I know last year my best friend used the summer to teach her child to read--since the school system had failed to do it in her grade one year. Tutor businesses thrive during the summer, trying to make up for what the schools don't do.
I think one of the problems is that schools have given up forcing kids to memorize basic things, like multiplication tables. Here's an excellent post over at Joanne Jacobs' education blog:
One reason for the teacher frustration is that the state’s math gurus have de-emphasized memorization in favor of “conceptual thinking.” The same philosophy has crept into English classes, where “creativity” has been elevated over knowledge of grammar, and into history classes, where knowing historical trends — “the big picture” — has replaced knowing dates of important events. The result is seniors who are not just incapable of multiplication, but also unable to identify the verb in a sentence or come within 100 years of placing the Civil War.
I’ve never believed that people are better able to understand concepts if they know no facts. Perhaps the ignorant are more creative — but not in a good way.
I totally agree. We've made our kids memorize all the Presidents (and we're Canadian!), all the English Kings and Queens, starting with Ethelbert, and the dates of all the major wars from the War of the Roses to the present. And they've had to memorize all the multiplication tables!
I don't believe this stuff about how memorization isn't fun. Memorization is actually quite easy for children--far easier than it is for adults. If we can make use of that window from 6-12 when kids are geared for memorizing and learning, we can put all kinds of interesting things in their brains!
My children also memorize poetry. Rebecca can do a really dramatic version of The Cremation of Sam McGee, which is an awfully long poem, but it's quite rhythmic.
If your children don't know their math facts, why not use this summer to teach them? It doesn't sound fun, but it will reap huge rewards. Here's the easiest way I've found to tackle them:
Start with the 2's.
Then do the squares (2 x2, 6x6, etc.)
Next the 5's, which you can learn by counting by 5.
Next the 9's. There are several tricks for the 9's. For instance, if you're doing 9x4, you take away one from the four, which gives you 3. Now, what do you add to 3 to get 9? 6. So the answer is 36. Try it. It always works!
Next the 4's.
Now, you only have a few facts left over (8x7, 8x6, etc.) I think there are about 8 of them, and you just have to memorize them. Here's another trick for 8x7: Think 5-6-7-8. Because 7x8 = 56!
Anyone else have any favourite tricks for helping kids memorize math?
I've been commissioned by Faith Today magazine, Canada's largest Christian magazine, to write an article on how Christian principals in the public school system can live out their faith on the job.
I've interviewed almost 10 principals, and they are optimistic, faithful, and enthusiastic. They pray. They have plans to introduce godly virtues into the culture of their schools, and they largely succeed. They were really a joy to talk to.
But now I'm really torn. I am going to present a faithful version of what they said, but I still feel very pessimistic about the public system in general. You can read more about that here, here and here.
Now I hear about an autistic child in Barrie, north of Toronto, who was reported to the Children's Aid Society because her Educational Assistant consulted a psychic, who told her that one of her students was being sexually abused. She reported this to the principal, who called CAS. On the advice of a psychic. And I am not making this up.
On May 30, Leduc picked Victoria up from school, where she's enrolled in an Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD) class with several boys around the same age. When Leduc returned home, there was an urgent call asking her to return to the Livingstone Street East school.
Frightened, Leduc rushed back to the school.
She and Victoria entered a room where they were met by the principal, the vice-principal and the teacher.
Leduc said they advised her that Victoria's educational assistant (EA) had visited a psychic, who said a youngster whose name started with "V" was being sexually abused by a man between 23 and 26 years old. Leduc was also handed a list of recent behaviours exhibited by her daughter.
School principal Brian Tremain -- who referred phone calls seeking comment to the board -- advised Leduc that the CAS had been contacted.
"That's when I got sick to my stomach," she said. "I was shocked the whole meeting."
