My brother recently talked to a member of our family who does homeschooling. She recommended the ideas of Charlotte Mason, so I went and watched this video, which presents the Mason philosophy (emphasizing what they call “living books”) in contrast to a few other homeschooling methods (traditional, classical, unit schooling, and unschooling).
None of these methods really spoke to me. There are two things to think about when evaluating an education philosophy:
- What is being taught? (Curriculum)
- How is it being taught? (Methods)
Curriculum
Here is how I would categorize the kinds of skills one could try and teach:
- General Academic Skills (i.e., math and literacy)
- Specific Academic Skills (i.e., law, medicine, science, business, home economics, etc.)
- Personality skills (i.e., integrating and harnessing emotions)
- Ideology (i.e., norms, values, status symbols, and ideas about society)
Regarding basic academic skills, I would probably just default to work others have done in developing things like the common core standards. Traditional education probably focuses on these skills more than the other philosophies mentioned, and that isn’t entirely wrong. Some versions of unschooling, for example, might underestimate the importance of these skills.
For young children, focusing on career specific skills is probably a bit premature, although as I will discuss below, I think it is good for students to observe adults engaging in “real” economic activity.
Of the five homeschooling methods in the video, I think that the Mason method of focusing on living books is a good start. But in general I think many schools are deficient at providing outlets for the ten personality aspects I mention in my post on family education. Even schools that emphasize social-emotional development often fetishize certain personality aspects (esp. agreeableness, conscientiousness and openness) at the expense of others (usually neuroticism and, sometimes, extroversion or openness).
Ideology is probably one of the main reasons that people choose homeschooling over traditional public or private schools. Everyone has an ideology, and not everyone is okay with the Standard Model or its variants. For example, I want to pass on my ideology about identity, happiness, work, and family to my children.
Methods
If I could sum up my view of effective education methods it would be to ask: Does this educational philosophy align with how the our brains have evolved to learn?
Specifically, I think our brains evolved in a hunter-gatherer type environment where we interacted with small groups, as discussed here. In this environment, I think our brains evolved to learn some specific skills (e.g., motor skills, language, food identification, how to build and identify trust networks) and to respond to some very specific learning methods.
Specifically, I think the four “Paleo” education methods are:
- Observation (esp. of adults engaging in real economic activity)
- Play (esp. informal games made up by the kids themselves)
- Conversation (not just listening, and not just talking to other kids)
- Trial-and-error (i.e., high-volume, immediate feedback)
Basically, children learned by following adults around, playing games, talking, trying to mimic what the adults do, and seeing what happens when they do it wrong.
Changes in culture (e.g., how people make money) have created a necessity for major changes in education. It is very costly to keep children around and try to teach them while working at the same time. Plus, the kinds of tasks that are economically relevant these days often require skills that cannot be learned by simple observation and play (e.g., math skills). Still, these cultural changes haven’t changed how our brain learns.
In a modern “traditional” school, kids observe adults, but only as authority figures, without real opportunities to try and mimic the behavior of these adults. Instead, kids are mostly exposed to the behavior of other kids within a very small (1 year) age range. Thus, they tend to mimic each other’s behavior, and a very weird and modern child-based culture emerges. Furthermore, kids don’t get nearly enough time to play. Thus, they become restless and seek ways to disengage. Furthermore, the kind of feedback they get exposes them to unnatural levels of stress that can have huge negative impact on social and emotional development.
So, taking a look at the Mason philosophy (at least my limited understanding of it) using this framework, I would say that it probably is a decent framework for approaching literacy, but might not be great for math. I don’t really see how it can be the basis for providing career specific skills. Living books might be one way to approach teaching personality skills, but I think providing opportunities for specific kinds of real interactions is a better approach. Finally, the Mason approach does have some ideological assumptions, but the overall result is depends a lot on the specific books chosen as the basis for study. When it comes to methods, I see a heavy emphasis on conversation, but probably not enough on observation of adults, play, or trial-and-error.
I have also been very interested in free schools. For example, the Sudbury School movement is based on a democratic ideology, and the idea that kids have all the basic cognitive tools (i.e., creativity, curiosity, and sympathy) they need to be effective adults. As a result, teachers let kids guide the curriculum. My interest in the movement was largely because I thought it gave students ample opportunity for play.
Looking at it now, I think they also probably do a pretty good job of providing opportunities for verbal engagement and for giving students opportunities to observe and mimic adults (although perhaps not in a sufficient range of real economic activity). However, I don’t really trust kids to know what is important when it comes to academic skills, and I don’t think the Sudbury democratic ideology really captures the set of the ideas and values I would like to perpetuate.
