Homeschooling: Record Keeping!

It's October, and you're a brand new homeschooling family.  By now you might be settling into some routine.  You've already discarded things that aren't working and still agonizing over others.  What's the most important piece of this homeschool puzzle?

It's record keeping.

If your child is in the K-8 range, your record keeping task is pretty simple.  Toss everything that's been done on paper into a box.  This includes workbooks, posters, homework, projects, book reports, and art work that isn't suitable for framing.  For the latter, take and print photos, even if black-and-white.  This is the record box, not the display case.  If necessary, everything in that box can be sorted later.

If your child is working a course online then get periodic printouts of grade reports. You could also take screen shots or photos of those screens that display grades.  Print, and toss in the box.

Take photos of the art work, family activities, pies baked, sports activities, field trips, and outings, and put those on a well-labeled flash drive for that year, one for each child.  The flash drive will go in a zip-lock bag (so you can find it) in the box while it's accumulating, and will either stay there at the end of the year or follow the child into the next year.  If you have multiple children then you'll want to transfer those family photos to a flash drive for each child.

Keep a list of books read and movies watched.  If the list is in electronic form it can go on the flash drive.  If it's on paper, then it goes in the box.  Don't forget the 4H record book.

If your child returns to a classroom setting somewhere, then what's in the box becomes your evidence of what was accomplished.  If there is ever a legal question about your homeschooling, then the box is your evidence of your diligence.

Consider selecting items from the box and the flash drive to use to make a memory book of that child's year.  You can make one book each year, or you can continue a book from one year to the next.

When can you toss what's in those K-8 boxes?  When the child has accomplished a year in a classroom setting, or after a year of high school, whether it was in a classroom, online, or homeschooled.  When that year is done you can rummage the K-8 boxes for the treasures you want to keep, and recycle the rest.  If you're uncertain about keeping something or throwing it away, consider taking a scan or photo of it and then tossing it out.  The photo goes on that flash drive.

If your child is doing high school level coursework, no matter what age, then you'll need a little more diligence.  Coursework for each class should be accumulated in its own file folder or envelope.  Keep these on a designated shelf or a filing cabinet.  Label them so they can be easily identified on the shelf or in the drawer.  Put daily homework in the back of the folder or envelope.  The order does not matter.  Copies of tests or projects go in front of the homework.  It should not be difficult to order these sequentially.  Grade reports go in the very front.  If the student is working through a book with specific content then add a copy of the table of contents from the book.  If not all content was accomplished, indicate on that copy where you stopped.

When a course is finished put the letter grade on the outside of the envelope or the front of the file folder.  Your goal is to handle this paperwork as little as possible.  In the same place include the dates when the course was begun and finished, and if the student was tutored through the course then include the name of that person. Writing a transcript from this data will be simple.

If the child returns to a classroom during high school then your accumulated file folders or envelopes can help a guidance counselor properly place that student.

The extra-curricular record of books read, club memberships (4H, scouting), sports, teen conferences and seminars, work and volunteer experience, etc. will be a separate file, and these are important if the child is applying for college.  If there's a calendar kept that shows the busy schedule of the student then include that calendar in this file.  What you need to do with this file will depend on what you choose to do following high school.  A college application may ask about those activities, and the file will jog your memory.

You can make a memory book, but you WILL transcript those high school classes, even if the child doesn't proceed to higher education.  A transcript is sometimes requested when applying for jobs or other educational opportunities and is required for the military.  It doesn't have to be elaborate.  Dates, course titles, instructors, credits earned, and grades are all that needs to be on that transcript.

A 'credit' is defined as 150 hours of classroom time in the study of a subject.  That homework folder can often easily justify that more than 150 hours was spent on the class.  If you're not accumulating the minutes spent on homework (who does that?) then the evidence is your homework folder.  

While some classes can be somewhat undefined about what was accomplished (art), some are pretty clearly defined from a textbook table of contents.  If you worked at developing some proficiency at an art or craft for four or five months, then count that as a half-credit.  If you ate, slept, and dreamt that animal-raising project for four or five months, then perhaps it's worth several credits.  If you proceeded at your own pace through algebra and took 18 months to do it, then that's one credit.  Actual course content matters most when the student is applying for higher education or to be admitted to military service.  Record keeping is crucial.

When can you throw away all that homework?  When the student has accomplished the next class up in a setting that will be transcripted.  For example, if the student successfully completes a math class at a college, then that's when all the math work from high school can be discarded.  Keep a copy of that transcript, however.

If you're new to homeschooling then perhaps take a day and get that filing system set up.  By now you'll have an accumulation of paperwork lying around to sort into your new system, and it won't be overwhelming.

Your kids will be fine!

It's August 1, 2020.  

The year has been hard, really hard, because everything has been turned upside down.  We all hate change, especially this kind of forced change.  

Without your consent or thought, you're now homeschooling, because your local school has opted to see your kids only on certain days, or not at all.  Some of you are going to find that on the days when you send your kids to school the social distancing requirements they will impose on kids aren't going to work at all. Your kids may beg to go to school, and then they may beg to stay home.  Some instructors are going to throw in the towel and go home.  Teaching this way is horrendous!

The rest of my remarks are for those of you considering abandoning public schools for homeschooling.  Here are some of your questions:

Will my kids fall behind?

Will they be properly socialized?

Will my teaching my kids destroy their future?

Will future opportunities be closed to them because I homeschool?

Will my kids fall behind?

I have two anecdotes to answer this question.

First, I was working on my Master's degree in Education (a completely worthless degree, by the way) back in 1990, and homeschooling was about five years old.  The ugly whisper around the education department was "Those homeschoolers!  They're testing at the 70th and 80th percentile on standardized tests!  How can that be?"

I mentioned this data to Francis Hildebrand in the math department.  Hildebrand was a free-thinking sort of person who had the ability to step back from a situation, have a look at it, and make cogent remarks about it that were true, and that irritated everyone.  Hildebrand said (I paraphrase) "Hey, take ANYONE, even people who have never been schooled, not even homeschooled, and they will place about the 50th percentile on standardized tests!"

For me, that remark led to two possible conclusions.  Either this says something about the test, or it says something about our schools.  

Standardized tests are 'normed', meaning that the broadest possible population taking the test would include people who knew everything on the test, all the way to people who could not read the test.  It is written in such a way that most people fall near the 50th percentile, the middle.

The other possible conclusion is that our schools just aren't better than the 50th percentile.  Well, they can't be, because the test is 'normed'.

I was talking to Julie Sessions about this.  Since the beginning of homeschooling in Whatcom County, Julie has taught the homeschool qualifying course at the community college.  Parents of homeschoolers in WA must either have a year of college or take a homeschool qualifying course.  Julie also used to offer the standardized testing for Whatcom County.  I told her of my conversation with Hildebrand, and of my conclusions, that this says something about the test, or something about our schools.

Julie's response was "I don't think it's either of those."  What??  I asked.  What do you mean? "I think," she said, "that it reflects people in general, and their ability to figure out what is necessary to know, and to learn it."

How much of what you do right now did you learn in school?

How much of what you learned in school do you use today?

Who were the really good teachers, both in schools and the other folks from whom you learned something?

How much of the knowledge that you use today is stuff you realized you had to know, so you figured it out?

The second anecdote is my experience at Whatcom Community College, where I taught math through pre-calculus for 17 years.  The college has a program called Adult Basic Education.  This program is for people who never got an education, not even homeschool.  How does that happen?  It happens in schools - kids who threw down education and would not conform to a classroom setting.  You knew who they were, if you attended school.  It happens also in homeschooling.  Some of those people who had a disastrous public school experience never want to see the inside of a classroom ever again.  They tend to live in remote areas, and may or may not register their kids for homeschooling with the local district, as they are required to do in WA.  The kids grow up, find they want a particular job that requires a diploma, and then show up to the community college to get one.  The college has courses that start at ABC and 1-2-3.

