I’ll admit it. I’ve always had a secret fondness for stories about one-room schools.
Why? Perhaps it’s the simpler time. Perhaps it’s the fact that they seemed to value good education and hard work. Perhaps it’s the family-like structure and community they fostered. Continue reading
Federalist Papers, T. Jefferson’s copy
In order to have a good grasp on the founding of America, it is often said that one should read the Declaration of Independence, the U.S. Constitution, and the Federalist Papers.
It’s easy to see why the Declaration and the Constitution make the list of must-reads, but why the Federalist Papers?
According to Gregory Maggs, law professor at George Washington University Law School, the Federalist Papers should be read because they provide “an extremely important source of evidence of the original meaning of the Constitution.” Maggs goes on to say:
“In the aggregate, academic writers and jurists have cited the Federalist Papers as evidence of the original meaning of the Constitution more than any other historical source except the text of the Constitution itself.”
Continue reading
Last summer (2015), George Washington University announced that it would no longer require students to submit their SAT or ACT scores as incoming freshmen. This move was made because the university “had concerns that students who could be successful at GW felt discouraged from applying if their scores were not as strong as their high school performance.”
Some students, however, did not get off so easy. Homeschoolers, the college noted, would still have to submit their SAT scores before they could be admitted. Continue reading
Several years ago I got into a conversation about classical education in which my conversation partner asked, “Isn’t that the kind of education that all those overachieving homeschoolers are into?”
I had to laugh. Yes, classical education has that reputation.
But the high-achieving nature of classical education hasn’t deterred interest. In fact, classical curricula are proliferating in homeschools, private schools, and charter schools. Continue reading
I was at a public park this weekend when I noticed a family preparing for a photo shoot. This family caught the attention of everyone else in the park as well, namely because of the screams emanating from one of its younger members.
The screams continued for the next quarter of an hour and it became apparent that the child’s parents were not fans of authoritative parenting. Instead, they seemed to be trying the mister-nice-guy approach to resolving their child’s tantrum. Continue reading
Over the weekend, I had an interesting chat with a friend about her daughter’s preschool program. She confessed to me that she couldn’t wait until the school year was over, for the preschool program dominated their lives. The schedule, she explained, interfered with other outside learning opportunities. At the same time, one of the main things her daughter was learning in the program was how to line up – perfect for fostering an environment of compulsion, but not for encouraging creativity or an enthusiasm for learning. Continue reading
It seems like every graduation season has its stories of whiz kids. The kids who are so ambitious and so accomplished that they’re graduating from high school, and even college, before the normal time.
One of the latest is 14-year-old Matthew McKenzie from Georgia, who received his high school diploma and associate degree the same day. And like many other whiz kids, McKenzie was – you guessed it – homeschooled. Matthew’s mother, Monique McCord tells the story:
“We would pull material from different textbooks and different resources so I would pretty much custom create his curriculum.” Continue reading
When it comes to writing, American kids just don’t cut it. Only 27 percent of eighth grade students achieve proficiency in the subject, according to The Nation’s Report Card.
That shouldn’t surprise us given the type of writing instruction which takes place in schools. Today’s writing instruction, a recent op-ed from The Hechinger Report explains, revolves around a child expressing his ideas on paper. Schools seem to believe that students have all the knowledge and inspiration locked up inside them. This knowledge simply needs to be let loose in order to create a written masterpiece. Continue reading
By now, many parents know there is something seriously wrong with the average American school. Time and again, children go into the school system as bright bundles of energy, curious about the surrounding world, and time and again, they stagger through the system frustrated and losing their interest in learning. Unfortunately, parents have firsthand knowledge of what former New York teacher John Taylor Gatto explained in his book, Weapons of Mass Instruction:
“After a long life, and thirty years in the public school trenches, I’ve concluded that genius is as common as dirt. We suppress genius because we haven’t yet figured out how to manage a population of educated men and women. The solution, I think, is simple and glorious. Let them manage themselves.”
That’s easy enough to say, but is it actually possible to do? Continue reading
High school English teacher Paul Barnwell made two interesting observations in July of 2016 in The Atlantic.
