A Healer’s Geste

Pursuing Classical Education: Think Before You Buy, or, Vision, the Best Moneysaver

Pursuing Classical Education Series

Pursuing Classical Education I: Introduction Pursuing Classical Education II: Personal Influences Pursuing Classical Education III: Summary of the Parts Pursuing Classical Education IV: Keeping Education Forefront

Pursuing Classical Education: V

We should remember that a classical and Christian education is not a “package deal.” No one supplier or textbook publisher will provide you with everything you need in a fifty-pound box, delivered by UPS. Western culture weighs more than this, and the abandonment of the fast-food, convenience-store mentality which currently surrounds education is one of the first indications that we are making significant progress. In a very real sense, this kind of classical education results in [and from] a certain mindset, a certain orientation. –Classical Education and the Homeschool

Certainly, if you have school-aged children already, getting something done is important. However, even if you’ve already started, already bought curriculum, or only have a few weeks before you must do so, thinking through your goals is still a worthy and worthwhile exercise.

James Daniels, in his talk from the 2009 CiRCE Conference on the Nature of Education, spent several minutes discussing how curriculum is merely a path. If you don’t know where you’re going, how do you know which path to choose? If you don’t know yourself or your students, how do you know which path — of the several that head the same direction — will get you and your students to the destination?

James Daniels’ speaking patterns don’t transcribe well, so here is a paraphrase instead:

Education should be person-focused, teachers must embody what they want to communicate to their students. Many schools take what is deemed classical curricula, but they don’t understand that curriculum is only a path, a means. And what is it a means to? It’s a means of cultivating something real and personal and embodied in the student. And so, instead of doing the hard work of deciding what they want their students to embody, what they want to see in their students as a result of what they’re doing, they just want to find out which books they need to buy. But you should be asking, “What is our mission here?” Don’t worry about what those other schools are doing, but what has God called you to do in your place based on who you have as your community and what God as called you to. If we begin to get our mission down, if we can say what we want this mission to look like in the lives of our students, then we can start discussing how to get there. Defining your objectives is a practice that anyone, homeschooling, Kindergartener teacher, 12th grade teacher, college professor should do. All educators need to be asking themselves, “If I am successful, if I do this thing well, what does it look like in the life of my students?”

Littlejohn and Evans in Wisdom and Eloquence say something similar in their chapter on curriculum. They attempt to be cute by calling it a 12-K curriculum; that is, a curriculum planned from the end to the beginning. Where do you want to end up? How do you get there from here?

Meaningful curriclum planning must begin with the end firmly in mind. Most curriculum planning processes start at the bottom and work up in a building-block fashion. “Let’s decide what our kindergarten program should look like, then first grade, etc.” The inevitable result of this kind of planning is that a good deal of the curriculum’s objectives will occur accidentally or will mimic the personal experiences of those who are designing the curriculum. The only type of grade-to-grade coordination the building-block approach permits is what we call “picking up where we left off” — that is, sixth grade begins where fifth grade left off, instead of fifth grade ending where sixth grade needs to begin.

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This is difficult work, and many teachers would rather just jump to the “what are we going to do?” questions, but the benefits of 12-K planning to a sense of coordination and ease of future planning are incalculable. [...] Write the curriculum [plan] from the top down rather than from the bottom up in order to gain a more purposeful, coordinated understanding of the whole program. –Wisdom and Eloquence: A Christian Paradigm for Classical Learning

James Daniels, paraphrased again:

I get a lot of people calling me and asking, “What curriculum are you using for ___?” And I always frustrate them by asking, “What about our goals for our school makes you think that yours is identical to ours? Do you think your vision, your community, is so similar to ours? I can persuade you to a lot of different curricula, but how are you going to decide?” A lot of times we treat curriculum choosing and planning like a comparative-religions class. We try to put all the curriculum side by side and look at the strengths and weaknesses of each one, make a pros and cons chart, and whatever comes out on the pro-chart wins. But what we need to do is look at this curriculum in light of what we want to produce in our students. We need to be able to say that we have these means in place because they cultivate _____. That’s a rational we can work from. However, in schools we usually craft these classical models in an esoteric way, in a vacuum, or we begin to get bits and pieces from different people and try to apply them to our school. Instead, we need to see all these ideas as a resource toward what you are cultivating in your school. If your vision is ambiguous and vague, then your decisions about curriculum, school culture, what programs you want to have, will be vague. If what you want to see in your students is vague, then you’re always going to be developing your curriculum. You’re going to be in that cycle. Every three years you’re going to be reexamining your math curriculum, your writing curriculum, and you’re just going to be on that gerbil wheel. But if you begin to say Who are we? What do we want for our students? Then you can begin to look to these things as a resource, and pull them in as they are appropriate in your situation.

There are so many resources, so many ideas, so many options out there, that if all you want is to do a better job than the public schools, you are still awash in a sea of millions of options that will get you there — including doing nothing at all but teaching them to read and do math. And if your goal is that simple and you want life to be that simple, then go for it. Make your decision with your desired end in mind, and then you have the freedom to tune out the twenty-pound catalogs and multi-room used curriculum sales.

Defining an educational philosophy for me is interesting and engaging. Perhaps it isn’t for you. But having one is freeing for anyone who has to make curriculum choices. Even if you can just read through a few books or a few meaty blogs or a handful of Christian schools and then adapt some simple statement about what you want to provide your children — a strong work ethic, a familiarity with the scope and sweep of history, a love of reading, a love of the outdoors, whatever your family’s “thing” is or whatever you want it to become — then you have some criteria through which you can sift through all the options.

Lindafay, one of those keepers of meaty & useful blogs, has a great post on this also, called “Homeschooling Methods: What’s Your Flavor?” If you can determine your style, and determine the guiding principles you want to operate under, then you can approach methods and curricula with confidence. Because, honestly, it’s really more about you and what you do than about what books you choose. If you need that message, then Mental Multivitamin is the one to give it to you straight-up: Homeschooling Expert? Nah. Spunky has also written on this topic, saying “Why you educate will help you determine how to educate.”

James Daniels, again, commented that it will not be the bad things that kill our schools (including homeschools) so much as it will be the good things drowning out what was best. There are so many, many good things you can do. How will you know what you should do?