A Simple Comment and Where It Leads...

I didn't expect to have anything interesting to blog so soon. But these things often come up when you least expect them. Last Sunday night, I was visiting with a new acquaintance at the church playground while watching kids play. It turns out that their family also homeschools. So the topic turned to what methods do you use and are you with a group, etc. In the course of the conversation she made a little commonplace comment that I've heard often enough before. It was a comment that seems completely ordinary, but the more I thought about it, the more it bothered me. The comment was that she didn't feel comfortable teaching her own kids after they reach 7th grade level work, so she sends her older kids to a charter school/homeschool arrangement where they are at school two days a week and then do independent study at home the rest of the week.

Now, please don't mistake my concern with this. I am not a purist that thinks my way is the only way. I have no problem with charter schools or independent study programs. I think that parents should be in charge of their own kids education whatever path they need to follow. The part of the comment that bothered me was not regarding method of schooling. The part that bothered me was about a person's comfort level in teaching their kids past a certain level.

Now, I understand that not all people feel like they can teach. By all means, if you don't think you can teach, don't teach. Though, I sometimes wonder if that is sometimes used as a cop-out so people can do as they please instead of sometimes making the occasional sacrifice to do what is best for their family. Personally, I don't feel that I am tempermentally suited to teach in a classroom situation where I would be teaching other people's kids. I am perfectly fine with teaching my own kids one-on-one. I have friends who are public school teachers who are just the reverse... they'll teach a passel of other people's kids without batting an eye, but can't imagine teaching their own kids. There are plenty of valid reasons to not teach. I'm O.K. with that.

What I keep coming back to in this comment that bugs me is, if you can teach up to a certain point, what prevents a person from teaching past that point. I didn't get into a deeper discussion with this acquaintance on the topic, because I thought that might be a little bit too much for a new acquaintance. What I started thinking about was what makes a person qualified to teach.

Knowledge about particular teaching methods may equip a person to teach better than if they were ignorant of those methods, but methods don't make a teacher. To my mind, understanding of the subject matter is a key element to being able to teach it. Though there are times when prior knowledge isn't necessary if the teacher is learning along with the student. Perhaps the student is outstripping the teacher's abilities. That would be cause for a different teacher indeed. But let us say we are not talking about extraordinary abilities. When a teacher gives up teaching at 7th, 8th, or 9th grade, there are probably lots of reasons for it.

But to my mind, in my usual way of thinking, anyone who has mastered a subject themselves should be capable of teaching it. So I keep thinking back to the comment and wonder about the teacher's mastery of the subject matter. With what little was said, I got the feeling in the conversation that the mother felt that her writing and composition skills would not be able to keep up with what her kids needed. Instead she is finding a way to keep the best of both worlds so to speak by using additional teachers to fill in the gaps while still keeping a workable homeschooling situation for her family. That is commendable. I don't want to imply with what I say that I am tearing anyone down. But, the comment about not feeling competent to teach what you yourself should have learned in school, should really prompt some self-reflection. If I cannot teach someone what I learned in school, did I really learn it or did I just punch my time card and manage a passing grade on a report card that didn't really mean anything? If I cannot teach someone what I learned in school, am I functionally below that level in education myself? If I cannot teach someone what I learned in school because I forgot it from lack of use, is it necessary for my child to learn and necessary for me to relearn? If I cannot teach someone because I never learned it myself, is it a good thing for them to learn or am I trying to give them something I never had (whether good or bad)?

Now comes the follow-up questions to all of that self-reflection. If I had what is considered a basic education (whether public or private), and am not qualified to teach those same subjects to someone else, does that mean that my education failed to reach the mastery stage and therefore failed. How many people who are educated in these "normal" methods of education (most of us were not homeschooled after all) are not well enough educated to be able to teach what they were taught? If a large percentage of people have this problem, what does that say for the education they received? What does this say about the educational systems used in our society?

I would love to tell you right now that I have all of the answers to the above questions. I don't. I do think these are some of the questions we parents should wrestle with as we figure out what is best for our families. I think I know some of the answers for me. I will share with you some of the answers as they apply to my teaching.

