Classical Education or Bust

When we first decided to homeschool our children, I was filled with all of these romantic thoughts of how joyous it would be to educate them. Actually, I probably would have not even used the word "educate." I preferred saying that I would facilitate my children's learning. Somehow, that seemed less controlling in my view. I remember having read John Holt's Teach Your Own, and being completely enthralled by the idea of unschooling. Heck, I still am! It made sense to me. It was organic, and wonderful, and yet really really tough--at least for me. Within a few months of starting out as "unschoolers" (in quotes because I'm sure there will be those who may believe, as even I do, that I went about it all wrong, and therefore wasn't technically a practicing unschooler), I was stressed beyond belief. A large part of it was because I didn't trust the method would work for me. I still wholeheartedly believe that it can work for nearly any child (if not all children), but perhaps not for every parent, as was the case with me. So I branched out and my homeschooling library grew to include books on other methods.

I think I ascribed to the "better late than early" philosophy for as long as it took before I was inundated with questions from well-meaning friends and family regarding my daughter's progress. Some people are able to field these questions effortlessly, but I was still working on thickening my skin in all matters related to home education. And frankly, the only reason I decided to jump on board with the whole "better late than early" view to education, was because I had already tried pushing early academics and made absolutely no progress. I guess you could say that personally, I was a reluctant advocate of the "better late than early" approach to homeschooling. Choosing to wait wasn't my preference, but it made me feel better to know that there was a school of thought out there that saw nothing wrong with waiting. Still, I felt conflicted.

I went on to read about the Charlotte Mason approach, and then moved on to other books on classical education. That's when I became interested in The Well-Trained Mind. It was the sort of education I wished I had had. I  quickly fell in love with the method, and tried to follow the schedules perfectly. I later learned that those schedules were only added to the book at the insistence of the publisher, and that they were only just loose suggestions. Still, I wanted to do it all. But I ran into a wall. My daughter was not learning to read as effortlessly as other children I read about on homeschooling boards. She struggled so much. I found that my perfect schedule was getting left behind. There was no time for all of the cool and interesting things I had planned to teach her, because our days turned into hours-long reading lessons. It ceased to be fun, for her and for me. And here's where I feel very ashamed of myself. I built that initial difficulty up into this insurmountable obstacle. I wasted precious time getting my daughter to excel at reading, without realizing that I was making it all such a tedious chore. Thankfully, it was around this time that I started to seek out support again online. And go figure, there were several other homeschoolers out there who were experiencing the same things! These homeschoolers also wanted to give their children a classical education, and were finding ways to do so, regardless of their children's struggles with reading. This was a major a-ha moment for me, because in my mind, I was still regarding the task of reading, and writing, to be prerequisites to a classical education. Once I eased up my expectations, and we started to conduct a lot of our lessons orally, setting aside a decent amount of our time each day to reading and writing instruction, things started improving. Those romantic ideas I had when I first started out, were not wholly unfounded after all. Granted, among our good days, were a smattering of difficult days. And as good as the good days could be, the difficult days were HARD, often bringing me to the verge of tears. But we pressed on. (Note: We eventually made our way into a more Latin-centered classical approach, but that's another story, best kept for another post!)

My little girl is now fourteen years old. She's a reader. She's still a reluctant writer, but she's making progress. She works very hard, and has taken ownership over her education. Yesterday, as we were discussing John Steinbeck's "Of Mice and Men," and really getting into our literary analysis, I was just struck by how much she's matured. She's grown to be such a sweet, mature, and introspective young lady. I don't think I've ever enjoyed homeschooling her as much as I do now. She is such a pleasure to be with, and discuss things with. This is exactly what I had hoped to get out of our homeschooling, all those years ago when I first romanticized about setting out on this journey. She may not be getting a "by the book" classical education, but she certainly seems to be no worse for the wear.