Carnival of Homeschoolin #165 is Up!

Judy Aron over at "The Consent of the Governed" is hosting this week's 165th Carnival of Homeschooling: Stimulus Edition. Happy reading!

Re-visiting My Educational Philosophy

I'm approaching my 2 year blogiversary, and a recent post by an Australian homeschooling blogger linking to my very first post (thanks for the link love and all the kind words!) got me thinking.

My inaugural post was entitled "Our Educational Philosophy". It was written seven months into our trial year homeschooling our oldest for pre-k and a few months after we made the decision not to enroll her in a traditional school for kindergarten. This first year was spent mostly on figuring out if homeschooling was right for our family and once we decided it was, figuring out how we were going to do it. It was heavy on the planning, and relatively light on the actual teaching part.

Fortunately, 4 year olds don't need that much in the way of formal academic instruction in general, and mine already knew most of the traditional pre-k stuff like the alphabet, counting, shapes, colors, etc. I did do formal phonics with her based on Romalda Spalding's The Writing Road to Reading (adapted to be less reliant on fine motor skills) but the other subjects were done informally.

My point in relating all this is that when I wrote up my educational philosophy, it was based primarily on my ideas about education rather than actual experience. Not that it was done lightly- I had read extensively on the subject and carefully considered a wide variety of viewpoints before trying to formulate my own philosophy. But the $64,000 question is how do I feel about it now that we're halfway through our second year of formal homeschooling?

Back then, I wrote:

"Our primary goal in homeschooling is to teach our children to love God and to serve Him in everything they do. We teach science as the study of His creation; mathematics as His order for the universe; literature, art, and music as the fruits of His inspiration; history as His plan for humanity; health and physical education as taking care of His precious gift of our bodies; and religion as His instructions for how we should live our lives here on Earth. We strive to provide our children with the tools (spiritual, academic, and practical) that they will need in their future vocations."

I still agree with everything here. However, I have been more successful in integrating our faith with certain subjects than with others. History and math in particular I need to do a better job expressing how they are part of God's design.

"We seek to foster in our children a true love of learning so that they will continually seek out new challenges and avenues for growth. We wish to encourage creativity, thinking 'outside the box', and approaching problem-solving in innovative ways. We believe this is best accomplished through integration across subjects; hands-on experiences; exposure to great literature, art, and music; discussing topics in-depth; applying what has been learned to novel situations; lots of variety and freedom to explore; and a balance of teacher-guided and child-directed activities."

Again, I still agree with all this. I've found the integration across subjects to be more difficult than I'd imagined. I got all these promising-looking materials to teach the history of math, science, art, music, etc. but my DD has not really been all that interested. Ditto for trying to do arts & crafts projects related to what we're studying. This is where the "encouraging creativity and thinking outside the box" has come back to bite me in the rear because she wants to do it her way (cue Frank Sinatra) rather than following the directions.

"We believe in tailoring the curriculum to the student's individual abilities, interests, and learning styles while still providing rigorous academic instruction. Our goals include the ability to read, write, and speak fluently and persuasively in English using proper grammar and spelling; strong quantitative skills and the ability to analyze data; familiarity with science, world and U.S. history, geography, and civics to be an informed citizen; computer literacy; and a thorough understanding of Scripture and Church doctrine in order to lead a moral life."

I definitely still agree with this. However, I realize now that I neglected to include some important goals. A big one is a thorough knowledge of economics and personal finance. Our country is in turmoil right now because too few of its citizens have a strong understanding of those key topics. Another important area is home economics and other practical skills. I'm not necessarily buying into the whole "training our daughters to be keepers of the home" thing (though certainly I'm not knocking women who've embraced the traditional female role and would have no problem if my girls decide to spend some time as homemakers when they grow up). I'd just like all my kids (including my son) to be able to cook, do basic sewing, and other household tasks.

"We draw upon the wisdom of many educators including pioneers like Charlotte Mason, Dorothy Sayers, and Maria Montessori as well as contemporary ones like Raymond Moore, Susan Wise Bauer, and Laura Berquist."

