We love our homeschooling journey. I love our time together as a family. I love the closeness I feel to my kids, and that they have with each other. We love the freedom to come and go as we please and study what our passions and interests dictate. But none of this is any academic measurement of success.
As a homeschooler, I have seen first hand that standardized tests are no better measurement of academic understanding either. We "follow" (swerve in and out of) a k12 curriculum for science and history and I have noticed as I help my kids through them that sometimes the tests fail to ask about concepts that have been my kids' favorites, and other times, they ask questions with one confusing word that might demonstrate to any teacher not paying attention that the concept has been missed, when it's only a poorly written question that is the problem. So if tests are no good for measuring, neither are grades which are made up of tests and scores.
So I've wondered if there was some intermediate measurement that would work before my kids ultimately enter the workforce where the market will pay them what they think their skill and store of knowledge is worth. Found a GREAT measuring concept in one of my most influential books, John Holt's How Children Fail.
"I feel I understand something if I can do some, at least, of the following: 1) state it in my own words; 2)give examples of it; 3) recognize it in various guises and circumstances; 4) see connections between it and other facts or ideas; 5) make use of it in various ways; 6) foresee some of it's consequences; 7) state its opposite or converse. This list is only a beginning...."
Yay! I've tried to describe this idea before as knowledge my kids "own." Holt calls it "real learning as opposed to apparent learning."
Holt says schools fail to make a distinction. "According to many of them, if you can say that 7X8=56, you know all there is to know about that particular fact.... The only difference between the mathematician and the child is that the mathematician carries around in his head many more such facts. So to make children into mathematicians all we have to do is train them, condition them, until they can say many such facts. Teach them to say everything that Einstein knew, and hey, presto! another Einstein!"
He contrasts this viewpoint with the following: "A child who has really learned something can use it, and does use it. It is connected with reality in his mind, therefore he can make other connections between it and reality when the chance comes. A piece of unreal learning has no hooks on it; it can't be attached to anything, it is of no use to the learner."
I suppose my challenge now will be to continue the knowledge journey with this clearer vision in mind. Of course, joining the knowledge journey is the best way to make sure it's happening. The lives, games, imaginations, conversations of my kids will all reveal what knowledge and understanding is really theirs. But I was glad to read a fuller picture of what I'm looking and going for!
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