Testing -- Help or Hindrance to Learning?

“I had scarcely passed my twelfth birthday when I entered the inhospitable regions of examinations, through which for the next seven years I was destined to journey. These examinations were a great trial to me. The subjects which were dearest to the examiners were almost invariably those I fancied least. I would have liked to have been examined in history, poetry and writing essays.

The examiners, on the other hand, were partial to Latin and mathematics. And their will prevailed. Moreover, the questions which they asked on both these subjects were almost invariably those to which I was unable to suggest a satisfactory answer. I should have liked to be asked to say what I knew. They always tried to ask what I did not know. When I would have willingly displayed my knowledge, they sought to expose my ignorance. This sort of treatment had only one result: I did not do well in examinations.“

Another bit from Winston Churchill's My Early Life -- a very good book, by the way, humorous and elegantly written.

Laura, in her comment to my last post, brought up the emphasis on testing in the "traditional" education circles. This article about ED Hirsch's "Core Knowledge" education notes:

The "Massachusetts miracle," in which Bay State students' soaring test scores broke records, was the direct consequence of the state legislature's passage of the 1993 Education Reform Act, which established knowledge-based standards for all grades and a rigorous testing system linked to the new standards. And those standards, Massachusetts reformers have acknowledged, are Hirsch's legacy.

Certainly there are many, many tests in the charter program we are using. Most lessons have an "assessment" at the end to check for mastery, and there are also more comprehensive assessments after each unit in each subject. In addition to this, there are state standardized tests at the beginning and end of each school year. And if that's not enough, the children are supposed to spend time regularly at Study Island, where they work on state standards through quizzes -- which can be in game format as well as in interactive worksheet or standard test form.

Is it too much? Or not enough, in the sense that it is not about real learning? I certainly think that in the wider public sense, an over-emphasis on testing and assessment can be detrimental to education. It can be stressful, it can distort real education, it can be used to put kids in tracks and thus have a corrupting effect on our democratic tradition. As Diane Ravitch notes, Tests Can Be Misused.

On the other hand, historically it has been somewhat difficult to think of a workable and honest alternative to testing. De-emphasizing testing, on a public level, can be dishonest to the children. Where a virtual monopoly is concerned, a lack of testing can be intertwined with a lack of accountability. (as an outsider, it's easy for me to conclude then that the system is broken; and as a former student, I'd prefer that the schools test academics, given that teaching academics is actually what they are in existence for, rather than engage in creepy subjective personal assessments or just give up any kind of real goal at all).

As a parent who homeschools and has kids in college and high school, I can accept that testing exists and is of real importance in life. College-prep testing is not going to go away. Nor is job-testing. And I don't see anything wrong with that so long as there are alternatives for people that don't test well in narrow academic subjects.

Now, as a homeschooler practicing education in my own home? Personally, I haven't found the heavy emphasis on testing in the K12 charter school to be a problem. In fact, being very honest, the emphasis on tests is one of the advantages of the program for me. I might feel differently if my kids were being brought down by the tests or were the type of kids that don't test well, but as it stands:

1. Both the kids rather like the tests than otherwise.... it gives them a marker of progress, even if slightly artificial.
2. The tests allow me to see where the kids are and where they still need work.

My kids like the tests, I think, because it's a pleasure to go over material that one knows well. And it's a pleasure to do well; and it's not catastrophic, in our environment, to do poorly. The way the system works, if a child falls short on an assessment, he reviews and does it again until he passes. At the same time, falling short is a useful yellow alert for me, as the teacher, that there is a problem with how the material was taught or learned. It has no "real world" effect -- unlike in public schools, where the child who has fallen short on an assessment has to drag a cumulative burden of poor grades and thus adds discouragement or fear to whatever learning difficulty he already had. In our homeschool, it merely means tweaking -- me working with the kid, or the kid working more carefully -- until the material is known.

I think children can feel a bit disoriented when they don't quite know what the expectations are in a subject. So having the expectations clearcut and eminently reachable is a bonus for their confidence level. In some ways, it can be existentially troubling to know you are being assessed but not know exactly in what way or using what standards. Having things clearcut has minimized some of the stress for both me and the kids.