I had an excellent public school education. Two of the four colleges I attended were public and two were private. They were all good schools and I had many good teachers. I have studied four widely diverse subject areas at the college level. I should be well equipped for teaching others what I have learned myself. For the most part I am. Yet, I too have strong areas and weak areas. I remember upon receiving my bachelor's degree, thinking to myself, "why didn't I learn all of this in high school?" I felt a little let down that my good education wasn't better. Those of you who follow my blog may have seen my tendency to think deeply from time to time, but I do not claim to be a great writer. I have a masters degree in information science. I am a proficient researcher by training. I relate well to college level studies. I like the give and take of a deep and challenging conversation. I find the basic steps of early education kind of boring, but I understand the necessity of them. So I work hard at helping my kids understand them. I am actually looking forward to the time when I can teach logic and deeper topics about our world. I look forward to guiding a teen through their own studies and deep life questions. Will I come across things I simply cannot teach? Yep. My seven year old is already beyond my musical abilities with the piano. I never learned to play the piano. I played violin for just over two years. I picked up most of my basic music reading ability during that time, which isn't much. When she passes up my husband, we will need to find her another teacher for piano or whatever other instrument she chooses to learn. I am an active person and I like to walk, but I am not a good swimmer. Our kids will get swim lessons from someone else since we see that as a matter of personal safety as well as a good skill to know. I learned French in school and never completely felt like I could speak it. I struggle learning languages. This year we are beginning to teach our oldest daughter Latin. I am learning it with her and my knowledge of French helps me a little. At some point, I expect she will surpass my abilities, since she seems more gifted with languages than I am. We will still teach her, but probably through independent study style lessons where she is learning from someone else, instead of being directly taught by her parents. It is completely possible that with her love of language she will surpass my English abilities. My husband has better skills there than I do, but she may end up needing another teacher for that. We seem to have very independent minded kids and they may all go in directions we never imagined or had any training in whatsoever. That's O.K. We are equipped to handle the basics. And we know how to find appropriate training for the other stuff.

As for the broader implications of people not being able to teach someone else, it worries me. I remember back when I was working at a Christian College library, I got a phone call one day from a man who was very concerned. He worked at a church where they had just received their new quarter curriculum for their children's classes. They were scheduled to start using it the following Sunday, but nobody he talked to at his church knew much about the publisher of this curriculum and he wanted to talk to someone who was familiar with it so they could tell him whether it was O.K to use, in other words, was it doctrinally sound? I truly wished I could have helped him out, but I couldn't. I wasn't a specialist in Sunday school curriculum and the person who might have helped him was unavailable at the time. After talking with him I realized that if he didn't understand his own faith well enough to read a child's Bible lesson and analyze it for accuracy, then he had a much bigger problem than "should we use this curriculum?". He didn't know what he believed. People who don't have a good understanding of what they should know, don't know how to operate at the level that society says they are qualified to operate at. It is easier to be scammed when you don't understand things like finances, advertising, religion, and politics. When people are not able to think logically and critically in many areas of life, they run into trouble. When this is a widespread problem, society runs into trouble.

For myself, If I find an area that is important for me to improve (whether for training my children, or for my own needs), I would wish to make changes and improve. I would not relinquish my ability or right to teach my own children lightly. So, to finish up... I would like you to consider your own answers to those self-reflecting questions and consider what is going on in our society when people consider themselves or others as unfit teachers.

Thoughts on Teaching the Bible

After my husband published a post about the dilemma of reading all of the Bible to a five year old during our homeschooling lessons, he received a few comments back that definitely show different people's approaches. I don't pretend to have all the answers, but I definitely have some opinions about teaching the Bible. Before I start spouting off on one or more of my soap box issues, it would probably be good to give a little background. That way you might be able to see a little bit of where I'm coming from.

I have a fairly conservative Christian upbringing. My parents raised me in the Church of Christ. One thing about the Church of Christ that many people (even some who belong to it) sometimes mistakenly overlook is that although many congregations appear to be the same, the reality is that there is no official connection to keep them all in cookie cutter unity. Each congregation is in control of its own affairs and tries to follow the Bible or get off track in its own way. The church I grew up in was a bit of a trend setter (at least during my childhood and high school years) that was usually middle of the road or slightly liberal leaning within "the brotherhood" of Churches of Christ. My parents' faith experiences also colored my religious background. My Dad grew up in the same faith background that I did. However, my Mom grew up going to any church that the most available family member with a car went to that week. She had a big extended family and they went to every church on the map. With that background, she helped bring a little perspective to what I grew up with.

When I say "conservative Christian," I know that many people will want to stop reading right there. And others, who have had bad experiences with my denomination, will want to stereotype me there. To that I can only say, if you wish to remain ignorant of another person's faith journey, so be it. Stereotypes are just that, stereotypes. They can't tell you about a specific individual. I think that it would be accurate to say that although I have encountered closed minds, faulty logic, and hypocrisy among my fellow faith travelers, I have also encountered plenty of open minds, well refined logic, and sincere faith among many of them, too. So, please give us a chance. I was raised to know the Bible. I was raised to follow God and my conscience to the best of my ability. I was encouraged to think critically and be well educated.