I am definitely still an eclectic homeschooler, with strong Classical and Charlotte Mason leanings. In addition to the above names, I've also found helpful information from Catherine Levison, Harvey & Laurie Bluedorn, and even some books geared at "unschoolers" by Mary Griffith and Mary Hood (these are full of ideas for experiential learning).

Overall, I think my original educational philosophy has held up relatively well. We've definitely made progress towards our goals. We could be doing better in some areas such as ensuring our family's faith is integrated across the whole curriculum rather than just certain subjects. It's been a learning process for me as well as my kids, and I'm sure that it will continue to be so in the future.

153rd Carnival of Homeschooling is Up!

Silvia over at "Po Moyemu-In My Opinion" is hosting this week's 153rd edition of the Carnival of Homeschooling. Happy reading!

Carnival of Homeschooling is Up!

The "Nerd Family" blog is hosting this week's edition of the Carnival of Homeschooling here. Happy reading!

1 Week Left to Vote in CoH Graphics Contest!

If you haven't already cast your vote in the Carnival of Homeschooling graphics contest, please head on over to "Why Homeschool" by next Thursday, March 27th.

115th Carnival of Homeschooling is Up!

Janice Campbell over at "Taking Time for Things that Matter" is hosting this week's 115th edition of the Carnival of Homeschooling.

Carnival of Homeschooling is Up!

"At Home with Kris" is hosting this week's edition of the Carnival of Homeschooling.

CA Judges: "Parents Have No Constitutional Right to Homeschool"

I'd always heard that California was one of the easier states in which to homeschool. So I was shocked to read an article on WorldNetDaily entitled "Judge Orders Homeschoolers Into Government Education." It was a bit unclear from the WND article what exactly was going on in the case of Philip and Mary Long [UPDATE: from the 2/28/08 court ruling, it appeared that the parents' names were Jonathan & Mary Grace. I have since learned that those are the names of the 2 Long children the court has ordered to attend school]. So I dug a bit deeper, and found the full ruling here.

According to the court document, one of the Longs' minor children reported some sort of unspecified physical and emotional mistreatment by Mr. Long [UPDATE: out of concern for the privacy of the Long children, I've decided to take down the link to a different court document detailing the alleged abuse. It is a matter of public record though so here's the gist of it. There was conflict between Mr. Long and an adolescent daughter over her disobedience of his strict rules. The daughter ran away from the family home & claimed that her father's corporal punishment was abusive and that he did not protect her from a family friend whom she alleges was sexually abusing her and her sisters. An older daughter not living with the family made similar allegations. The parents and the other children deny these allegations and basically characterize the two girls as disgruntled with their strict upbringing. The child welfare authorities sent the teen to live with her sister, where she is enrolled in a traditional government-run school. They found no evidence that the youngest two children were subject to abuse so they left them in the home. A follow-up visit 6 months later confirmed they were doing okay.]

The L.A. County Department of Children and Family Services investigated and discovered that all 8 children in the family are or had been homeschooled. The children in question are currently enrolled in the accredited independent study program of the Sunland Christian School. The Longs have stated that they homeschool because of their “sincerely held religious beliefs...based on Biblical teachings and principles” and that they do not believe in the policies of the public school system.

A court attorney was appointed to "represent the interests" of the youngest 2 Long children [whom even the teen making the allegations of her own mistreatment has said were not abused and whom the social workers at the follow-up visit agreed were okay]. This attorney asked the juvenile court to order that the children be enrolled in a traditional public or private school. The reasons given were:

(1) [The children] could interact with people outside the family.
(2) There are people who could provide help if something is amiss in the children’s lives.
(3) [The children] could develop emotionally in a broader world than the parents’ “cloistered” setting.

[UPDATE: The child welfare authorities were *ALREADY* keeping tabs on the Long family. If, at any point, they become concerned about the safety of these children, they can choose to remove them from the home the way they did the teen. Additionally, enrolling the children in a traditional school is no guarantee of protection from a legitimately abusive situation, should that turn out to be the case.] The juvenile court declined to issue the order because the Longs have a constitutional right to homeschool. The court-appointed attorney for the children then appealed to the Second Appellate District of California.

