WTF homeschooling

[JesusFightClub]

This sig is taken from a proud parent boasting about how her children are learning so well via the Maxwell methods.

Sometimes I'm tempted to send ignorant anti-hsers to this site. Then I realize... I would have to see them here. Perhaps the hive is best kept secret... shhhhh!

~Julie

dd 15, Great Books, Medieval World History, Astronomy, Oxford Guide to Writing, Vocab from Classical Roots, AG, IXL, Ecce Romani, German

ds 11, Medieval Times, Earth Science & Astronomy, King Arthur, Latin Road, Math Mammoth, Critical Thinking, Spanish

ds 5, OPGTR, SWO1, FLL1, WWE1, Math Mammoth, Life Science, SOTW1

What the fuck. I'm no brainbox and even I know Ecce Romani is for children. If I heard a 15 year old saying how she used Ecce Romani I'd think she was a wee bit held back in her development.

And the Oxford Guide to Writing. What. This is a 15yo who's spending her time changing babies' nappies, because there isn't a ten year old who would brag about Ecce Romani or the Oxford Guide. Unless they were functionally illiterate.

I'm going to sign on to a Christian homeschooling forum and my sig line is going to be "MY ARE KINDS NOW READIN BUKKES, TEH ARE READIIN BUKKES WIV BIG WORDES, TEH MUCH MORS CLEVRER THAN TEHY HETHINS".

:doh:

[wendy-sparkles]

What the fuck. I'm no brainbox and even I know Ecce Romani is for children. If I heard a 15 year old saying how she used Ecce Romani I'd think she was a wee bit held back in her development.

My third form Latin teacher used ecce romani with us. Granted, she was terrible, and the stories easy to make fun of, but because of that that would never have jumped out at me.

edited for riffles

[caito]

:/ I don't really know anything about homeschool curriculums or textbooks, so those things sound okay to me. But I'm coming from an ignorant perspective, so I'd rather hear from you, someone who knows what those books really are.

[snarkbillie]

What age group is the book for? I'm reading on Amazon and it says 7th-10th grade which is right about where a 15 year old would be (10th grade) so I'm confused.

[ILoveJellybeans]

Critical thinking? I thought fundies didnt approve of that

[JesusFightClub]

snarkbillie, my class started on Ecce Romani at 11. I actually started it at 10 and a bit (stupid age thing, I was the youngest in my class).

I will point out this wasn't a group for gifted children. I am not bright at all and I have never been vaguely eligible for the gifted and talented crew. But 15 year olds of any ability were having a shot at actual Roman writers. They were reading Tacitus in English and in Latin and thinking about methods of translation. They weren't fucking around with Ecce Romani.

[Guest Anonymous]

Am I missing something here?

That book list is awful. I mean, it's a bad book list. We're supposed to be impressed that her kids are reading these books, but what books are they? It's not like I can go out and pick up a copy of 'Astronomy' or 'King Arthur' because it's impossible to know which books she's talking about.

Also, why is there no literature?

riffles

[ElphabaGalinda]

snarkbillie, my class started on Ecce Romani at 11. I actually started it at 10 and a bit (stupid age thing, I was the youngest in my class).

I will point out this wasn't a group for gifted children. I am not bright at all and I have never been vaguely eligible for the gifted and talented crew. But 15 year olds of any ability were having a shot at actual Roman writers. They were reading Tacitus in English and in Latin and thinking about methods of translation. They weren't fucking around with Ecce Romani.

I think for that one, it depends on the opportunity to learn Latin in the area where you live. Here I had no opportunity to learn any Latin for any of my schooling, it's just not taught in schools here. I had the opportunity only once I got to university, and they probably would have started with something more suitable for children, since no one would have come to the course with any Latin knowledge. So even if you're in university, you need to start at the beginning. Latin probably also isn't a common thing to learn at all where they live, though I'm not familiar with the area.

What I will criticize is general subject headings on a so called book list, like Astronomy or Life Sciences. Why can't they say the real title of the book? I just have a suspicion that their science education is lacking or includes a lot of God references, just because if they're not saying the real titles of the books, what are they hiding?

[f undies]

Am I missing something here?

That book list is awful. I mean, it's a bad book list. We're supposed to be impressed that her kids are reading these books, but what books are they? It's not like I can go out an pick up a copy of 'Astronomy' or 'King Arthur' because it's impossible to know which books she's talking about.

Also, why is there no literature?

The 15yo also has no math listed. I think I was in Algebra/geometry at that age. I guess these are of no use if you expect dd to be a SAHD and not a college attending heathen.

