by Steven Horwich
Where will Junior study? And I don't mean “at home,” as that is understood. I mean where exactly.
There is a tendency, I think, amongst those of us raised over the past 150 years (and I’m pretty sure that’s all of us) to think of “education” in terms of “classrooms”. Classrooms are where one goes to receive “the gifts of education”. (Forgive my slight smirk, here.)
We generally perceive this as a truth, so much so that we ship off our five year-olds to preschool and our young adults to college.
It is true that there can be some advantages to a classroom situation, though the way education is done today the few advantages that might have been available to classroom learning are rarely if ever employed in a meaningful sense. One possible advantage of having a classroom of fellow students is that there usually should be someone there studying what you’re studying that you can “partner” with for exercises and things “done” with the subject being studied.
Generally, though, schools do not do much of anything at all with the “knowledge” imparted. And they don't trust students to work together without supervision. Action is not usually the goal of education when speaking of a school situation, anyway.
Of course, another advantage schools have is resources. If the goal of a school was to provide students actual activity along with knowledge, and in areas of study in which the student had
interest, then schools are well-supported and should have been able to provide interesting hands-on experience in various ways. They generally do not, but they should have.
Additionally, schools always have some students who are advanced in a certain study, and others who need tutoring if they are to “keep up” with the school's agenda and the national standards.
(All utter garbage so far as the individual student is concerned, but hey, the school can’t be wrong, can it.)
One use of a classroom situation might be to team up advanced students to tutor students who are struggling. And some schools do attempt to do exactly that, to their credit. This could best be done in a school with a “Little Red School House” mentality, where children of all ages and ability occupy a single classroom.
In that system, rarely found today in United States public schools, an older and more experienced student might easily coach a younger student who is in need of help. A well-constructed homeschool group of 2-5 families could also do this, and they often do.
All of the above taken into account, classrooms are not the best place for a person to be if they want to learn something, or anything. But they may be the worst place to be, for reasons already described, and to be further discussed later in this book.
A homeschooler must do his study somewhere.
Since it is called “homeschooling”, one can usually assume in safety that the study is being done at home…either the student’s home, or at a friends.
There are many “unschoolers” and homeschoolers alike who extend study to include the great outdoors, museums, zoos, and almost any place in the world that might have a lesson to teach.
That, by the way, would be almost anywhere, from any local business to any open field. In his brief stint as a teacher, the American philosopher Henry David Thoreau did exactly that –taught in an open field. In his day, the world wasn’t yet ready for that idea. His school quickly
closed down.
Assuming you are working at home. I believe it is important to make the study space conform to three important criteria.
1) The student’s needs.
2) The student’s interests.
3) The overall needs of the household.
To start, a student needs to have his own space to study, and ideally, it should be a dedicated space. It should not have to be taken apart and put back together each day, if at all possible. That will act as a serious waste of time, and a distraction to learning.
What does a student need beside a place to study?
When my children were homeschoolers (they are adults now), they needed many things in the study space to work effectively. Structurally, these included a pretty quiet space. It had to be kept fairly neat and organized, even if they madea mess of it while studying.
This meant straightening or cleaning each day of work. The room had to be large enough to move around a bit, as required by their studies. It had to have no strange or distracting smells.
It needed decent lighting to work by. It had to have air (usually from a window) entering as needed. There needed to be a working bathroom nearby. They needed access to decent food and water for breaks, lunch, or whenever, but we rarely allowed food into the study space due to the mess and smell factor.
What was in that room that was directly related to study?
A desk or table to work at.
A place to neatly store books and materials, where they could be quickly located for use.
A computer on the Internet, one per student. (Yes, students need access to the Internet and yes, some student’s uses of the Internet will need to be policed.)
A printer was needed, though today, I don’t think we would use it much.
A shelf was made available for supplies such as paper, pens, pencils, erasers, measuring tools such as rulers, a stapler with staples, scissors (these last two for older students, I think), and whatever other supplies were required by their particular studies.
They had a door they could close, but I usually had it open.
