Smrt Lernins

Because Thursday is Science Day at the McLernins house, I find myself thinking about what it means to be a secular homeschooler. Patchfire and I often discuss how extraneous one feels being a secular homeschooler who also has a rigorous curriculum. There just really aren’t that many of us. Most of our secular contemporaries are schooling much more informally than we are, and many have actually jumped the homeschooling shark into full-blown unschooling.

Yes, education can be fun. It often should be fun. Learning only by rote doesn’t teach critical thinking skills or creativity. That does not mean, however, that memorization has no place in education. Think of the wide array of professions where being able to remember and recall many tiny bits of information is critical to success. If you don’t develop those skills early on, you’re going to be hard pressed to learn them in adulthood. The ability to write a formal piece and express yourself eloquently will never fall out of fashion or become irrelevant. Reading the classics expands your child’s mind with language usage, scenarios, and settings they might not ever imagine on their own. This type of education may not be hip, it may not be sexy, and it certainly isn’t trendy and cutting edge, but it’s persisted for a reason. Children aren’t always the best judge of what they need to know. You can’t make an informed choice in a bubble, and asking your child to make decision about what she needs to know for the rest of her life from a place of naivete doesn’t serve her well.

Here’s my challenge to you, secular homeschoolers. Raise the bar. Why should the religious homeschoolers be the only ones expecting high performance from their children? Why should they be the only ones whose children are expected to read, do math, or exhibit critical thinking skills in any formal capacity? It’s not an unschooling world out there and you’re putting your children at a disadvantage when you expect nothing of them. Take a cue from the religious homeschoolers for one, and raise the bar. “Throw out the books and go learn something” might work with your first grader, but failure to develop the ability to engage in some formal study is only going to hurt your child.