If you haven’t been yet, secular homeschoolers might want to go check out the Secular Homeschool website [...]]]> Anakin Skywalker: “She programmed Artoo to warn us if there’s an intruder.”
Obi-Wan Kenobi: “There are many other ways to kill a Senator.”
Anakin Skywalker: “I know, but we also want to catch this assassin. Don’t we, Master?”
Star Wars II: Attack of the Clones

If you haven’t been yet, secular homeschoolers might want to go check out the Secular Homeschool website run by Topsy-Techie (sigh, how I do miss her blog). The forums are friendly and lively, but without the ever increasing flaming I got tired of seeing on another (very large) homeschooling website tied to a famous homeschooling method of the same name. Yeah, that one. An added bonus is a lack of “the argument for creationism” and “evolution is just a theory” threads that made me want to toss my computer across the room.

One that had me thinking today was about textbooks – and how they have gotten a real stink attached to their very being. Being lazy, but still thinking it was worth sharing, here’s my 2c on the topic – as copied from here.

There is no One Right Way

Melissa in Oz, commented that CM isn’t the same as unit studies. Which is closer to what I described above, so I thought I should include my response, as well. Just to be accurate.

You’re right, Melissa. They’re not the same, and I’m sorry I didn’t make myself clearer.

I thought about that later – she calls what she does CM, but ties a lot of unit studies in as well (especially for her youngest ones). I thought of her though because she’s always talking about books like I remember CM writing about them. No twaddle, boring textbooks, only living books (a term, I admit, that I find condescending). She does focuses on spending time in nature, working on nature journals, and using “real books” in place of academic – aka, boring – books. I should have noted that she’s more eclectic in reality than she self-identifies.

I would like to note that I have a high regard for the multitudes of approaches to teaching children – I swear, I’ve probably tried them all over the years – and the various ways adults go about helping their children learn. I believe we do ourselves, our children, and the larger world of learning a disservice when we write off any sub-category of books as unnecessary or – worse, detrimental – to learning or achievement. My son learned to read, on his own and largely without my assistance, because of Calvin & Hobbes at the age of 4. He’s not a wunderkind, just a boy that wanted – desperately – to know what that spiky-haired boy and tiger were saying to each other. A series of cartoons, the horror. Complete and total twaddle, but it was the key to opening the doors to reading for my son and many other highly visual kids.

I learned the basics of physchology in highschool because I saw a used textbook at a book sale and thought, 25 cents? You bet. It’s wasn’t an involved read, but it was thorough discussion of the topic and gave me a desire to know more, fueling my decision to take a few courses in it during my undergrad years. Not a career in it, not a passion for it, but a definite interest.

Padawan Learner wants to be an inventor. Maybe I should say PL is an inventor, because he’s been imagining improvements to just about everything that comes his way since he was old enough [...]]]> “For a mechanic, you seem to do an incessant amount of thinking.” – C-3PO, Star Wars II: Attack of the Clones

Padawan Learner wants to be an inventor. Maybe I should say PL is an inventor, because he’s been imagining improvements to just about everything that comes his way since he was old enough to declare something “to be when he grows up”. His inventions/improvements are often fantastic (lovely word, that – multiple meanings), frequently push the laws of physics, and sometimes lead to quite interesting discussions – occasionally heated discussions when he feels that Dad Windu and I are just not getting the point.

Once or twice a year, I hear this refrain, “Why am I learning about (insert annoying topic o’the week here)? I’m going to be an inventor.” My answers usually run along these lines:

• Who cares if my spelling isn’t right? Only the people reading your grant proposal.
• Why do I need to learn calculus? Do you think you’ll ever need to calculate things in motion?
• Do I have to learn the metric system? Only if you want people in the scientific community to take you seriously.
• Is good grammar really a big deal? It is only if you want patent clerks and investors to fully understand your invention.
• What’s the point of learning history? You might find a new solution by exploring an old problem.