Judges H. Walter Croskey, Joan Klein, and Patti Kitching of the Second Appellate Court then made an extraordinary ruling. They held that the California Educational Code Section 48222 that exempts private school students from compulsory attendance at government-run schools only applies to those enrolled in traditional private schools. This goes against two previous home school cases handled by HSLDA, that upheld the right of homeschools to operate as private schools: People v. Darrah, No. 853104 (Santa Maria Mun. Ct. Mar. 10, 1986); People v. Black, No. 853105 (Santa Maria Mun. Ct. Mar. 10, 1986).

Under the requirements of the CA Ed. Code, private school teachers are not required to hold a CA state teaching credential or have any specific qualifications aside from being "capable of teaching". The only time a state teaching credential is required is if the parent chooses to act as a "certified private tutor" under Section 48224. Yet the Second Appellate Court judges held Mrs. Long unfit to teach her children at home because she lacks a state credential:

"the fact remains that the children are taught at home by a non-credentialed person. Moreover, the very language of section 48222 is an implicit rejection of the parents’ position that having someone from Sunland Christian School monitor mother’s instruction of the children is sufficient. Section 48222 provides an exemption from compulsory public school education for '[c]hildren who are being instructed in a private full-time day school.' (emphasis added)."

The Long children ARE being educated IN a "private full-time day school". That school just happens to be located at the Long home!

What is the truly scary part of the Second Appellate Court ruling for religious homeschoolers is the rejection of the Longs' right to homeschool based on their religious beliefs. The judges rejected the Longs' claim that that requiring their children to attend government-run schools violates their First Amendment right to freedom of worship. The reason given was that those religious beliefs are "philosophical and personal" rather than specifically mandated by an organized church community based on traditions that are centuries old (such as the Old Order Amish). The judges wrote that:

"[The Longs'] statements are conclusional, not factually specific. Moreover, such sparse representations are too easily asserted by any parent who wishes to home school his or her child."

So the State gets to decide whether a family is homeschooling for religious reasons NOT the family itself. If the State decides the reasons are actually "philosophical" rather than "religious" (talk about vague!) then the parents have no right to educate their own children.

Please join me in praying that the State Supreme Court will overturn this horrendous ruling!

Homeschooling and "The Mommy Myth"

According to the authors of The Mommy Myth: The Idealization of Motherhood and How It Has Undermined Women, I must be a failure as a homeschooling mom.

Why? Because I'm not totally fluent in quadratic equations, the XYZ affair, and the literary symbolism of Banquo's ghost in Macbeth. Forget about the existence of such things as oh, I don't know, teacher's manuals, literature guides, reference books, online and community college courses, tutors, etc. Forget the fact that the typical elementary schoolteacher would almost certainly have equal or greater difficulty in teaching these concepts without any kind of reference material. Not to be too much of an educational snob, but I scored more than 400 points higher on the SAT than the average new elementary teacher and had a higher college GPA than >60% (the study unfortunately lumped together all the 3.5+ students so I'm not sure exactly at which percentile mine would place me).

Didn't you get the memo from Professors Susan Douglas of the University of Michigan and Meredith Michaels of Smith? The one saying that home educators need to be omniscient, spend the absolute entire day imparting knowledge into our kids, and feel a compulsion to have our kids step over others, be the envy of others, rise above the mass of the others, "to be, and to be seen as, well, a star"? That we are self-righteous zealots who consider ourselves to be the perfect examples of enlightened maternal virtue?

Pardon my French, but that's a big, fat, steaming load of manure. It's quite clear from reading the discussion of homeschooling in The Mommy Myth that Drs. Douglas and Michaels don't know the first thing about real-life homeschoolers.