And sometimes, a parent/educator spent time in the room supervising whatever study was taking place. That person needs a place to sit.
Needless to say, whatever materials the student was actually studying needed to be available in the study space, be it a book or a program or document in their computer.
There is more. There are objects usually required for a student to study subjects of particular interest.
For instance, a student studying music and guitar will need a guitar, and perhaps even a keyboard, along with workbooks he’s using. They might even need recording equipment.
A student studying cooking may need a well-stocked kitchen, and victims, um, I mean, taste testers to sample their efforts.
A student studying baseball might need the equipment to play, a park, even a Little League team, as well as books and videos.
Each unique study has unique needs, and if a student is to do well at it, he needs what he needs.
Of course, the expense and effort to get everything a student needs for certain areas of study might be prohibitive. I remember when my own kids were studying meteorology (weather, atmosphere). I put together a small weather station for them with a few pieces of necessary equipment. There was a lot more I could have done had I the resources. (Today, there are Internet sites that do a lot of the same things a “home weather station” would do.)
And as to decoration?
Well, mom and dad may not like it much, but this is the student’s place to study.
It is also, sorry student, a part of the house your whole family lives in. I believe that compromises can be arrived at where the student can have things to look at that do not distract much from study but which please him, and which are not so horrible that mom and dad will be unwilling to show great grandma the study room. Such compromises are necessary.
Bottom line, a student is not going to learn much in a space unsuited to learning.
The space itself will work against the student. A space that fits the above criteria and any other criteria that will facilitate study is what you need and want. If you are truly interested in improving study skills,this is one quick way to do so. A student surrounded by the things actually needed to study, those things in good shape and good order, in a space genuinely equipped for study, is almost bound to experience improved results.
Steven Horwich has been a professional educator for over 40 years, and a homeschool advocate and author of curriculum for 15. His K-12 secular curriculum, STEPS (www.stepsed.com) has been used by over 20,000 students worldwide, and includes world history, science, civics, creative writing, study basics, current events, and lots of arts.
Where will Junior study? And I don't mean “at home,” as that is understood. I mean where exactly.
There is a tendency, I think, amongst those of us raised over the past 150 years (and I’m pretty sure that’s all of us) to think of “education” in terms of “classrooms”. Classrooms are where one goes to receive “the gifts of education”. (Forgive my slight smirk, here.)
We generally perceive this as a truth, so much so that we ship off our five year-olds to preschool and our young adults to college.
It is true that there can be some advantages to a classroom situation, though the way education is done today the few advantages that might have been available to classroom learning are rarely if ever employed in a meaningful sense. One possible advantage of having a classroom of fellow students is that there usually should be someone there studying what you’re studying that you can “partner” with for exercises and things “done” with the subject being studied.
Generally, though, schools do not do much of anything at all with the “knowledge” imparted. And they don't trust students to work together without supervision. Action is not usually the goal of education when speaking of a school situation, anyway.
Of course, another advantage schools have is resources. If the goal of a school was to provide students actual activity along with knowledge, and in areas of study in which the student had
interest, then schools are well-supported and should have been able to provide interesting hands-on experience in various ways. They generally do not, but they should have.
Additionally, schools always have some students who are advanced in a certain study, and others who need tutoring if they are to “keep up” with the school's agenda and the national standards.
(All utter garbage so far as the individual student is concerned, but hey, the school can’t be wrong, can it.)
One use of a classroom situation might be to team up advanced students to tutor students who are struggling. And some schools do attempt to do exactly that, to their credit. This could best be done in a school with a “Little Red School House” mentality, where children of all ages and ability occupy a single classroom.
In that system, rarely found today in United States public schools, an older and more experienced student might easily coach a younger student who is in need of help. A well-constructed homeschool group of 2-5 families could also do this, and they often do.
All of the above taken into account, classrooms are not the best place for a person to be if they want to learn something, or anything. But they may be the worst place to be, for reasons already described, and to be further discussed later in this book.
A homeschooler must do his study somewhere.
