News From Hawkhill Acres

(This is one of my favorite posts. It was one of those times when I didn’t really write so much as channeled thoughts from the warped soul of someone who was killed in their unschooled kid’s science experiment explosion. I wrote it back in April of 2007, but it’s just as relevant now as it was then.)

Other home schoolers’ blogs make me feel like such a slacker. Like Ava, who is a translator. Her husband, Carl, is a biologist who specializes in diseases of plants. This year, they’re educating their three kids via field trips to the Louvre and strolls along the Champs-Elysees, because she’s translating books from Arabic to French and he’s fighting grape blight or blot or rot or something. Anyway, whatever it is, it makes the wine bitter and undrinkable, so he’s my man. Sometimes, life is a Cabernet, non?

They’re both so intelligent that they have to drink three glasses of wine and take a Benadryl to talk to ordinary people like me. On Thanksgiving this year, I assume they hit the Beaujolais and then composed a “what our kids are doing in home school” post as they digested their dinde roti and sauce de myrtille. Sandwiched in between photos of French street scenes with tiny figures that might have been them or might have been almost anyone, including pigeons, were lists of what their kids were up to. I swear they only do it to make unschoolers like me feel inadequate.

My kids are very artistic, but they’ve never shown any interest in art history or anyone else’s art. Their kids are making a copy of the Empress Theodora and her retinue, a mosaic which appears on the south wall of the apse at San Vitale. Life-sized. In their hotel room. With pieces they manufacture themselves by breaking bottles, ashtrays, ceramic soap dishes and cough lozenges. (The picture of it is kind of dark, but I believe I can just make out the Smith Brothers logo on one of the red robes.)

My kids go to the library and get books about Pokemon, the latest fantasy novel, Barbie and fairies. Their kids write books like “Deforestation and its Impact on Biodiversity, Habitat loss, Trade and Endangered Species.” With footnotes. In Latin. I’m only up to page 568, but I can tell you, we won’t be getting any mahogany furniture anytime soon.

We visit museums and spend more time arguing about whether the blinds are made out of aluminum or plastic than we do looking at the exhibits. Their kids are docents at three museums and a private collection of Faberge Eggs. Imperial Eggs.The eight missing ones.

We have a Black Lab and three cats. They have a Giant Gambian Pouched Rat, a Komodo Dragon, several hedgehogs and a platypus. Laying eggs. It’s their science fair project at the homeschooler’s science fair. We don’t attend ours, ever since the unfortunate incident with the manure vs chemical fertilizer experiment. Who knew it had to be aged?

We play Mario Tennis. They play polo with real ponies and several members of royalty. We spend hours wading in tide pools, but never remember to bring our marine biology book, so all we can identify are crabs and those brown wiggly things with all the legs. Sandworms? Clamworms? Well, they’re ugly as sin and can give you a painful pinch, we know that. They often do research for the Cousteau Society. In a shark cage. With the door open.

Okay, maybe I’m exaggerating a little here, but honestly, this is what it feels like sometimes, when I read all the blog posts about museums toured, concerts attended, instruments mastered, classics read, projects completed, esoteric knowledge acquired and businesses in operation. Doesn’t anyone else just hang out with each other most of the time? Visit with friends? Read for pleasure? Make things just for the heck of it, not because they’re projects or educational? Consider Jeopardy or Good Eats or If Walls Could Talk highly educational? Doesn’t anyone take a walk without a field guide?

Sure, we get a lot of non-fiction out of the library every week and my kids are both very creative, but we’re pikers compared to what seems to be the norm in the homeschooling blogosphere. I have this recurring nightmare that my kids are going to turn 18 and sue me for not making them learn more. Oh wait, didn’t I just read that a 10 year old homeschooler did that? And represented himself. In a Class Action Suit. Tough luck, Ava and Carl.

Lynn over at Bore Me to Tears (the blog that asks if you’re an Ant trying to understand the Internet) posted about whether or not kids should be tested for knowledge and I wrote a comment that threatened to turn into a short novel, so I figured I’d better post here instead. First of all, I don’t think the post at Homeschooling Research Notes that Lynn referred to in her post was talking about standardized testing, but just in case, here’s a link that pretty much sums up what I think of that. I’m ag’in it, in case you don’t want to click on the link.

I’ve read some of Rob Reich’s writings and I’m ag’in what he has to say also, although I agree that he’s a thoughtful, even-minded critic of homeschooling and an advocate for children and their right to autonomy. However, how he squares this with his belief that government testing would be a good idea is beyond me. How can kids learn what they want to learn if the government is testing them for what the government thinks they should know?

