Purpose and Priorities in Education

I just read this teen's open letter about standardized testing. He's making a documentary about education and how standardized testing has affected the education of many young people. 

I think this is important. 

Students absolutely should be engaging in the global and national conversations about education. Of course, this would have been a lot easier had education been returned to local control (under a President Mitt Romney). Unforunately, that's not in the cards. Our current POTUS, President Barack Obama, is only a reformer insofar as it means making America like all the other nations of the world and increasing globalization. He doesn't care about the quality of education; he's more interested in its quantity -- that is, making sure all students fit under the umbrella of government schooling. 

While I agree all children should have access to learning tools, I disagree that all students deserve and need the same education. The difference? 

Learning tools tend to be universal: letters, numbers, blocks, books, videos, internet access. They are tools which can be used to present information in a beautiful variety of ways. 

It's not the same thing as providing "education" which to the government generally means a standard curriculum which all children are taught and must be proved to have accepted by means of standardized testing. 

But how is this resolved? How do we ensure we are providing top-notch tools and making sure those tools are used wisely for continued learning? How do we ensure students are prepared to become productive citizens who are also independent thinkers?

It's so tricky, really. I mean, there's a reason we haven't gotten it all sorted. 

The way I see it, there are two legitimate purposes for education, and a third more cynical purpose: 

1) To expand the mind and allow continued learning, 

2) To provide preparation, life skills, and job training, 

3) To manipulate the culture to fit a government ideal.

For that first purpose, you really don't need any kind of testing at all. Teachers can tell if a child is learning or not, and with such a broad goal as "continued learning" there's ample room for creative encouragement. In the past, before this round of standardized testing, American schools embraced the fuzzy math, creative spelling, e-for-effort ideal. The result of ignoring life preparedness and job training has been pretty glaring: America has fallen behind.

For that second purpose alone, you get China. No wiggle room for different types of learners. The sole purpose of education is to produce educated, useful citizens. You test into your caste system, as it were. Even before NCLB, we had this obsession with standardized testing. The results are no more desirable than previously. You get squashed spirits, kids who do fall behind a standardized norm, and tremendous burnout so that by the time kids get to college, they just want a break.

The third purpose needs no help. Those wheels have been in motion a long time, stretching into higher education and ensuring all teachers value the same government-sanctioned cultural ideals.

Going forward, we really need to figure out what our priorities are as a society. Personally, I value both 1 and 2, and am wary of 3. I'd rather see parents take care of cultural training. Nobody is an island, and we couldn't keep our kids from popular culture if we tried, but that doesn't mean we have to give up our traditions to favor a whitewashed, government model of culture. I know many immigrants have lamented that their children are abandoning their language and heritage because of this cultural immersion in government schools.

But where is the balance between 1 and 2? Is education for learning or job training? 

And who gets to decide?

My own view is that the decision should be left to individuals. Some schools (college prep, etc.) could specialize in life preparation and job training while others (charter schools with a fine arts focus) could specialize in the virtue of learning, separate from its job applications. 

The only way this works, though, is for school choice to become the norm. And that rubs the wrong way anybody who believes all kids should be learning exactly the same things (standardized education proponents). 

So the battle continues.

2 weeks in 1: Knowing What Your Child Can Handle

We've started doing two weeks in one as far as the official Sonlight P4/5 with Kindergarten Readers curriculum goes. My decision to do this is based on Gilgamesh's incredibly fast progress, and his recent boredom with some of the busy work.

The funny thing about busy work is that it's not busy work unless you already know the material. Otherwise, it's just called practice. But there's nothing more frustrating for a child than being forced to do worksheet after worksheet of tedious stuff he knows backwards and forwards.... except perhaps being forced to do work that's too advanced. Either way is not good.

That's what I love about homeschooling. Who knows a child better than his mother? Especially during the early years of life! Mom-as-teacher can look at progress/past work/attitude and determine what would best motivate and facilitate learning in her child. So that's what I did.

Gilgamesh is reading at a first grade level.

Let me just say that again because I'm really proud of him:

Gilgamesh is reading at a first grade level... at four and a half years old.

I already knew he was doing amazingly well when he started asking me about apostrophes and contractions and pointing out commas whenever he found them. But Sonlight has a nifty little Quick Reading Assessment on their website. The word lists are representative of words the public school children in each grade are reading.

When I saw that they were recommending the first grade readers for Gilgamesh, I was 1) super proud and 2) really not that surprised, considering he's already reading the kindergarten readers fluently. The next steps in reading are some of the most challenging with hard-to-remember rules and big words that take some serious sounding out, but Gilgamesh will soon be ready. He's not yet, which is why I chose to accelerate the current curriculum rather than abandon it.

Since the very light preschool program we're using doesn't actually do math and definitely doesn't bog down the preschool mind, we're perfectly fine in reading more material each day and doing more writing practice. The increased rate of practice has been great for Gilgamesh, since it's always new, and kids (at least mine) love novelty. We're still doing art projects, reading about natural science, and looking things up on youtube and Google images when he's curious, so there's no feeling of being rushed, really.

But we are covering two weeks of the curriculum in one, so by his fifth birthday, he'll be all set to start Sonlight's Core A (kindergarten) with Grade 1 Readers. I'm very excited for him because of his pure love of learning. Anybody who thinks I'm pushing him to read earlier would be dead wrong. Everything he does, reading-wise, is his idea. But I definitely prepped the soil.

Here's what I have done:

• Insisted on reading aloud with him every day, whether it's a chapter from a chapter book or several picture books.
• Let him point out the sight words he'd been learning on the pages of actual books.
• Purchased and used Phonics readers (Disney makes these, and so do the merchandisers of just about every kid show you can dream of, like Dora, Diego, Cat in the Hat, etc.) We got ours at Costco for under ten bucks.
• Exposed him early and often to TV and videos that encourage reading: Super Why (Super Readers), Word World, Meet the Letters, Meet the Sight Words 1, 2, and 3, Leapfrog Letter Factory, Word Factory, etc.
• Kept flashcards in the house and wasn't afraid to use them.
• Let him see me reading. Encouraged his dad to let the boys see him reading.
• Talked about new books like they were ice cream.

The rest was all him. My natural love of books shines through in my life and attitudes. That added to kids' general natural curiosity and desire to be like the adults in their lives combines to create fertile soil for learning to read. 

I'm not saying we've never had struggles, like letter reversal, dropping beginning consonants while sounding out words, or sounding out the first few letters only to guess haphazardly at the whole word (that's my favorite). Everybody has challenges while they learn to read. I'm just grateful for Gilgamesh's natural love of learning and intense interest in the written word. I recognize not all children are built like him. I hope this little list is encouraging to parents who aren't sure how to proceed with introducing their kids to reading. My suggestion: dive into the deep end and keep swimming. Kids are hardwired to learn language. The time is now. 

[end inspirational speech]

Most of all, remember that as a super-involved parent, only you and your spouse know what's best for your child. If it's skipping the first grade to go into third, ignore the judgers. If it's taking it super slow to make sure he has a stable foundation for the rest of his life, ignore the judgers. Focus on what you know is right, and if it's not as clear as a bell...

Prayer works.

Good luck and enjoy!