Since it is called “homeschooling”, one can usually assume in safety that the study is being done at home…either the student’s home, or at a friends.
There are many “unschoolers” and homeschoolers alike who extend study to include the great outdoors, museums, zoos, and almost any place in the world that might have a lesson to teach.
That, by the way, would be almost anywhere, from any local business to any open field. In his brief stint as a teacher, the American philosopher Henry David Thoreau did exactly that –taught in an open field. In his day, the world wasn’t yet ready for that idea. His school quickly
closed down.
Assuming you are working at home. I believe it is important to make the study space conform to three important criteria.
1) The student’s needs.
2) The student’s interests.
3) The overall needs of the household.
To start, a student needs to have his own space to study, and ideally, it should be a dedicated space. It should not have to be taken apart and put back together each day, if at all possible. That will act as a serious waste of time, and a distraction to learning.
What does a student need beside a place to study?
When my children were homeschoolers (they are adults now), they needed many things in the study space to work effectively. Structurally, these included a pretty quiet space. It had to be kept fairly neat and organized, even if they madea mess of it while studying.
This meant straightening or cleaning each day of work. The room had to be large enough to move around a bit, as required by their studies. It had to have no strange or distracting smells.
It needed decent lighting to work by. It had to have air (usually from a window) entering as needed. There needed to be a working bathroom nearby. They needed access to decent food and water for breaks, lunch, or whenever, but we rarely allowed food into the study space due to the mess and smell factor.
What was in that room that was directly related to study?
A desk or table to work at.
A place to neatly store books and materials, where they could be quickly located for use.
A computer on the Internet, one per student. (Yes, students need access to the Internet and yes, some student’s uses of the Internet will need to be policed.)
A printer was needed, though today, I don’t think we would use it much.
A shelf was made available for supplies such as paper, pens, pencils, erasers, measuring tools such as rulers, a stapler with staples, scissors (these last two for older students, I think), and whatever other supplies were required by their particular studies.
They had a door they could close, but I usually had it open.
And sometimes, a parent/educator spent time in the room supervising whatever study was taking place. That person needs a place to sit.
Needless to say, whatever materials the student was actually studying needed to be available in the study space, be it a book or a program or document in their computer.
There is more. There are objects usually required for a student to study subjects of particular interest.
For instance, a student studying music and guitar will need a guitar, and perhaps even a keyboard, along with workbooks he’s using. They might even need recording equipment.
A student studying cooking may need a well-stocked kitchen, and victims, um, I mean, taste testers to sample their efforts.
A student studying baseball might need the equipment to play, a park, even a Little League team, as well as books and videos.
Each unique study has unique needs, and if a student is to do well at it, he needs what he needs.
Of course, the expense and effort to get everything a student needs for certain areas of study might be prohibitive. I remember when my own kids were studying meteorology (weather, atmosphere). I put together a small weather station for them with a few pieces of necessary equipment. There was a lot more I could have done had I the resources. (Today, there are Internet sites that do a lot of the same things a “home weather station” would do.)
And as to decoration?
Well, mom and dad may not like it much, but this is the student’s place to study.
It is also, sorry student, a part of the house your whole family lives in. I believe that compromises can be arrived at where the student can have things to look at that do not distract much from study but which please him, and which are not so horrible that mom and dad will be unwilling to show great grandma the study room. Such compromises are necessary.
Bottom line, a student is not going to learn much in a space unsuited to learning.
The space itself will work against the student. A space that fits the above criteria and any other criteria that will facilitate study is what you need and want. If you are truly interested in improving study skills,this is one quick way to do so. A student surrounded by the things actually needed to study, those things in good shape and good order, in a space genuinely equipped for study, is almost bound to experience improved results.
Steven Horwich has been a professional educator for over 40 years, and a homeschool advocate and author of curriculum for 15. His K-12 secular curriculum, STEPS (www.stepsed.com) has been used by over 20,000 students worldwide, and includes world history, science, civics, creative writing, study basics, current events, and lots of arts.