How long does it take to get an adult through an 8th grade education?  A year or two.  How long does it take to get them to a high school diploma after that?  Another year or two.

The conclusion is that older students are faster learners.  If you feel you are dragging a child through a curriculum, then possibly it will be much easier if you just wait a bit.  Kids learn to walk at different ages. They also learn to read and do their math facts at different ages.

There were also people in my math classes who did their best in school, and had disastrous experiences with math.  Five to fifteen years later, they walked into my algebra classes, terrified.  But I get them settled down, working on some problems, and they find it's easy.  They think I've worked magic, but the only magic is that their brain is now older and better.  What they could NOT do in high school is now easy, and rocket science is now open to them.

Will your kids fall behind?  Maybe.  It depends on what 'behind' means!  But they will catch up, when they decide they need to.  And when their brains are older and better, they'll learn it.

Will they be properly socialized?

Good heavens!  Is school where you send your kids to be properly socialized?  In my experience teaching homeschoolers in small groups we had kids from both homeschooled-only settings, and kids with a classroom background.  The disruptive kids were almost always the ones who had learned these behaviors in a classroom setting.  We heard all the time from parents about how nice our homeschooled kids were to each other.  

Take your kids to church to get them properly socialized.  They will learn that 'red and yellow, black and white, they are precious in His sight', and the golden rule, and that it's an omniscient and loving God and not Santa who will find out who's naughty and nice.  

And then there's the social classroom of the bus, which starts and ends each day.  I don't think I need to elaborate.

And then there's social media.  I don't think I need to elaborate.

Will my teaching my kids destroy their future?

Only if you hate your kids.  You love your kids!  You know how to give your children good things.  You already invest in things that you know nothing about so your kids can have experiences you can't provide.  Riding lessons.  That box of art supplies.  Dance and piano lessons.

A better question is:  Who are the people I want to get in front of my kids?  The ones who will set their brains on fire for learning?  Be thinking about that, and not your own inadequacies.

Will future opportunities be closed to them because I homeschool?

Again, I saw literally hundreds of people who were products of public schools in my college classrooms, repeating, or taking for the first time, classes they should have had in high school.  I saw people who could not do algebra in the 9th grade have rocket science opened to them.  Some of them went on to do rocket science!  When they get a fire under them to learn something, they will go around or leap over all the barriers, or even plow through them, and learn it.  It might not happen while they are under your roof.  Sometimes it takes some life experience to motivate them.  Sometimes it takes a class from the school of hard knocks to motivate them.  That will make you sad, but you can't prevent it all.

Your job is to do your best.  Observe, observe, observe.  Your elementary age kids often don't have the vocabulary or life experience to decide what's happening to them.  They love you, and will often tell you what they know you want to hear, and not truly how they are feeling.  Keep talking, and keep watching.  If something is 'off', then ask YOUR parents, or your spouse's parents.  You'll often hear something like "You were just like that at that age."  You got through it!  So will your kids!

Limit screen time.  Consider eliminating screen time.

Before there were devices, there was a summer I looked at my kids and said, "We're turning off the TV.  If you spend the summer in front of the TV you won't remember there was a summer."  Like your television, your device is mostly a piece of equipment to deliver advertising and tell you what you need to buy.  The library still has books.  There is a time and a place for learning via the web.  Consider limiting the use of your device to looking up something, and not for entertainment.

No conclusions, just questions

How much of the knowledge that you use today is stuff you realized you had to know, so you figured it out?  

Where do you go today to figure out what you need to know?

Who are the really good instructors you want to have your kids in front of?

When is the last time you pushed yourself to learn something, and did it in front of your kids?

Christian homeschool landscape from here

A year ago, October 21, 2016, I was watching the American Presidential election with a great deal of apprehension.  I didn't realize how much anxiety I had until we woke up on Wednesday to Donald Trump's win, and palpable relief.

The day of the election I was pretty sure that Mrs. Clinton would be the outcome, and that homeschooling as we knew it would go away under increased government control of education, or requirements to include certain topics in education that would clash with religious conviction.

I was prepared to tell the Christian homeschool group that I administrate to get ready to dissolve, that government would take over the testing, the judging of performance of homeschool students, who could qualify to teach homeschool students, the freedom of religion in homeschool, on and on until homeschooling itself became illegal or it became impossible to comply with requirements.

The Tuesday of the election was one of the two days per week that my homeschool group meets.  (Yes, we only need two days per week to do a full year's curriculum.)  No one among us thought Trump would be the outcome.  I was wondering that day how fast all those changes would happen, and if I would even be able to see the end of the school year with my students before Clinton regulations dismantled us.

The Thursday of that week I was pretty jubilant.  Yes, there were votes left to count, and uncertainties such as plagued the 2000 election (look up 'hanging chads').  But I was pretty sure that Trump and Congress would preserve the freedoms we need to be homeschoolers.  We would be ok for awhile.

One year later I am wondering if a Clinton win wouldn't have been better for Christians.

We would most certainly have seen our freedom to homeschool taken away.  We would have seen our children forced back into government schools with a secular humanist agenda.  We would have seen religion in education become illegal, and people jailed for bending the tender minds of their children towards a loving God.

In preparation for that persecution we would have been on our knees, praying about all of the above.  We would be sharing the gospel until we were jailed for it, then we would be rejoicing to be counted worthy to suffer dishonor for the Name.  Our best customers would be the other sinners with whom we were jailed, and no matter what, the Word of God would spread.

But what has happened?

Now I see Christians attempting to strengthen the physical bulwarks against the outside world, and forgetting that the battle is spiritual.  Instead of using this space of time to reach out to the world I'm seeing Christians once again becoming complacent, pulling in to their Christian safe spaces.  Christians are demanding that only Christian materials, people, thoughts, and ideas be put in front of their children.  I thought that only snowflakes on college campuses acted that way.

I teach math.  I'm afraid I'm going to have to throw out all of geometry because it was put into approximately its modern form by Euclid, a Greek who preceded Christ by 300 years.

For that matter I had better revert to Roman numerals because they were used at the time of Christ.  Oh, and about those symbols we call Arabic numerals?  They were the result of translating a Hindu work on math into Arabic, so it could be read by the Muslim world.  Part of the title of that text is transliterated "al-gebra".

What are you going to do with the wise men at the birth of Jesus?  They used astrology to know both the time and the approximate place of the birth of a king of the Jews.  A star led them to the exact place to find that king.

When did Christians become the Pharisees, refusing to eat and drink with sinners and tax collectors?

When did we become snowflakes, refusing to listen to any ideas not first presented in the Bible?

Mindless automatons, well-prepared for thoughtless obedience

Patrick Deneen, Associate Professor of Constitutional Studies at Notre Dame writes this article.  Comments at the bottom of it are pretty illuminating as well.

http://www.mindingthecampus.org/author/pdeneen/

Common Core Kills Innovation, Tortures Students

Because it's a government thing.  And government is the WORST at deciding what's best for people.

When people innovate, they find better ways of serving people.  That's just as true in education as it is in business.

Today I spoke with a parent who was searching for 'a good old math text' she could use, because everything she could find was labeled 'Meets Common Core standards'.  The content of these was making her understandably crazy, because she couldn't follow the explanations required by Common Core.  Trying to find one not labeled for Common Core is almost impossible.

