Posts Tagged homeschoolers
Classical Home Schooling is a Radical Shift
Posted by Diane in Post-Trivium Homeschool | High School on June 25th, 2008
As the sparkling lights of the symphony hall were dimmed, a hush fell over the matinee crowd full of home schooling families. All chattering ceased as the distinguished maestro confidently walked across the stage and silently addressed the musicians with his baton. After many years of diligent practice, the concertmaster was perfectly equipped to escort his audience on a musical journey that would quicken hearts and challenge minds.
Over the years, the maestro had mastered the language of music theory: melody, harmony, and rhythm. The longer he studied music, the more he understood the deeper mysteries of his art. Instruments, movements, and themes became his playground for critical analysis and experimentation. Finally, he learned how to interpret the unique meaning of the music and convey the composer’s intent by coaching the performers in their craft. His mastery of language, thought, and communication within his area of expertise would bless his community today during the concert and for many years to come as he continued to influence his culture with his passion for bringing music to life.
The maestro demonstrates four unusual qualities that we want to foster in our rising homeschoolers:
- He masters the material.
- He disciplines himself.
- He interprets meaning.
- He influences his culture.
Why call these qualities unusual? Because most of today’s preteens and teenagers are captives of an educational system that breeds opposing characteristics and behaviors. Authentic classical Christian home education requires a profound shift in thinking about education. Think about your own public school experience.
Mastery is difficult if you only skim the surface. You went to school for 12 years. You had one textbook for each class. Every textbook had 36 chapters – one chapter for each week of the school year. You read one chapter a week. You were segregated by age into a grade. You studied the same textbook as your peers. That textbook was approved by a committee of certified educators who decided what information every child in your grade needed to know about that particular subject. If you couldn’t keep up with the instruction, you felt like an inadequate failure. If you understood the concepts, you were bored with the repetitive drills. The time restrictions of the calendar dictated the material taught, and there was no leeway for slowing down or accelerating learning.
No time for mastery.
Self-discipline is not necessary if someone tells you what to do. You were assigned a home room, and you had your own desk. You were given a timed schedule. Tardy arrivals and absences were noted on your record. You went where you were told including the bathroom and lunchroom at specific times. You read the chapters, you took the tests, you wrote the essays, and you memorized the material, but for some reason, you can’t remember much of what you learned! You were a good student who did what you were told. Good behavior was dictated not by the heart’s desire, but by the law. As soon as the teacher left the room, chaos broke loose.
No room for learning how to make informed decisions or teach yourself.
Interpretation is impossible when someone else tells you what to think. That committee of certified educators made the important decisions for you about what facts were important in literature, grammar, science, math, social studies, health, home economics, and all the other electives. Surveys, also known as secondary sources, formed the backbone of your education. The highlights of human knowledge were offered. Some might say your education was a mile wide and an inch deep. Education experts decided that you were unable to handle the heavier “classics” (other than a token play by Shakespeare or novel by Dickens). Anyway, we all know that the classics are too difficult for teenagers, right? You were required to parrot back the facts that you’d memorized on multiple choice and true-false exams.
No chance for independent thinking or interpretation of meaning.
Influence is negative when your highest goal is self. Public schools no longer teach history; they teach social studies. At the center of all social studies is the individual. Next comes his family then his community then his world. In public school, motivation for action is centered around the individual and his or her vocation. You worked hard to get good grades to get a good job. In our family, we refer to this dilemma as “me is me to me.” If educators dream of shaping kids who will influence their community, these dreams are limited to the creation of “good” citizens although good is defined in a Greek sense and not necessarily a Biblical sense. References to the God of human history are non existent, and as such, young people fail to understand their purpose. Since one of the responses of faith is sacrificial service to others, a major motivation for blessing the community cannot be discussed in public schools. Service to others requires a redirection of focus from the self to the community.
No incentive to influence or share what you have learned with others.
Thankfully, you have chosen home schooling, a radically different path for your children! You have the luxury of time to help your homeschoolers master the three skills of the trivium. You have the luxury of gradually training them to be independent, self-directed thinkers who are responsible for their own learning. You have the luxury of determining your own homeschool curriculum content so that your kids can learn to grapple with the great ideas of Western Civilization as they read and discuss the classics, selected surveys, and biographies. Finally, you have the extreme privilege of being able to lead your children into an eternal relationship with the Living God, teach them how to use Scripture as the spectacles through which to view the world, and show them how to serve others in a way that influences and blesses. Adopt a counter-cultural stand, and experience the joy of classical Christian home schooling today!