I think it parallels the Montessori system in some ways. In the Montessori system, the children work with the materials many, many times if they need to. They set their own pace and mastery is the goal. I think that for kids, this is very satisfying -- to know the task and know it can be mastered and that they are not "failures" if they don't.

The Jesuits were very firm advocates of testing. They pinned their education on daily, weekly, monthly, and term quizzes, tests and exams. And their students enjoyed notable success in all walks of life. There were other aspects to the Ignatian educational success besides testing. For example, a solid sacramental life, a great intellectual and moral example of well-educated teachers who were also good men.

Something called the Testing Effect has been measured. From this post on The Value of Testing:

The journal Psychological Science noted this outcome in a 2006 report. According to the researchers, “Taking a memory test not only assesses what one knows, but also enhances later retention, a phenomenon known as the testing effect.” They added, “Testing is a powerful means of improving learning, not just assessing.”

For my first grader, the tests aren't really tests for him. They are oriented towards review and overlearning. For my 8th grader, for whom "real world measurements" have become more important, the tests provide incentive and also more reliable remembering of key points that are important for later study.

"Memoria" and Core Knowledge

(I'm writing notes as I proceed through Hirsch's The Schools We Need and Why We Don't Have Them, and this blog is sort of my notebook. Since I'm notetaking, I'm raising questions in my mind rather than answering them. So I apologize if this comes off as rambling and not very conclusive. )

The development of real-world language skill results, then, in functional masteries which are extremely complex in their interactions but which can be schematized for convenience into three aspects:

(1) Mastery of the continually repeated formal elements of language to the point of automaticity
(2) The gaining of a content-rich knowledge base represented by particular word meanings and cultural conventions
(3) The successful active deployment of these elements in comprehension and problem-solving.

This general pattern holds not just for speaking and listening but also for reading, where the mastery of decoding skills belongs to the realm of continually repeated formal elements that need to become unconscious and automatic.

The same three-part pattern holds for penmanship and composition, where a great deal of effort is required to habituate the learner to the continually repeated formal elements of making letters and words, so that level-one letter formation becomes sufficiently automatic so as not to interfere with the conscious deployment of written words to convey meaning. Because of the limitations of working memory, the more these formal and foundational processes are automatic, the more effectively the comprehension, expression, and problem-solving aspects of any intellectual skill can be deployed. Higher-level skills critically depend upon the automatic mastery of repeated lower-level activities.

from The Schools We Need by ED Hirsch. Also see The Magical Number Seven.

If you look at the three essentials he mentions above, you can probably see the temptation to make an analogy to the traditional classical trivium of grammar, dialectic and rhetoric. Here's an example.

Aristotle writes:

All instruction given or received by way of argument proceeds from pre-existent knowledge.

and Aquinas wrote:

“The nature of the true consists in a conformity of thing and intellect....”

“Our knowledge, taking its start from things, proceeds in this order. First, it begins in sense; second it is completed in the intellect.”

One of the five canons of rhetoric is Memoria, which meant not rote memorization but a rich stock of knowledge upon which to base communication, and it strikes me that Hirsch is evoking this concept when he talks about "core knowledge". Knowledge, he affirms, rests upon knowledge. (here's an interesting article called "On Cultural Literacy" -- a View from Rhetorical Tradition).

Given all that, it makes sense for Hirsch to hold that learning needs to be based on knowledge of real things, not simply on empty structures or methods. And that knowledge of real things is intrinsically related to language. Ordinary verbal communication can only take most of us so far -- higher-level reasoning is very much intertwined with reading and with systematic verbal instruction such as is found in lecture or seminar formats. He discusses the Fourth Grade Reading Gap -- reading ability at the "content" levels is based not so much upon decoding strategies as on understanding of syntactic conventions and vocabulary -- vocabulary not meaning mere word lists but rather, understanding of words in their context.

