It Takes a Whole Village

It Takes a Whole Village

The School Daily e-newsletter (www.theschooldaily.com) of 27 September 2002 featured an article by its own editor wherein he said his own teaching philosophy was based on the African Proverb: It takes a whole village to educate a child. Keystone’s editor replied with the following:

Forgive me, but I must counter this with the following quote by the Wisconsin Independent School Board Association:

Only the village idiot

would consider letting the entire village in

on the task of raising his children.

I ’m fairly sure I don’t want my children adopting the lifestyles, values and attitudes of the typical African village our media and missionaries portray to us: the poverty, the disease, the men folk sitting around drinking or chewing, the women doing all the physical labour, the rampant sexual immorality, the deadly AIDS plague running out of control, the superstitions of the animist religions, the greed and envy and corruption of the witch doctors, the female circumcision, the slavery still practised by the blacks and the Arabs as it was 200 years ago, the prostitution, the slash and burn agriculture, and the killing of rare animals to feed the tourist and aphrodisiac trade.

And the NZ village: it contains a growing number of men who refuse to marry the women they live with or have anything to do with the children they sire; it has women who refuse to spank children who do wrong, claiming it is too violent, yet who will slaughter their own children, who have done nothing, while still in the womb; sexual immorality and perversions of all sorts are freely available on the internet to people of any age, on video for slightly more effort, in massage parlours, and through the personal columns while the health classes in some schools train younger and younger children in the fine art of condom use; children openly skip classes in order to help with the cannabis harvest and show up at school stoned; teachers appear to be unable to curtail the rampant bullying and women’s refuges are full to bursting.

Please allow me to suggest another old proverb, spoken 2,000 years ago by a swarthy Jewish fellow, as an alternative to this defective African one: “Love the Lord your God with all your heart, soul, mind and strength, and your neighbour as yourself.” I reckon we’d all get a lot more mileage out of it.

From Keystone Magazine
September 2002 , Vol. VIII No. 5
P O Box 9064
Palmerston North
Phone: (06) 357-4399
Fax: (06) 357-4389
email: craig@hef.org.nz

To order a subscription to Keystone Magazine do one of the following:

send email to sales@hef.org.nz with visa number

post cheque or visa number to PO Box 9064, Palmerston North, New Zealand

fax: 06 357-4389

phone: 06 357-4399

Trademe (fees added):  http://www.trademe.co.nz/Members/Listings.aspx?member=2366144

Sella (No added fees):  http://www.sella.co.nz/store/4ym9qg/home-education-foundation/display-100

Read for Yourself

Read for Yourself

As the parents of a home educating family, perhaps the best thing you can do for your children’s academic advancement is to read for yourself, for your own enrichment. Always be adding to your store of wisdom and knowledge: study history, the Scriptures, your children’s learning styles and current events.

Don’t be too concerned about where you start. As C. S. Lewis said of English literature, any part of it eventually leads to the rest anyway. Jump in wherever you fancy and keep going as long as the interest level continues to motivate you. Read a wide variety of things: histories, novels, poetry (read it aloud!), essays, plays, biographies, short stories, theology, philosophy, science, etc. Be careful not to kill your love of learning by dragging yourself through stuff you hate. There is a skill in finding the line between self-discipline in studying what you know is valuable, even though you don’t enjoy it, and unprofitable self-torture.

Even so, you must read Mortimer Adler’s How to Read a Book. It is fantastic! Check out his list of the world’s greatest books that everybody should read. Another beauty, written by a Christian, is James W. Sire’s How to Read Slowly, for it focuses on how to read different kinds of books and how to determine their underlying world view.

A noble objective is to learn to feed yourself rather than be spoonfed pre-digested, pre-interpreted, watered-down, modern-language condensed versions of the old classics. Find a copy of C. S. Lewis’s book God in the Dock: Essays in Theology and Ethics and read the essay in it called “On the Reading of Old Books”. This is a wonderful essay about the value of old books, the original books, as opposed to modern ones “about” the old ones.

From Keystone Magazine
September 2002 , Vol. VIII No. 5
P O Box 9064
Palmerston North
Phone: (06) 357-4399
Fax: (06) 357-4389
email: craig@hef.org.nz

To order Keystone Magazine do one of the following:

send email to sales@hef.org.nz with visa number

post cheque or visa number to PO Box 9064, Palmerston North, New Zealand

fax: 06 357-4389

phone: 06 357-4399

Trademe (fees added):  http://www.trademe.co.nz/Members/Listings.aspx?member=2366144

Sella (No added fees):  http://www.sella.co.nz/store/4ym9qg/home-education-foundation/display-100

Informal Learning

Informal Learning

Alan Thomas, Senior Lecturer in Psychology at the University of Northern Territory, Darwin, is formulating something he calls “the Child’s Theory of Learning” as a result of what he has observed over the years. It contrasts sharply with the way children are expected to learn in school.