What happens when kids fail the tests? Knowing the government the way I do (hey, I sleep with a government worker, don’t forget), I can’t believe failure or low marks won’t lead to more government intervention and possibly a recommendation for remedial learning in public school.

As far as Lynn’s “gray area” of worrying about kids who are allowed to learn only as much math as they need to balance a checkbook, while I understand her concern and sometimes share it, I have this to say. I’d rather see that than government intervention and I don’t agree that it can’t be remedied if a kid decides that she wants to be a doctor or scientist. For one thing, by the time the kid is old enough for the kind of math needed for any math-intensive profession, surely said kid would have a clue that they’ll need more than multiplication to be a rocket scientist. If they don’t, then I question the desire for that kind of profession.

If I remember correctly, Algebra 1 doesn’t really start until 4th or 5th grade and can be learned in a matter of weeks. I know this because when I was in Algebra 1, which started in 8th grade back in the 60′s, I got a C-, because my teacher was a kind man who didn’t want to flunk me even though I failed every test and never really got the basics so I floundered through both semesters. In 9th grade, we had Geometry which made a lot more sense to me, because I could actually see the lines and angles, unlike those mysterious X’s and Y’s in the Algebra formulas. (Hey, I’m an Earth sign. What can I say?)

Several years later, I realized that failing to learn Algebra still rankled, so I got an Algebra 1 course that consisted of a textbook and workbook and I slogged through it all by myself until I grasped the concepts and could pass the quizzes and tests. I’ve never used or thought about Algebra since I closed the workbook, but I learned it. If I did it, anyone can. There are adult classes in high schools and community colleges and online lessons for free in almost anything that a person could need to catch up on.

Daughter is another reason I don’t think testing is necessary. She chokes on tests. They give her hives. If something is timed, her IQ slips twenty points and she assumes the emotional attributes of a toddler who hasn’t napped, but has ingested a 5 lb bag of sugar. She’s wicked smart, but we didn’t find that out by testing her. I’ve figured it out from living with her for almost 11 years.

Those of us who have children who learn at home, whether we “teach” them or “help” them with their unschooling or just let them learn whatever they want with no guidance from anyone, know much more about our kids’ intelligence, interests, capabilities, drawbacks and weak areas than any test can show. We also probably know from the time the kid is a pre-teen whether or not they’ll need math for science or extra emphasis on language arts to express their love for words or art lessons instead of sports.

Testing does what public school does: It separates learning from life. It breaks down learning into neat little categories like math, reading and writing. As if you can. Life is too big for that. It’s “everything” as my late son once said when asked what he was learning at home. I think the only way to “test” our children is by observing whether they’re happy and engaged and interested in life. If they are, how can they help but learn what they need to know to succeed?

If, like me, you were dying to know the difference between a marsh, a swamp and a bog, here’s a link that will sort it all out for you before your next nature walk. If, on the other hand, you’re sound on wetlands, but somewhat confused about our winged insect buddies’ private lives, this site will explain why that old Don Ameche movie was called “Cocoon” rather than “Chrysalis”.

If you’re sick of the same-old, same-old browser and would like something much snazzier, which makes blogging so easy-peasy that you may be inspired to start several more blogs, I urge you to consider my new blog of choice, Flock.

I have the Eco version, but the orginal version is great for anyone who likes the idea of posting to their blog(s) within their browser, being able to share photos, feeds, media streams or anything else seamlessly and effortlessly and so much more that I haven’t even explored it all yet. I’m a big Firefox fan. I’ve been using it since the Mozilla dragon was an egg, which may be why I like Flock so much. It’s built on the Firefox framework and seems to like all the Firefox extensions and add-ons I’ve stuck onto it so far. I especially like the keypad scrambler that encrypts my keystrokes at the kernel level and the “no-flash” option which turns flash into little icons that I can turn on or not, as I wish.

When you tire of playing with Flock, may I suggest you learn a new language or brush up on the ones you slept through in high school at Mango Languages. Like the web site says, “Don’t mangle a language, mango it.”

With a foreign language under your belt, perhaps you’d like to try your hand at some art. For the art-impaired like me or someone young, Carmine’s Landscape Adventure is just the ticket. I opted for the sleepy landscape, but you could go for adventure or a landscape that shows the weather.

Art is nice, but knowledge is power. If, to your chagrin, you find one day that your almost-adult son doesn’t know the fifty states and their capitals, or, worse yet, that you don’t, take heart. Most Americans don’t know how many states there are, never mind their names and major cities. You can learn everything you need to know about the 50 states at any of the web sites on this page. And with that I’ll leave you and return to satisfying my curiosity via the Net. Happy surfing.

Blogged with the Flock Browser

Tags: homeschooling, learning online, unschooling