To use an example that comes to mind, Paddy noticed "Nile" written in some context and his eyes brightened. "The Nile River!" he exclaimed in delight. It was because he had been learning about Ancient Egypt in his history studies. A little door was now unlocked in his mind. Another example is how we learned recently about how the leaves change in autumn. Of course, Paddy had seen leaves turn red and fall before, but somehow discussing it for science opened a verbal door and he was thrilled when we walked through fallen red and gold leaves later that day.

Charlotte Mason talks about the role of knowledge using the example of how we all, having once heard a name or learned something, seem to stumble across it everywhere all of a sudden. This sense that everything is connected is one of the purest delights given to human beings and is a motivator for further learning. Hirsch's point is that given a set of children in a classroom, the ones that have already discussed and thought about the Nile delta or leaves falling will be able to build on this in other contexts while the ones that don't have the prior knowledge will have to construct in a bigger hurry. This sort of thing leaves disadvantaged children behind much further and faster than it does children who have access to books and verbalized experiences in their own homes.

I think this CLAA article on True Education makes a good point that is necessary to make, that things like the Nile and even leaves falling don't of themselves lead to anything beyond the material world. It's not so much that these things are unworthy to know, as that they aren't sufficient and they can become a distraction.

Another thing about the Nile, in particular, is that it is for most of us second-hand knowledge. Paddy believes on faith, basically, that the Nile exists as a reality, but neither he or I have seen it in reality, touched it, or been part of the ancient Egyptian society. Our modern world tends to focus overmuch on material things as "realities" not realizing that to most of us, concepts like the orbit of the planets around the Sun are taken on simple faith and not really "known". This doesn't detract from Hirsch's point that knowledge leads to knowledge, but it does put it in perspective. Nor does it necessarily detract from the worthiness of such knowledge, because the very essence of cultural transmission is that it leads from mere appearances and accumulations of memory to things beyond.

Aristotle writes:

The animals other than man live by appearances and memories, and have but little of connected experience; but the human race lives also by art and reasonings. Now from memory experience is produced in men; for the several memories of the same thing produce finally the capacity for a single experience. And experience seems pretty much like science and art, but really science and art come to men through experience; for 'experience made art', as Polus says, 'but inexperience luck.' Now art arises when from many notions gained by experience one universal judgement about a class of objects is produced.

But he goes on to say of the distinction between wisdom and mere memory, even memory that proceeds to experience and judgment, that wisdom is ordered to the higher things:

We suppose first, then, that the wise man knows all things, as far as possible, although he has not knowledge of each of them in detail; secondly, that he who can learn things that are difficult, and not easy for man to know, is wise (sense-perception is common to all, and therefore easy and no mark of Wisdom); again, that he who is more exact and more capable of teaching the causes is wiser, in every branch of knowledge; and that of the sciences, also, that which is desirable on its own account and for the sake of knowing it is more of the nature of Wisdom than that which is desirable on account of its results, and the superior science is more of the nature of Wisdom than the ancillary; for the wise man must not be ordered but must order, and he must not obey another, but the less wise must obey him.

"Such and so many are the notions, then, which we have about Wisdom and the wise. Now of these characteristics that of knowing all things must belong to him who has in the highest degree universal knowledge; for he knows in a sense all the instances that fall under the universal. And these things, the most universal, are on the whole the hardest for men to know; for they are farthest from the senses. And the most exact of the sciences are those which deal most with first principles; for those which involve fewer principles are more exact than those which involve additional principles, e.g. arithmetic than geometry.

and finally, in opposition to the idea of knowledge for merely utilitarian purposes -- "production" he calls it:

That it is not a science of production is clear even from the history of the earliest philosophers. For it is owing to their wonder that men both now begin and at first began to philosophize; they wondered originally at the obvious difficulties, then advanced little by little and stated difficulties about the greater matters, e.g. about the phenomena of the moon and those of the sun and of the stars, and about the genesis of the universe. And a man who is puzzled and wonders thinks himself ignorant (whence even the lover of myth is in a sense a lover of Wisdom, for the myth is composed of wonders); therefore since they philosophized order to escape from ignorance, evidently they were pursuing science in order to know, and not for any utilitarian end. And this is confirmed by the facts; for it was when almost all the necessities of life and the things that make for comfort and recreation had been secured, that such knowledge began to be sought. Evidently then we do not seek it for the sake of any other advantage; but as the man is free, we say, who exists for his own sake and not for another's, so we pursue this as the only free science, for it alone exists for its own sake.