Under Common Core, teachers open a book that tells them what the student should be doing today.  There's no innovation.  There's just a recipe.  Add drill, shake, and bake.  It doesn't matter if the product turns out poorly, the recipe book says to move onto the next task.  How do you take yeast that hasn't proofed well and use it to make bread?  It doesn't matter.  The bread is due for the oven at a specified time, and in it shall go, with or without yeast.

Stacie Starr, an Ohio teacher, describes her dissatisfaction in this article.

It's not just that it's one-size-fits-all, which usually doesn't fit anyone very well.  Common Core is like one of those medical quick-loss diets where the only thing consumed is a nutritional liquid concocted in a lab.  It will barely sustain you.  It's boring, dreary, and tasteless.  It's also developmentally inappropriate, asking children to do things that are beyond their cognitive development.

The prescription of Common Core has killed educational innovation.  Students are people, and no two are alike.  But the ugliest part about Common Core is that innovation isn't allowed.  It shall be Common Core or nothing at all.  Parents who are looking for supplemental materials to try and repair the damage are finding it impossible.  A book titled Math, the Old-Fashioned Way might be a best-seller.

There are people not directly associated with a classroom who have a wealth of educational ideas to offer.  Some have years of classroom experience, are fabulous with kids and people, and clearly know what they're doing.  But Common Core has pinched them off, curtailed their livelihoods, and excluded them from the educational setting.  "Sorry, if it doesn't meet Common Core standards, we can't use it.  We don't have time.  We're too busy practicing for Common Core tests."

It isn't just schools who recite this.  I hear this from parents who are unwilling to step off the Common Core conveyor belt for fear their child will be left hopelessly behind.  If, as a tutor, I can offer repair of the math phobia but not the Common Core model of doing things, then my services may be rejected.

Understanding the subject matter isn't the goal anymore.  Allowing oneself to be conformed to a strange and unforgiving standard is a psychological technique used to convince people they aren't smart enough to stand up for themselves.  The teacher, who should be the one who rejoices in opening reluctant brains becomes the deliverer of torture, tightening thumbscrews while saying, "Hold still, honey, this is going to hurt, but it will be good for you."  It only teaches people to put up with pain while those in charge stick it to them again.  It kills innovation in the student, too.

Yup, this has all the earmarks of a great government program.  More teachers should stop putting up with it.

Why I'm now totally disassociated from public education.

I taught mathematics at the local community college from September, 1997 to August, 2014, usually two 5-credit classes per term.  I never wished to become full-time at the CC, as my work with homeschoolers at ZLO was actually much more interesting.  The job at the CC funded my joy at ZLO.  Sometimes ZLO was lucrative.  Mostly it has been an education in itself.

I've enjoyed being part of the community college environment.  The CCs, probably throughout the country, are the institutions of second chances.  Folks who have never done well in school often come back to education later in life when their cognitive maturity is better, and they have a purpose and a plan.  Many find they can now excel.  For some, rocket science opens to the student who failed high school algebra more than once.

Pressures to change and conform to moving-target standards
Until recently the focus of the CCs has been to turn students into 4-year university material, or to provide two years of college at a lower cost.  We look down the road, and try to match student behaviors to expectations they will have at those 4-year universities.  But there has been increasing pressure on the CCs by the K-12 public school system to align standards so that there is a less abrupt transition to college by high school graduates.  One such program is called the Transition Mathematics Project (TMP).  K-12 standards are a moving target!  The CCs have placement testing so that we can put a student where s/he will be able to perform within our system, which looks forward to the math required of these students as their college career progresses.  About 2/3rds of the students enrolled in math at the CC are in classes under the college level.  But it's what we do!  We get students ready for college.  I find the 'standards' tug-of-war a distraction.  It's not about finding ways to do what we do, but better.

Change for the sake of change (but really for money)
Some years back the Curriculum Committee at our CC came to the math department to point out that barely 25% of students who begin math at Math 94 (1-2-3 math) or Math 97 (first half of high school algebra) ever make it to a college level (over Math 100) math course.  There was much discussion within the department about why that was happening.  The consensus was that students in those low-level math classes lacked good-student skills.  We had some discussion about incorporating study skills into those courses, but the end result was a proposal to up-end the order of curriculum delivery, the path through mathematics, as though that would somehow create the change we needed in students to cause them to succeed.

The department chooses a book the whole department will use for the courses with multiple sections offered.  This helps to smooth out differences between instructors and saves students text costs when they repeat a course with a different instructor or take the subsequent course from the next section of the same text.  But there was no book to match our new path.  There was some discussion about writing our own book, but that idea was quickly abandoned when there was no money in it.  In the end, a new book was chosen and some supplements written, rather on the fly.  But the point of all this is that a change was made without any research at all about whether the change would achieve our intended result of getting more students farther down the road.  No pilot program.  No data collection, except for noting how many more students got through or beyond.  I believe the college got money for simply showing we were trying to make a change!

As an instructor, I had to shelve materials I had spent nearly two decades developing, and begin as though I were a new instructor.  I threw out presentations, supplemental materials, chapter reviews, and tests, because nothing matched up.  I found I disliked the new texts chosen.  Some parts clearly had been re-worked from the first edition and somewhat refined.  Some parts were not.  We had previously used other texts that were of much better quality, so I knew those existed.  I found I simply didn't have the time to prepare the courses I loved to teach, to a standard I thought worthy of the people who were shelling out hard-earned money to try to make an improvement in their lives.

Institutions of higher learning or institutions of higher nonsense?
I had a student in a math class the last term I was at the CC who was concurrently enrolled in a humanities class.  She mentioned one day that the instructor assigned students to go to the older buildings in town and lay hands on them to hear their story and feel their age.  When they got back to class the instructor asked if anyone had thought to taste the buildings.  While this is certainly not universal, this is the kind of nonsense towards which higher education is leaning.

There are more and more requirements towards CC graduation that include 'diversity' and 'sustainability'.  I got a request in email that wanted to know how I was incorporating these ideas in my math classes.  I refused to take the survey, even though they acknowledged that math classes typically don't lean towards these ideas.  But there was some insistence on the part of the college that everyone take that survey.  I felt as though the results could easily be used against me for not conforming to these expectations.  I'm pretty sure the math placement tests don't have either of these concepts on them.

Diversity and inclusion are not the same thing.
Another curious email I received during my final quarters at the CC invited faculty and staff of color to join a group to discuss issues that affect people of color.  You can see my photo on this page.  I flatly had no idea how to respond to that email.  I decided I did not want to know if I could join.  But privately I decided that the 'diversity' issue and 'inclusion' were in separate categories at my CC.

Should I send my child to the CC while in high school?
One of the things that the CCs do is handle Running Start students.  In Washington State, the Running Start program is a way for well-prepared high schoolers to take courses at the CC that can apply both to high school graduation credit and college credit, saving the student a considerable amount of college expenses.  I have several horror stories about the demands placed on 16 year olds, to examine some very adult ideas, including pornography.  Again, among CC instructors, the disrespect for the age of these younger students is not universal.  But parents need to understand that the CC is a very adult environment.  Pick and choose the instructors who will be in front of your kids.  Compare notes with other parents.  Collect notes for yourself on instructors who will be appropriate with your child.  And remember, college is for ADULTS!  There are tough ideas that get rolled around there.  Your child's life experience may simply not be up to participating on that level.  Yet.

So, unhappy with the direction of the CC, unhappy with the forces moving curriculum within my department, and especially unhappy with not being able to deliver a class to my own high standards, I  decided to end my tenure with the CC.

Migrating from public to homeschooling

Click here to read how an Oklahoma mom went from "Of course my kids will be public-school educated" to "We're homeschooling now."

Why do I teach at Zacchaeus Learning Opportunities? (ZLO)

Really, I should be asking why I don't teach in a K-12 setting anymore.

