Wouldn't it be great if all students had passion? Think how much they'd learn!

But be careful what you ask for.  Passion allows--and is often associated with--a level of effort that can overwhelm bystanders.  Just ask Thomas Edison's grade school teacher.

According to legend, little Thomas was not content to sit quietly, absorbing information that he could parrot back to his teacher.  Instead, he dared to ask questions--lots of them, apparently.  Out of frustration, the teacher declared him a bad student who simply could not learn. Shortly thereafter, Thomas' dear mother removed him from school and set about the task of schooling him herself.

Such is the lot of parents raising children who do not respond to the world as expected, who refuse or are unable to meet established norms of conduct. Focusing on one's passion at the expense of what is expected of us can often be disatrous. And yet, most of the world's greatest ideas have come about because of individuals who were willing to challenge the status quo, who questioned what they were told and sought other answers.

The choice to unschool is contentious. Many would say that it results in children who are essentially uneducated.  But to parents like me, who have been given a child with a keen sense of focus and passion, I say. "So be it." The risk of mediocrity is, in my mind, far worse than the risk of failure.

In failure, we continue to learn. And, when we continue to learn, we gain the most meaningful education of all. This is what Thomas Edison's mother knew.

The rest is history.

I have to admit that being "standards-free" makes me nervous, even if it is only for a relatively short time.  How do I know that my son will learn what he needs to learn to keep up with the rest of the world? How will I know if he learns broadly enough across subjects and deeply enough within critical subjects to prevent significant "holes" in his knowledge base?

For now, he appears to be keeping pace with the state standards for his grade-level, at least in language arts, math, and science. Social studies--especially as far as history is concerned--is a different matter.  Much of the content (i.e., dates, historical figures, significant events) doesn't come up as a topic of conversation everyday and it is not immediately apparent to a nine-year old why this information would be useful.

Come to think of it, maybe we teach history backwards in traditional school.  Instead of starting with facts and details about people and events long gone, we might do better to start with where we are now in time, with current people and events that are real and relevant.  From that base of direct experience, we could then add examples of how people and events transpired in the past, perhaps compare and contrast what happened then with what is happening now.

Oh well, this isn't my area of expertise.  Just musing.

Any history teachers out there? I'd love to learn about the rationale for history curriculum as it is presently taught.  In the meantime, think I'll go give my kid a pop quiz and ask him who the major party presidential candidates are.

As you may recall, I decided (almost capriciously) to try "unschooling" with my son this year.  Unschooling, if you are not familiar with the term, has also been referred to as "child-centered" education.  In its simplest form, this means letting students drive the content of instruction, rather than the teacher.  No standards, no predetermined curriculum, and no assessments.

(For those of you who have been following this journey so far, I'm happy to report that my son loves this approach and has even been known to "do school" on the weekend.)

Now, you may be thinking, "Why in the world would you take such a risk with your child's future!"  Let me explain.

Last year, we homeschooled using the Time4Learning curriculum (Time4Learning.com). It's an impressive online program that can be used to supplement a traditional classroom education or can serve as the basis for a homeschool effort. We made good progress and my son still remembers a great deal of what he learned, as evidenced by occasional "pop quizzes" in the field.

The Time4Learning curriculum contains a series of lessons grouped together under units of instruction and, more broadly, under four general subject matter areas--Language Arts, Mathematics, Social Studies, and Science.  These lessons are constructed with an eye towards grade-level national standards.  This is pretty much the way lessons are planned and taught in traditional classrooms (albeit according to state standards). The main difference with Time4Learning is that students can access the course content anytime, anywhere, and at their own pace.  Actually sounds ideal for a kid with special needs. So, what's the problem?

It became apparent over the past year that my son's unique learning needs made the traditional curriculum challenging--no, make that nearly impossible. We spent more time trying to fit the curriculum to his learning style than we did covering the content of the lessons.  I found myself working constantly to embed his individual lessons into a broader context so that he would find the content relevant and would thus pay attention. And, much of the text presented for the third grade-level student read like a page out of a textbook:  lots of words, few pictures, and small print. Not the best presentation for a student with multiple neurologically-based issues.