To go back to Paddy and the falling leaves -- focusing on them in conversation, in "studium" led to a new sense of wonder which his senses affirmed. Just living through six years of leaves falling in autumn did not wake up that sense of wonder and mystery that potentially leads to more questions and answers.

The Pause that Refreshes

Kieron liked this US state placement game and got quite good at it yesterday.

One thing I am liking about the K12 schedule is that every few days there is an "optional" or "choose your own" day in a subject. They don't come all at once. So one day there may be an option on Algebra, another day in history. Sometimes there are two in one day and Kieron feels like he hit the jackpot.

I usually don't let him have that time off altogether --- mean mom! Instead I have him do a related reading or a game or quiz like the geography one linked above. But it's usually something short that he sort of likes. I only intended him to do the map game once, but instead he played it for over 30 minutes.

I was going to say that if I ever went back to DIY I might use the same system. However, I'm not sure if I would. There's something psychologically different about having a computer assignment sheet that I would have to work to replace if we went back to indie mode. We used to have days off every once in a while when life got in the way of academics. However, the California charter expects you to stick to the California school schedule, so you can't call days off even if, like last week, you have a houseful of very ill children and are running to various doctors for various health reasons. You have to keep logging attendance (though you don't HAVE to plug through the lessons under those circumstances-- you can have a reading day and hands-on math review or something more suited to ill kids, much like we used to do on sick days in the past).

That is a potential downside and one of the reasons I don't think I could have done this when Aidan was sicker. But it does simplify things, too. I find that we can tuck lessons into pockets of the day. I actually rather like this better than a mad rush to get everything done in the morning. Yesterday the day stretched from 9 am, when we started reading The Two Towers, to 6 pm, when Kieron finished his algebra. But we were by no means on task all that time. We took a walk, we ran a couple of errands in the village, we made store pizza for lunch, an uncommon treat; I talked to Liam about the philosophy of physics for quite a while, as the boys played Bionicles. Paddy and I did the molecule experiment and I had Kieron watch so he could help us discuss it. Kieron went looking for a book to read, found The Prince and the Pauper, and hid himself for about an hour to read it. So we have our normal life around the corners of the charter life.

But Kieron does get a thrill out of those "Optionals".

Week Two Wrap-Up

There was an interesting thread at Real Learning about "high school expectations". A mom mentioned that after seeing what was expected at a local high school, she wondered if her homeschool expectations were too high. A lot of people chimed in. Anyway, my "thought for the week" as I embarked on the second week of the K12 curriculum was that in our typical DIY relaxed mode days, we did a LOT, more than it would have seemed on the surface. It's odd because I was afraid that K12 would be overwhelming for us. But not so. In some ways it's heartening to see once again that in our mode of past years we did things differently, but not the "easy way". Unschooly types and eclectic classical or CM-y types, take heart! You are probably doing way more than you think you are ;-0.
-----------------------------

We settled into more of a routine this week. Our new schedule of more rambling mornings, with read alouds, a warm breakfast, art or project time and then nature walk is working well. We eat an early lunch and then settle down about noon to get through the bulk of the other things to do.

This is more doable for us now that we have X amount to get through. It's easy for the kids to see what's assigned for the day and where they are in finishing it. You can't really "cheat" and do things the shallow way because there are assessments to show mastery (though you CAN postpone the assessments if you don't think the child has it down, especially in the younger grades.

Paddy still has restless moments but has more of a sense of what's involved so he isn't quite as distracted and irritated when I call him to work. I think also it has helped that he has built up a store of knowledge, so it is partly review and not all new and foreign.
-----------------------------

Topics Covered with Paddy:

Phonics -- digraphs -- review to him in one way, since he can read, but new in that he is not used to thinking about the sound elements that make up words. This is really basically a spelling lesson. We work with word tiles mostly. We do rhymes and "word chains" where you change one sound in the word and read the new word formed. Then we practice handwriting for a few minutes, usually along with whatever drawing or coloring projects are supposed to be done.