One of the best things to help stem this tide has been talking about all the different shapes that ‘inventor’ can take. Is a chemist working on a new cholesterol-lowering drug an inventor? Is a biologist who designs a test for resistance to a new pathogen in trout an inventor? Is a writer an inventor? Where is inventing an important part of success in a person’s  job – even if they don’t think of themselves as an ‘inventor’? Did you know that Uncle Owen has invented processes and contraptions to further his research? Does that make him an inventor of sorts? Would a person who creates a new computer language be an inventor, a linguist or ‘merely’ a computer programmer?

Vander Kitten has shown two of my favorite traits, the courage to ask questions and the courtesy to do it well. She writes:

What about discussion [...]]]> Han Solo:          ”We don’t have time to discuss this as a committee.”
Princess Leia:    ”I am not a committee.”
     Star Wars V: The Empire Strikes Back

Vander Kitten has shown two of my favorite traits, the courage to ask questions and the courtesy to do it well. She writes:

What about discussion with other learners? I tend to learn most when interacting with others, and hearing the questions they come up with.

I hope you don’t think I’m jumping on this because I disapprove. You of course don’t need or seek my approval. Instead, I’m in such awe of what you and PL are doing, that I just want to learn all I can about it.

Did you see how she did that? She asked her question, giving it a personal touch, and then followed the question up with a softening clarifier, which shows that she’s all too aware of the risk that someone might misinterpret her tone as judgmental. Now, I know for a fact that Vander Kitten isn’t like that in any way, but it was still a mighty kind thing to do regardless.

First, I’m really sorry, Vander Kitten. I have been meaning to answer this for the last week, but just haven’t taken the time to do so.

Second, I agree. Discussion – even a heated discussion – is one of the greatest ways to learn something. I really have to talk things out to make sense of complex ideas. Dad Windu might say I have to talk things to death, but that’s a different issue.

So yes, we do a lot of discussing between the three of us – as we read, watch or hear about things we discuss them in varying degrees of detail, sometimes once and sometimes again and again. Obviously, a fair share of the discussions between PL and I have to do with our formal learning, but we also do a lot of just talking about “stuff”. Stuff meaning things we see on the Discovery or History Channel, movies that we watch, Science Friday on NPR, books on tape, family/friend conversations, and the assorted things that we wonder about that are just rolling around in our brains. I know that you were probably thinking of other students his age, but remember that I’m doing a lot of learning right along side of him, so we’re often discussing and debating what we think something means or has meant. We had a great talk a couple of weeks ago about why the verbs “to be”, “to have” and “to eat” are irregular in languages that conjugate verbs (such as the English, Dutch and Latin languages that we’re studying).

PL and I were talking yesterday afternoon about the different “histories” you get from a variety of biographies of the same person. He had just finished reading a couple of biographies about Mozart and said, “I think it’s really interesting that each of these books is about Mozart, but each author picked a different thing to focus on. So even though they’re all about the same man, you only see the parts of his life that each author thought was most interesting or important. Why do you think people pick one thing over another? How do they decide what to include and to exclude? What makes someone decide that someone else’s life is worth writing about anyway?” Now that’s a discussion! (It was excellent, by the way, and although it pushed one of my planned lessons completely aside, I didn’t mind in the least.)

More to your intent, PL and his friends talk about what they’ve been learning frequently, asking questions and bringing up points from their own learning in the same subject or related topics. I’ve been really pleased to see how they are willing to challenge each other’s assumptions, while also letting someone have the time necessary to draw his thoughts out. From some other hs’d kids down the road, he’s also learning to hear someone else’s (crazy) ideas and decide when to push a point and when to let it go. That’s a lesson that’s best learned early, in my opinion.

He also goes to a monthly book club at B&N, where he discusses books (and ideas and games and movie adaptations) with anyone else that shows up. Our librarian, one of the hippest male librarians ever, is always pulling him aside to talk about new books that are in, or “Does this book sound interesting?”, or about what we’re studying and what topics PL wishes there was more info about.

So discussion, it’s a really big part of our lives and our learning.