He observes the typical classroom: busy beavers industriously engaged in one activity after another, producing all kinds of colourful and creative items to hang around the room. He observes home educators who practise a much more informal method of learning: nothing much seems to happen: they go for walks, read a lot, work on their own projects now and again, take music lessons on Thursdays, help out a neighbour down the road. Yes, there was a lot of discussion about all kinds of things during a typical day, with mum acting more like a mentor than a lecturer or assignment-setter and marker.

Thomas says that what struck him the most was incidental conversation. “Whether we were out walking, sitting around the kitchen table, engaged in some other activity such as drawing, making something, or working on a project, eating or just out in the car, there seemed to be an incredible amount of incidental talk.”

Isn’t it interesting how this parallels our Lord’s instructions to us in Deuteronomy 6:6-7 – “And these words which I command you this day shall be upon your heart; and you shall teach them diligently to your children, and shall talk of them when you sit in your house, and when you walk by the way, and when you lie down, and when you rise.”

Thomas was struck by the reality that children in school rarely get the opportunity to have such lengthy informal conversations with adults. And yet for the first five years of life – before school – this is precisely how children learn: by constant banter with mum and dad all day. They learn huge amounts of general knowledge, numerical concepts, literacy skills as well as how to speak maybe several languages – and this is routinely done by virtually all parents with no particular thought to what they’re doing.

Yet this highly effective Child’s Theory of Learning must be abandoned once they start school. Professors Barbara Tizard and Martin Hughes at London University compared the quality of learning of three to four year olds in pre-school, which the children attended in the mornings, with unintentional learning at home in the afternoons. The researchers were struck by the high quality of language and learning at home, irrespective of the parents’ level of education:

At home, children discussed topics like work, the family, birth, growing up and death — about things they had done together in the past, and plans for the future; they puzzled over such diverse topics as the shapes of roofs and chairs, the nature of Father Christmas, and whether the Queen wears curlers in bed. But at pre-school, the richness, the depth and variety which characterised the home conversations were sadly missing.  So too was the sense of intellectual struggle, and of the real attempts to communicate being made on both sides. The questioning, puzzling child we were so taken with at home was gone. Conversations with adults were mainly restricted to answering questions rather than asking them, or taking part in minimal exchanges about the whereabouts of other children and play material.

Could children go on learning in this fashion for years on end….and not do the “school” thing? Roland Meighan of the University of Nottingham School of Education notes that “Families starting out on home-based education who at first adopted formal methods of learning found themselves drawn more and more into less formal learning. Families who started out with informal learning at the outset found themselves drawn into even more informal learning.” He points out that this informal or incidental learning closely resembles the kind of learning so efficiently engaged in by pre-school infants at home. Then Meighan makes the astounding statement: “The sequencing of learning material, the bedrock of learning in school, was seen increasingly as unnecessary and unhelpful.” It seems that at home students can learn very well just by living.

For many home educators, and certainly for many of the more popular packaged curriculum used by home educators, the immovable assumption is the need for a well-planned scope and sequence through which to move the students.  (See Figure 1).

Figure 1:

Conventional Scope & Sequence in Schools

Reading Writing Maths Science History
Level 1 Level 1 Level 1 Level 1 Level 1
Level 2 Level 2 Level 2 Level 2

Level 2

Level 3 Level 3 Level 3 Level 3 Level 3

Barbara Smith of the Home Education Foundation, Palmerston North, New Zealand, recently encapsulated the observation of Thomas, Meighan, Tizard and Hughes when she said: “Children develop their own scope & sequence: it is generally composed of two three-letter words: how and why.”

Indeed. And children use this method of learning with tremendous results, exceeding in amount learned during the first five years all that they’ll learn in the next 20. Why does it have to stop at age five or six when the child is expected to start school and suddenly be expected to learn at a pace, at a place, during a time and concentrating on subjects chosen by someone else totally unfamiliar with the child’s developmental progress to date, his or her family background, culture, interests, abilities, values, beliefs, learning style and inclinations?

