The Great Push Leading Nowhere

Ok, just a little exaggeration.

In planning for my daughter's education, I've had to ask myself some very tough questions.  What kind of education do I want my daughter to have so that she can make her way in the world as an adult?  It's a given in my homeschool that Christ will pervade our education.  His character, His lessons, His History will be a part of what I want my children to know and live.  Yet, I still feel the academic pressure to make sure that my children are accomplished in school.

The problem is that the world is changing quickly. Public schools have felt the need and desire to push children to learn more advanced subjects earlier and earlier.   I've watched this happen with my children through the years.  In order to be competitive with the world, the public schools have pushed learning concepts faster and faster.  Some children keep up without difficulty.  Others are left behind, often repeating subjects over and over until they can pass and get the credit for them.  Ironically, those students often pass the subject around the time they would have taken them if the standards hadn't been changed.

I've researched the education received by students in the late 1800s and early 1900s.  Not dependent on computers or calculators, children learned early on to figure numbers in their heads.   This is not the case today.  Both of my older girls have told me, as I've worked with the ten year old on her math skills, that they never memorized their multiplicative tables.  I was shocked by this.  What about all those timed tests they used to take?  What about the Math Wall of Fame all the kids strived to have their name put on in Elementary School?  Simple, they told me.  They learned what they had to for the test, then forgot it. They may have eventually, through use, learned most of their multiplication facts.  But it wasn't uncommon to have to figure one out or look one up as they were advancing through pre-algebra and algebra and up.

Why can we not compete in America with other nations with less money and resources?  I truly believe there are numerous reasons.  One of the biggest ones is the push to compete has brought advanced concepts to a very early age, long before a child's mind can understand and grasp the concept.  I've noticed this with Laura quite a bit.  If her mind can't seem to understand something, the best thing I have found is to not push, but to wait.  I'll re-introduce the concept in a month, or six months, or even a year.  Usually, by then, Laura has matured enough to grasp the concept easily.  Not only will she grasp the concept but often will grasp it quickly.  She may struggle for a long time in an area, then suddenly it will click and she'll quickly jump ahead weeks, or even a year ahead in skill level.  Sometimes it took a different approach, but most of the time it just took time for her brain to mature to the right point.

I took Algebra in the ninth grade.  My oldest daughters took Algebra in the eighth grade, getting High School credit for it.  It has been offered to current seventh graders at the same school.  Every few years, the concepts are pushed back a grade or two.  It makes no sense, though, cause these same kids taking classes earlier and earlier aren't scoring higher on the standardized tests than the kids did a few years ago. They are scoring worse!  How is this push to teach more advanced concepts earlier helping?

With a child in fifth grade, you would think that planning for high school would seem a bit ridiculous.  It isn't.  I want to have a plan of action for things like history and math so that there is a building of concepts or a flow to our learning.  I don't want to have a lot of stops and starts.  Planning for what we will cover when has come into play, and it can be stressful.  (It almost makes me want to purchase a computer program or go back to the workbooks to do the planning and teaching for me.)  But when I actually thought and prayed about it, I knew that, while I need a plan, trying to cram in too much on any of my children won't help them learn.  So, some subjects are just going to be at their pace, with many practical applications thrown in.

I've also noticed that there are many, many subjects that the public school often covers.  I can see the tendency to do the same thing in homeschooling.  I'm not sure that it is a good idea to overwhelm students that way.  Skills may be necessary to build, but it isn't building anything by stressing students out to the point where they don't even want to learn anything.  There's a huge difference between being challenged and being overwhelmed.  I don't want my girls to be so overwhelmed that they feel like they can't accomplish the work.  There may be things they don't like, but that's not the same as developing a negative attitude toward learning.  I've seen a lot of that in public school students.  I still see that negative attitude in my ten year old even though she is in her third year of being homeschooled. She spent the first few years in public school, and her dislike of school formed quickly.