1.  It's the people.  The homeschoolers we attract are amazing, wonderful people.  These are parents who are deeply invested in their kids, who love being with their kids.  The world sees that as parents living through their children and calls it a mental aberration and will tell us that we need to get a life so the kids can have their own lives.  But the attitude that kids need to be raised by daycare and school and not the parents is promoted by people who either run those operations or by parents who  resent the impact that kids have had on their lives.  Dropping a kid off at daycare isn't giving the kid a life, it's just parking the child.

The gospel of Christ turns people outward, to develop relationships with other people.  Jesus treasured everyone and taught us to do the same.  He specifically named the children as models for members of his kingdom.  The people at ZLO are people I'd like to find in heaven.  They open their hearts and resources to needs, and they show the world what the Kingdom of God looks like.

People who are willing to sacrifice their own desires for their kids raise people who are willing to sacrifice.  The kids are self-confident, willing to help, willing to try unusual activities.  Because they don't have to pursue 25 hours of school each week these families have time to learn new pursuits as a family.  Their broad experience means they have rich experiences to share.

2.  The setting is 75 minute classes with ten or fewer children meeting once or twice weekly.  Are you kidding?  As a former public school teacher, this is like I've died and gone to heaven!  Yes!  I can accomplish the same amount of curriculum in 2.5 hours per week.  The small classes lets me get to know these kids.  I bust my rear more for that than I ever did for a class of 35.

3.  Truth is what we seek.  This week I listened to a college math student tell of a humanities instructor who assigned students to go touch some of the older buildings in town, so that students could feel the story the building had to tell.  After their field trip the instructor asked if anyone had tasted the building.  Students are like the population of citizens in the story of the Emperor's New Clothes.  In trying to be deemed worthy of their station and the emperor's approval, all agreed they would 'see' the emperor's new clothes.  How many students will write something the instructor wants to read, despite the evidence before them?  We want students to seek truth, and not what they wish to be true.  Truth starts with the Word of God.  The fear (deep respect) of God is the beginning of knowledge.  It is fools who despise wisdom and discipline.

4.  The model supports families.  The family IS the sustainable model of human existence.  The two-parent family is the model than can reproduce itself!  A strong family can weather illness and disaster.  It can be a safety net for members of other families who are troubled.  It establishes the resources for the offspring to flourish.  In the process, the community benefits, and marriages and friendships that respect the family give both strength and resilience to the overall social network.  We LOVE seeing entire families hanging around, working on their homeschooling in a quiet corner, playing on the large field or in the gym on a rainy day,  the moms connecting to share skills and advice, the dads networking and building their businesses.

5.  It's an environment where I teach the best way I know how.  I'm not delivering a curriculum on the behalf of educationists who believe that parents are incompetent and who show little understanding of how children work.  I meet parents and hear their concerns.  I hear their hopes for their kids.  I have few restrictions on what I might do to get a child to learn.  I want them to do well in any class that follows mine.  That is the true test of my competence as an instructor.  I want to share my love of learning and the subject matter I know.  I don't have to pretend knowledge I don't have because I was assigned a class outside my expertise and training.  My goal is to get kids to want to learn, for that will take them anywhere God wants to take them.

You are welcome to join us.  Check us out at www.zlo.org.  We offer classes at a church near the middle of Whatcom County.

Studying language religiously

"When I was a child, I spoke like a child, I thought like a child, I reasoned like a child. When I became a man I gave up my childish ways."  I Cor 13:11 (from the Bible)

1.  Children have to learn how to speak.

"Now out of the ground, the LORD had formed every beast of the field and every bird of the heavens and brought them to the man to see what he would call them.  And whatever the man called every living creature, that was its name."  (Genesis 2:19).

In other words, Adam learned to talk.  I don't think it stopped with the animals.  I think God prodded him to come up with a name for everything, for actions, and conjunctions, and all of the parts of speech.  Why?  God made Adam's intellect to grow with language.  Adam needed to learn language.  Furthermore, God chose to share the companionship of the Trinity with more than Himself, and wanted to communicate with Adam.  It is a tessellation that goes on and on.  God is in relationship with the Trinity, and yet He seeks to share the joy of that relationship with others.

When we are in relationship to God, we want to share that joy with others.

2.  Language lets us share.

Not to say that animals don't have communications abilities.  And I have personal experience that these abilities can be developed somewhat.  But animals don't make up the words.  People do.

The purpose of language is to share!  To share our experience with each other, to share our experience with God.  To share our toys and our food and our blessings with each other.  To share the Kingdom of God with one another.

3.  Prayer is language.

One of my kids was about 14 months old when she first asked for something.  When I figured out what it was she wanted I was happy to give it to her, because she finally used language to ask for something.  For me, the lesson was that we just fail to receive from God's hand because we don't ask.

"If you then, who are evil, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will your Father who is in heaven give good things to those who ask him."  (Matthew 7:11).

Oh yes!  There are groanings we have trouble putting into words.  But this brings me to the point of this blog entry:

4.  We study language because it assists us in our communications with God.

It is NOT enough to just be happy with the words that we know.  God brought every animal to Adam, and Adam gave it a name.  I don't think that stopped with the nouns that are the animals.  God brought ideas to Adam, and Adam gave them names.  The Bible brings tough ideas to us, and we 'learn' them when we can talk about them.  God, who is happy to give good gifts to His children, is happy to listen to your lesson in tough ideas.  Pour your heart out to Him!  He will help you refine your language, which will refine your thinking, which will refine your actions.  The process is through language and prayer.

"If any of you lacks wisdom, let him ask God, who gives generously to all without reproach, and it will be given him."  James 1:5.

5.  Language, both prose and poetry, can be used to study and to know God.

Do we teach it that way?  Isn't this the highest use of language?  Shouldn't our exercises in grammar, punctuation, and spelling, our exercises in writing sentences, paragraphs, and essays, shouldn't all of this have the end-purpose of communicating better with God?  With sharing and spreading the Kingdom?

Describing what God has done glorifies Him!  This can be science and math.  We worship Him in song, and the poetry of the lyrics is an effort in language.

It's not that EVERY effort in writing needs to be something that can be sung in Heaven.  Grocery lists and instructions don't have to have this qualification.  But the act of choosing the best word for our worship will most definitely carry over into choosing the best word for whatever the task at hand.

But do we teach language, and for that matter, EVERY subject with the bigger picture in mind?

I went to college for this?

This summer I am a car farmer.

My son is the inventory manager for a local auto recycling yard.  Cars run in the family, and the family has been peripherals of this yard for the 3+ decades of our marriage.  I usually teach summers at the community college, but for a variety of reasons decided I would become a car farmer instead.

My job is in support of inventory management.  Every one of the 200,000 or so parts, from whole cars to a taillight, need to be located and tagged.  When that happens, the front desk can tell customers on the phone, on the web, or standing in front of them if we have the part and how soon we can retrieve it for them.  Sometimes it has to come off of a wrecked car.  Sometimes we can walk out to a shelf and bring it back immediately.

But when things aren’t where we expect to find them we generate frustration at the front desk, unhappy sales people, unhappy customers, distrust, and a poor reputation. Knowing where everything is and being able to lay hands on it in minutes means we can make money faster.  A strong reputation for being able to provide the correct part in the shortest possible time will bring back customers and these customers will bring in additional customers.

It is my job to locate every part and get a bar code tag on every single part.  In addition to the 13+ acres of cars (about 3,000 wrecked cars in the yard) there are about 4 more acres of storage containers and warehouses, some with 2 floors, others with 20’ tall ceilings, that are filled with motors, transmissions, doors, hoods, lights, mirrors, wheels, radiators, flywheels, etc.  Car parts.  