As a result of this background, I entered a long college career that took me to four colleges and four majors in completely different subjects. The one that applies to this post is my last one. I was a Bible and Theology major. For a variety of reasons relating to family responsibilities, work responsibilities, social life and such... I didn't finish my degree. I was about five classes away from my 2nd Bachelor's degree in Bible and Theology. I make no claims to be a famous scholar. I never even took Hebrew or Greek. But, I still think that I probably have a better religious education at the college level than your average person off the street. The education I have does impact some of my thoughts on teaching the Bible.

When we started homeschooling our daughter she was preschool. The Bible classes she got at church were fine. Then she was Kindergarten and I tried to supplement her classes by following up on the Memory verse work and asking her questions about her lesson. I could write another post solely on my opinions of church Bible classes. I did quickly determine that my daughter found the memory verse work so easy she was bored with it. And she was more interested in the crafts than the stories (unless they were "icky" stories such as those my husband mentioned in his post). In talking with the people in charge of the curriculum to know what was to come in the grades 1-6, I learned that they didn't start a systematic study through the Bible until second grade.

We didn't start homeschooling for religious reasons, but we are religious. And our faith is important enough to us that I knew that one class a week on Sunday morning was not going to be good enough for us. So I decided to add religious studies to the schedule when I was planning for this year. We are following a historical structure in our studies so, she will learn about world religions as we encounter them in history. In fact, we our learning some of what the Ancient Egyptians believed, in our current studies by reading some our their myths. But, for our own family's faith, we are reading the Bible since that is the core of our religion.

Some people think that collections of Bible stories are most appropriate for young children. I agree up to a point. I've been reading Bible stories to her from numerous books of compilations since she was interested in being read to. She knows all of those stories, but she is lacking in context. And all of those convenient compilations are paraphrases. They are not actual translations of scripture. On the plus side, they eliminate most of the scandalous violence, the breaking of sexual taboos, the grievous misdeeds of the heroes of faith, and the difficult to explain passages about God himself.

I have a strong bias toward reading primary source material. Don't slice and dice my literature, history or even religion please. There is so much to gain by listening to an author as he or she intended to be heard. So, I made the decision that if I am teaching our daughter world history and literature in first grade, then I will be reading her an actual translation of the Bible. This gives her the context for those stories she has learned. She learns the order that things happened. She learns a lot more about how God interacts with people, than the cut and paste version served up in story books.

In addition to this, she learns that there is usually more to the story than she has ever heard before. Some of that story causes me my dilemma of whether to read absolutely everything. I mean... she's only five after all. She doesn't need to hear about everything does she? So, since I make a detailed lesson plan, I started reading through the Bible trying to divide up the readings in appropriately sized chunks.

I was a little nervous about including Noah getting drunk (remembering some of the interpretations of that story that I've heard through the years), but It went OK. It helps that I went out and got a translation that aimed at a third grade reading level. Some of the more difficult phrases to explain become euphemisms. The next problematic story was the story of the visitation of the angels to Sodom and Gommorah. I haven't got to that one yet, so I can't tell you how I'll handle it yet. Either I will edit my reading to give the gist of the story (it is a major story that is revisited many times later and therefore necessary to my eyes), or I will read it straight and deal with any questions from my daughter as they arise.

Of course there are all the long genealogy passages... I'm reading them. Genealogies were important to the people of that time and you can learn the occasional tidbit from them. Then there are the long passages in Exodus where God describes in detail to Moses how to build the Tabernacle, then Moses describes in detail to the people how to build the Tabernacle, then the people build the Tabernacle and it is described in detail. Whether or not that section takes up half of the book of Exodus, it feels like it does. I'm planning on editing that down to give her the highlights and give her an idea of what Israelites were told to do in their religious practices. Then later on there are all of the Levitical laws about how to do the various sacrifices, how to do the various feasts, the day to day legal issues, cleanliness laws, etc. I will try to give her some of it, but not too much. These laws are brought up later. Every time I considered skipping something, I would be reminded how it is brought up later with the assumption that it is no longer new information. Yes, much of it is deadly dull to us. Yes, some of it is downright icky. But, I found that in small chunks, it didn't look so bad and the few sections that I had the most problem with probably should be skipped for attention span reasons. She is only five!

I do not feel guilty leaving out a few things. You see, I'm leaving most of it in. Very few things hit my don't read threshold. And those are mainly because of her age. This will not be the only time we read the Bible. As she gets older, we will read every bit of it. By the time she is in high school I expect reading the whole Bible to be at least an annual activity. We are going slower this time through. I plan to be most of the way through Numbers by the end of the school year.