[keen23]

I actually use IXL as a supplement to the math that the kids are learning in (ebil public) school. Because I hate the curriculum the school is using. I wouldn't use IXL as the sole math curriculum, but as a supplement it's pretty good.

[JesusFightClub]

Good point, and one would venture to suggest it's because Mummy and Daddy think literature will poison children's minds and make them into sinners who hate the Lord.

I'm sorry to keep using myself as an example, especially as I am such a rubbish one. But when I was 15 I had some skill in French, German and Latin. I could read German and French newspapers and magazines. I had read a lot of the Great Books Christian homeschoolers boast about their children reading. I could program in Basic and Visual Basic. I could discuss nihilism in popular thought. I was thick at a lot of things but I wouldn't boast about stuff like reading kids' books in Latin or learning to talk in foreign. And I have a very low IQ.

They seem to be setting low standards for their kids.

[Guest Anonymous]

JFC, when did you last take an IQ test?

[constantgardener]

snarkbillie, my class started on Ecce Romani at 11. I actually started it at 10 and a bit (stupid age thing, I was the youngest in my class).

I will point out this wasn't a group for gifted children. I am not bright at all and I have never been vaguely eligible for the gifted and talented crew. But 15 year olds of any ability were having a shot at actual Roman writers. They were reading Tacitus in English and in Latin and thinking about methods of translation. They weren't fucking around with Ecce Romani.

JFC, you're so lucky to have had the chance to do Latin at school! Did your school offer it for GCSE or was it just an 'extra'? My husband's school did it but it was quite a posh school. I have to learn a lot of Latin plant names in my line of work, I would have loved to have studied it in more depth.

[fedelm]

I'm pretty sure that those are curricula or subjects, not specific books. 1xl appears to be an online math program that goes up through Geometry. Of course she doesn't list the grade the kid's at, but I'm not seeing anything obviously wrong with that curriculum.

[JesusFightClub]

I think for that one, it depends on the opportunity to learn Latin in the area where you live. Here I had no opportunity to learn any Latin for any of my schooling, it's just not taught in schools here. I had the opportunity only once I got to university, and they probably would have started with something more suitable for children, since no one would have come to the course with any Latin knowledge. So even if you're in university, you need to start at the beginning. Latin probably also isn't a common thing to learn at all where they live, though I'm not familiar with the area.

What I will criticize is general subject headings on a so called book list, like Astronomy or Life Sciences. Why can't they say the real title of the book? I just have a suspicion that their science education is lacking or includes a lot of God references, just because if they're not saying the real titles of the books, what are they hiding?

Good point, I just don't get why you would brag? I wouldn't list Ecce Romani as an achievement. I might say something like "she has started to learn Latin".

People are going to say "Look, she is learning foreign with big clever foreign words! I guess she's super talented! And it's all down to homeschooling!"

[Maude]

dd 15, Great Books, Medieval World History, Astronomy, Oxford Guide to Writing, Vocab from Classical Roots, AG, IXL, Ecce Romani, German[/quote

ds 11, Medieval Times, Earth Science & Astronomy, King Arthur, Latin Road, Math Mammoth, Critical Thinking, Spanish

ds 5, OPGTR, SWO1, FLL1, WWE1, Math Mammoth, Life Science, SOTW1

These look more like the kind of thing I read in my spare time, not a school curriculum. I'd really like to see how these fundies measure up to your average public school student because my money is that they're all at least two or three grades behind, if not more.

[Guest Anonymous]

I'm pretty sure that those are curricula or subjects, not specific books. 1xl appears to be an online math program that goes up through Geometry. Of course she doesn't list the grade the kid's at, but I'm not seeing anything obviously wrong with that curriculum.

That would make more sense. But I think the Oxford Guide to Writing is a book.

[JesusFightClub]

JFC, you're so lucky to have had the chance to do Latin at school! Did your school offer it for GCSE or was it just an 'extra'? My husband's school did it but it was quite a posh school. I have to learn a lot of Latin plant names in my line of work, I would have loved to have studied it in more depth.

We were Scots, so we didn't have GCSEs ;) It was an extra and supposed to help us understand languages. The teacher was very insistent on "memorising the structure". He reckoned once we could see how Latin worked, we could see how other foreign languages worked...

[ElphabaGalinda]

Good point, I just don't get why you would brag? I wouldn't list Ecce Romani as an achievement. I might say something like "she has started to learn Latin".

People are going to say "Look, she is learning foreign with big clever foreign words! I guess she's super talented! And it's all down to homeschooling!"