Asking “Why?” and “How?”, children will fill in a knowledge grid (see figure 2) which is wider in scope than any used by schools. They will not follow any particular sequence, for life experiences and interesting connections and curiosity do not follow any predictable pattern. Even so the grid will continue to be filled in with each successive question, discussion and conversation, many times to a far greater depth (and certainly with an important emphasis on its relevance to the individual student) than happens in school. And because the child is asking the questions, he will doubtlessly remember much more of the material in that part of the grid than he would of the comparable part in a conventional school-style scope and sequence grid that was covered when the child was absent from school or daydreaming, unwell, distracted, upset or unmotivated.

No wonder Roland Meighan asked in regard to informal home-based education not “Does it work?” but “Why does it work so well?”

Figure 2:

A Possible Child’s “How?” & “Why?” Scope & Sequence


From Keystone Magazine
September 2002 , Vol. VIII No. 5
P O Box 9064
Palmerston North
Phone: (06) 357-4399
Fax: (06) 357-4389
email: craig@hef.org.nz

To order Keystone Magazine do one of the following:

send email to sales@hef.org.nz with visa number

post cheque or visa number to PO Box 9064, Palmerston North, New Zealand

fax: 06 357-4389

phone: 06 357-4399

Trademe (fees added):  http://www.trademe.co.nz/Members/Listings.aspx?member=2366144

Sella (No added fees):  http://www.sella.co.nz/store/4ym9qg/home-education-foundation/display-100

Geography

Geography

An article in the NZ Herald this month (September 2002) told how a survey of nearly 3,000 school children found “that many children have a limited
knowledge of New Zealand facts and history. Only 33 per cent of Year 4 pupils (aged 8-9) and 59 per cent of Year 8s (aged 12-13) could pinpoint their country on a world map.”

Well, we’ve not had that problem! Maybe that’s because first of all I love geography and maps myself and am always looking something up.

But when we once fostered and home educated an eight-year-old who knew little, we found a fun way to make him look like an Einstein. A trip to the library secured a couple of those great National Geographic maps of continents.  He taped South America on the big window and taped a blank sheet of newsprint over the top. It was fun tracing the continent with a bold felt pen because it didn’t involve books or reading or sitting at a desk. He learned all about bays & peninsulas & river mouths & islands in the process. Then he traced the national borders and put big dots for the capital cities.

The next part was hard, but made more tolerable because I sat with him the whole time helping him with encouraging words: writing out the names of each of the countries in the continent on some card. I made it interesting by telling what little I knew about each of the countries as he wrote them out, and found that my memory had some really cute little snippets stored away once I started searching for them. Cutting the names into individual cards was an enjoyable task.

Then his job was to match each card to the correct country he had outlined on his map, now stretched out on the table, using the National Geographic map as a guide. We would do what he remembered several times a day and would add new ones as he was able. After he’d mastered about four countries, he discovered he knew more than most adults, and this motivated him greatly. Soon he knew all 13 South American countries from memory. Every adult who arrived would be met with an invitation to look at his map…..and then be handed the 13 innocent-looking cards and challenged to place them correctly! None could do it!

Let me tell you, this was really impressive to all the friends and neighbours skeptical about home education, and made a visit by the ERO officer really plain sailing, when in fact the little guy’s maths and writing skills simply weren’t there. And as a result each of our other children chose a different continent, and soon each one was an expert in a different part of the world. So when we started reading Operation World to learn of the state of Christianity in different countries, our children’s appetite for more geographical information had already been sharpened.

There are some great interactive geography games you can download from the internet….for free! Check it out at the Owl & Mouse Educational Software site:  www.yourchildlearns.com/owlmouse.htm

Blank map printouts are available at:                               www.enchantedlearning.com/label/geography.shtml

From Keystone Magazine
September 2002 , Vol. VIII No. 5
P O Box 9064
Palmerston North
Phone: (06) 357-4399
Fax: (06) 357-4389
email: craig@hef.org.nz

To order Keystone Magazine do one of the following:

send email to sales@hef.org.nz with visa number

post cheque or visa number to PO Box 9064, Palmerston North, New Zealand

fax: 06 357-4389

phone: 06 357-4399

Trademe (fees added):  http://www.trademe.co.nz/Members/Listings.aspx?member=2366144

Sella (No added fees):  http://www.sella.co.nz/store/4ym9qg/home-education-foundation/display-100

The Four Parenting Styles

The Four Parenting Styles

by Craig Smith

Dr Diana Baumrind, Research Psychologist with the Institute of Human Development at the University of California (Berkeley) and others describe in very useful terms four basic parenting styles. These each involve combinations of acceptance / responsiveness / support on the one hand, and demands / controls / monitoring on the other.

