Academic Excellence

At our recent family meeting I was somewhat disheartened to see that "academic excellence" got no votes as a family priority. However, I figured out later that the kids had no idea what that meant. My initial explanation was, you know, being really good at school-type stuff. Huh? These kids don't have any frame of reference for knowing whether they are really great or really bad a school-type stuff, since they aren't really sure which of the stuff we do is the traditional school-type stuff. The main subjects that leap to mind for them when I say "schoolwork" are math and spelling and punctuation (for Anna) and reading (for Mickey). They both mostly enjoy math, but the reason we spend time on these particular language arts activities is because they are my kids' weaker areas. So, when they hear "academic excellence" that sounds to them like slaving away at these topics that are not especially fun and somewhat difficult for them.

It got me thinking. What *do* I mean by academic excellence? Getting straight A's certainly doesn't mean anything in our world. I guess the thing that is important to me is that when they get to high school or college or whenever they enter a more traditional school setting, that they will be able to do well. The earliest I could see my kids going to school is high school, and how much do they really need to know to do well in a typical public high school? Or even an academically rigorous high school? A good grounding in math, preferably with algebra already well under their belt (though certainly many kids take algebra in high school and do perfectly well); the ability to read something, think about it critically, remember it, and integrate it with other things they know; the ability to translate their thinking into writing that is clear and well-reasoned (preferably without a lot of spelling or punctuation errors).

So how do I achieve these goals? By plugging away at math, at their own natural pace, I'm quite confident that my kids will be ready for high school math by the time they are 14. I find homeschooling extremely efficient when it comes to math--you can cover topics for exactly as long as you need to and can capitalize on the times when their math brains are really working.

Being able to read something and think about it critically does NOT come from reading comprehension worksheets, but from conversations about real books and about life in general. Once you learn to read (which A has down pat and which I'm quite confident M will get by the time he is 14), it is the thinking that is important. Actually, the thinking is important from the moment you are alive, and the reading gets picked up along the way. Being skeptical, observing people, wondering about the physical and social and political world, and having conversations about all these things are how kids learn to think critically. Plus, I think homeschooled kids have the advantage of not wondering what the "right" answer is (i.e., the answer the teacher is looking for), but can just come to their own conclusions. There aren't that many leading questions in real life--where someone asks you something because they want to find out if you know some specific thing, so you have to guess what they are after before you can answer the question correctly. In real life, people ask things because they don't know, and if they can think and read, they can probably find out the answer, if there is one.

Writing is tricky, because I am certainly no great writer. But, I write technical reports for a living, and the editors who go over my writing don't change all that much, so I must be reasonably clear and well-reasoned. I may never write fiction, but I can think through what I want to say, and can usually organize and articulate it well enough to get the point across. Fortunately, A does love to write, so if I can just nurture her writing impulse, she may actually be someone who could *really* write. By high school I'm sure she'll be ready for some help from a real writer, but at this point providing the structure for her to spend time writing and editing her writing will get her a long ways. I don't know about M yet, but at the very least, I do think that by 8th grade, he can be clear-thinking enough to be able to get his thoughts organized and written out. Now whether either of their writing will be mostly spelled correctly and with correct punctuation, I'm not quite so positive...

So, really, when I am thinking of academic excellence, I'm not really thinking that I need my kids to be writing 10-page papers on Beowolf or reading Shakespeare in the original at age 11, though I wouldn't object to that. Rather, I think that a steady diet of good books, videos, games, and activities that provide plenty of exposure to good language, history, science, and psychology, and the conversations that arise out of them are the things that will prepare them to be intelligent, thoughtful people. Add in plenty of music, art, and exercise, plus enough math and the mechanics of English and I think that will get us there. I am constantly encouraged by how little I remember learning in grades k-8, and how much I enjoyed and felt stimulated by (and was perfectly well-prepared for) my academically rigorous high school. I was able to spend most of my k-8 years doing the stuff that I loved doing--playing music, playing pretend and putting on plays with my friends, running around outside, reading, etc. These are the things that prepared my for high school. Plus, I did have some good math instruction.

Music Together

Wow, I'm catching a nice strong signal from my neighbor's wireless at the moment so I'm going to seize the opportunity and do a blog entry. (Don't worry, I'm helping pay for the signal--I'm not stealing it!)

We had our first ever family meeting a few weeks ago to figure out what our top priorities are, as a family. Healthy eating, exercise, music together, and art came out on top, so we've been concentrating on those things lately. Since music is my thing I'm incredibly delighted that others found this so important.

I've been changing my mindset about music from having music lessons at the core musical activity to playing with others as the centerpiece. To become a good musician, you need to put in a lot of hours playing your instrument, which is much easier to do when you're having a good time. Also, to learn to play well in a group, you need to play a lot with other people. Fortunately, the very funnest thing about music is being able to play with others. With A, who takes piano lessons, I'm realizing that the drudgery of practice is killing her love of music. But, she does love to play when she is doing chords for fiddle tunes, or playing the right hand melody line along with folk songs or Christmas carols. And, since we've been playing so much, she has not only spent a lot more time at the piano than usual, but she is getting better and better at listening to what else is going on AND she actually got inspired to write a song yesterday, for the first time ever. I'm not saying that music lessons are unimportant, but I'm figuring out that music lessons don't necessarily create a love of music, which is the thing that will really keep you playing all your life.

For M on cello, I'm not that familiar with Suzuki, since I didn't do it myself, but I think I'm taking a philosophically similar approach. I want to start with playing by ear for a good long while before pulling in music or notation of any kind to help him develop his ear and his memory. As long as he is happy playing songs with mostly or only open strings, we'll stick with that. I think I'll introduce the idea of playing a melody every once in a while, on the assumption that one of these times he'll get excited about it and be ready to put up with the difficulty of figuring out how to use his left hand correctly for the fun of being able to play a recognizable song. In the mean time, I have probably a hundred songs I can pull up that involving almost exclusively the notes C, G, D, and A for a bass line (or could easily be transposed to use them). And if we plug away at these songs in the fiddle, folk song, and traditional song repertoire, he'll have a lot of great songs in his ear after a while. And, he can spend a nice long time developing his bow arm and hand, his sense of rhythm, and his listening and ensemble skills. Again, I do plan on hooking him up with a real teacher as soon as he seems ready to practice, but in the meantime I think we can make lots of progress and have lots of fun along the way.

Also, we've gotten D playing with us, and since he likes blues and rock and mainly likes to improvise, he has pulled in a whole new dimension that is great for all of us. The kids don't really know how to improvise yet (not that I'm any good at it, either), but they are hearing D and I playing around with it and starting to get the idea, and every once in a while one of them will grab a drum or something to try to play along with us. Very cool!

Songs of Joy and Peace

A new CD by Yo Yo Ma. Here is a clip of him playing one of the songs on the Colbert Report. This one must be joy! Or maybe exuberance.