Mathematics -- well, we're past numbers up to 12 which he has known since he was 2 or 3! Most of this unit was learning how to write the numbers. Next is simple addition, which he has known about since he was 4. The teacher said we could target the assessments and move through quickly.

Language Arts -- I mostly like this course. It's divided into literature, grammar, and composition. The literature is folk tales and childrens' classics and a heavy emphasis on poetry. Whenever there is a new story, say Sylvester and the Magic Pebble, it is reread over a period of three days (like Five in a Row) and there are little projects and discussion topics associated with the readings so you develop basic lit ana skills. You do literature responses through pictures and verbal discussions. Some of it I modify a bit to make it closer to something that will seize his imagination. .... a more narration-oriented approach.

The grammar strand is right now concerned with "types of sentences". I downloaded some old English Lessons books from Google and used their lessons as topic starters because they intrigued him more than the sort of basic sentences that were provided.

History -- we are just finishing a unit on the world. ... continents and major oceans, some landforms, and cardinal directions. Then there was a story that introduced the words "history" and "historian". The next lesson is about archaeology and that wraps up the unit. Then we move to Ancient Egypt. He was squirrelly and restless at first with this subject. I tried to make it more interesting by hiding a chocolate chip and telling him where to find it by means of N-S-E-W, finding a few computer games to reinforce continent names and locations, showing him the globe and talking about where different people were and different things took place -- that kind of thing. He started getting more with the program as the unit went on. He did a great chalkboard narration of the landforms, sketching them and describing what they were like. When he wants to get on board, he does a great job.

Science -- units of measurement. This was not particularly interesting to him at first, either. He had no reason to care much what units of measurement were used for measuring length, mass, temperature or volume. Each type of measurement had a lab component. It helped that Kieron is doing a parallel but more complex unit at the same time, so some of their labs overlapped. There were a couple of messy but pretty intriguing volume labs in the kitchen. Today he measured temperatures and we had a "class" for his Bionicles. He much preferred answering questions posed to the Bionicles than to himself.

Art -- an introduction to looking at works of art, with a focus on lines and how they evoke mood. A lot of these classes are a bit more aggressive in having the child come to a given conclusion than our usual CMy, unschooly, discursive approach. I wouldn't be talking about types of lines and the emotion they evoke with a six year old under normal circumstances. But I'm going with it. The art is good quality art; we've never been successful with art appreciation in the past in any form. It has always gotten pushed to the back burner. So it's like I am out-sourcing and just supporting what is taught, even if I'm not on exactly the same page.

Music -- we are just getting this off the ground.

Almost forgot! Our reading time -- in the morning I read Lord of the Rings to anyone who's around. At lunch time I read Paddy's Language Arts stories or else something else we are going through. At bedtime he has a bedtime snack and another reading time that stretches out to his bedtime. We're reading Thornton's Burgess's Animal Book, some story anthologies, Chatterer the Red Squirrel, and something else I can't remember. Just before sleep time I read him a bit of non-fiction from What Your First Grader Needs to Know. I tease him that I'm trying to bore him so he'll fall asleep. So of course, then he tries to stay awake to listen!

----------------

I've run out of time, so I won't go into much detail with Kieron. He has his own student site associated with mine, but his own. He goes there and looks up his assignments. I spend a fair amount of time helping him and making sure he doesn't skip through the parts he doesn't want to do ;-). Sometimes we change the parameters of the assignment a bit. The rule is that we avoid changing them downwards. If we make a modification it has to be a step up, just more suited to his interests. For example, he was supposed to make a clay and shoebox miniature of an art gallery. I let him change it to a science museum. He met and exceeded the parameters and worked on it much more seriously than required. If I help him by typing out the responses to the study questions in history, I extend them by asking extra questions and discussing details to make sure his understanding isn't just a "fill the blank" type one.

He was reading a LOT of books from our shelves and last week wrote a nice 3-page story, the best he's done yet. It was called "The Lair". He was quite happy with it.