Supporting Unsupporting
High-level

Monitoring

Authoritative

Authoritarian

Low-level

Monitoring

Indulgent

Neglectful

The authoritarian style, where monitoring is high and support low, gives complete authority to the parent, who dictates how the children will behave. It tends to be less effective in the teenage years, because there is no negotiation. It relies totally on the recipient recognising the greater authority of the parent.1 It is a restrictive, punitive style, allows little verbal exchange, and can be associated with social incompetence in children: they are anxious about social comparison, fail to initiate activity and have poor communication skills.2

The best meaning home educating parents in the world can fall into a pattern of authoritarian parenting because of feeling pressured to perform. A strict adherence to a packaged curriculum, demanding a minimum number of pages to be done each day, can cause parents to feel they need to keep the children working and performing at all times, especially when combined with unrealistic expectations in other areas such as educational outings, lessons of various kinds or even social commitments or fastidious housekeeping. Such folks may have lost sight of the prime advantage and opportunity of home education: to enable your children to interact with you all day, rather than with a book. Vast amounts of knowledge and wisdom as well as important attitudes and values are communicated most efficiently when you feel comfortable just sitting for an hour talking with the children about whatever subject comes up.

The indulgent or permissive style sees parents who are highly involved with their children, but who place few demands or controls on them: support is high and monitoring low. Children have great freedom, and few or no boundaries. Indulgent parenting is also associated with children’s social incompetence, especially a lack of self-control. Children may always expect to get their own way. Some parents deliberately rear their children in this way because they believe the combination of warm involvement with few restraints will produce a creative, confident child.2 While young people need more from their own parents, the indulgent style can be a very useful one for a step-parent.1

Probably few Christian home educators would be in this group since Christianity is a faith of discipleship which means self-discipline and submitting to higher authorities. However, with today’s negative worldly attitudes toward work and responsibility, parents may unwittingly be letting their children down in the area of discipline because they are so interested, committed to and involved in their children’s activities. It is the Christian parent’s duty before God to shoulder the hard and at times unpleasant task of training and disciplining their children to abandon the ways of folly which are bound up in the heart (Proverbs 22:15) and to walk according to God’s word.

The neglectful parenting style, where both monitoring and support are low, where parents are very uninvolved in the child’s life, perhaps absorbed in their own troubles, and children may be left to bring themselves up, is also associated with social incompetence in children, especially a lack of self-control.2 There is no discipline of the children, and no interest in them either. This is the most harmful. The children rightfully feel neglected because no one notices when they are in over their heads with no lifeline to haul them back.1

This is the caricature of a home educator our enemies like to portray. Such neglectful parents, of course, are the least likely to want their children hanging around them all day when the schools will occupy them for at least six hours a day, and often more, plus probably feed them into the bargain.

The authoritative parenting style, where monitoring and support are high, encourages children to be independent but still places limits and controls on their actions. Extensive verbal give-and-take is allowed, and parents are warm and nurturant toward the child. Such children are generally socially competent, self-reliant nd socially responsible.2

This is what home education, tutoring, mentoring is all about. Parents know they have the goods to pass on to their children and are confident in their ability — as well as committed to their duty before God — to do so. I Thessalonians  2:9-12 talks of the hard work, the good example and the lofty goal the Apostle Paul had for the Thessalonians as he nurtured them first as babes, encouraged them as peers and finally charged them as mature Christians to carry on faithfully in his absence. It is our job to do likewise with the next generation.

Notes:

1. From NZ Herald, 31 July 2002, Suzanne Innes-Kent, relationships consultant, author and broadcaster, http://www.nzherald.co.nz/storyprint.cfm?storyID=2346957

2. From Life-Span Development, John W. Santrock, University of Texas, 1997, Brown & Benchmark.

From Keystone Magazine
September 2002 , Vol. VIII No. 5
P O Box 9064
Palmerston North
Phone: (06) 357-4399
Fax: (06) 357-4389
email: craig@hef.org.nz

To order Keystone Magazine do one of the following:

send email to sales@hef.org.nz with visa number

post cheque or visa number to PO Box 9064, Palmerston North, New Zealand

fax: 06 357-4389

phone: 06 357-4399

Trademe (fees added):  http://www.trademe.co.nz/Members/Listings.aspx?member=2366144

Sella (No added fees):  http://www.sella.co.nz/store/4ym9qg/home-education-foundation/display-100