Vasilly, of 1330V, is researching a paper for an incredibly interesting topic: home schools and what public schools can learn from them. It is for class, but I hope she considers making it available for all of the rest of us homeschoolers who would likely drool over the opportunity to write a paper like that for a professor. I am sure she would get tons of comments and links (hint, hint). Especially considering she is not actually homeschooling her children.
I have a working list in my mind and am curious what you would add to it:
Flexibility.
Sometimes, you have to go with that teachable moment. When children ask questions and you are able to guide them to discover the answers. I had a few of those moments in the classroom and they are incredibly exciting. But somehow, they are always cut short by the bell. By the schedule. In homeschooling, the schedule is adaptable and those moments can turn into long-term projects.
Parents.
Schools seem to be coming around, but are still a number who seem to treat parents as if they were an inconvenience. Despite the fact that all studies show that parental involvement is the key factor in education which surpasses all others, including teacher education, curriculum and even poverty in the home. Also indicative of this fact is the fact that a homeschooling mother with a GED is capable of giving her a child an education competitive with the public system. That isn’t to show that the schools are bad, or that education isn’t necessary to educate a child. To me it merely points out just how important it is for parents to value the education of their children.
Time.
Kids are shuffled around too much. They no longer have time to run in a field, tame a wild crow, build a tree house and try to dam a creek in the woods. If they aren’t in school, they are hurriedly finishing schoolwork so they can run off to some other activity. Homeschooled kids, too, can get shuffled quite a bit with the activities that almost seem to thrust themselves upon us, but homeschooled kids do seem to have a little more time to just be kids.
Time, Again
Not just free time, but time to develop. What is the rush with identifying “slow learners” in kindergarten? The range of “normal” for beginning reading still says “4 to 8.” But by eight you are already identified and receiving services. You already “know” you can’t read. You already “know” you are behind. And you already “know” you are dumb. Many of our early childhood practices are no longer developmentally appropriate. And studies have shown that children who start reading later quickly catch up to their peers and are more likely to maintain their love of reading into adulthood. What is the rush?
And while we are asking and answering questions, I’ll pass on the one Vasilly asked me.
Do you recommend any books on homeschooling?
She has what seems like a good start to a basic primer on home education:
- How Children Learn -John Holt
- Teach your Own - John Holt
- Coloring Outside the Lines - Roger Schank
- Home Learning Year by Year - Rebecca Rupp
- Guerrilla Learning- - Grace Llewellyn
But I must confess I have not read many books specifically about homeschooling. I am sort of in the same camp as Marcy Muser of Marcy’s Musings:
Books on homeschooling in general usually don’t impress me all that much. The way I homeschool is unlike the school-at-home many of those books talk about. The single book that had the most influence on my life as a homeschooler was For the Children’s Sake, by Susan Schaeffer Macaulay. By all means, find a copy of this book and read it. It’s interesting, it’s absorbing, and it gives you a solid understanding of what’s really important in your home and your homeschool.
- Steven Caney’s Kids’ America (a treasure I picked up at a recent library book sale. If you can get your hands on it, consider yourself a fortunate individual. Full of history and hands on projects, it could be a curriculum in itself.)
- Lewis and Clark’s Transcontinental Exploration by Roy E. Appleman
- Plant Projects for Young Scientists by Salvatore Tocci
- Experimenting with Water by Robert Gardner
- Founding Mothers, the Women Who Raised our Nation by Cokie Roberts
- The Real Book About Ships (another great, out-of-print book, this one picked up at an antique dealer in central Nebraska.
- Not to mention a plethora of field guides.
Principled Discovery is a place to stop and discuss news and information related to faith, family and particularly education. Pour yourself a cup of tea and join the conversation! 
Archived NHEN discussion on this topic, interesting reading and some good sources to explore imo –
“Homeschool Changing Schools Instead of the Other Way Around?”
I love reading books about homeschooling! My favorites are definitely NOT of the “how to make your home like a school” variety. Most are also based on a Christian worldview.
The Three R’s and
You Can Teach Your Child Successfully, both by Ruth Beechick
Educating the Whole-Hearted Child by Clay & Sally Clarkson
Senior High: A Home Designed Form+U+La by Barbara Shelton
Homeschooling for Excellence by David & Mikki Colfax
As for things that public schools can learn from home schools : one biggie is that children are unique in their abilities and the speed at which they learn; homeschooling allows for individualization without stigmatization - spend longer on this subject until you really understand it, move ahead quickly or skip some of this because you’ve GOT it! I’m not sure that can ever happen in an institutionalized setting.
My first recommendation for someone wondering about homeschooling would be Family Matters: Why Homeschooling Makes Sense by David Guterson. Guterson is a public school teacher and novelist who is teaching his four children at home. It is also a secular book which makes it easier to recommend across the board.
I have read For the Children’s Sake and appreciated it very much also.
I don’t read hsing books. Never can get past the perky cover or daunting “your child will be an idiot if he doesn’t learn all of the info we have in here” feel.
I read a collection once of accounts by other hsers. Interesting because I knew some of the authors online.
But that’s not, imo, how you learn to hs. You learn how to do it by doing it. Which takes a certain leap of faith since most of us have spent our lives being taught that being in school is the right way.
Could public schools learn from hsers? I guess so. If you go by the more school-y hsers and really don’t expect much. If you don’t expect much more than what we should have been expecting all along — attention from the teacher, less testing focus, lots of good resources and tons of time to use them, etc.
Since none of that is going to happen, though, no, I don’t think public school will learn anything from hsers. They could. But they won’t.