The decision to try "unschooling" came from an observation that my son, left to his own devices, is actually a highly efficient learner who has managed to amass an unusual amount of skills and knowledge for someone his age. You don't need to take my word for it--ask anyone from the school district who has given him a norm-referenced achievement test. 

For now, I'm sitting back and watching him learn, looking for clues that will help me transform his education from one of learned helplessness and frustration to one of self-mastery and enjoyment.  He's far enough ahead right now to give us a little "wiggle room" as we explore what he needs to become (remain?) a self-determined learner, one who can recognize what he needs to learn and knows how to go after it, whether its about how to grow a spruce tree in a container on the deck or how to convert fractions into decimals.

I'll worry about the standards and curriculum later.  For now, my son has a lot to teach me about what it means to learn.

Thank you, Dr. Van Eck, for recommending this video!

    

I just got back from spending a couple of days swatting itsy-bitsy ghost gnats at a county campground. No computer for over 24 hours. Thought my computer-addict son would go nuts. Instead, he spent his time filling up sandwich baggies with water to see what would happen when he threw them up in the air and let them come crashing down to earth. (No, they didn't always explode on impact. Go figure.)

The time away led to an epiphany on my part as well.  I recently spent some time searching through the research literature to see what had been done in the way of homeschoolers and instructional design. Well, there doesn't seem to be much out there (on any topic related to homeschooling, actually) and I started to ask myself why. 

I suppose one reason is that there probably isn't much funding for a topic like this--after all, it runs counter to the conventional wisdom that all kids are better off in traditional classrooms with licensed teachers.  Another reason may be that homeschooling has tended to be seen as the province of ideologues who choose to homeschool out of religious conviction or a profound distrust of public institutions (see Lange, C. & Liu, K., 1999. Homeschooling: Parents' reasons for transfer and the implications for educational policy (Research Report No. 29), National Center on Educational Outcomes, University of Minnesota, Minneapolis, MN).

I thought a little bit more and realized that times are changing fast--more and more parents are choosing to pull their kids out of established venues for education and instead school from home, either one-family-at-a-time or in co-ops of like-minded parents. How could this be happening?

In a word:  technology. (See Isenberg, E. J., 2007. What have we learned about homeschooling? Peabody Journal of Education, 82(2-3), 387–409).

We can now access the kinds of information and resources via the internet that only a few short years ago required intensive time and training to obtain. One example is Time4Learning.com, an internet-based curriculum that presents mathematics, language arts, science, and social studies in short, targeted lessons, complete with frequent assessments and a comprehensive tracking system for Kindergarten through 8th grade.

The epiphany came when I realized (cue slap to forehead) that what I thought was a focus on homeschooling as a legitimate and powerful option for special needs kids may, in fact, be a broader issue of individualized instruction for all. Technology (the internet, in particular) is the key.

Think about it. Our whole world is about individualized choice these days.  I can walk into my neighborhood Caribou Coffee and ask for a small half-decaf/half-whatever’s freshest with “this much room” for 2%. What if they looked at me and said, “We’re sorry, no-can-do.  We only serve a large regular coffee straight-up. Looks like you have special needs. Let’s run some tests to see how we can help you learn to drink your coffee black and in large quantities.  And, if you can’t handle the caffeine, maybe you should try meds.”

Instead, when I place my rather complicated order at Caribou, I’m greeted with a smile, offered friendly banter, and given a cuppa Joe exactly how I want it. Everyone wins--they get my money (repeatedly, actually) and I get coffee the way it tastes good to me.

What if education came the same way? Think of the possibilities! We could spend more time focusing on helping learners learn. We could (gasp!) broaden our notion of education from an 8:15AM-to-3:15PM-daily-during-the-school-year enterprise to an every day-every way kind of adventure.

Yeah, I know--I’m dreaming. But, I’m not the only one (see Levine, M. The classroom revisited. Psychology Today, June/August, 2002).  I just wonder how the world could be different (for typical kids and especially for special needs kids) if we explored ways of customizing education to the individual student, rather than trying to customize the student to our current standard of education. We’ve got the tools. We can learn to use them.