This weekend I'm going to plan our religion component. It dropped to bare bones while I was getting the hang of the K12 thing,

Cultural Literacy

I've been hoping to write a bit about the philosophy behind K12. I am not very philosophically focused these days, but I'd like to at least get the opening lines drawn. So I've been working on this in bits and pieces. Sorry if it comes out scattered!

First of all, to get this part out of the way -- here's an extensive review of the K12 online curriculum itself, by Cathy Duffy. An issue that comes up regularly in the homeschool world is whether or not any public school charter program is really homeschooling. This topic is not my concern right now. I have never really formed an opinion either way. I have a lot of friends who homeschool under charters. I don't think there are strictly philosophical concerns. Why shouldn't taxpayers receive public funding for their childrens' education? The concerns are logistical. How much control do you have to surrender? Is it too much? Will it lead to too much? Veteran homeschoolers who have fought intense legal and civic battles in the past are likely to be suspicious of government hand-outs in exchange for accountability. These seem to be the main issues as far as I can tell, but I am not well informed on this.

Another issue that comes up in Duffy's review is the religious one. Can you still give your children an education "permeated with Christian piety" (Pope Pius's words) when you're using a largely secular curriculum? This is an interesting issue to me, but I'm not going to discuss it in this post since I'm still trying to think it through (and work it through day to day).

I'm not going to talk about those issues for the present, though I make no guarantees for the future. Here, I'm just talking about what the program is about as far as what its curriculum IS and why it is the way it is. Well, my understanding of it, anyway. Bear with me! Writing helps me think!

To start with:

The K12 program is quite heavily based on ED Hirsch's "Cultural Literacy" ideas which were applied in the "What Your Nth Grader Needs to Know" Core Knowledge series that I've had on my bookshelves forever. Now whether Hirsch would go along with the K12 program which was devised by William Bennett is another question. All I know

Hirsch was a scholar studying how people comprehend literature for a book he was writing on the philosophy of composition. By chance, in a study involving southern college students reading a text on Grant and Lee, he found that context -- a background of knowledge -- affected comprehension of a given passage more than almost any other variable. To be more accurate, he found that readers could judge the literary style and correctness of a passage FAR better if they comprehended the text. And a key factor in comprehension was this context or background knowledge.

Following this finding through, he did or researched more studies of a similar nature. He found that for much writing beyond simple primer texts, writing relies upon a certain amount of general prior knowledge. When this background is there, a text can be subtle, nuanced and concise. When the background is lacking, the text has to be verbose, simplified and circuitous.

Even with the technical knowledge required to read words and sentences, children from deprived backgrounds often hit a wall as soon as the reading material reaches a certain level of complexity and subtlety. Hirsch argues that this is because reading well requires more than just ability to decode. It requires some implicit knowledge that is brought to the text by the reader.

He devised the term "cultural literacy" for this implicit knowledge or contextual understanding. The term was disliked by many who thought this was some sort of cultural imperialism. Here in this interview he admits that he wishes he'd chosen a different term to avoid the controversy. However, his ideas had a wide impact perhaps partly because of this very controversy.

Hirsch argues that literacy is THE skill needed for the citizenry of a country founded on democratic principles. And this level of literacy depends on knowledge. Knowledge builds onto knowledge, or "hooks" on to it. If you read an article about Grant and Lee and you already know something about the Civil War, you are likely to learn more. If you read the same article knowing nothing about them, you will struggle.

As I mentioned, Hirsch has been accused of being conservative (in fact, he votes Democrat) and of trying to impose a WASP worldview on a multicultural society. He argues that in fact his agenda is egalitarian. The kids from middle class homes generally pick up a lot of cultural context from dinner table discussions, reading and so on. If the schools don't teach a core curriculum, these kids still become literate. The ones who fall through the gap are the ones that have no opportunity to pick up the knowledge elsewhere.

He also argues that he is not trying to impose a cast-iron traditional agenda on the curriculum.

For one thing, he says that it's a benefit to our country that kids come from very different homes with different cultural backgrounds. He doesn't want the schools to *replace* this but rather to provide a rich secondary common stock of knowledge that is unique to our country.

