The following is an excerpt from Mr. Horwich’s new book, Not Alternative Education – Universal Private Education. This is part four of his article, Homeschooling in the 21st Century. It deals with ways to help develop successful goals in homeschooling
As a homeschool parent, you’re looking for the best ways to prepare your student to do what he wants with his life, while staying within your means.
You want to teach the student what he needs to know to survive in a complex civilization. That means he’ll need to learn about things basic to that civilization such as politics, religion, finance, history and culture. But you also want to do whatever it takes to give your child an edge in his own chosen fields of activity and interest. We all know that a person will work harder and with far greater success at a job that he loves, rather than one that he despises or is compelled to do.
We want to see our children become able, productive, to be masterful and enthusiastic in their work and life. The most important modern idea I can share with you today is that the student, his needs and interests, should be at the center of the decision making process about his own education.
We’ve discussed this. First locate what your student is interested in. Do this through genuine concern and observation. Listen to your student. Watch your student. When the light in their eyes turns on, be aware and ready to feed their interests.
Next, do anything and everything possible to provide your student experience in the area he’s interested in. And keep it up indefinitely, or until the student has either lost interest or has gained mastery to the point where you cannot help him anymore. This “new” idea placed at the core of your educational efforts will help guide you as a teacher. It may lead you to devalue or even jettison certain normally “core” subjects in study. It may lead you to emphasize some subjects at the expense of others. So be it.
We’re preparing the student to live his life, not the life of some imagined average person. If this approach leads to college, so be it. There are many ways a student can get into a college, and many ways to prepare for the inevitable tests a homeschool student (or any student) will need to take and score well to get in. There are Junior Colleges that almost can’t refuse a student entry, and once a student has done his two years of prison…er, Jr. College, it can be much easier to get entry to a college. That is if college is where your student needs to be.
We’ve discussed other educational options such as internships. An internship is a form of actually doing a thing. Nothing replaces hands-on experience. A student who wants to write should be writing – a lot. A student who wants to repair cars should be doing so, and often. If a field of interest has no practical application of any kind, it’s probably not much of a field of interest. Experience doing the thing that one wishes to do is the very best way to master the requisite skills. Nothing replaces the student’s own fire, his entrepreneurship.
So what are the new-fangled 21st century ideas to prep your student for success?
-Allow the student to focus his time and energy toward what he is interested in. Do not enforce studies in which the student has no interest.
-Apply common sense to the problem of education and throw out any old idea or tool that clearly isn’t working.
-Use college if it’s going to help the student get where he wants to go, and skip college if it will not.
-Consider Internships.
-Support and create opportunities for hands on experience.
-Support the student’s own entrepreneurship.
You’re right. These aren’t very new ideas. Yet what we laughingly call “modern education” almost entirely ignores them, and it has for a long time.
Parents, your own education most likely suffered from a lack of the employment of these ideas, or from this particular focus. You may have even been discouraged by an educator or two from following your dream or expressing your own entrepreneurship, as I was in High School by a vice principal at the public school I attended. I asked for the school’s cooperation in producing a musical show to raise money for homeless children, which I was assembling (at age 16). I was told by this Behemoth of Blather that “students cannot manage their own affairs”, and I was instructed to stop.
I left her tickets for our opening night and I’ve been producing, directing and writing shows my entire life since then. She was wrong. Anytime someone tells a student that they can’t do the thing that they’re interested in, they are very likely to be wrong.
Let’s get real “21st century” about education. Let’s believe in each student’s unique potential and back it up.
This may be a bit of a tough road. The world has never much supported the dream of the individual, not until that person made his dream a tangible reality. And then the world went “wow”, and became brilliant in hind sight.
Lincoln was seen by his own party (the Republican party, which was new born in his time) as a country bumpkin, and though a consummate politician, his road to the Presidency through his own party was difficult at best. Then his dream came true and he changed the world. Today his party proudly claims Lincoln as its founding father.
Geniuses in hind sight.
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.
As a homeschool parent, you’re looking for the best ways to prepare your student to do what he wants with his life, while staying within your means.
You want to teach the student what he needs to know to survive in a complex civilization. That means he’ll need to learn about things basic to that civilization such as politics, religion, finance, history and culture. But you also want to do whatever it takes to give your child an edge in his own chosen fields of activity and interest. We all know that a person will work harder and with far greater success at a job that he loves, rather than one that he despises or is compelled to do.
We want to see our children become able, productive, to be masterful and enthusiastic in their work and life. The most important modern idea I can share with you today is that the student, his needs and interests, should be at the center of the decision making process about his own education.
We’ve discussed this. First locate what your student is interested in. Do this through genuine concern and observation. Listen to your student. Watch your student. When the light in their eyes turns on, be aware and ready to feed their interests.
Next, do anything and everything possible to provide your student experience in the area he’s interested in. And keep it up indefinitely, or until the student has either lost interest or has gained mastery to the point where you cannot help him anymore. This “new” idea placed at the core of your educational efforts will help guide you as a teacher. It may lead you to devalue or even jettison certain normally “core” subjects in study. It may lead you to emphasize some subjects at the expense of others. So be it.
We’re preparing the student to live his life, not the life of some imagined average person. If this approach leads to college, so be it. There are many ways a student can get into a college, and many ways to prepare for the inevitable tests a homeschool student (or any student) will need to take and score well to get in. There are Junior Colleges that almost can’t refuse a student entry, and once a student has done his two years of prison…er, Jr. College, it can be much easier to get entry to a college. That is if college is where your student needs to be.
We’ve discussed other educational options such as internships. An internship is a form of actually doing a thing. Nothing replaces hands-on experience. A student who wants to write should be writing – a lot. A student who wants to repair cars should be doing so, and often. If a field of interest has no practical application of any kind, it’s probably not much of a field of interest. Experience doing the thing that one wishes to do is the very best way to master the requisite skills. Nothing replaces the student’s own fire, his entrepreneurship.
So what are the new-fangled 21st century ideas to prep your student for success?
-Allow the student to focus his time and energy toward what he is interested in. Do not enforce studies in which the student has no interest.
-Apply common sense to the problem of education and throw out any old idea or tool that clearly isn’t working.
-Use college if it’s going to help the student get where he wants to go, and skip college if it will not.
-Consider Internships.
-Support and create opportunities for hands on experience.
-Support the student’s own entrepreneurship.
You’re right. These aren’t very new ideas. Yet what we laughingly call “modern education” almost entirely ignores them, and it has for a long time.
Parents, your own education most likely suffered from a lack of the employment of these ideas, or from this particular focus. You may have even been discouraged by an educator or two from following your dream or expressing your own entrepreneurship, as I was in High School by a vice principal at the public school I attended. I asked for the school’s cooperation in producing a musical show to raise money for homeless children, which I was assembling (at age 16). I was told by this Behemoth of Blather that “students cannot manage their own affairs”, and I was instructed to stop.
I left her tickets for our opening night and I’ve been producing, directing and writing shows my entire life since then. She was wrong. Anytime someone tells a student that they can’t do the thing that they’re interested in, they are very likely to be wrong.
Let’s get real “21st century” about education. Let’s believe in each student’s unique potential and back it up.
This may be a bit of a tough road. The world has never much supported the dream of the individual, not until that person made his dream a tangible reality. And then the world went “wow”, and became brilliant in hind sight.
Lincoln was seen by his own party (the Republican party, which was new born in his time) as a country bumpkin, and though a consummate politician, his road to the Presidency through his own party was difficult at best. Then his dream came true and he changed the world. Today his party proudly claims Lincoln as its founding father.
Geniuses in hind sight.
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.