The authors' bias is obvious in their treatment of the National Center for Educational Statistics study statistic about 30% of the homeschoolers surveyed citing the desire to "provide religious or moral instruction" as their primary motivation for educating their kids at home. Now, those of us inside the homeschooling community know how broad that statement is, and how extremely diverse the group of families are who might concur with it. No one group has a monopoly on morality and people of any faith or none whatsoever might decide to homeschool in order to teach their children in accordance with their family's values. Yet to Drs. Douglas & Michaels, they're all ultraconservative fundamentalists motivated by:

"an insistence that their kids never encounter the words 'evolution', 'birth control', or 'Oscar Wilde'."

Even the most conservative Christian homeschoolers I know teach *ABOUT* Darwinian evolution and sexuality. Drs. Douglas & Michaels may not like the way those topics are being taught by conservative homeschoolers, but it's a myth that homeschooled kids are totally sheltered from controversial topics.

The authors of The Mommy Myth truly seem to believe that homeschooling is super difficult for the parent doing the primary teaching. But honestly, I see what they would have me do instead of homeschooling to be way more stressful. Throughout the book, they make it abundantly clear their preference for women to hold full-time employment outside the home by glamorizing careers and presenting an excessively negative portrayal of homemaking. Yes, it can be tedious to do housework, change diapers, and so on but the corporate world isn't all fun & games either. I could go on at length about the tedious aspects of my last paid position. The point is, Drs. Douglas & Michaels would have me employed 40+ hours per week, and on top of that somehow find the time & energy to devote myself to the "rehabilitation of public education" by "[joining] the PTA and [giving] the local school board h***."

Forget the fact that the local school board has very little power to fix the problems with government-run schools. I'd have to try to influence things on the state or even Federal level, which would be a full-time job in and of itself. Maybe it's a generational thing, but I'm a lot more cynical about the chances of me actually being able to bring about a significant improvement in the schools. Frankly, I'd rather spend my time and effort on giving my kids a good education at home than on some idealistic but likely futile crusade.

That's what I think truly bothers the authors of The Mommy Myth. They have this attitude that I should feel some sort of noblesse oblige to sacrifice my kids' well-being for what Drs. Douglas & Michaels see as the collective good. However, I don't see why the fruits of my labor should go to benefit "free riders" rather than my own family. Why should I invest my time & effort to help out the kids whose own parents are too lazy or disinterested? It's like the children's story of the Little Red Hen or 2 Thessalonians 3:10 "if any would not work, neither should he eat."

A Private Tour Through the Museum of Knowledge

We've been chasing away our rainy day blues through field trips to local museums quite often in recent weeks. We've done 3-D digital animation at the Zeum. We've gotten an up close view of the human body via the BodyWorlds 2 exhibit at the Tech Museum of Innovation. We've peered at Drosophila chromosomes through a microscope at the Exploratorium.

One thing I really appreciated during our field trips is how nice it was that we could go through the museums at our own pace. My kids were able to spend as much or as little time at each exhibit as they themselves wanted to. In contrast, we saw several class groups where it was obvious that the pace of the tour was not appropriate for a large percentage of the students. Many of the kids were either visibly bored or visibly upset at being herded along to the next exhibit before they were ready. The teacher or museum docent was in charge of the schedule, regardless of their students' own individual needs.

The authors of Poisoned Apple: The Bell Curve Crisis and How Our Schools Create Mediocrity and Failure use the museum group tour as an analogy for the instruction in traditional schools. Betty Wallace and William Graves write:

"These highly defined curricula pressure teachers to march students through their lessons as if they were on a group tour in a museum. The curriculum writers decide which halls the students march down and which works they will spend their time viewing. Teachers cannot tolerate stragglers in the museum of knowledge nor do they allow the more curious and energetic to race ahead or stray down inviting corridors on their own. Such departures jeopardize the group's progress."

Homeschooling allows us to replace the group tour with an individual one. Each student's individual needs determine the schedule, not some arbitrary decree by a committee of educrats hundreds or thousands of miles away. If we want to take a detour down an inviting corridor, we have the freedom to do so. These "rabbit trails" often turn out to be highly enlightening as well as enjoyable. Also, if we want to incorporate our own family's values, there is no ACLU to file a lawsuit against us. We choose what curriculum (if any) to use, and we have the flexibility to modify it or replace it entirely if it's not working for our students.

