Recently I came across this article on a homeschooling website. The title, “How Long Should a Homeschool Day Be?”, piqued my interest as a current homeschool tutor and future homeschool mom. I expected to read a common-sense suggestion of how a busy family might set up their homeschool day. Instead, I became more and more irate as I read an attack on the amount of time wasted in public and private school classrooms. She refers to uncited “studies” that find that students K-12 only spend 84 minutes per day actually learning. The rest of time is wasted with lining up, passing out papers, bathroom breaks, etc. (As a private school, homeschool co-op, and now online classroom educator, I find this very hard to believe–I generally spend 3-5 minutes getting a new group of students settled and the remaining 55 or 115 minutes tackling the material. And that’s just one class. These “studies” must only look at very low-performing schools with abysmal teachers.) Here’s the key line of “encouragement” to homeschool moms:
So, do your children spend an hour and a half each day learning – either reading, writing or discussing school subjects with you? Are their minds engaged for an hour and a half throughout the entire day? If so, you are doing better than the schools across the nation.
What upsets me so much is not that this author is trying to encourage tired homeschool moms or even that she is pointing out that much of school, especially the early grades, can be done in far less time than the traditional seven hour day. What bothers me is that this author is buying into the homeschooling black hole of the lowest common denominator. We’re not educating our children at home for academic and moral excellence and character instruction; we’re just measuring our success by keeping up with the lowest standard we can find.
A couple hours or schoolwork may be sufficient for the lower grades, but older children need to learn to glorify God with their mind by sticking to their studies for longer than 84 minutes a day. It probably took me 84 minutes just to get through an Algebra II lesson or to review for a French test. Sadly, though, my previous co-op experience showed me that homeschoolers with low standards are much more common than I had thought. (“Well, my kids’ friends don’t have to write a research paper in public school, so I’m going to let them drop your research and writing class. Besides, they’re not college material, anyway.”)
Don’t get me wrong–I am a huge homeschooling fan. I started planning out Tommy’s homeschool curriculum as soon as I found out he was on the way, and I love, love, love the homeschoolers I taught this year. I tend to think that the world would be a better place if we all started our kids with the Veritas Press curriculum and then put them into a Great Books Tutorials sequence, but I do realize that not everyone is called to homeschool. Good thing Derek is a product of 13 years of private schools–he keeps me from getting too opinionated! =) I know there are many, many homeschoolers who do not operate with this “lcd” line of thinking, but it is certainly tempting to do so. It’s a tough area, but it’s not helpful to have homeschool newsletters spouting this brand of “encouragement” to worn out parents. Let’s not be satisfied with the lowest common denominator–let’s make excellence our goal!
Oh, my goodness, you’re so right! I’ve heard that before, too, but it just makes me think, “Oh, good, I’ll be doing Carver a world more of good just by the little bit that we’re doing now.” I should be striving for excellence, even in a short kindergarden day.