One of my granddaughters is home schooling her kids. It’s not so much about pandemic as having some input into their education, distance to travel, country roads, and the affordability of fuel. I admire any parent who is willing to take that on, as I recall being home schooled myself for the first couple of elementary years. Distance and lack of transportation were factors for us too.
I was a total brat. I hadn’t signed up for having my mom sit me down for a prescribed number of hours for an assigned activity, and all her nonsense about how fun school would be when I did go, went right over my head. Luckily, Mom had been a primary school teacher before her marriage and knew how to deal with recalcitrant learners. She did such a good job that, upon entering public school, I was placed a grade ahead; a practice I wouldn’t recommend, since it meant I was always too young to do things my classmates were allowed to, and graduated at 16, with no notion of how to navigate the adult world.
Homeschooling has changed since then, and the curriculum is more creative. It’s working out well for my great grandkids, who live on a Montana ranch. They get to practice math while helping feed cattle, build a shed, or measure ingredients for a recipe. Dad’s guitar comes into play for music lessons, and art, spelling, and writing spill over into letters the great grandparents can hang on the fridge in Nebraska. The kids are second and third graders and insist on being involved with night calving checks, but the ten o’clock one is their limit. Not having to be up at the crack of dawn to catch the bus for a long ride, they can sleep a bit later, and their mom doesn’t have lunches to pack.
My granddaughter says some days are hard, but it’s basically been good for all, and goes much better than the virtual classes they experienced last year. She already has the weeks counted to the end of the semester, and the kids probably do too. I don’t know if they’ll continue the routine another year or two, but no doubt at some point they’ll be in a more traditional setting. Meanwhile, the whole family is learning to think outside the box, which is more and more necessary for all of us.
One of the unintended consequences f 2020’s trials may be that public education has to re-think how to implement learning. If politics can be left out if the equation, we may see progress in how classrooms prepare students for real life. A lot of my resistance to various assignments during school years was expressed as, “This doesn’t’ have anything to do with life after I graduate.” A lot of it was relevant, of course, but nobody bothered to show us how that would play out.
That being said, maybe 2020 also showed parents how necessary it is to be involved in their kids’ learning. One daughter in law corrects her kids when they use improper English, and reminds them that the habits they develop now will be in place when applying for jobs. And let’s be clear. Teaching manners, respect, values, and life skills is too important to be left to public schools. Do your job parents, it’ll make the teacher’s job a lot easier.