by Steven David Horwich
The following is an excerpt from Mr. Horwich’s new book, Not Alternative Education – Universal Private Education. This is part one of his article, Homeschooling in the 21st Century. It deals with the tools available to the homeschooler today, and why this is the right time in history to homeschool.
In way of attacking homeschooling, a woman wrote me to say that homeschooling isn’t what it was in Lincoln’s day. She meant to say that homeschooling is less effective today than in Lincoln’s time. Well, let’s use that great man as a sort of comparison point or “base line” for the discussion at hand.
It is true; homeschooling is not the same as in Lincoln’s day. Our values have changed, and so have the reasons that people homeschool. In Lincoln’s day there were no real public schools and few private schools. Tutoring was relatively costly. Lincoln himself was from a poor family. His log cabin origins are common knowledge. In Lincoln’s time, people homeschooled because they had no other options.
We picture Lincoln – the famous image by firelight, reading books borrowed from lawyers under which he interned. Abraham Lincoln was a man who made the most of everything he was given. Would he work by candlelight today, with a few borrowed books and his own ingenuity to get him through? Nope, not a chance. Today, Lincoln would use the resources available to him, just as he did in his time.
In his time, Lincoln’s resources included borrowed books and candles when he could get them.
Today, available resources include massive numbers of books, electric light, cars, libraries, zoos, museums, TV, DVDs, the Internet and more.
One can only dream about what an Abe Lincoln might achieve today, educationally. What potentials did he never realize that he could easily rise to today? What could he do with the tools we use every day?
Today as then, such a person would make the most out of what is available. What does this mean to you as a homeschooler?
It means that the potential for learning is absolutely enormous.
By the way, all the books that Mr. Lincoln learned from are pretty much still around, often found for free on the Internet. For those of you who believe that books are the core and source of knowledge, we’ll discuss that shortly. For now, let me just say that books can be great, but they can also contain “information” that can be as misleading, as incorrect, as plain wrong as any Internet site. They are tools, as are all the rest of the tools mentioned.
You may be asking: “Well, with all that great stuff available to use in education, where are our new Lincolns?”
My answer –there are likely many people of comparable ability and potential to the successful homeschoolers of the past such as Lincoln, Thomas Jefferson, George Washington, Mark Twain, and the army who fill our history books. Your own children may well be among them.
Potential is a remarkable thing. It can lay unseen and dormant for years, and then – give a certain experience, the right educational key, it can explode to life in the form of intense interest and surprising aptitudes on the part of a student. This is one of the most important functions of education – to find the key, the experience or ideas which will turn a student’s potential on.
If we lack Lincolns and Twains today, it’s because education has failed miserably in this respect, today. Potential was never awakened. The potential was not seen. It was permitted to rot and atrophy and die. Or worse, and far more likely today – the potential was crushed before it could ever see the light of the sun.
Steven Horwich is an Emmy and Dramalogue award-winning writer/director, who has split his life between the arts and education. A teacher with over 35 years and over 20,000 hours of experience from elementary school through university-level teaching, he started homeschooling his own children in 2002. This led him to author over 300 courses since 2002, a complete curricula (excluding math) for ages 5-adult, called Connect The Thoughts. Over 20,000 people have used CTT since making it available via the Internet in 2007. His curricula is presented at www.connectthethoughts.com. There is over 5 hours of film explaining his courses and approach. He has authored a book about education today, Poor Cheated Little Johnny, and a teacher training program to go with it. He currently presents a free webinar about education and homeschooling every third Tuesday.
The following is an excerpt from Mr. Horwich’s new book, Not Alternative Education – Universal Private Education. This is part one of his article, Homeschooling in the 21st Century. It deals with the tools available to the homeschooler today, and why this is the right time in history to homeschool.
In way of attacking homeschooling, a woman wrote me to say that homeschooling isn’t what it was in Lincoln’s day. She meant to say that homeschooling is less effective today than in Lincoln’s time. Well, let’s use that great man as a sort of comparison point or “base line” for the discussion at hand.
It is true; homeschooling is not the same as in Lincoln’s day. Our values have changed, and so have the reasons that people homeschool. In Lincoln’s day there were no real public schools and few private schools. Tutoring was relatively costly. Lincoln himself was from a poor family. His log cabin origins are common knowledge. In Lincoln’s time, people homeschooled because they had no other options.
We picture Lincoln – the famous image by firelight, reading books borrowed from lawyers under which he interned. Abraham Lincoln was a man who made the most of everything he was given. Would he work by candlelight today, with a few borrowed books and his own ingenuity to get him through? Nope, not a chance. Today, Lincoln would use the resources available to him, just as he did in his time.
In his time, Lincoln’s resources included borrowed books and candles when he could get them.
Today, available resources include massive numbers of books, electric light, cars, libraries, zoos, museums, TV, DVDs, the Internet and more.
One can only dream about what an Abe Lincoln might achieve today, educationally. What potentials did he never realize that he could easily rise to today? What could he do with the tools we use every day?
Today as then, such a person would make the most out of what is available. What does this mean to you as a homeschooler?
It means that the potential for learning is absolutely enormous.
By the way, all the books that Mr. Lincoln learned from are pretty much still around, often found for free on the Internet. For those of you who believe that books are the core and source of knowledge, we’ll discuss that shortly. For now, let me just say that books can be great, but they can also contain “information” that can be as misleading, as incorrect, as plain wrong as any Internet site. They are tools, as are all the rest of the tools mentioned.
You may be asking: “Well, with all that great stuff available to use in education, where are our new Lincolns?”
My answer –there are likely many people of comparable ability and potential to the successful homeschoolers of the past such as Lincoln, Thomas Jefferson, George Washington, Mark Twain, and the army who fill our history books. Your own children may well be among them.
Potential is a remarkable thing. It can lay unseen and dormant for years, and then – give a certain experience, the right educational key, it can explode to life in the form of intense interest and surprising aptitudes on the part of a student. This is one of the most important functions of education – to find the key, the experience or ideas which will turn a student’s potential on.
If we lack Lincolns and Twains today, it’s because education has failed miserably in this respect, today. Potential was never awakened. The potential was not seen. It was permitted to rot and atrophy and die. Or worse, and far more likely today – the potential was crushed before it could ever see the light of the sun.
Steven Horwich is an Emmy and Dramalogue award-winning writer/director, who has split his life between the arts and education. A teacher with over 35 years and over 20,000 hours of experience from elementary school through university-level teaching, he started homeschooling his own children in 2002. This led him to author over 300 courses since 2002, a complete curricula (excluding math) for ages 5-adult, called Connect The Thoughts. Over 20,000 people have used CTT since making it available via the Internet in 2007. His curricula is presented at www.connectthethoughts.com. There is over 5 hours of film explaining his courses and approach. He has authored a book about education today, Poor Cheated Little Johnny, and a teacher training program to go with it. He currently presents a free webinar about education and homeschooling every third Tuesday.
