Stop Asking What You Should Teach

Why homeschooling isn't about finding the perfect curriculum.

Years ago I didn’t understand why other homeschooling mums needed so much educational input from outside of the home. I found creating lesson plans and deciding what to teach my children really easy — almost naturally.

This meant I often fell into the trap of doing too much, packing our days with activities and lessons, and unwittingly pressuring both my children and myself to perform.

And then there were the days I’d suddenly realise we were learning simply for learning’s sake. The children would ask why they needed to learn something and I’d be stumped, unable to give them a reason that made sense. My fallback was usually:

“Well, you might need to know this one day.”

“Then why can’t we learn it then?” they’d ask.

That drive to teach, or for our children to be forever busy learning, is deeply ingrained.

I used to joke that many of my homeschooling friends were either frustrated would-be teachers, or teachers who had left the profession.

All too often friends would ask me to help them come up with educational activities for their children — or ask how to teach something — and I usually resisted, but really wasn’t sure why I felt so reluctant. I find it incredibly easy to dream up a dozen activities off the top of my head, or brainstorm a busy unit study in fifteen minutes. And to be honest, for a long time, I wondered why they couldn’t. That’s how natural it felt.

At first, I answered those questions by imagining what I’d do with my own children. Sometimes they’d do those things but more often than not they wouldn’t. After a while, I learned to consider the family asking the questions more closely, and then tailor my suggestions to better suit their lifestyle and circumstances.

But even then I realised something important. I could never know their children as well as they did. And that made all the difference.

My suggestions were based on generalisations. That’s what schools have to do. At best, what I offered was no better than a school curriculum.

As a result I became reluctant to provide instant solutions, activities or lesson plans for other families.

Homeschooling works because it isn’t school.

My wise friend John Peacock, author of the Why and How of Australian Home Education , kept insisting that we — us mums and dads — are the experts when it comes to homeschooling our children. We are “at the coal face” of educating our children, he’d say.

It is our children, our family, our lifestyle and our needs that determine how our children are educated, what they learn, when and how.

And because of this, the knowledge we seek about how to homeschool already exists within us, waiting be recognised. We simply need to ask ourselves the questions we ask everyone else — and then patiently wait for the answers to emerge. Because they will and do.

It took me years to recognise some of the answers. They’d arrive in various guises time and again until I paid attention and noticed them for what they were: solutions to questions I’d asked long ago.

Once we learn to trust our ability to find solutions, it gets easier to brainstorm a dozen ways to help our children learn almost anything. Sometimes it’s a matter of working out where to look for more information. That is an educational activity in itself! Acknowledging that we don’t have to know everything or be able to do everything is an important first step. We simply need to model being an active and confident learner.

When we pay attention to our children’s needs (instead of distant, impersonal ideas about what good parenting or education should look like), and when we base our decisions and solutions around their strengths and limitations (as well as our own), we become empowered to give our children exactly what they need.

Or as John Holt succinctly put it:

“What children need is not new and better curricula but access to more and more of the real world; plenty of time and space to think over their experiences, and to use fantasy and play to make meaning out of them; and advice, road maps, guidebooks, to make it easier for them to get where they want to go (not where we think they ought to go), and to find out what they want to find out.”

Most of us don’t have the confidence, especially in those early years of homeschooling, to “go it alone”. And we shouldn’t have to. Learning is a social game and it’s a lot of fun, especially when we share what we’ve discovered.

Often, someone’s suggestion will trigger an avalanche of answers of our own. What’s that saying — something about standing on the shoulders of giants? It’s a good one: without the support and encouragement of others we’d get nowhere.

But, believe me, that’s very different from being given a set of ready-made answers, especially if we haven’t actually determined what we truly need to know yet!

Another thing John Holt wrote was,

“Intelligence is the measure of how we behave when we don’t know what to do. It has to do with our ability to think up important questions and then find ways to get useful answers.”

Most of us believe we don’t have time to observe, listen, focus, pay attention, and give time to our children (or our own needs). We’re always in so much of a hurry, seeking shortcuts, and desiring convenience.

It can blind us to what we really need. And we’ve been conditioned to think like this, by our own schooling experiences, by the continuous reinforcement of a marketing-soaked media, and cultural pressures.

It takes a conscious effort to learn to slow down and trust that the answers will come if we only give them time.

Homeschooling gave me the gift of time — time to watch my children, listen to them, and, above all, learn from them.

It gave me a glimpse into how learning really happens, and the confidence not only in their ability to learn naturally, but also in my own.

Now when I think the grandkids should learn this or that, or do something, or I have a great idea I’m keen to explore with them — I pause, take a step back, consider who they are, what’s happening in their lives, and what it is they really need to know and be able to do, and what will work for them, right now. And together we’ll talk about it and see if it fits, see if it’s actually needed.

Photo by Benjamin Hersh on Unsplash

I’m dropping Notes most days and would love to connect with you that way — you can add a comment or like. Don’t forget we can keep the conversation going on any of my posts by adding a comment there too.

If you’re homeschooling in Australia, don’t forget to download my FREE Resource Directory for a bumper list of educational and curriculum providers and suppliers, as well as comprehensive guide on getting started how to register as a home educating family.

Whatever your approach, your lifestyle or education philosophy, I’m here to support you. Take what you need, leave the rest. I want you to lean on my experience because I’ve leant on others — we are in this together, growing and learning from each other!

That’s all for now! Until next time, Beverley