109th Carnival of Homeschooling is Up!

Tiffany over at "Life on the Road" is hosting this week's 109th Carnival of Homeschooling: Leaving a Legacy Edition. Catch up with all the bloggers who are more organized than yours truly :-)

108th Carnival of Homeschooling is Up!

Alasandra is hosting this week's 108th Carnival of Homeschooling: American Literature Edition. Happy reading!

Why Education is Not Like Making Ice Cream

I'm currently reading a very interesting but highly depressing book called Tested: One American School Struggles to Make the Grade by journalist Linda Perlstein. Tested follows the struggles of the 3rd grade teachers at a government-run elementary school over the course of a school year to improve the test scores of its poor, primarily African-American and Latino students (scores are up but basically the entire year until March is spent doing little aside from reading & math test prep).

Anyways, while reading Tested, I came across a fabulous quote that just sums up the problems facing government-run schools. It's from a former corporate CEO named Jamie Robert Vollmer. He was giving a speech to government schoolteachers about how schools should be run more like businesses when a veteran English teacher asked what happened if his ice cream business received a subpar shipment of raw ingredients. He admitted that he would send it back:

"And so began my long transformation. Since then, I have visited hundreds of schools. I have learned that a school is not a business. Schools are unable to control the quality of their raw material, they are dependent upon the vagaries of politics for a reliable revenue stream, and they are constantly mauled by a howling horde of disparate, competing customer groups that would send the best CEO screaming into the night."

You can read the full Education Week article from which the quote was taken here.

This quote just goes to demonstrate why homeschooling is able to provide a superior education to children. While parents do not have control over the innate intellectual potential of their children (that's up to God or Nature, depending on one's beliefs), they do at least have control over the environmental influences. Unlike government schoolteachers, home educators can ensure their students get enough sleep, eat a healthy diet, do not watch excessive television, have regular medical & dental checkups, etc. They can consistently provide loving but firm discipline. While there still can be occasional family crises such as illness, death, job loss, or divorce (though I suspect that the divorce rate among homeschoolers is significantly lower than the general population much as it is among users of Natural Family Planning), at least homeschooled children won't have their education disrupted by classmates acting out in response to crises within their own families.

Should a homeschool budget need to be scaled back during an economic downturn, parents have control over where those cuts will be made and can minimize the negative effects on their children. Class sizes & guidance counseling loads won't suddenly go up. Electives won't disappear such often happens with art, music, PE, foreign language, etc. in government-run schools.

Those "howling horde of disparate, competing customer groups that would send the best CEO screaming into the night" as Mr. Vollmer puts it? In homeschooling, there really aren't too many of them. There is obviously no conflict between teachers & administrators, teachers & parents, or administrators & parents. Politicians and corporate interests have little power to meddle. No special interest groups complain about what is included in or excluded by the curriculum. The ACLU and NAACP don't stand watch threatening lawsuits. There is no controversy over military recruiters visiting the school (if one does, it's by invitation). All the political and ideological battles that distract government-run schools from their missions are virtually eliminated in homeschooling.

107th Carnival of Homeschooling is Up!

Judy Aron over at "Consent of the Governed" is hosting this week's 107th Carnival of Homeschooling: Martin Luther King, Jr. Day Edition. Happy reading!

106th Carnival of Homeschooling is Up!

"Red Sea School" is the host for this week's 106th Carnival of Homeschooling: Rhythm Edition. That's rhythm as in the pace of life.

What Does it Mean for a School to be "Effective"?

What makes an effective school? The answers given to this question reveal much about the priorities of the responder.

There's an interesting article over at EdNews.org today entitled "How do effective schools drive student performance?" It discusses a recently released report on Tennessee government-run schools by a group called the Education Consumers Foundation. The ECS was founded in 2005 by Dr. John E. Stone, professor of education at East Tennessee State University. Its stated aim is to be the Consumer Reports of education policy and practice.