It’s not as easy as it looks!  Some Corvette wheels have left hand patterns or right hand patterns.  It matters whether it’s a left wheel or a right wheel, and the correct tag must be applied!  Sometimes there are three similar wheels, one with minor damage.  That wheel is worth less than the other two.  The correct tag must be attached to that wheel.  A customer may not want to pay for the perfect wheel and may be happy with one with minor scratches.  Let’s pretend we make a mistake and send that customer away with a perfect wheel but for the damaged price.  Later, someone comes in wanting two wheels of similar wear, but when we bring the wheels to the front counter one clearly has damage.  We may lose the sale altogether because the wheels do not look similar enough, or we will have to reduce the price for the mismatched pair.  But the yard is out of the money for one perfect wheel.

Perhaps you feel like a big establishment can eat such errors.  Let’s look at it another way.

There are about 60 people who work for this yard.  The efficiency of the yard most certainly depends on the inventory management.  The yard cannot make money when they can’t sell a part they have.  The correct inventory, properly located and tagged, means the yard is making the most money as quickly as customers arrive.  This money pays those 60 people, most of whom have families to feed, homes and vehicles with payments, children with dreams of college, and occasionally a nice vacation.  These owners are good people, who are happy to give raises when merited and the money is in good supply.  The possibility of this happening is greater when parts are available to be sold.  My job benefits every one of those 60 people.  My job also benefits the owners, who can find the best people to work for them in a well-run establishment.  Good workers who are unhappy move on.

Did I need a college education for this job?  Probably not.  But here are some job skills that my job requires.

Attention to detail.  Tags designating a right side door and a left side door can get mixed up.  I may have to have R and L tattooed on the proper hand!

Accuracy.  The first couple of days I was given the ‘easy’ job of comparing cars in the yard with a list of what was in the yard.  I’m a math teacher, and I felt the numbers would be easy.  But numerical labels are NOT numbers!  For a couple of days I thought I had early-onset Alzheimer’s.  My son was also a little concerned with the errors.  Once he showed me the data entry, however, things clicked.  I began to see the patterns that had meaning that were embedded in the stock numbers on each car, and why they were important.

Persistence.  Every part needs a tag.  Every single part, no exceptions. I cannot walk away from a mess of parts because the pile is too big or ugly.  It must be sorted out and every single piece identified.

Logic.  There might be four tags in my hand, but only three items.  Which one isn’t here?  Where is it?  Why?  How can the descriptions in the database help me decide which tag goes with which item?  Sometimes a location number shows a B instead of an 8.  Is it a different location or was there a readability error?

Willingness to be educated and learn new things.  I’m not afraid to learn new computer skills, but I dislike asking someone three times how to do the same thing.  Fortunately, everyone in the yard knows that I am there to help with their job security.  No one has lost patience with me yet.  Yet.

Inventiveness.  My smartphone has a ton of good tricks.  A chunk of database can be transferred to a spreadsheet that I can carry in my hand.  As I'm climbing over and around things in the yard, having my hands free of clipboards and pens is really important.  Being able to search the spreadsheet for a stock number can help locate an item not in the proper place, and make it available for those who need to find it.  Its photo capabilities mean that I can take or send data to someone who can interpret it, without making them leave what they’re doing and walk to my location.

A sense of order, pattern, and travel.  I am free to change the location of items, making them easier to reach or manipulate.  Sets of wheels shouldn’t go on the top shelf where a ladder is required to reach them.  It becomes enormously difficult to audit the inventory when things are not easily reached.  Each wheel has its own tag, and the barcode scanner needs to see every single tag.  Location changes must be reported, so that the front desk can find things!

Some knowledge of the field.  Anyone willing to learn could be trained to do this, but it goes much faster and more accurately when you can recognize the difference between a bumper cover and a fender.

Some knowledge of other fields.  A pretty flower out in the yard turns out to be a noxious weed.  I recognized it, and have alerted people to just pull it up when they see it.

Some physical strength, agility, and balance.  I am climbing over and under many irregular things, stretching to write numbers in a visible place, standing on tiptoe, crouching low, climbing on racks to reach things, lifting wheels down off of and up to shelves, pulling awkwardly shaped and balanced parts out to find numbers and tags without inflicting damage to either myself or the part, and avoiding wasps and sunburn.

Attention to safety.  The job rather ends if I slip in a puddle of grease and break a knee, or stab myself in the face with a twisted piece of scrap metal.  It’s very easy to get fingers pinched or skin scraped or to trip over something.  We all know this and take action to prevent this, but EVERYONE must do so.
 
Kindness for people who assist me, thankfulness that my coworkers are ALWAYS willing to help, feedback when someone has been helpful or done an exceptional job, an ear and an eye to look out for someone in difficulty or having trouble with a task.

Willingness to clean up after myself AND others.  There’s a lot of debris floating around a wrecking yard.  When I started, I hadn’t generated any of it.  But cleanliness applies even here, and everyone has to take ownership, even if they didn’t create the mess.  You’ll be happy to hear that our waste and runoff water collection ponds are currently full of tadpoles.

How does this all relate to education?

After just a few weeks on the job I've come up with some games and tasks that might help kids sort and categorize.  Understanding how the world works and being able to communicate what you know is largely about describing categories and sorting.  Sometimes one is easier than the other.  But this is wealth-generating stuff, whether or not you go to college.

WHY college at age 18, when most aren't ready?

I was reflecting on a conversation with another parent I had recently about a 21 year old child of theirs who is struggling at the community college level.  We talked about all of my little soapboxes:

• Most 18 year olds should not be in college.  They SHOULD be getting some life experience, seeing the world, traveling, gathering up experiences that will enrich their later college experience.
• A lot of brain maturity happens for a lot of people between 20 and 25.
• We expect college behaviors of high schoolers, many of whom aren't ready for it.  
• Kids should have some work experience.
• The possibility of the tech college as a stepping stone to further education.
• Students not successful in the academic setting should back off until they get a plan and a focus, and are ready to burst walls to make it happen.  
• A good track record opens doors, a poor one can cost more money in the long haul.
• Rocket science is often open to older students who couldn't do algebra at any time in high school.

And then I got to wondering, Why do we insist that all 18 year olds go to college?  It certainly isn't because of their guaranteed success there.  Only a fraction of the population ever attends.  Half of all who start never finish.

Why do we dangle college as the holy grail?

The answer is: To finish the student's indoctrination.  Their success in a field of study isn't important.

The indoctrination happens in an environment where the instructor is forbidden to speak to the parent, in the introductory courses in communications (literature, writing, speech), science, and the humanities, where students are told that capitalism is a bad thing, that government holds all the answers, that the working conditions of anyone who works is terrible, that humans are no more than a slightly glorified animal, that experiencing sexuality is a wonderful thing at any time and under all conditions, that one doesn't have to take responsibility for the babies made but that we should probably try to avoid certain diseases, that humans are a scourge upon the earth, anyway.

What better way to convey all of these things to the young mind!  They are separated from parents and families, grouped with friends under the same instruction, allowed and to some degree encouraged access to behavior-altering drugs, and given free rein and encouragement to try behaviors which their parents would not approve.

College!

ADHD - A Peculiarly American Problem?

Read this article, from the journal Psychology Today, no less:

Why French Kids Don't Have ADHD

Here are my thoughts.

Yes, ADHD is somewhat of an American construct.  But look at WHY we treat kids for ADHD.  It's predominantly because they're not doing well or acting out in school.  But the response of schools in America is quite different than the response of schools in France.

The psycho-social response to ADHD in France suggests that they actually believe the parent is the parent, and that the best place to treat a child with behavioral problems is in the home.

In the USA, the child belongs to the village, and at least for two generations now, we have taught parents they are incompetent as parents, that they had better let the village raise and educate the child.