His second point is that the "core knowledge" is not static and rigid. It's an organic, flexible thing. For instance, "9/11" had no meaning a decade ago. "Watergate" had no cultural significance a half century ago. While the periphery of the core is in flux, there is a stable inner center, because of our literary tradition. If you don't know something about the Bible or Greek myths, you will miss a LOT of allusions in many books. That is NOT going to change so long as we want to read Shakespeare or Keats.

He is not arguing that our United States body of core knowledge is the only one possible or somehow absolutely the best. A child growing up in Japan would have a different body of cultural literacy to learn. The point is that for the sake of civic discourse, this body be explicitly taught in an orderly fashion in the public schools.

He doesn't carry the argument further, but I would imagine that these various bodies of core knowledge would have value in communications between cultures as well.

For one thing -- there are generally universal ideas that transcend the culture and extend to the larger human sphere of concern. Seeing the same ideas and problems posed in very different cultures is intellectually invigorating and valuable.

Secondly -- if this acculturation and transmission of tradition is made systematic and coherent -- it is easier for those from other cultures to pick up on it. A key example would be the Greek body of literature and philosophy. None of it was developed for us "barbarians"; rather the contrary, one would say. However, it has had an unparalleled fruitfulness across time and place. You could well argue that part of this was because of the Greek dialectic ability. Because they were taught and formed very carefully in their cultural background, and because they were expected to ponder, evaluate and interact with this body of formative knowledge, they also were able to communicate with a clarity and depth that has echoed like voices across the centuries and miles.

So though Hirsch doesn't go there in "Cultural Literacy" at least, I think you could make a case for a lively transmission of cultural literacy as a communication device to other cultures as well. Rather than locking each culture into its own values and traditions, it gives them the tools to transcend that. Just a thought though, and it may be off base. I can get carried away ;-).

Daily Schedule

I had one stressful day last week. Paddy didn't want to do his schoolwork. Kieron was delaying and Aidan was in a bad mood. After that things got better and we've evolved a daily routine that actually might work well for us. I put it below.

Or view it in docx form.

One of the things Paddy was balking most about was, oddly, the art projects. I guess he hasn't had past experience with "assigned" art and I can understand his feelings of resistance. So I started something that I was thinking about during the summer -- having a morning free Drawing/Writing time. It's going to be mostly undirected but I think once Paddy is warmed up he won't mind doing a little directed work.

So on Friday we had an art hour and it went really well. The only problem was that Aidan gets stressed for some reason by the other kids doing crafts or art. So he ended the hour in a horrible mood. Consequently I'm putting an outdoor hour in right after the art hour. That way we can go for a walk, get some exercise and fresh air and hopefully come back refreshed. Aidan loves the outdoors and hasn't been able to go outside as much because our neighbor told us that a big mountain cat has been seen in our area.

Kieron seems to be inclined to start working on his K12 academics about noon, after an early lunch. That was frustrating me but I made the decision to try it his way and see if it might actually work. The main question is if I can survive the afternoon (I usually get sleepy in the early afternoon). But Kieron doesn't need THAT much of my involvement. I just have to be there and ready to supervise or discuss or guide. If he doesn't get his work done by 4 pm I will give him a homework hour at 7 pm which is when Sean does his homework. If that's still not enough time I can plan a "catch-up" hour just before lunch in the morning for him to tie up loose ends. And there's always Saturday. But so far he seems to be able to finish his core academics in about 3-4 hours and the extras, like the art projects and free reading and physical exercise, in the hours around that time.

My planned routine is to work alternately with Kieron, Paddy and Aidan, about one subject per hour. So that way my K12 work takes about 5-6 hours. The read-alouds, time outside, and art time DO count towards California's requirement of a 5 hour school day, but I consider them fun rather than work, so I'm not really counting that as time on task.

I'm also planning to have Paddy do a bit of handwriting during the weekends to take some of the time pressure off during the week. He is "behind" in this one area. I don't want to push him but I think that I probably haven't paid enough attention to getting him interested in using his pen and pencils and markers. He has started writing with more confidence already since we have been working on it the past two weeks.

Probably more than anyone needed to know, but I thought I'd write it out so I can remember it!