If you want to know why my family follows a strict schedule of lessons in our homeschool, read my post Why Use a Strict Schedule or Timetable in a Charlotte Mason Homeschool.
Before I describe exactly how we make a timetable work in our home, I want to dispel a few pervasive myths about following a schedule or timetable that I see over and over:
Myth #1: When you follow a set schedule for lessons, you compartmentalize learning.
In reality: I compartmentalize lessons, not learning.
We are a family of lifelong learners. We consider biking to the library, making a phone call to a grandparent, sewing a gift for a friend's birthday party, reading a story, making cornbread, morning time, read alouds, soccer, and free play time to be learning activities. Lessons feed the mind a rich feast of ideas, but they are only part of the learning we do.
Myth #2: When you follow a set schedule you eliminate spontaneity.
In reality: Consistency is more important to me than spontaneity. However, lessons can be set aside!
A special opportunity to be with friends or a warm day in February finds my family cutting lessons short or skipping them all together. Also, because we have set days for lessons, there are plenty of days and weeks without lessons. On break weeks, we can leave room for spontaneous fun as well as planned excursions.
Myth #3: When you follow a set schedule you eliminate the ability to follow rabbit trails.
In reality: We follow lots of rabbit trails, but I purposely leave most of the work to my children to increase their thinking powers, help them own their self-education, and to encourage healthy autonomy
Many homeschoolers value the ability to follow "rabbit trails" or the interests or questions that arise during the course of any learning experience. On one hand, indulging in the wild, galloping thoughts of children is not exactly fostering the habit of attention that I believe is so important. On the other hand, Mason writes:
Long ago, I was in the habit of hearing this axiom quoted by a philosophical old friend: "The mind can know nothing save what it can produce in the form of an answer to a question put to the mind by itself." I have failed to trace the saying to its source, but a conviction of its importance has been growing upon me during the last forty years. A Philosophy of Education, vol 6, page 16.So questions are a good thing! And our minds should seek out the answers as they may represent all that we can know. But the child should spend some meaningful time in developing an answer first. Mason writes:
There is some slight show of speculation even in wondering 'Why?' but it is the slightest and most superficial effort the thinking brain produces. Let the parent ask 'Why?' and the child produce the answer, if he can. After he has turned the matter over and over in his mind, there is no harm in telling him––and he will remember it––the reason why. Every walk should offer some knotty problem for the children to think out––"Why does that leaf float on the water, and this pebble sink?" and so on. Home Education, vol I, p 154.So, there is no harm in me telling them the answer once they've really tried to think it out themselves. However, Mason's first chapter of A Philosophy of Education is entitled, Self-Education for a reason.
The teacher's job is to provide full, regular meals (of ideas) and student's role is to assimilate those meals through the practice of narration and through the process of the Science of Relations. And I don't read that it is my job to answer every question that my student wonders about. Instead, their desire to know should endow them with a natural desire to use free time to answer some of these questions. Mason writes:
Of course, the most obvious means of quickening and holding the attention of children lies in the attractiveness of knowledge itself, and in the real appetite for knowledge with which they are endowed. Home Education, vol I, page 145.In other words, children are endowed with a desire for knowledge and that desire should motivate them. I can and should provide the means for my children to explore their interests. Personally, I'd rather provide the generous and well-balanced diet, and let them pursue interests in the ample free time our schedule provides.
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Myth #4: Parents who follow a strict schedule are controlling.
In reality: I schedule lessons into a short period of time so that my children have more time for self-education, under my authority, but without my control.
For the good of our children, we should restrain our inclinations to control their education. Mason urges parents to act from a place of masterly inactivity (which "indicates the power to act, the desire to act, and the insight and self-restraint which forbid action") exactly because:
We try to dominate them too much, even when we fail to govern, and we are unable to perceive that wise and purposeful letting alone is the best part of education. School Education, vol 3 pg 28-29.If we micromanage all the content that comes into their minds and hearts, we are not sending the message that the education is their self-education. And nothing destroys the natural desire for doing something more than becoming convinced that you are only doing it for someone else.
Mason has several suggestions for how to encourage children's educational autonomy besides masterly inactivity, including the practice of narration, having the child read their own books, and the habit of the mother not talking too much.
Years before hearing the name Charlotte Mason, I was thoroughly convinced of the wisdom of leaving many things unsaid.
One of my most favorite parenting books is How to Talk So Kids Will Listen & Listen So Kids Will Talk by Adele Faber and Elaine Mazlish. So much of this book was challenging to me, but I have seen amazing results by small changes in the way I speak to my children.
In many respects, I feel this book prepared me for homeschooling and the Charlotte Mason method, especially with regard to the chapter entitled Encouraging Autonomy. On the list of things to do to encourage autonomy, the authors write, "Don't rush to answer questions." They give the example, "That's an interesting question. What do you think?"
Before reading this book, my pretty intense oldest child would ask dozens of questions, some over and over again, about every picture book we read. At the same time, he was hesitant to make guesses unless he was absolutely sure of the answer. In other words, he was acting very anxious and overly reliant on me to provide "right answers."
I wanted to encourage an appropriate level of autonomy for my young child who, for example, didn't really need to know why the giraffe in the story was going to the party, but instead was looking to me to provide security in the form of proving that I knew everything! So I started answering (almost) every question with "That's an interesting question. What do you think?"
Guess what? He slowly became more confident in taking guesses and less anxious overall. The world became a place where self-exploration (or self-education) is possible for even the youngest minds.
Myth #5: When you follow a set schedule, students cannot learn how to manage their time.
In reality: I'm much more concerned about forming good habits of attention, obedience, and thinking than I am about practicing time management skills for elementary students. Even so, my young children have hours and hours of time each day to manage their time without schoolwork or mom's nagging hanging over their heads.
I can finally say that my children are rarely bored. I've made a lot of tweaks to our rules, possessions, and rhythms to get to this place. And I firmly believe that our rich daily feast of ideas, served through morning time, read alouds, and lessons based on living books are a huge part of feeding the children's intellectual needs, giving them ample fodder for work and play.
With so many optional and required things to do after lessons are over around 10:30am, I am pleased to report that they manage their time quite well to accomplish all they want to do each day. They also look forward to weekends and breaks when we have no lessons and there is even more free time to manage.
Will I always dictate my student's lesson schedule like this? Probably not. Young adults have different skills and different needs for autonomy, so we'll cross that bridge when we get to it. But, even if my teens did follow a strict schedule of lessons (like every non-homeschooled high schooler I've ever met, including myself), I know that it is possible to develop time-management skills. I even had some myself at that age!
Myth #6: You must follow a timetable to give your children a Charlotte Mason method education.
In reality: I'm just another mom trying to discern the meaning of life and learning as I go and homeschooling my children in the process.
But, I think it is a bit of a stretch to say that a strict timetable is absolutely necessary. I'm very partial to Karen Glass's position on The Spirit and the Letter of a Charlotte Mason Education.
Personally, I have discovered so much wisdom in Mason's writings on education that I prefer to emulate her practices in service of her principles as much as I can both understand and manage, unless or until I find a reason not to do so.
I see the benefits of following Mason's recommendation to use a timetable and it works for us, so I use it.
Curious about what this looks like in practice? Here is a bit about our strict homeschool schedule right now.
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