Melissa Harris-Perry (click here to see her ad on MSNBC) puts her finger right on it.  But she isn't proposing that we ought to stop thinking about the kids being 'privately owned'.  She's actually verbalizing what has been taught to parents.  

Never mind that the village isn't much interested in feeding, clothing, or providing the child a place to sleep.  If the child turns out well, then the school gets the kudos and points joyously to the nice test scores.  If the child turns out badly, it's the parents' fault.  My supporting argument:  When did you ever see parents getting recognition for their children's test scores?

Certainly, then, schools have to use the resources available for adjusting a child's behavior.  The family itself is not often in their tool box.  American families run hither and yon to various child activities, and have little time for family activities.  About half of American families don't have both parents under the same roof with the child.  American families, intact or not, are often more interested in chasing the dollar than they are raising children.  Schools are for babysitting while they go do that.

It is no wonder to me that schools recommend the use of drugs to control behavior.

Common Core Curriculum Standards and math I teach

So, the new educational reform is Common Core State Standards Initiative.  And just like ALL of the other educational reforms, this one looks good on the surface:  "Let's make it so that everyone is actually teaching the same thing at the same time, so that if a student moves from one educational setting to another that there will be continuity in his/her education."

Nice thought.

But it's the industrial manufacturing conveyor belt model of doing education.  It PRESUMES that if we set the standard that we can just automatically meet it.

Before I begin with an example from the mathematical standards I have another critique:  These were written so that almost no parent and many administrators can know what is going on.  I read some of them and had to scratch my head over the vocabulary.  Here's an example I COULD follow:

CCSS.Math.Content.8.F.B.5 Describe qualitatively the functional relationship between two quantities by analyzing a graph (e.g., where the function is increasing or decreasing, linear or nonlinear). Sketch a graph that exhibits the qualitative features of a function that has been described verbally.

Translation for the general populace:  Use knowledge about how the equation affects the graph to match an equation with a graph.

Notice the first number after the phrase "Math.Content".  This exercise is intended for grade 8.  In our current lineup of math topics, this would occur closer to the latter half of a first-year algebra course, traditionally taken in grade 9. By then, students in the book I use have seen linear equations, direct and inverse variation, quadratic and exponential equations, and a few higher-degree polynomial equations.  Each draws a recognizable graph, and given enough of the graph you can tell what kind of equation generated that graph.  Given the equation a student can draw a quick sketch (no more difficult than any letter of the alphabet) that the equation should draw.

This is a first-year algebra exercise.  But the Common Core Standards have it as an 8th grade math exercise.  They are expecting to put EVERY 8th grader through algebra.

*long pause for my dismay and astonishment to bubble to the surface*

I work with adults at the community college.  Some of them had algebra shoved at them too soon, when they were 9th graders in high school.  The CC Standards appear to be putting the first half of algebra into the 7th grade, and the 2nd half into 8th grade.  I'll have a career, picking up the pieces years later, until I die!

I want to reassure parents of children with whom I work.  I fully intend to math-activate your student.  But I will NOT present algebra before it is appropriate for your child.  Do not bring me a 7th grader, insisting that I teach algebra because that's the CC Standard for the rest of the population.  The rest of the population will not be able to meet that standard, or they will dumb it so far down that it means nothing.

A cognitive maturity has to happen before people can work fluently with letters representing unknown quantities.  When that maturity happens, it happens.  It can be as young as age 12, and it might not happen before age 17 and sometimes later.  I will NOT frighten your child away from math because of a measuring stick someone else has created.  I would love the opportunity to take your child through pre-calculus, whenever s/he is ready for that.  For most students, that should happen before you send them to college.  College can wait until the student is ready.  As I have said in other entries in this blog, there is NO reason to hurry college.  Wait until you're well-prepared to take advantage of the coursework, without paying for 'remedial' coursework.

So relax.  The child learns to walk when God has ordained that will happen.  Every child without a physical impairment learns to walk.  We can do the same with algebra.  We will honor what God has created, and not try to bend the child to the will of a human standard.  When s/he is ready, we'll do the math.  S/he will be far better prepared than the student who has had to muddle through a class meant to meet the CC Standard.

By the way, you're invited to come along.  If YOUR math education needs refreshing, or if you didn't finish the course, you're welcome to take it alongside your child, for free.

Educational reform rammed down our throats

I attended the community college math conference today for Washington state.  One of the invited speakers was Amy Getz, from the Charles A Dana Center in Austin, TX.  She talked about Mathways, an educational reform project whose engine is the Dana Center.  The effort is to make a shorter path for community college students from pre-algebra to a terminal level math course.

In the Mathways project, it would begin with a pair of 'co-requisite' (meaning 'must be taken concurrently') courses, one in the humanities and one in the sciences.  The humanities course would focus on study skills and would have students sorting out their career choices and writing their college plans.  The math course would include exploring career choices in math/science as well as the math skills pre-requisite to a college-level course.  In Texas where they plan to implement this, they see this as a 1-semester course.

Students would then progress to one of the following:

   1. a college-level course in quantitative reasoning that would be suitable for a degree not requiring much math or science.  It would allow them to take a basic science class, but that's about all.  Think Early Childhood Education (ECE).

   2.  a college-level course in statistics, also pre-requisite to a basic science class, and appropriate for the lower-level health care workers (nursing, massage therapy, medical assisting) and perhaps some business fields that do a fair bit of market analysis.

   3.  a STEM (science-technology-engineering-mathematics) path leading to calculus.

Currently, about all we offer at the CC level is the third one, anticipating that the more doors that are open, the more opportunities that students will have.  As hopeful as that is, there are a lot of students who wash out of college because of the college-level math requirement, and in some cases the math requirement is a little silly.  ECE folks don't need to factor quadratics.  They DO need to be able to gather some data about their students and talk about their progress.

According to the Dana Center, this sort of change needs to be a universal one.  For some time they have been working with educational groups and others interested in seeing this change, getting buy-in from colleges and universities across Texas and in other states where groups have indicated an interest in the project.  The number of bureaucracies that have to make the decision and implement changes is pretty vast.  At each educational institution there is a board of directors, some form of a curriculum committee, department chairs, instructors, bookstores who will sell new books, and people who work to meet accreditation standards; there are the companies who come to each college and do accreditation evaluations, there are agreements between institutions about what constitutes a college level course and the content they approve, there are agreements between the local community colleges and the universities to which students will transfer about courses and their content.  Ms. Getz said they had the stage all set to make the change to the new Mathways project in Texas, Fall 2014.

Here's the curiouser parts of this:

1.  There's no text yet.  Ms. Getz said that much of this would be online, and that they were on the verge of a publishing agreement with a book publisher, but of course couldn't say anything until that agreement was finished.  But they want to make this massive change in about a year.

2.  That means that NO ONE has done this yet, and there is no research about whether the outcome will be the desired one.  I'm just wondering here about all of those brave new students and all of the money they spend on college; all of the higher educational institutions and/or employers who will have to decide if these students are properly prepared...  But they want to make this massive change in about a year.

3.  The Dana Center representative said that the part they hadn't thought out well yet was the STEM path.  But that's what we HAVE been doing for a long time.  Why is that one so hard?

I agree that we need some changes.  And while I listened to this I thought "Ok, this is in Texas.  When they have it sorted out it will head this way."  (I'm in WA, remember?)  Now that I'm home and thinking about tomorrow's final sessions at the math conference, it's occurred to me that I've heard this all before.