Socratic Dialogue: Leading Questions Illustrated
Posted by Diane in How to Teach Homeschool Skill 3: SPEAKING on May 5th, 2008
Communicating effectively in your home school is not limited to classical discourse like formal speeches or written compositions. Narration is a communication skill that is used in casual conversation more than the other two combined! Think about the countless times during a day that you ask your home school child questions…
- How did you sleep last night?
- What did you dream about?
- What are your plans for study today?
- What was the book about?
- What would you like for dinner?
- How did you spend your free time this afternoon?
- What do you want to be when you grow up?
- What did you learn from your reading?
Home school Moms and Dads are great at asking questions! But the risk with asking open-ended questions is that you’ll get vague responses like “okay” (how did you sleep) “I can’t remember” (what was the book about), and “I don’t know” (what did you learn today). What you want to do as a classical homeschooing parent is draw out your child’s understanding so that he or she is giving you more than one-word grunts. You know that words have the power to change the world, and you want to raise world-changers who are eloquent and persuasive! Train them in giving concise, direct answers so that when they find themselves out in the community and someone asks a question, they are prepared.
So how do you coax your reluctant child to give thoughtful responses to your questions? Socratic dialogue is one method that we use in our home school to great effect. In this post, I’ll show you how I do it using a real-life example from my home school daughter’s high school biology course.
Remember that Courtroom Drama?
Unless you are a practicing attorney, you probably haven’t had a lot of experience in using Socratic dialogue. In fact, attorneys (and some homeschoolers) are the only living Westerners who still use this classical tool. Attorneys receive training in Socratic method in law school where they learn to ask leading questions of a witness.
If you have ever been to a legal deposition or watched a courtroom drama, you know that a good prosecutor asks leading questions. In preparation for the trial, the attorney “deposes” the witness. In a deposition, the attorney asks the witness pertinent questions under oath, and a court transcript is created which both the defending and prosecuting teams receive. In deposing the witness, the attorney is trying to arrive at the facts of the case. These facts are the basis for the trial, and a skillful attorney will use these facts in asking leading questions of the witness so that the witness gives him the answers that he wants. Facts are the starting point for your Socratic dialogue preparation, too.
What are the FACTS?
Just like the attorney, you need to know the facts before you can ask useful leading questions. Unless you are already an expert on the subject matter, you need to read the home school material along with your child. Now I am not saying that you have to read every single word that the child reads; if you have more than one child, the task of keeping up with all of the weekly reading assignments plus all of your other family responsibilities would be overwhelming! Be selective. You might choose one subtopic from your teenage daughter’s high school science reading, one chapter from your preteen son’s history reading, and one picture story book to read with your youngest child. (By the way, the Socratic method works well with both fiction or nonfiction.)
In this example, I listened to a Teaching Company Biology lecture with Meredith on DNA called “The Double Helix.” We put on the 30 minute DVD, and we both took “branch” notes (see image to the left – thank you, home school titan Andrew Pudewa) as the lecture progressed. We paused the DVD if there were any concepts we didn’t understand. After we watched the entire lesson and outlined the concepts, we both wrote a brief abstract or summary of the notes in paragraph form. This step ensured that we organized our thoughts and clarified any obscurities in the sticks and branches. We follow this same procedure for each lecture.
After Meredith writes her summary, she either reads it to me or lets me read it. Often there is no need for further clarification because I can see from her oral or written narration that she understands the concepts. She has effectively communicated her understanding. However, perhaps there is a concept that I think is particularly important or one that she hasn’t quite captured in her notes. That concept would serve as the subject of my leading questions. (See the blue arrows and the highlighted areas of my notes.)
This gets a little technical, but bear with me. For this example, let’s say that I want to make sure that Meredith understands how nitrogenous bases (A, T, C, G) pair up as they attach to the sugars on the two DNA strands. The sugars on DNA strand #1 have nitrogenous bases (NB) which attach to the NB on DNA strand #2. Imagine that the DNA strands are the side rails on a staircase, and the NB connections are the stair treads. (See the highlighted area in my stick and branch drawing.) Now the tricky thing is NBs are either pyrimidines or purines which means that one is larger than the other one. So the larger NB on DNA strand #1 must attach to the smaller NB on DNA strand #2 (C + G), then the smaller NB on DNA strand #1 must attach to the larger NB on DNA strand #2 (A + T), and so forth all the way down the double helix or the imaginary stair tread would be lopsided, and the double helix would not be a double helix!
