Sunday, March 14, 2010

Curriculum Selection and the Free Exchange of Ideas

My seven-year-old daughter recently completed her phonics program, conveniently coinciding with her self-realization that she is capable of true, independent reading.

This, of course, opens up a wealth of opportunities for learning. No longer is her learning limited by her five physical senses, but the awakening of a sixth mental sense enables her to independently absorb and process information in a whole new way.

The past week I have simply allowed her to revel in her newfound superpower by giving her ample time to read simple chapter books and other library selections at her reading level. Absent our usual phonics lessons, however, and armed with her ability to read, I realized we would be best served if I devised a concrete plan as to where her education should progress from here. We have both been satisfied with her math curriculum, but everything else had thus far taken a back seat to phonics.

The whole process of curriculum selection has been something I have found daunting from the start. While I am not a firm believer in the absolute necessity of a firm curriculum for homeschooling, I do find some structure helpful. Selecting one, however, proved to be more difficult than I anticipated. Up until now, it has been natural to procrastinate in order to allow my daughter to focus on learning to read, supplemented by a solid mathematics curriculum and the random exploration of social studies and science.

While shopping curricula, I encountered two major obstacles to making a choice. The first, with all due respect to my Christian friends, is the incredible abundance of Christian-based curricula available. Some of these curricula are by all accounts excellent. We are Jewish, and even though many non-Christian homeschoolers modify these materials for their use, I did not really wish to take it upon myself to determine which curricula might be adaptable to my beliefs and which might not.

The second obstacle is that many secular curricula replicate public school at home. The same flawed educational philosophy that is burdensome in a classroom is even less relevant in the home environment, where time-management and testing strategies intended to address issues of classroom management are completely unnecessary.

Additionally, many of these curricula, whether of the secular or religious variety, are in my opinion unnecessarily commercial. They are packaged with piles of expensive books that could be just as easily borrowed from the library, binders of materials that could just as easily be digitized, and consumable materials that can in many cases be obtained more economically by simply looking around one's home. On the other side, many of the more economical curricula lack quality and substance.

Sorting through it all can be a nightmare, and the free access of information on the internet is a double-edged sword. Anyone can publish on the internet, which results in piles of garbage, but also a few independently produced jewels that would have been virtually inaccessible prior to the advent of the world wide web. Not only can an independent educator produce a quality curriculum without access to publishing resources, but he has the capacity to make his case for his curriculum, and a potential buyer has an opportunity to preview content and discuss it with other homeschoolers online. Independents in this and many other media fields are no longer relegated to obscure catalogs, but can now present themselves to the world for scrutiny. They sink or swim on their own merits rather than remaining at the mercy of publishing or media industries.

The math curriculum I have been using thus far is created and sold digitally by such an independent educator, and after much searching, I finally have made my choice as to which general curriculum we will use. First Step appears to be similarly excellent, and though it lacks professional typesetting and editing, its values and approach to education appear match my own.

I can only surmise that this freedom also plays into the dramatic increase in popularity of homeschooling over the past decade. With so much information so freely available, the pedestal of the establishment comes crashing down. We do not have to accept the educational philosophy of the state, or even listen solely to the music that the recording industry arbitrarily chooses to publish. Ideas are now on a more even playing field, empowering us to make freer and more informed choices, not only related to education, but to virtually every aspect of our lives.

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