Another consideration is that we are following an educational approach that encourages exploration of facts and information for the youngest kids. It is not to gain mastery at the beginning. It is to lay foundations for further study. I learned from my Master's program (Library and Information Science), that people learn things better if they have already been exposed to that information. But, the young age level is not necessarily very good at analyzing what they read. It's the older kids that wrestle more with why and wherefore. So I feel comfortable with providing a much bigger slice of the picture than most kids her age get, with the idea that the small bits I've left out, will fit better when she is old enough to handle a little bit more heavy-duty mental wrestling that some of those passages prompt.

One commenter at my husband's blog made the helpful suggestion of starting with the New Testament in our reading. I appreciate the helpfulness, truly, but the suggestion undercuts a basic premise in my teaching of the Bible. That premise is that it is almost impossible to get a full understanding of the New Testament without a firm grounding in the Old Testament. I'm sure that steps on a few toes, because I have known many people who think that the New Testament somehow overshadows the Old to the point of making it obsolescent. In my mind, reading only the New Testament is like reading the end of a story but not the beginning. Have you ever flipped channels on your T.V. and been sucked into a movie only to find out that you watched only the last 15 minutes. Yeah, you saw the climax and the way it ended, but you are completely oblivious to what put the characters in their situation to begin with. You didn't see the character development or the trials and victories that came before. And remember, the people who wrote and read the New Testament when it was new, thought of the Old Testament as their scriptures. The Old Testament was their Bible.

So...I suppose I should report on how it is going. After all, we've been doing Bible readings for the last three weeks. Well, I have found that by Genesis chapter 15, I have not had to edit anything out. My daughter likes some of the readings but not others. I can tell how much she likes it based on how eager she is to come up with a sentence for her narration page and whether she wants to illustrate the passage (this last being completely optional). Some of them are pretty bland, but some are hilarious. For instance, the story of Cain and Abel. She never mentions the fact that Cain killed Abel (the obvious point for most of us). Instead she was impressed that Cain farmed, so she wrote "Who likes crops?" and had a picture of a very happy-looking stick figure of Cain showing off a platter of vegetables. I keep all of her work in a binder to document her progress. But even without that motive, The Pillowfight Fairy's work shows a very amusing view of the Bible.

Teaching to the Test

You know... one of the things that I like as a homeschooler is the ability to concentrate on comprehension and mastery without having to "teach to the test." There is a freedom in this. There is quite a debate in our society right now about how to teach kids and how important testing is. I tend to be on the side of those who say teaching to the test isn't the right approach.

That is why it is so ironic that I find myself "teaching to the test."

Why would I do this? Because my daughter wants to participate in our Church's "Bible Challenge." It is a Bible knowledge quiz (handled much like a spelling bee) that they have every year at the end of summer. It is open to kids who have finished kindergarten through sixth grade. They divide the kids up into age groups for appropriately challenging questions for that group. For every correct answer they earn a ticket to redeem for prizes. Everyone who completes the challenge without missing an answer gets a trophy. My daughter really, really, really, wants to do this. So we have the list of questions that they handed out in June for the quiz in August. The idea is to encourage Bible knowledge, not to try to trip the kids up with surprise questions.

So, this week I have been teaching to the test. We have been reviewing the questions. I was happy to see that the questions didn't cover anything that she was unfamiliar with (with the possible exception of how many books are in the Bible). She knows all the stories mentioned in the questions, so I'm happy that she knows the context of what the questions are talking about. She also knew most of the answers. However, I have needed to encourage her to stick to the answers they expect the kids to give. Restating an answer in your own words is fine as long as it is accurate and doesn't confuse the issue (she has been fond of riddles lately and has sometimes tried to answer questions with riddles).

Now I have to try to find a way for this review of questions to stay fresh or she will get bored and not put effort into it. It would be heartbreaking for our little perfectionist to miss an answer in this much anticipated contest. (Heartbreaking for her that is, we are OK with it).

Which brings up another question: Are perfectionists that way all their life? Are there any recovering perfectionists out there? I've never seen evidence that this personality trait changes. Not being a perfectionist myself, I've never seen much point to it. My husband is one (that must be where she gets it), but he manages to use it to give himself the drive and endurance to work until he gets right whatever he is working on. That is an adult form of perfectionism. In our five year old, it tends to work more like "If I get something right the first time, I love it and want to do it constantly until I get tired of it. If I get something wrong the first time, I hate it and I will fight every attempt to get me to do it again." Anybody got ideas on how to move this stubborn perfectionist from point A to point B? I've just been making her do things anyway, until she gets it right (then I can't stop her). Nobody said parenting was easy. Parenting and teaching can be twice as hard sometimes.

So anyway, I am teaching to the test this summer as a favor to my daughter. How is that for a twist?