1.  It happened with No Child Left Behind.  That began as America 2000, and was heavily campaigned for and sold to us by the Businessmen's Roundtable.  The current iteration of it is Core Curriculum Standards.  (The New Mathways project admits to being heavily informed by the Core Curriculum project.)  All of these have wonderful names, but the results have been flatly unimpressive.  This is busy-work that eats up people's time and taxpayer dollars.  It's not reform.

2.  There was a major overhaul of healthcare rammed through Congress not too many years ago.  The famous line was "We'll have to pass the bill in order to see what's in it." Uh huh.

3.  This sounds a lot like the 'transitions' course that was implemented when one of my kids got to high school.  Students in this course spent time learning how to be successful in high school.  It was silly to cause all students to take this course, just as silly as not continuing the course throughout more years of high school for those students who needed the extra support.

So, Dana Center.  Why don't you try this out somewhere?  Work the bugs out of it.  Get some research done.  See how effective it is.  Tell us how students like it, how transfer institutions view it, how successful those students are after a few years.  Come back and give us a report then.

A single item of educational reform

I've written before about my idea for one educational reform. It would be this:

We'll give you twelve years of education, take it when you're ready.

It would create a cascade of other educational reforms, all of which various efforts are trying to achieve right now.

First, schools would be able to dismiss students not ready for the educational setting.

This would include disruptive students. These students would absolutely be able to get an education, as long as the school didn't have to be the one to administer severe behavior management. They could come back when they can behave. Schools would be safer.  Classes would be more productive.

Schools should be able to dismiss under-performing students. Some kids just really and truly need to not be starting school at age 5, or for that matter, age 6 or 7. There's also a cognitive maturity level we expect at high school for which many students aren't ready. Sending these kids home for a year or two, or putting them in school half-time would allow them to perform better on the tasks they can handle, and give them time to do homework and let learning soak in.  There's also the possibility of getting a job.  That is also an education, for which the student is rewarded for their good work.  Where the student has to be on Saturday morning can greatly affect his/her choices of activities on Friday night.  Work is not evil, contrary to the opinion of many child advocates.

Second, with more students actually completing high school at a pace they can manage, we'll be sending more students on to college. I hear from about half of my students at the community college where I teach that they weren't ready to do college straight out of high school. (Many of them weren't ready to do high school in high school.) At 25 or 30, they are great students.  Rocket science opens up to them.

Third, schools would be able to maintain a high level of educational performance. We could actually define what a student entering 1st grade or a student entering high school should be able to do.  Students who need to get caught up could either wait or find a tutor.  It might be better to wait.  For a young student, it WOULD be better to wait!  This noise about a common-core curriculum would change shape.  Currently it is trying to define what a 6th grader, EVERY 6th grader should know.  Instead we should be able to say to students of any age "You are at level 6.  Would you like us to take you to level 7?"

Fourth, the state will be spending less on education, but getting more students 'finished'. When students come ready to study we don't have to spend money on people whose job it is to chase down disruptive or truant students.  We also wouldn't spend so much money on equipment purchases.  Manipulatives and lab equipment get destroyed by students unhappy about being forced to be in their particular educational setting. There are many educational activities that are not done in public schools because unhappy students don't respect property.

What to do with a student who needs time to cognitively mature?  Parents could pay for another educational setting, not at the expense of the taxpayer.  Parents could homeschool.  Smart schools could offer assistance with this, at the price of meeting with the family one or two times per month.  Where possible, parents could/should involve the child in the family business. There are ALWAYS a myriad of tasks to be done in a family business that could be done by a 2nd grader.

Now, here's my next educational reform.

We'll give you only eight years of education, take it when you're ready.

Why only eight years?  Because if we start later, it will not take twelve years to get someone ready for college.  At the community college where I work we get adults who show up for school for the first time because they need a diploma or a GED for a job they want.  They've never been educated, perhaps not even home schooled.  We have Adult Basic Education classes that start at 1-2-3, ABC.  How long does it take us to get them an 8th grade education?  About two years.  How long does it take for them to complete a GED or adult high school diploma?  About two more years.  If we didn't start educating until age 12 or later that it would take us much less time to get people an education.

I premise that one of the outcomes of our industrial manufacturing conveyor belt society is the view that the job of children is to be in school.  We THINK that all kids need to be in school.  This job of school is to prepare them for a job later.  No doubt, we do school as a society to prepare kids to get a job.  Ask any high school student why they are in school.  But do we really think that what is learned at age 6 will seriously affect job opportunities later in life?  Only if you believe that if a child doesn't learn to read at that age that s/he will be of no value at age 10.  This is a reflection of our industrial-manufacturing-conveyor-belt thinking.  The car that fails manufacturing performance tests can be fixed or junked.  We have to stop thinking of people as we do cars.  Kids end up with their self-worth defined by the expectations of their age-peers.  This can be a false positive as well as a false negative.

Decreasing the number of years of state-paid education would cause parents to seriously get involved with educational decisions involving their children.  They might decide that it could be cheaper to pay for K-4 education, or to homeschool the child during those years.  On the other hand, parents may want to pay for a private high school of their choice as better preparation for the child's future.  Either way, parents would be paying much more attention to school expectations and performance.

Here's the ice cream of the 'eight years' reform.  Let's say a student has not used a dime of public funds for education before college.  Perhaps s/he has been privately schooled or home schooled.  If that student can pass entrance and placement exams to show s/he is at the college level, we should give that student eight years of college, perhaps all the way to a PhD.  If a student began formal schooling at age 16 and was able to complete pre-college work in four years, then that student would still have 4 years left to work on college. An educated populace is a wealth-generating and tax-paying populace.

Why does 'wait until they're ready' or 'delay education' horrify some people?  Outside of that industrial-manufacturing-the-kids-need-to-be-in-school model that defines the self-worth of the child, I understand that as a society we treasure education, but what we're doing inside those buildings we call schools is not so much education as it is baby sitting while parents work.  One of the reasons parents work is to generate taxes that pay for the costs of state-funded education.  If we want to decrease the amount of money we spend on education then let's wait until the student is ready to be educated.  If we treasure education, then let's wait until the student is ready to learn. Let's learn to treasure families.  If they didn't have to work so hard to support state education, then they might actually have time to be parents.  That can only be good for society.

Are you still horrified at this idea?  Do you think it is also the school's job to socialize children from a young age?  Do you think that will not happen if a child is left to the skills of the (presumed incompetent) parents?  *sigh*  Most parents simply don't choose to be cooped up with their kids all day long.  Moms quite naturally gravitate towards other moms of kids the same age.  Kids quite naturally gravitate towards other kids.  Family interactions often involve grandparents and cousins and their parents.  Humankind survived thousands of years without compulsory education.  People learned what is necessary to know, and sometimes paid others to teach them skills.  Teens and young adults were apprenticed to learn skills, and sometimes communities gathered up the kids to teach reading, speaking, writing, and accounting skills.  It worked then.  Compulsory public education isn't going to propel humankind to a higher plane of existence.  It could have quite the opposite effect.

Pre-Algebra Math Curriculum

Yes, I occasionally get to exchange some email with Harold Jacobs, my all-time favorite math text author.  Publisher WH Freeman forwards email to him from their website from people with questions about his texts.  He received an inquiry from Michelle, who asked about a good homeschool curriculum leading up to the algebra book by Harold Jacobs, and since Mr. Jacobs hasn't taught math at that level and doesn't have experience homeschooling, he forwarded the question to me.  Michelle was wondering about Math-U-See and Saxon.  She was also asking about some fun things to do in math.  Here is my reply:

I have not used Math-U-See.  I'm aware that the author has worked hard to develop a good course.  Folks generally stay with it through algebra and geometry.  I don't get many kids with a Math-U-See background.

