Smrt Lernins

I’m sure I’ve mentioned that I teach a creative writing class for a local secular homeschool co-op. I had nine students and am now, sadly, down to seven. We have an interesting age mix, 7-12, despite my specific instructions in the class description that all students be ages 8+. Rules do not apply to homeschoolers, whose children are all so gifted that it practically grants them an extra year.

We just finished our non-fiction unit. The final non-fiction assignment was writing an article for a newpaper or magazine. One quirky child of about nine submitted this little beauty, which I will now shared in his exact words, spelling and grammar included (just a hint, this is best if you read it out loud):

It starts with the first blush of attraction, the seductive allure of a curriculum that professes to be the right one for you and your child. It seems to have every quality you’re looking for in a program of study. You seem so compatible, with harmonizing goals and similar interests. In a mad rush, you make a commitment to this curriculum, buying the whole program of study, grade K-6, including the teacher’s guides and instructional videos. This, truly, is the curriculum of your dreams.

Weeks pass, and the rose ever-so-slowly begins to lose its bloom. This perfect curriculum no longer seems so perfect any more. Perhaps every lesson is a struggle with your child. Perhaps you discovered something buried in the text halfway through a book that is in complete opposition to your beliefs or methodology. You realize that this curriculum is really not at all compatible with you or your child, but sadly, you are now bound to it for life with no reprieve. You will have to continue with this painful farce of a curriculum, because the alternative is a messy legal battle that will leave your lives all ripped apart and your child emotionally scarr….

Uh…no. Wait a minute. Something about that doesn’t sound quite right, does it? Sounds pretty ludicrous, doesn’t it? And yet, some people treat their curricula as though they were bound to them by law, God, or society, and that the decision to change curricula based on their needs (or, more importantly, the needs of their children) is akin to dragging their children through a messy divorce. The reasoning may vary by homeschooler — perhaps she paid a lot for the old curriculum and doesn’t want to be out the money, perhaps she praised the curriculum to the rooftops and doesn’t want to lose face by bailing on it, perhaps she dreads having to research yet another curriculum to replace the one that isn’t working, perhaps she fears a repeat of the same love and disappointment, or perhaps she’s just secretly afraid that the curriculum itself is fine and she is the real problem. For whatever reason, homeschoolers cling to broken curriculum long past the point where jettisoning the stuff that doesn’t work should be in order.

I say to you now: A curriculum is not a marriage. I’ve been through it. I know! I, too, found some curricula that I thought would be the best thing ever, invested quite a bit of money in them, only to be sadly disappointed a few lessons in. In our case, the curriculum in question was the Institute for Excellence in Writing’s Ancient History-Based Writing Lessons. I dropped $49 for the teacher/student combo based on strong recommendations for IEW’s programs, only to find “banned words” lists and several Bible-literalist remarks buried throughout lessons, which were also unnecessarily dense and convoluted. I hated it. Captain Science hated it. It was time intensive, labor intensive, and only served to make the Captain hate writing more than he already did.

Did I ditch that unwieldy, sinisterly religious curriculum right away? I am quite sure you realize that I did no such thing. Instead, we continued to slog through it from another few weeks, mutually loathing it, while I tried to tweak each lesson to make it more appropriate for a secularly homeschooled nearly-9-year-old whom I didn’t want to grow up hating everything about writing. Eventually, I realized that no amount of tweaking would make this the right fit for us, and lo! How I did fall into despair, for how should I ever disentangle myself from the complicated relationship with this godawful curriculum.

I’d spent $50 on this program and invested considerable time and effort in trying to make it work. How could I just walk away from it? How could I not try to find something supplemental to fill in the gaps or take the time to go through and cross off every reference to the “true” stories of the Bible? I had several days of hair pulling, hand wringing, and loud lamentations of the women*. I then had what I like to refer to as a “Robert Jordan moment**.” It was an epiphany. Pouring time and money into a curriculum that didn’t work didn’t mean I was obligated to continue pouring good money after bad. No! In fact, it meant that I should run from this curriculum as fast as possible! I had no obligations to this curriculum. I had nothing to bind me to it. I didn’t have to stick with it through better or (increasingly) worse! I wasn’t married to this curriculum at all. At best, we were dating, and it was time to see other people curricula.

I did more research, talked to more people, and finally bought a second-hand-but-new copy of Writing Strands Level 3, and oldie, but goodie, whose informal, jocular tone gave Captain Science a renewed interest in writing. Writing Strands works for us. This isn’t to say that it would work for you, but to say that you should find a curriculum that does, instead of staying with one you both hate just because you feel stuck with it.

When I see posts on various forums asking “Is it too late to switch our math curriculum?” (Answer: “NO! It’s never too late!”) or “Should we switch curricula?” (Answer: “If you’re unhappy enough with it to start asking, the answer is probably a resounding ‘yes’”) I can only think that these are people who believe they are married to their curricula. Not only that, they take a view of this curricula marriage that one expects the fundamentalist religious set might apply to their actual marriages: unseverable, no matter how much abuse, unhappiness, or incompatibility you might suffer, because it would certainly work if only you’d try a little harder.

No amount of trying harder is going to fix a fundamentally flawed relationship, however, nor will trying harder make your child respond well to Saxon math or Sonlight history. Luckily, unlike in a human relationship, you can walk away from bad curricula without a backwards glance or any significant repercussions. When you find yourself wrestling with a bulky curricula or your child crying over another lesson, take this piece of advice and remember that a curriculum isn’t a marriage. You owe it nothing.

Plus, I hear the resale value’s not that shabby, either.

*See Conan the Barbarian. Better yet, don’t see it, and just take my word that this is a reference to that.
**The phenomenon wherein one continues to read Robert Jordan novels, despite loathing them, because one has already invested four, five, six+ books’ worth of reading in the series and feels obligated to continue, but then finally has a moment of clarity wherein one realizes, no, one has not “invested,” but rather wasted four, five, six+ books’ worth of reading on the series and never, ever, ever subjects one’s self to another book devoting thirteen pages to describing yet another dress on yet another one-dimensional female character.