It's not just stuff like this that makes me wary, though. It's the whole idea that we can teach about values without actually having a foundation. It's great to teach about honesty, and virtue, and kindness, but if there's no foundation that comes from the freedom and liberty that we have earned in Western society due to our Judeo-Christian heritage, does it even matter? And when we give up on academics to teach things that should properly be taught at home, then kids suffer.
I homeschool, so I am admittedly biased. And I am extremely glad that these principals are in the public system, so that incidences like that in Barrie are still relatively rare. But I can't help thinking that we have veered so far off track that it's hard to get back. Anyway, I'm just saddened by the whole thing.
I didn't really mean to start a debate on homeschooling with my preceding post, but I'm getting comments and emails about it, so I thought I'd try to tackle it again.
First, I do not believe all public schools are bad. Actually, the one my nephew is in is one of the better ones in our city. But for most kids who are very bright, a regular classroom is just not enough intellectual stimulation. How can it be with 25 kids? That doesn't mean they won't get a good education; it just means they'll be bored a lot.
And I agree with Jules' comment below that some homeschoolers are below grade level, just as some public schools are below standards. That's definitely true. Not all homeschooled kids do great (though studies do show that on the whole homeschooled kids do better than schooled kids). I do believe, though, that homeschooling, if it's done well, will produce a better educated child. Please note--"if it's done well". I know it's not always done well! But learning one on one will always take less time and will be more in tune with the child's learning styles and capabilities than a classroom with 25kids will be.
We just love homeschooling because it works great for our family. It won't work wonderfully for every family, and not every family can do it. I certainly don't think every family should! And my post below was not meant to say that. I was just announcing something that was going on in my family--we are now homeschooling my nephew, under his parents' supervision--and I'm having fun with it.
I think with every form of education there are pros and cons. The cons to homeschooling would be the lack of sports (though our group makes up for that), the lack of friends, the lack of opportunity to learn teamwork. These, though, don't outweigh what we believe are the benefits for our kids. Different families will have a different list of pros and cons and will have to weigh them accordingly.
So I have no problem if people decide differently from us.
What I do have a problem with is people emailing me or saying that I shouldn't complain about the public school system, because their children are doing fine. That's great for your children. But it doesn't change the fact that my nephew was bored and demoralized, or that my daughter was unchallenged and bored when she was in school, too.
Come to think of it, I was extremely bored all through my public school experience. So was my husband. If we had had the opportunity to learn like my daughters have, life would have been very different.
So every parent has to do what they think works best for their family. Pray about it and make the decision for your own family. We're all entitled to our opinions, and God often leads different people in different directions for different reasons. That's fine with me. I hope it's fine with all of you, too!
Anyway, enough of all this! I don't want to make this into a homeschooling blog. I'd much rather talk about housework or marriage or parenting. So we'll see what I come up with next!
We have a wonderful homeschooling group in our little community. We get together for sports, skating, track and field, and sometimes more academic subjects. The youth socialize together. It's great.
But whenever we go, my family brings the average number of children down. Most families have 7, 8, 9, 12, or even 5 kids. We had two.
Until now. My nephew, Alex, has come to join our little brood. So now we have 3!
Here they are doing math on their first day of school. They look miserable, but they were actually just hard at work. and the mugs are full of hot chocolate and marshmallows, which is how we always begin our day.
Alex is thrilled to be here so far. He was the one who asked to come. He's three weeks younger than Rebecca, but they're not at the same level because we've been homeschooling Becca all along, so she's doing high school work at this point. Alex is just as smart, I think, but he developed some sloppy habits in math in school that we're going to cure him of! I'm trying to get him through a whole math textbook in the next three months so he can move ahead and won't be in the same book next year as his cousin Katie who is three years younger!
The girls like it because it's a change. After seven years of just the two of them, it's nice to have someone else around. I think I like it for the same reason. And Alex?
He is just sick of being bored at school. He's sick of homework that has no educational value (we don't do homework. They just get their work done in school). He's tired of all the teasing and social garbage that goes on in the playground. He's tired of not being challenged.