Saxon is fine for kids who like hard work for the sake of hard work.  It's ok up through the Algebra 1/2 book, but the algebra book takes the idea of cycling back to review one step too far.  It strikes me as somewhat helter-skelter, and I refuse to teach from it or to tutor kids from it.  The subsequent high school books are just as frustrating.  Still, I know some kids who had a good guide (parent who was good with math) to get them through algebra with Saxon, and were fine.

Here's what I DO use for pre-algebra:

1.  The homeschool group I administrate uses the reproducible worksheets from Steve and Janis Marcy, http://www.marcymathworks.com.  These include everything that might be taught in general math and pre-algebra, but don't include instructions. They are thorough and complete, however, covering all of the needed topics.  A savvy parent will enjoy these. If they need directions I have kids write directions on the back of a sheet.

2.  The Mental Math series on Amazon:

Mental Math in Junior High

Mental Math in the Primary Grades

Mental Math in the Middle Grades

These are also reproducible.  They are a nice balance to developing proficiency with a calculator.  Kids DO need to develop proficiency with a calculator!

3.  There are a lot of $6 workbooks that can be found at Barnes and Noble, sometimes Toys R Us for keeping things fresh over the summer, and these are JUST FINE for regular use.  Each book focuses on a topic, like fractions, decimals, graphing, etc.  Use them up, throw them away, buy them again for the next kid.  There also are some very good supplemental books by the Critical Thinking publishers.  Here's one:

Building Thinking Skills

4.  I have recommended ALEKS.com as an online website for use by adults needing to refresh and re-learn concepts from pre-algebra forward.  The ALEKS folks have been diligent at filling in the gaps and developing coursework, and the system is VERY good at diagnosing gaps in learning and understanding and drilling to fill those in.  At $20 per month, it is the cheapest math tutoring I know.  I've sent some folks out to ALEKS to polish some skills before they enter classes at the community college, and I've learned that if ALEKS says they know the material, then they know the material.  The ALEKS folks have developed their online materials for kids as soon as they can read.  I haven't reviewed that level, but I wouldn't park a kid in front of a computer for a long period of time, anyway.  Some will eat it up, however.

The most important part of pre-algebra is showing where it is used all of the time.  That's where homeschooling is excellent, if parents aren't stuck in the classroom paradigm, thinking that math education has to be done at a table with a book.  Going to the grocery store, shopping online for a good deal, measuring and weighing and cutting in the kitchen and Dad's shop, comparing cellular contracts, talking about the good deal vs. the right fit, on and on.  If parents know how to use the math in everyday life, the kids will be just fine.

When to start Algebra?  Whenever the student is ready.  The big rush is to put it into the 8th grade for everyone.  Huge mistake.  It just means I'll be teaching at the community college until I die, if I like, cleaning up the mess made by pushing it too soon.  I would say that if a young student has competence in all of the topics in anyone's pre-algebra text and is hungry for more, then let him or her begin, but without the necessity of finishing in a year.  I've had students as young as 6th grade in the Jacobs book (I have one now that age), but I find that as bright as they may be, they need more time to digest and complete homework.  For that reason, I have designed a Decompressed Algebra series, which takes two years to complete the book, and provides lots of opportunities for data gathering and analysis, along the lines suggested by exercises in the book.  

Good, solid, math fun?  Play games!  The card game War is how my kids learned to sequence and count.  I've developed matching cards for fractions-decimals-percents, and my pre-algebra class has been playing Go Fish with these for two weeks.  Yahtzee, Sequence, Rack-O, Flinch.  Checkers, Chess, Go, Oware.  These are every bit as important as drill and practice.

But you knew all this!

Why learn anything?

It's a delight when the denominational magazine I receive (because I'm a member of a particular denomination) produces an article so appropriate for education.

Roger Wiens, a senior scientist at Los Alamos National Laboratory is also a member of this denomination.  The article linked to below gives a bit of his personal history and why he has no problem working in a pretty secular field for a pretty secular goal.

We need to keep our brains OPEN, and PLAN to keep on learning. Education isn't just a means to an end as in "I want to be a _______ so I can make lots of money".  Exploration and seeking new knowledge is a kind of worship of God.  God's fingerprints are all over the universe.  We don't worship the fingerprints, we worship the Creator.  The twists, turns, surprises, variety, and magnitude are all meant to get us to open our mouths and say "Oh, my God!  That's AWESOME!"  Seeking new knowledge always opens our brains to think creatively.  It's hard work!

The creativity we learn from the Creator Himself is meant to be turned around to our everyday situation.  How can we make our life better right here?  How can we make the life of our neighbor better?  How can we bring Christ to our world?

http://www.usmb.org/roger-wiens-why-i-explore-space

How postponing college can pay - BIG!

I ran into a former ZLO parent today who showers me with gratefulness every time I see him for advice I gave concerning his son some years back.  He had a very interesting update, and I asked if he'd write a paragraph or two on the outcome.  Here it is.

Dear Molly

Thanks so much for your encouragement to start our son in tech school instead of college.  He was only 15 when we had that discussion.  Now at 19 I thought I'd give you an update. 

He graduated last year from Bellingham Tech's welding program utilizing the Running Start program.  There he made friends with older men with clear career goals. 

He is currently working at Central Welding Supply.  He was hired in spite of the fact that he was too young to get a HAZMAT commercial drivers license.  They love his work ethic and enthusiasm.  His employer has offered to pay for tuition and books for anything related he wants to take.  How interesting that our son has received basically a full ride scholarship from his current employer.  He would never have been ready for this if we had pushed academics right away.  Your advice was crucial,  to push the hands on experience first.   He will still probably wait to pursue a business college degree.  However he plans to take an evening class this fall at BTC.  

As his friends struggle to get through Whatcom or Skagit, he is making a living wage with full benefits, no college debts and free college later.  Thanks again for encouraging us to wait on college for him.  This has helped develop self confidence and sped up his emotional and spiritual maturity.   

Thankful for you and ZLO.

Jeff Hodgin

For those of you who aren't sure your child has academic capabilities yet, please understand that tech college and/or work is a safe, viable, cheaper option.  Tossing a student into a highly academic atmosphere where they fail a class causes them to carry a track record that will NOT open doors for them down the road and may well increase the overall cost of college.  There are NO 18-year olds who MUST go to college.  Allowing them more time to mature is good, no matter what their capabilities are.  And you just might find someone willing to pay for their college later.

Why we homeschool

I've written this in an earlier entry but I seem to be using it often these days.

Homeschooling families (most of them) do NOT want their kids sheltered in a greenhouse.  They want the sun to shine on their heads, the rain on their faces, the wind in their hair.  They just want to be able to choose what grows up next to them.

The world would weigh us with knowledge of things for which we have no strength to bear at such an early age.  The ability to carry that knowledge will come in due time, but there isn't any need to burden a child with adult ideas and actions too early.  The world's purpose in burdening a child is to break that child, and form the child to the whims of the world.  A set of loving parents can choose a more appropriate time for a child to take on the world.

Why we keep on trying when it's hopeless

View this:

Carly is an autistic child on the far end of the autistic spectrum, who has learned to communicate.  It turns out that a normal intelligence was locked behind an autistic interface.  It was with persistence and luck that a hole was opened for her to squirt a message to the outside world:  "There's a healthy intelligence in here!"

For me the message is that it's when things look hopeless is when it's time to try to learn the most.  Too often we give up, throw in the towel, and walk away.

There is also a time to take the work off of the loom, discard it, and start again.

I don't have the wisdom to always tell which is which.  Sometimes we CHOOSE to take on a project or person to try to fix up that person.  This might be a bad idea.

But sometimes life hands us a helpless or hopeless situation.  I think that the lesson of Carly is that unless we try, sometimes try a lot, we will miss opportunities to learn.

That's education!