Rational Homeschooling

Cross-posted to Rational Homeschooling

Well, I have posted on what I consider to be rational parenting.  Since the title of this blog is Rational Homeschooling, I figure I should elaborate a bit on what that means to me.

Rational Homeschooling includes:

• Educating oneself on learning, education, cognitive science, etc. to ensure good practice
• Determining what your definition of an educated person is; for example:
  • An educated person should have all of the knowledge needed to score well on the SATs
  • An educated person should have the skills to research whatever information they may need
  • An educated person should have a solid framework of knowledge in the literature, sciences, history and arts in order to fill in the framework with connected knowledge as they develop (my personal definition)
  • insert your (educated, reasoned and deliberated) definition here
• Developing specific goals that lead toward your target of assisting your child in becoming an educated person
• Keeping in mind that being an ‘educated person’ is not an endpoint; one is never finished learning.  We have only a few years to contribute to our kids’ educations; these are milestones we are working toward, not destinations.
• Treating one’s children as capable of learning anything they set their mind to; capable of knowing when is and is not a good time for them to be trying to learn something; intelligent consumers of information
• Allowing one’s children to make choices in their education so that they become good decision makers and so that they have ownership of their journey

Rational Homeschooling does not include:

• Creating artificial grades to reward or punish
• Demanding completion of items based on purchase price, perceived notions of obedience vs. disobedience, or ‘the principle of the thing’
  • Making children learn things the parent him/herself does not know and is not willing to learn