A good friend of some years dropped an email a few days about with some reflections on how he might envision his children being educated. Not that he has kids, mind you, but he was thinking ahead. His own education was fairly non-traditional, and somehow, despite being raised by wolves, turned out relatively brilliant. Except when he’s being stupid, of course.
Point being, his musings primarily concerned ways that a small community might go about organizing to provide home schooling for more than one child, utilizing the expertise of everyone in that community. In this way, his expertise in (say) Physics might be leveraged, while someone else’s expertise in Literature or Ecology would be utilized elsewhere.
I think, however, that he glossed over what probably matters most in the scenario he laid out. One of his starting assumptions was
I’m also proceeding from the standpoint of someone who will one day be a parent, and furthermore the parent of a child who … will get lots of love and attention at home.
I think that might be the single most important factor in the whole equation. Instead of worrying about expertise in Physics or Ecology, you could go a long way to having parents in a community host homework sessions for a group of students, where the parents take turns with small groups of kids asking them questions about their homework, taking interest in what they do, etc. Or, put more simply, I don’t think expertise matters in this situation, but I think the attention and respect are key.
It was an interesting email to receive as CSCS is starting up in a few days. We’ll see how many students show up this year, but the premise is daunting (yet exciting) from an instructor’s point of view: as long as we don’t do things that suck, the students will show up. Or, as long as we respect the time the students are putting in, I’ve noticed that the students respect our time as well, and participate actively. Working with things the students are interested in (little robots) helps out, so I think it’s a healthy combination of respect and motivation that play a key part.
Is my friend’s “home school collective” related to CSCS? I think so, because I think that capturing a student’s imagination is a critical first step in the learning process. And I think that this was implicitly (and somewhat explicitly) behind my friend’s preflections on his children’s future education: how can I get them to be excited about learning (because I don’t think your typical school environment manages)?