The ECS did a study of 6 TN schools whose students made the greatest annual gains on achievement as determined by the state's "value-added accountability system." I'm unfamiliar with the details of the TN system, but from the ECS press release, it appears to be heavily weighted on standardized reading and math tests. ECS wanted to know what made these schools so "effective" and discovered:

"while these schools were geographically and socio-economically diverse, they shared a set of common practices – practices that created an environment where students could excel, and which could be adopted by any school interested in excellence."

As someone who is very interested in education, I was curious to see the report's conclusions. Here they are, with my comments in bold:

1. The top-performing schools use progress tests that assess the same skills that are tested on the state’s Tennessee Comprehensive Assessment Program (TCAP) examinations. In other words, teaching to the test.
2. The top-performing schools require students to meet higher-than-minimum mastery criteria on student progress tests. Okay, but the focus should be on actually mastering the subject material, not just being able to pick the correct answer on some multiple-choice test.
3. The top-performing schools employ practice-intensive learning activities that target the types of skills required by the examination. Drill-and-kill test prep again.
4. In the top-performing schools, the principal receives frequent reports of individual student progress with respect to attainment of Tennessee’s curriculum standards. Keeping on top of student progress is certainly important, but again the focus is on passing the test rather than real learning.
5. In the top-performing schools, teachers receive frequent reports on the progress of each of their students. Ditto #4.
6. In the top-performing schools, teaching practices are adjusted when a student makes insufficient progress towards a curricular objective. Students simply are not permitted to quietly fail. Absolutely.
7. In top-performing schools, student progress data is used to assess each teacher’s classroom effectiveness. Teaching performance is tracked continuously by the principal or by colleagues who are assigned to monitor teacher and student progress. Okay, but student progress should be measured in multiple ways, not just via standardized testing.
8. In top-performing schools, the principal and other teachers routinely work with struggling colleagues to improve their teaching skills. Okay to a certain extent, but if a lousy teacher does not improve within a reasonable time frame, then administrators should be able to fire him/her. This would require a significant revamping of the tenure system.
9. In top-performing schools, principals obtain supplemental budgetary support for the training and materials required to improve teacher performance. I don't think that simply throwing more money into the current system is going to improve schools. There needs to be a top-to-bottom overhaul to eliminate waste and get more bang for the taxpayer's buck.
10. Top-performing schools regularly inform parents about their child’s performance and seek to work with parents whenever children are progressing insufficiently. Parental involvement is key. Schools need to work with parents, not undermine them as happens so often in today's government-run schools.
11. Top-performing schools survey parents at least annually to assess satisfaction with the school’s services. Surveys aren't enough since they can be easily ignored by educrats. Parents need greater input in how their children's schools are actually run.
12. Top-performing schools have school-wide programs that reward positive social and academic student behavior. Principals monitor the success of these programs, collecting data on the number and type of student referrals for problem behavior. Bribery undermines intrinsic motivation. Certainly, schools ought to recognize hard work and student achievement through things such as the honor roll. But the expectation should be on valuing learning for its own sake, not for some external reward like cash for good grades.

So what are some of the things I personally would look for as evidence of an effective school? Here are 12 suggestions:

• Students demonstrate mastery of subject material in multiple ways, not just on standardized multiple choice tests.
• A safe learning environment free from violence, drugs, and other discipline problems.
• A focus on academics. It's not the school's job to take care of students' every need. A teacher should instruct, not act as therapist, social worker, foster parent, etc.
• High standards for all students. No more patronizing attitude that girls and minorities need a dumbed-down curriculum in order to "feel good about themselves." Frankly, it's insulting!
• The school fosters a true love of learning, so that students will continue to seek out new intellectual challenges and avenues for growth long after graduation.
• The school encourages creativity, thinking "outside the box", and approaching problem-solving in novel ways. If the U.S. wants to compete in the global postindustrial economy, we've got to be the innovators.
• Less reliance on textbooks and worksheets and a greater emphasis on experiential learning. Field trips shouldn't be limited to once or twice per year but rather frequent excursions. Learning doesn't just happen within the confines of the classroom.
  