I think, though I'm just guessing, that she doesn't expect people to be familiar with it (I had to Google it), so it sounds super impressive. Also since Latin is offered so rarely where I live, anyone who learns it was always thought of super academic and advanced, since it wasn't a required part of schooling I think, and also sounds super academic. I suspect that's why she's decided to teach Latin in the first place, because it sounds impressive to her circle. What I'm more concerned about is the lack of details on their science curriculum, I don't really trust them to get an accurate picture of how science works.

Also why is there no literature on that list? Do they not have to read novels? That's another thing that's lacking.

[celestial]

JFC, when did you last take an IQ test?

QFT!

[ElphabaGalinda]

That would make more sense. But I think the Oxford Guide to Writing is a book.

Oxford Guide to Writing is a book, and a pretty good one, I think

[Wolfie]

JFC, when did you last take an IQ test?

This.

As we've said before, IQs are not static.

[Austin]

I actually use IXL as a supplement to the math that the kids are learning in (ebil public) school. Because I hate the curriculum the school is using. I wouldn't use IXL as the sole math curriculum, but as a supplement it's pretty good.

My husband uses it as a supplement for his fifth graders, too.

[gardenvarietycitizen]

The 15yo also has no math listed. I think I was in Algebra/geometry at that age. I guess these are of no use if you expect dd to be a SAHD and not a college attending heathen.

The lack of math for the 15yo is what jumped out at me (I don't know even one word of Latin - we were forced to pick at Classical Chinese). EDIT: Unless the "1XL" is some sort of math program? I'll just leave some general commentary in, anyway:

I know we've discussed this before, but I think there really is something to the idea that homeschooling lower elementary kids is more popular partly because it really IS easier, in some ways. The popular-with-fundies "but they just learn through life, helping out Mom" really does work for a lot of basic concepts, basic reading, some calculation, fractions, that sort of thing - you can learn lower elementary math fairly well in the kitchen. You go on some nature walks and observe plants. So yeah, you're "doing school" in a few hours a day and actually managing to cover the bases, and can legitimately wonder why the public school kids are at school for so long (answer in a lot of cases is that the kids at public school in lower grades aren't doing academic work for all that time either).

But the stuff taught from junior high or even upper elementary onwards really requires a different sort of discipline. Heck, the classes in public schools change format around that time too, and a lot of homeschoolers start getting more formal or working in groups. There's more homework, and the necessary hours of actual studying and focused drills that you must put in to master the material (regardless of if that's at home or at a school) increases.

The fundies who want to keep with the "oh, they just learn from life" or "we 'do school' just a few hours a day" start falling off the path at that point. Some of them completely do, having their older kids teaching the younger ones and pretty much having no time for their own studies. Some sort of keep going but because they want things that kinda happen "in between" or without much oversight, they continue more in reading or the humanities than they do in math or sciences. Kids can pick up history from reading a book in between chores to a greater extent than they can pick up geometry or formal proofs that way, never mind physics.

Combine that with the idea that it's somehow "okay" to say "I'm not good at math" as an adult where people wouldn't dream of admitting "I'm not good at reading" and you can end up with a lot of people who are doing well at humanities subjects and bragging about how much they read while having extremely lacking math skills.

[JesusFightClub]

I copied a couple more from that forum.

16 yo: CC Chem, DO Physics, Great Books III, AP Eng Lang, Lukeion Latin III, PS Calc, robotics, flute

14 yo: Calc, Hon Chem, Span2, Art, and Band at PS; World Hist I, AP Eng Lang, APCS, math competitions, piano, clarinet

10 yo: R&S, SW, MCP/Sing Math, FFL1, US hist and lit, reading about science

Catholic wife and mom with seven children: one in college, two partially homeschooling high school, three after-schooling elementary, and one in preschool...homeschooling since 1997...also part-time German and Spanish teacher and learning Swedish

Homeschooling books and programs I love: RightStart Math, Saxon Phonics, Story of the World, Seton readers, Learn Spanish with Grace, Handwriting Without Tears, Math [You] See, Khan Academy

Homeschooling 11th, 8th, 4th, 2nd, and 1st, w/ 3yo tagging along

Using TOG Y4, Writing Aids, Rod & Staff Grammar, FLL, Phonics Pathways, ETC, VfCR, Singapore Earlybird and Primary Math, Life of Fred Elementary, Life of Fred Beginning Algebra, LoF Advanced Algebra and Trig., Visual Latin I/II, Classical Rhetoric, Traditional Logic II, God and the History of Art, Signs and Seasons Classical Astronomy, Apologia Physics

I'm not trying to be rude but what the fuck is there to be proud of here? (I am also confused by God and the History of Art but I hope an artistic FJist can explain this to me?)