Plan the Leading Questions
Now that I know where I want to end up, I can plan the questions. The easiest way to tackle this task is to break the entire concept up into short answer questions like this:
- What are the 2 nucleic acids on each DNA strand? (sugars and phosphates)
- What are the 2 types of nitrogenous bases? (purines and pyrimidines)
- How are the purines different from the pyrimidines? (size – purines are smaller)
- What are the 2 purines? (adenine: A and guanine: G)
- What are the 2 pyrimidines? (cytosine: C and thymine: T)
- Which of the 2 nucleic acids, sugar or phosphate, attaches to the nitrogenous base? (sugar)
- Can a sugar attach to any of the 4 nitrogenous bases? (yes)
- If a sugar has a purine nitrogenous base, what must the connecting nitrogenous base be? (pyrimidine)
- What would happen if a purine attached to a purine on the DNA strand? (the “stair tread” of the double helix would be lopsided, so that it didn’t look like a double helix anymore)
If you have carefully structured your line of questions, your home school child should end up right where you expected and chances are good that she will understand the steps of the concept better now that she has had to think through them logically. Additionally, as the child answers the questions, you can detect any misunderstandings and discuss them right away. Yes, it would be much easier to just tell them the answers, but then she wouldn’t own her understanding, would she? Socratic Ddalogue is an effective communication tool because the child learns to break the concept or idea up into components, organize the thoughts, and relate them to the parent. The conversation usually expands beyond the initial questions as a full-fledged discussion emerges, and your rising home school scholar practices the art of classical rhetoric through narration and Socratic dialogue.
Could You Define Classical Rhetoric?
Posted by Diane in How to Teach Homeschool Skill 3: SPEAKING on April 24th, 2008
Are you incorporating classical rhetoric in your child’s home education? According to the honorable Zell Miller, former governor of the state of Georgia and United States Senator,
“Twenty years of votes can tell you much more about a man than twenty weeks of campaign rhetoric. Campaign talk tells people who you want them to think you are. How you vote tells people who you really are deep inside.”
Although you’ve heard the word “rhetoric” used in contemporary conversations, you might not have a clear idea of what it means in terms of an authentic classical home education. The two most common usages of the word rhetoric in my community of Christian homeschoolers are as follows: (1) the inflated verbosity of politicians to win votes at all costs, and (2) the misuse of the original term to describe a “stage” of classical home education, generally the homeschool high school years. Our lack of understanding stems from the fact that the term rhetoric belongs to an art (remember the seven liberal arts of a classical education?) that was constructed during ancient times, practiced for thousands of years, yet abruptly abandoned as a fundamental discipline in our public schools during the middle to late 1800s. In short,
Rhetoric is the art of oratory.
For thousands of years, classical rhetoric was classified as (1) verbal, (2) conciliatory, (3) persuasive requests (as opposed to coercive demands) that were (4) delivered by a single orator. More recently with the invention of the printing press, the term rhetoric was broadened to include written as well as spoken oratory. Oratory, derived from the Latin infinitive “orare” which means “to pray”, is simply the art of speaking in public and writing for the public. The same principles of rhetoric are applied to both oral and written disciplines.
Classical rhetoric is the art or discipline of using written and spoken discourse to persuade, inform, or motivate an audience…the very essence of the speech or essay is meant to move the listener or reader. According to Scottish Presbyterian Minister and Master of Rhetoric, George Campbell,
“we discourse to enlighten the understanding, to please the imagination, to move the passions, or influence the will.”
Although Campbell was primarily interested in the art of rhetoric because he believed it would result in better preachers, contemporary home educators see the application of rhetoric to a whole slew of opportunities from platform, interpretive, and limited preparation speeches and essays to books, sermons, and face-to-face encounters in the community. Now that you know the definition of classical rhetoric, will you incorporate it into your child’s home education?
‘Shiver Me Timbers!’ Do I Have To Teach Logic?
Posted by Diane in How to Teach Homeschool Skill 2: THINKING on April 2nd, 2008
Formal Logic…most of us never learned the rules in school and shudder at the very thought of teaching it in our home school! But if you are going to raise a classical scholar, you really need to become familiar with the concepts and terms. In fact, you may find after completing a few lessons that you actually enjoy this methodical way of constructing and evaluating arguments. Let me briefly introduce you to the study of logic in laymen’s terms.
History
The western version of classical logic originated in Classical Greece with Aristotle. He called his argument the “syllogism.” Each statement followed a particular order containing a subject and a predicate. There are many vocabulary words, but three important ones to remember when teaching logic in your home school are: argument, reason, and conclusion.