I find school really wastes kids' minds. He could be doing stuff so far ahead if he was simply allowed to work at his intellectual pace. Keith teaches the kids one or two days a week and he's been doing chemistry with Rebecca, so he started Alex on it yesterday. It's basically a high school course, but the kids can handle it if you explain it well. And they're learning Latin and Greek.
For history, we're at the Depression. We spent about an hour yesterday talking about the Stock Market Crash and how stock markets can crash. And we talked about how banks could crash then, but not now. We didn't write a lot, but we talked a lot. They learned a ton. And he loved it. He said they never talked about anything important at school.
I don't know how long he'll stay with us. We're homeschooling the girls all the way through high school, and I don't know if he'll want to go back to school at some point. But I'll get him prepared for harder subjects, anyway. And he's just thrilled that he gets to do hard stuff!
His first comment, when we were in a meeting about homeschooling him, was, "I just want to learn as much as I can." Now that's a good attitude! I hope it lasts (in 13-year-olds you can never tell), but so far he's great. But it makes me sad for how little the kids learn in public school. What a loss of great potential! But more on this later.
One of the things that saddens me the most about schools is how much they usurp from parents. They teach sex ed. They teach character. They teach morals and values and hygiene and health, things that were once the purview of the home. And they teach the basics in ways that we parents never learned them, making it very hard to help with homework.
It's easy for a parent to feel that he or she is not qualified to teach anything at all. We should leave it to the schools. We provide the nurturing and the physical care, and the schools provide everything else.
We homeschool, but I think this is the way society is trending.
And we as parents need to realize that much of what the school teaches is counterproductive. What do kids learn in the playground? Being popular matters. Brand names matter. Being cool matters. None of that is true as an adult in the way it is as a child, but it is taught nonetheless.
But Joanne Jacobs argues that schools also teach kids to be unemployed.
In a recent survey urban middle school students were asked the questions, “How many times can you be late (or absent) in a month and hold a regular job?” Over half the students responded you could be late as often as you had a good excuse. Almost half responded you could be absent any time you had a good excuse.
They believe they deserve a second, third, fourth and fifth chance after making mistakes. They’re never accountable for their actions.
Many urban youth not only believe that a good teacher can make you learn but that s/he can always make it fun as well. Naturally, every effort should be made to make as many things as pleasant as possible, interesting, and certainly engaging for students. But fun cannot be the ultimate standard for judging the work of teachers. Students frequently must learn hard and complex things. Many of these “things” require memorization, intense concentration, and repetitions which are fatiguing.
If schools accede to and support an ideology that “good learning is always fun,” what do they actually teach students about work? Should good feelings come from having fun activities, or should one be taught to feel good by accomplishing things?
Then kids leave school and no employer will put up with the attitudes these kids have.
So it all comes back to us. Do we realize that our purpose as parents is to raise independent, godly adults, or do we think our purpose is to make sure our kids have fun and enjoy the early years? I'm not saying responsibility can't be fun; I'm only saying our priorities have to be correct.
Kids need to do things they don't like (like practising piano; my daughter is very grumpy right now about that). They need to learn to clean. And they need the TV off during dinner hours. Life does not revolve around them, and if we moms try to make sure that our kids' lives are endlessly happy, we're actually doing them a disservice.
When I write my weekly columns (they appear in 12 newspapers now), I often get reader email back. But by far the subject that brings in the most email is whenever I talk about how schools are not really doing a good job of educating anymore.
First, they don't teach phonics. They teach "whole language". And then they can't figure out why kids can't read. Then they no longer make kids memorize their math facts. Counting on your fingers is acceptable. And we wonder why we do so poorly in tests.
Anyway, I came across this YouTube video which brilliantly explains the problem in how schools teach math.
About Me: I'm a Christian author of a bunch of books, and a frequent speaker to women's groups and marriage conferences. Best of all, I love homeschooling my daughters, Rebecca and Katie. And I love to knit. Preferably simultaneously.
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