You Don't Need a Co-op or a Chromebook for Your Homeschool
You just need books... and more books...
It’s late August, so in every local homeschool Facebook group I’m in, I see people asking for co-op recommendations. In every national group, I see people asking for online programs. It’s driving me nuts.
Don’t get me wrong, my kids do a co-op-like program and an online Judaics program to fill gaps. But the tone and message of the posts I’m seeing is clear: Help! I can’t do this! Can someone please do it for me?
If you’ve decided to homeschool, you likely know something is wrong in our education system. You see the test scores, you see the violence and mental health epidemics, and you may even begin to question “What is the point of an education? Why do we do it this way?”
But there’s still a voice inside of you that says that you can’t do it. That you need experts to take over and take the reins.
So what can parents do if they feel ill-equipped to educate? This is a Substack devoted to books for a reason.
Read.
I cannot understate the power of reading aloud. There are entire books written on it, in fact. If I could send every new parent a book, it would be on this.
Parents deciding to take on the task of home education need to shift their perspective on their role. We are not teachers, we are facilitators. Instead of teaching kids art, we facilitate their exposure to it. Instead of teaching literature, we read to them and let C.S. Lewis and Beatrix Potter do the teaching. And yes, sometimes, in our roles as facilitators, we’ll find outside calculus or Latin teachers, online or in a co-op. But those teachers aren’t doing the job for us, they are joining the team that parents are head coaches of.
How can parents who want to reorient their thinking on education do some professional development about their new role? Here are some places to start:
Weapons of Mass Destruction by John Taylor Gatto
John Taylor Gatto's Weapons of Mass Instruction , now available in paperback, focuses on mechanisms of traditional education which cripple imagination, discourage critical thinking, and create a false view of learning as a byproduct of rote-memorization drills. Gatto's earlier book, Dumbing Us Down , introduced the now-famous expression of the title into the common vernacular. Weapons of Mass Instruction adds another chilling metaphor to the brief against conventional schooling.
Gatto demonstrates that the harm school inflicts is rational and deliberate. The real function of pedagogy, he argues, is to render the common population manageable. To that end, young people must be conditioned to rely upon experts, to remain divided from natural alliances and to accept disconnections from their own lived experiences. They must at all costs be discouraged from developing self-reliance and independence.
For the Children's Sake: Foundations of Education for Home and School by Susan Schaeffer Macaulay
Every parent and teacher wants to give his or her children the best education possible. They hope that the teaching they provide is a joyful adventure, a celebration of life, and preparation for living. But sadly, most education today falls short of this goal.
For the Children’s Sake imagines what education can be based on a Christian understanding of the meaning of life and what it means to be human―a child, a parent, a teacher. The central ideas have been proven over many years and in almost every kind of educational situation, including ideas that author Susan Schaeffer Macaulay and her husband, Ranald, have implemented in their own family and school experience.
Jim Trelease's Read-Aloud Handbook by Jim Trelease
Recommended by "Dear Abby" upon its first publication in 1982, millions of parents and educators have turned to Jim Trelease's beloved classic for more than three decades to help countless children become avid readers through awakening their imaginations and improving their language skills. Jim Trelease's Read-Aloud Handbook, updated and revised by education specialist Cyndi Giorgis, discusses the benefits, the rewards, and the importance of reading aloud to children of a new generation. Supported by delightful anecdotes as well as the latest research, an updated treasury of book recommendations curated with an eye for diversity, Jim Trelease's Read-Aloud Handbook offers proven techniques and strategies for helping children of all backgrounds and abilities discover the pleasures of reading and setting them on the road to becoming lifelong readers.
The homeschool approach of past generations is gone—including the stigma of socially awkward kids, conservative clothes, and a classroom setting replicated in the home. The Wild + Free movement is focused on a love of nature, reading great books, pursuing interests and hobbies, making the entire world a classroom, and prolonging the wonder of childhood, an appealing philosophy that is unpacked in the pages of this book
The Call of the Wild and Free offers advice, information, and positive encouragement for parents considering homeschooling, those currently in the trenches looking for inspiration, as well as parents, educators, and caregivers who want supplementary resources to enhance their kids’ traditional educations.
The Well-Trained Mind: A Guide to Classical Education at Home by Susan Wise Bauer
The Well-Trained Mind will instruct you, step by step, on how to give your child an academically rigorous, comprehensive education from preschool through high school―one that will train him or her to read, to think, to understand, to be well-rounded and curious about learning. Veteran home educators Susan Wise Bauer and Jessie Wise outline the classical pattern of education called the trivium, which organizes learning around the maturing capacity of the child’s mind and comprises three stages: the elementary school “grammar stage,” when the building blocks of information are absorbed through memorization and rules; the middle school “logic stage,” in which the student begins to think more analytically; and the high-school “rhetoric stage,” where the student learns to write and speak with force and originality. Using this theory as your model, you’ll be able to instruct your child―whether full-time or as a supplement to classroom education―in all levels of reading, writing, history, geography, mathematics, science, foreign languages, rhetoric, logic, art, and music, regardless of your own aptitude in those subjects.
The homeschool world is not immune to the forces taking hold in the public education space. Even some of the resources I’ve listed here have gone a bit off the deep end (I’ll be working on a side project related to this; I’ll announce it here). Just last week, I saw one prominent homeschool influencer tell her audience if you don’t decide to study one artist of color every year, the only possible reason is basically that you’re racist. This is an aside, but given that I’m recommending a few of these books I feel the need to caveat my endorsements that while I appreciate these books, I don’t or won’t support everything they’re doing in the present.
Tell us in the comments: What books do you recommend to folks to red pill them on education and homeschooling?
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