Method
Reasoning shapes our thinking into intelligent patterns. When someone asks us for our reason for believing something, our minds have to go beyond the information given in order to decide, explain, predict, or persuade. Our reasons support our conclusion. So, a simple definition of logic is:
the system for using reasons and conclusions to construct and evaluate arguments
Whenever we give reasons to support our conclusions, we are presenting an argument. Officially, such reasons are called “premises.” Here is the structure of a formal logic argument:
Reason 1 (first statement to justify the conclusion – evidence)
Reason 2 (second statement to justify the conclusion – evidence)
Conclusion (statement that explains, asserts, or predicts based on the evidence or reasons)
Don’t know which logic books to buy for your homeschool? Traditional logic teaches methods for evaluating criteria like validity, truth, and soundness. Anthony Weston provides a brief overview of logic in his Rulebook for Arguments if you want an executive or top-level summary of the subject. In our own home, school we’ve used two logic curricula: Canon Press and Memoria Press. My recommendation would be to purchase Memoria Press’ Traditional Logic, books 1 and 2, for a full year of homeschool high school credit. Most homeschoolers are ready to tackle this methodical workbook sometime between the 7th and 8th year.
Critical thinking will skyrocket once your kids begin to understand traditional logic. In lesson five of the second book of the Memoria Press text, your homeschooler will learn how to apply all the methods for constructing and evaluating arguments to real-life. They can then take any newspaper article, identify the arguments including premises and conclusions, and evaluate with specific tools whether the argument is sound or not. This is a critical thinking skill that is rare in our culture and certainly unusual among teenagers; you owe it to your kids to give them these tools so that they are ready to take what they’ve determined and communicate their position effectively.
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If you have enjoyed this post or any of the other posts in this series, and you have a favorite social bookmarking site, would you mind taking a minute to click on the “bookmark and share” button below and plugging our website as a favorite? We’d really appreciate any good recommendations that you could pass on to your home school friends.
Can A Critical Thinker Be Creative, Too?
Posted by Diane in How to Teach Homeschool Skill 2: THINKING on March 26th, 2008
Just because your homeschoolers are critical thinkers doesn’t mean that they can’t be creative thinkers as well. Road two of the classical trivium, thought, involves giving your children tools to solve problems. Observation, language, and evidence are all components of critical thinking but so is creative thinking. How is creative thinking related to critical thinking?
To be a creative thinker is to have a sense of discovery…to imagine…to invent…to be curious. Critical thinkers need to foster creative thinking so that they can develop viable alternatives and solutions for the problem. Solving problems involves the following five steps:
1. Identify the real problem.
- Ask lots of questions.
- Who? What? When? Where? Why? How?
- What is causing the problem?
- Eliminate the distracting side issues.
2. Generate a list of alternatives.
- Consult experts.
- Brainstorm.
- Set the timer and “jam” random thoughts.
- Imagine new ways of doing it
- Postpone judgment until later.
3. Evaluate the pros and cons of your possible solutions.
- What do the experts recommend?
- What do the written references say?
- What are the facts?
- Have you had a personal experience with the problem?
4. Decide on the best solution.
- What pros and cons can you merge?
- What alternative solutions can you eliminate?
- What is the most workable solution?
5. Monitor the results of your plan.
- How well is your solution working?
- Did anything unexpected happen?
- Are there any adverse effects?
To think creatively about a problem, your homeschoolers have to develop a deep understanding of the central concept and issues. In order to foster an environment where creative thinking is encouraged, provide the following conditions in your home school:
Time
Allow lots of uninterrupted time with no distractions so that your homeschoolers can really think about the issue. Give less work so that they can go deep. Eliminate distractions (I know this is difficult). Give them time to concentrate so that those creative juices flow. They needs time to absorb all the facts of the situation and imagine solutions.
Place
You’ve probably heard this before, but we really do need a quiet place to engage in deep thinking. My kids work all over the house, both inside and outside, but when they need to really concentrate, they go to their “quiet places.” Meredith goes to her room and closes the door, and Connor disappears in the study. There’s also some value in going to the same quiet place each time they want to do some serious thinking because every time they reenter that place, the memory of prior “ah hah” moments will trigger a similar eureka moment this time.
So where does creative thinking factor into these five problem-solving steps? People who think creatively come up with alternatives and solutions that are not the norm. Creative thinkers illuminate the crux of the problem. Creative thinkers innovate when it comes to alternatives. Creative thinkers imagine a better solution. Once a little creativity has been applied to the problem, a critical analysis of the problem, alternatives, and solution can be performed. The more creative thinking your child does, the more ideas he’ll produce. The more creative ideas your child produces, the more skilled he’ll become. The more skilled he becomes, the more satisfying his sense of accomplishment will be. The more satisfying his accomplishments, the more he will love learning! So you see? Homeschoolers can think critically and creatively!
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Have you visited The Classical Scholar Book Stores yet? You’ll find lots of books that train your homeschooler in critical thinking.