The first was that his students have no moral compass. Barnwell discovered this when discussing various ethical issues with his class. His students were, he found, quite oblivious to internationally and historically accepted values of moral living. Continue reading
“My dog ate my homework” has long been the default excuse for students who miss the mark with their school assignments.
But high school students in New Zealand appear to have moved beyond this tired excuse, for instead of blaming the dog, they are turning their own ignorance into an excuse for victimhood.
According to The Guardian, New Zealand students in their last year of high school sat for an important history exam in the middle of November. During the exam, students were asked to write an essay on the Julius Caesar quote, “Events of importance are the result of trivial causes.” Continue reading
Ethel Kennedy reading…
Earlier this year, The Wall Street Journal ran an article entitled “The Great Gift of Reading Aloud,” in which author Meghan Gurdon reflects on how she implemented family reading time in her household.
Gurdon describes read-aloud time as “one of the great joys of our family life” which has brought extreme benefits to herself, her husband, and her five children.
Some of these benefits include the following: Continue reading
Although homeschool anecdotes are a dime a dozen, hardcore statistics on this emerging education trend are often few and far between.
But on Tuesday, the U.S. Department of Education released the latest official numbers on homeschooling in America. Not surprisingly, they continue to rise. Continue reading
…and that’s showing up in their friendships
I burst out laughing the other day while reading a friend’s Facebook status. He explained that he and his two grade school sons were watching Anne of Green Gables when they came to the part where Anne and Diana have a conversation while standing on a cliff overlooking the sea. The youngest son suddenly blurted out, “Anne better watch out, Diana might push her off the cliff.” Continue reading
Everyone expects the first week of school to contain some hiccups. Even though we all know that our children are perfect angels and would never give their teachers trouble, the transition to schedules and classmates can also contain behavior problems that mom and dad will eventually hear about.
What most parents don’t expect to hear, however, is that their child got into trouble for good manners. Continue reading
There’s always something thrilling about the start of a new school year or semester. New clothes to wear. Fresh books to explore. New teachers to meet. It’s all become a part of what we call back-to-school and the education experience.
Of course, many of us will quickly agree that the new books and clothes aren’t really what matter. It is the ideas we learn and the schooling we get that make the real difference both in the present and in the future. Continue reading
By now, it’s a well-known fact that American adults don’t read. Fourteen percent can’t read at all. Thirteen percent can’t read proficiently. And according to Pew, one in four adults didn’t even bother to pick up a book in the last year Flaggers.
But these are adults, right? They’re busy with work and parenting and social responsibilities and don’t have time for things like reading.
High school kids are a different matter. After all, they spend a lot of their time in school. Wouldn’t that fact alone help them get a fair number of books under their belt? Continue reading
J. R. R. Tolkien is one of the most famous authors of the 20th century. Known for the mythical worlds and creatures he presented in The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings, Tolkien is beloved for his way with words and his imaginative genius.
Tolkien’s fame, lovability, and worldwide influence are the types of things most parents dream of seeing flower and bloom in their own children. Unfortunately, there is no set formula that parents can follow to cultivate children who are successful and impactful like Tolkien. However, parents can glean a number of insights from Tolkien’s upbringing in the hopes of awakening some of the same hidden genius in their own offspring. Continue reading
Laura Ingalls Wilder
How did the Ingalls girls get such a stellar education?
The education received by the characters in the Little House on the Prairie books has long amazed readers. How in the world did the Ingalls girls manage to get such a stellar education in the midst of primitive surroundings and a transitory lifestyle in the 19th century?
In honor of Laura’s 151st birthday on February 7th (2018), here are five key educational practices that may have contributed to her success: Continue reading
Last fall we shared a new bit of preschool research conducted by the Peabody Research Institute at Vanderbilt University. The research found that Tennessee’s state-funded Voluntary Prekindergarten program made little difference in giving children a head start in learning. In fact, the time in preschool actually seemed to make children fall behind their peers who had not attended. Continue reading