible to do everything I'd planned to do and get through a day--let alone a month--or, even, the rest of the year.

Contributing to this is the third thing: our daily wake/sleep cycles are completely out of whack. The kids and I are up until 2 or 3 in the morning--and thus not up and at it until noon. I feel preassured all day long to keep moving. I hate giving the kids breaks because it is nearly impossible to bring them back from them. So, I keep pushing, let's do one more thing before we....But, it's Newton's law in action: the more I push, the more they resist. I haven't found a rhythm to our day, such as it is.

Lastly, I've been spending a lot of time over at the Well-Trained Mind message boards. I've been checking out other homeschooler's blogs. And I'm depressed. The women (and men) on those boards would be the very last people in the world to heap scorn and shame upon my head, yet I'm intimidated by their energy and committment (pre-reading? A Mom is actually pre-reading her history book selections?) and in the inevitable comparison between her kids and mine, mine seem to be way, way behind.

I must take a few days and get a handle on what's happening and what I want to have happen. My original plan was a 40 week school year with a week off every six weeks. That leaves us with six weeks for a "vacation" --now to be divied up between the three week trip to be taken out East in the spring and maybe three more weeks in the summer.

I have yet to figure out how far back that pushes our curriculum to next fall--but as Bauer writes: is there really a rush? Still, I can't help cringing. You just can't take half a year off and expect not to be half a year behind. In the words of the Wise, this needs to be my focus as I reevaluate:

Children move from grammar to logic stage thinking, and from logic to rhetoric stage thinking, at different times in different subjects. We should focus on this, rather than focusing on age or grade level.

or where we are in the curriculum.