Learn Spanish Or Chinese Better

We make lots of suggestions in The Well-Trained Mind. We describe methods for classical education, and talk about philosophy and educational theory. But theory isn’t enough; we were anxious to give even the most uncertain parent the confidence to tackle the task of classical education at home, so we included plenty of specific suggestions. This was partly because of the urging of our publisher, who was completely unfamiliar with home schooling. (“But how much time should they spend on math?” he would write on the manuscript. “How many pages of spelling should a third grader do every day? Exactly how many hours should a seventh grader devote to science? If you don’t tell them, they won’t know where to start, and they won’t even try.”) We were a little skeptical, primarily because we’ve been involved in home education our whole lives. A lot of the things he wanted us to spell out (for example, how many times a week to do art, for how many minutes at a time) seemed to us to be obvious.But as we’ve heard back from parents using the book, we’ve realized that he was right. If you’re a veteran home schooler transitioning to classical education — or in your third year of classical education — you don’t need to know how many minutes to spend in art, how many times per week. But if you’re a beginner, you need concrete details. Having specifics in hand is necessary if you’re going to have the confidence to tackle the home education project. This is why we also recommend one or two curricula for every subject. Of course there are plenty of books and programs out there that can fulfill the same function as Saxon math, or Delta science. But we didn’t want to overwhelm our readers. We evaluated programs for a combination of thoroughness, systematic method, ease of use, and affordability, and recommended the curricula that won (in our opinion). So of course you should feel free to substitute books and programs that work best for you and for your family. Naturally, we feelstrongly about some of the programs and methods we recommend. For example, after meeting scores of illiterate college freshmen, Susan is only confirmed in her opinion that everyone ought to do the A Beka high school grammar and composition course (grades 7-12). And we continue to insist that young children (grades 1-4) can and should do more formal academic work than is recommended by some other educators. Jessie has heard from far too many parents who say, “We took a relaxed approach in the early years, and our children have really suffered from it.” If you ask us, we’ll repeat these opinions! But the beauty of home schooling is its flexibility. After all, you are home schooling because you want the freedom of working with your child’s strengths and weaknesses in a one-on-one setting where you have the option of experimenting and adjusting. One area that seems to be concerning our readers is that of scheduling. For example, we have fourth graders schedule for 5+ hours of work per day.This is “quite intensive,” as one mother wrote us. “I think this will be a bit much, and I keep wondering how [you] did it with only a 4-day week, and cover all the material.” The answer to this question is simple: we didn’t do it all. In the book, we try to cover every possible area of academics: reading, writing, grammar, history, science, art, music, logic, speech and debate, mathematics, research papers, foreign languages, computer skills, typing — you name it, we have suggestions for it. But that doesn’t mean that one particular child is going to study all of these areas. Your family’s home school schedule will be affected by your own interests and priorities. For example, Susan does an enormous amount of reading and writing at her house, because she’s a professional writer. Art only happens every three weeks (or so), although music practice takes place every day (since she is also an amateur musician). If she were a professional artist, she would do art every day, and music,perhaps, every three weeks or so. We said in the book (but apparently not emphatically enough!) that very few parents will follow the schedule in the book. Frankly, we put the schedules in under protest, at the publisher’s insistence. They are only useful as a springboard for your own schedule — one that fits your family and your child’s learning style. We received recently an e-mail in which someone had totalled the times recommended in the book for study in each grade. The list looked something like this: Kindergarten 1 hour 20 minutes First grade 3 hours 49 minutes Second grade 4 hours Third grade 4 hours 52 minutes Fourth grade 5 hours 34 minutes Fifth grade 6 hours 41 minutes Sixth grade 6 hours 51 minutes Seventh grade 6 hours 51 minutes Eighth grade 6 hours 58 minutes Ninth grade 7 hours 33 minutes Tenth grade 7 hours 33 minutes Eleventh grade 6 hours 21 minutes Twelfth grade 6 hours 21 minutes The writer was concerned about overkill academics, especially in the early grades.But remember these points about the recommended schedules: 1) You’ll be surprised how much time for academics and outside reading you have once you turn off the TV. Enough said. 2) Yes, you will spend this amount of time if you do EVERYTHING we suggest in the book. But no family is going to do that! Obviously, a few subjects (reading and writing, mathematics, history and science) must be studied by every educated person. But not even an educated person does the core subjects PLUS two foreign languages, art history, drawing lessons, music lessons, and music appreciation. Rather, do the core subjects and choose what arts and languages you will concentrate on. Or alternate: music one year, art the next. And if you can do them all, more power to you; but don’t feel guilty if you can’t. 3) These totals assume that children will work at basically the same rate in every subject: half an hour for grammar, forty-five minutes for math, twenty minutes for spelling. Our recommended schedules makethe same assumption. But in real life, children find some subjects a breeze and others a hard slog. Most children will not spend twenty minutes on spelling and forty-five minutes on math; they’ll toss off the spelling in five minutes and sweat over the math for fifty-five minutes, or charge through science in half the time we suggest. So you may well find that you can complete the amount of work we suggest in much less than the time we list; this is especially true for children who are quick in language arts skills. 4) When looking at these totals, consider that a child in school, even in the elementary grades, spends 7-8 hours at school and another 2-3 in homework: that’s 9-12 hours on schoolwork! Obviously, this is far too much. But even at its most ambitious, classical home education doesn’t require this much time. 5) The high school totals are based on a heavily academic schedule pursued by a college-bound student. It is not unreasonable to expect a fifteen-year-old bound for