• A rigorous curriculum that is tailored to the needs of the individual children, not a "one size fits all" cookie-cutter one mandated by some committee of educrats hundreds of miles away in the state capitol or thousands of miles away in D.C.
• The school recognizes that intellectually gifted children have special educational needs and provides them with opportunities for acceleration, curriculum compacting, enrichment, and so on. It's not "elitist" to have GATE, it's a matter of providing the gifted with an appropriate education the way we do children on the other end of the IQ spectrum.
  
• Bright, hardworking teachers who have completed academically rigorous teacher preparation programs that focus on subject material and proven pedagogical techniques rather than anti-intellectual, politically correct edubabble.
  
• Hiring, pay, and dismissal of teachers based on performance (multiple measures not just standardized test scores) rather than seniority.
• The school recognizes parents as the primary educators, and works with them rather than undermining them.

Hmm, now that I reflect on what I've written, it basically boils down to saying that traditional schooling should be more like homeschooling!

The Carnival of Homeschooling Needs You!

Henry Cate over at "Why Homeschool" is running a graphics contest for the Carnival of Homeschooling. You've got until January 28th to come up with a cool logo for the COH.

I'm not much of an artist, but I'll see what I can come up with :-)

103rd Carnival of Homeschooling is Up!

The Deputy Headmistress over at the "Common Room" is hosting this week's 103rd edition of the Carnival of Homeschooling. Happy reading!

102nd Carnival of Homeschooling is Up!

Jacque over at "Seeking Rest in the Ancient Paths" is hosting this week's 102nd Carnival of Homeschooling: The Many Hats of Homeschool Edition. Cute theme!

Government-run Schools Dumping Classic Poems in Favor of Lightweight Verse

One of my favorite books to read growing up was the Golden Books Family Treasury of Poetry edited by Louis Untermeyer. I received it as a gift on my 6th birthday from one of my little friends and it still has a special place on my bookshelf decades later. I spent many hours as a child absorbed in the wonderful poems such as Longfellow's "Paul Revere's Ride", Poe's "Annabel Lee", Keats' "La Belle Dame Sans Merci", Thackeray's "Pocahontas", Holmes' "Grandmother's Story of Bunker Hill", Lear's "The Owl and the Pussycat", Nash's "Tale of Custard the Dragon", and so on.

I was therefore very disappointed to read an article from London's Evening Standard newspaper entitled "Schools scrapping classic poetry for 'lightweight' verse." British school inspectors checking poetry teaching in government-run primary schools found that only 8% earned an "outstanding" rating. Most teachers did not know enough about the subject to teach classic poems and instead focused on easier modern verse such as "On the Ning Nang Nong" by Spike Milligan:

On the Ning Nang Nong
Where the Cows go Bong!
and the monkeys all say BOO!
There's a Nong Nang Ning
Where the trees go Ping!
And the tea pots jibber jabber joo.
On the Nong Ning Nang
All the mice go Clang
And you just can't catch 'em when they do!
So it's Ning Nang Nong
Cows go Bong!
Nong Nang Ning
Trees go ping
Nong Ning Nang
The mice go Clang
What a noisy place to belong
is the Ning Nang Ning Nang Nong!!

Not exactly Shakespeare, is it?

While there is a place for modern poets such as Shel Silverstein or Jack Prelutsky in the curriculum, the primary focus should be on classic verse. Not just for cultural literacy purposes, but also because they typically demonstrate a higher-level vocabulary and structure than recent poems. A child simply gets more out of reading something that has not been "dumbed down".

In our homeschool, I'm planning to use the poetics series by Michael Clay Thompson published by Royal Fireworks Press. It looks like a good introduction to studying poetry using classic verse. I think we'll do a poetry unit in the spring with the Music of the Hemispheres book if DD appears to be ready at that point (it's so hard to predict with her).