Nance
I second Heidi’s! Guterson’s Family Matters was one of my earliest homeschool reads, and turned out to be one of the most influential, probably because I was fresh out of public education as a profession and his book came from him teaching school while his family homeschooled at the same time. So his way of comparing and contrasting the experiences really spoke to me. Also his final chapters relate to how both can and should change going forward.
The book that started it ALL for me… and doesn’t tell you what homeschooling is or isn’t, rather the various things it can be and how different those all are is The Teenage Liberation Handbook. An exciting book by a former teacher… and it’s not for teenagers, although it started out that way.
The other book that truly impressed me was The Unprocessed Child… it just filled me with awe and wonder and desire.
I have a list of book that I have read and continue to read… I have to admit that Holt is my least favorite **shrug** maybe because he write more like a formula or scientific view of what education should not be and what learning is. I don’t feel like there is a science to it… it’s natural and unavoidable: we all learn, we all enjoy learning; no schools, no community type resources necessary.
Anyways, my book list is extensive… some where great books, some not worth the time it took to read them, some eye opening, some a tad boring, but I love the field of education and will continue to add to my list. The current read is Holt… and it is killing me to get through it LOL
And as far as what schools could learn from homeschoolers… I think the first item you listed was the prize! I too had those moments in the classroom and had to direct attention back to the “lesson at hand,” missing a great learning opportunity.
Great suggestions, Beth! I also love the Ruth Beechick books, the whole-hearted child one, and Homeschooling For Excellence. This last is completely secular, but it was revolutionary for me as the Colfaxes basically tell their story of how they got their four sons into Harvard (in the days when homeschoolers were not welcomed there), without really “doing school.” I haven’t read the high school one as my daughter is 11 and just getting to the point where I need to investigate that.
Dana, the other kind of book I get is the “book list” book. I have tons of resources from online, but some of my favorite books are the ones that list the really excellent books to read with your kids, or that list books by topic. On my shelf right now, among others, are EyeOpeners! and EyeOpeners II (both topical listings of non-fiction books), The New Read-Aloud Handbook (by Jim Trelease), and Honey For a Child’s Heart. These give me ideas for what to read with my kids when I run out of my own ideas.
I can’t wait to try some of these others people have recommended!
What can public schools learn from homeschoolers?
Three words.
Edible School Lunches.
Oh, can I play too LOTP?
Three words? Okay, I nominate “teaching isn’t learning.”
What about integration of subjects across the curriculum. That was the sort of buzzword that we used in my MS Ed days (which was the same time that I was deciding to stay home with my first kid and to homeschool). Much of what I would hold up as vibrant homeschooling is just the sort of idyllic educational experience that teachers long for.
History and literature selections that support each other. This shows up in lots of homeschools. We are studying WWII so we are reading non-fiction, fiction and biographies from that period. And we are reading lots.
Hands on experiences and field trips. We don’t just read books, we go and see and go and do. In an era when many schools are abandoning field trips as too hard, too expensive and too difficult to justify by a standard of learning line item, we can just pick up and go. Didn’t get enough out of one visit. That’s ok, we’ll get a family membership and come back every couple months.
Individualization. I not only have the ability to pick curriculum that fits my kids, I can pick what works best with each child. While it isn’t uncommon for a family to reuse math or grammar with the next child, they are also free to choose something completely different, without having to check that it is one of five approved texts on the state list. Again, this is a mantra that you hear over and over in education schools, but that most school teachers aren’t actually able to implement. Of course, the economy of scale and production that a school represents would fall apart under the level of individualization that a homeschool can manage. What schools could (re)learn is that tracking students by their current ability does allow a more individualized instruction. Of course, you have to be willing to move kids around within the groupings as their abilities relative to the group change. But tracking has been shelved as an idea because it isn’t politically acceptable to suggest that all children aren’t capable of all things all the time.
I “third” the Guterson book. This is one of many homeschooling books that are more inspirational than how-to. I love that type. Don’t forget “Dumbing Us Down” by John Taylor Gatto - that’s another classic. Speaking of classics, there are the books by the Moores - Better Late Than Early (condensed in the Reader’s Digest, it brought the homeschooling movement way out in the open) and The Homeschool Family’s Handbook. Fantastic!
Three more words.
Sleep until eight.
I really liked
The Well Trained Mind,
The Charlotte Mason Series
and believe it or not a few homeschooling catalogs: Sonlight, Elijah Company (which no longer exists but I still have.)
homeschool blogs are a great resource as well.
That does sound like fun. Here is mine:
Play outside. Lots.
Doing stuff- not just reading about it. Volunteering or appreticeships. Hanging with adults to learn how to be an adult. Problem solving- not just being told what to do. Thinking about things- not just being told what to think.
I could go on and on.
Nice list, Dana
The biggies that come readily to my mind are subsets of your list…
TIME to pursue passions - reading books the child is thrilled with, building a huge puzzle to completion, … whatever the passion of the moment is. Of course, school kids can do this, too, but they clearly have LESS time to do so, not to mention the weariness that seems to accompany a full day at school.
Self-identity - NOT determined by others. My kids have a greater ability just to be themselves and not to worry about how other’s perceive them moment by moment for hours at a time.
Cue-ing off your idea of having TIME to develop … my firstborn was reading fluently by age 5 woohoo!!). My second born did not begin reading fluently til almost age 7.5, and not until recently did he discover his total passion for reading. At no time (I think) did he need to suffer self-esteem or inadequacy issues due to this late reading. (again, woohoo!).
Happy Friday to you….