Do we need a curriculum?

Photo by Taylor Heery on Unsplash

Interesting things are happening in home school politics in Queensland. Many home school families are upset that, without much consultation, a bill is about to be voted on that would force home school families to follow a set approved curriculum. So is that a good idea or not?

The national curriculum is designed to be taught by school teachers within a school environment. Those hard working people train for years to have the privilege to do it. They spend all year working on lessons to follow it. They are talented and hard working and are doing that job to the best of their abilities. If I am forced to teach that same curriculum within a home school setting without that training, does it devalue the qualifications of the teacher? It seems to imply that anyone could do it. It’s not the case. I have no intention of applying to be a school teacher, I’d be appalling at it. There are way too many kids and I have no background with those particular kids. Instead I am a home school teacher. If you think that means I am saying that I am not qualified to teach my children then you’ve missed my meaning! Homeschooling is not a school environment. I prove annually to the department that my child is learning and progressing in mathematics, literacy and a range of other learning areas. I’m very good at what I do, because I tailor the learning to my child’s needs and learning stage. I spend hours researching ways to engage my children fully in learning so they have a rich and varied education. I do all that without the need of a set curriculum.

It is not necessarily a bad idea to have some goals when it comes to learning. I set goals each term on what I would like to achieve with my child. This term I wanted my child to enjoy writing. He can write. He can touch type, but he doesn’t enjoy writing. I am free to take my time and use whatever resources and methods I like for this. What worked was taking him out. We went to a beautiful place with interesting things which we discussed and wrote about and somehow something clicked and writing was no longer the enemy. Education and love of learning as one.

Forcing everyone to follow a set curriculum means implies a certain confidence that the curriculum you make everyone follow is somewhat proven to produce good results. There are several problems with this. The first is that it doesn’t work like that. Throughout the history of the curriculum (which began in England when I was about 8 years old), there have been some people that have got the grade and others that have not. There are plenty of people that leave school without a decent level of education and many more who pass their tests and then immediately forget most of what they’ve learned, particularly if it’s not relevant to their lives. Worse than that, there are many people who leave school with no qualifications and little understanding of the curriculum. We study the curriculum at school, more to get a grade, a finished outcome. It can not possibly be relevant to everyone and therefor it becomes mundane. I once heard a teacher laughing to another teacher about when they were asked by a child why they needed to learn a topic. The joke they were laughing at was that ‘you won’t the smart kids will.’ It’s a little horrifying that even the teachers that teach the curriculum are aware that a lot of it is irrelevant and therefore disengaging to many kids. How much further would the children go if they were learning things they could see the relevance of?

Another issue with the curriculum is that when a school teacher teaches a topic, there is often an assessment at the end to see if that child has adequately learned the topic and they are given a grade. The key thing to remember is that if the child gets a low grade and has obviously not learned that topic, the teacher can not stop and keeps going with it until the child understands. In school, they move on to the next topic. It may be that new topics are introduced or in later years that same topic is learned in more detail. It is easy for children to fall behind. The teacher has to fit in the entire curriculum they are using so they must keep going. In home school it works differently. If my child does not understand a topic, I have some options. It might be that they are simply not ready for that topic yet. Children’s’ brains develop at different rates and I have found sometimes that waiting another few months and trying again produces good results. I can also stop and think of new ways to learn it. If I am using a text book, a worksheet or explaining it, I can think up a different way. I might need to use different visual aids, take them out and learn in a way that they can see the practical nature and link it to real life. The point is that I am not on a curriculum schedule, my child can learn at their own pace. Learning and education is still the goal and my child learns extensively and deeply, but there is not rush.

Many home school people choose to follow a curriculum. They try it and if it works they follow it, if it doesn’t, they change it. Being forced to follow a set curriculum means the children who it doesn’t work for are still forced to follow it. Why? We aren’t saying give up then, learn nothing, instead we want the freedom to change what we are doing in order to engage our children in the material so we can successfully teach them. Some, like myself, have never followed a set curriculum. This might suggest that I have no goals, no idea on what we are doing day to day and no care for their learning. That isn’t the case at all. Instead, I choose what we are doing from a huge variety of places. Sometimes I am setting topics and researching ways to learn them. Sometimes I’ll find resources from the huge range available online and use them. Sometimes I will use child led learning. They pick the topics and we learn what they want.

When we first began our home school journey, my child was fascinated by geology, rocks and crystals. We found a local lapidary club and went along, once a fortnight during school hours. My son loved it. We learned the following:

1. Most people there were aged 45+ and were happy to talk and teach my child the skills to make him successful in his interests. He learned from many different people and his communication skills improved dramatically.
2. He learned from the resources they had, such as a wide variety of different kinds of rocks. This meant it was very hands on as he saw the different geology and what people were doing with them. He learned to identify a range of rocks. A lot of that was very creative.
3. He read a lot about the topic from a variety of books we read
4. He wrote about his rock collection and collated it
5. He learned how to shape and polish rocks using their machinary, which meant he had to follow careful instructions and relaly work at it.
6. He learned about chemicals which polish rocks such as titanium oxide
7. He went fossicking with the group and learned how to find and identify rocks. He also learned about laws and rules in the local area for fossicking.
8. Sometimes the rock man from the mainland visited and he budgeted out his money and learned what the rocks cost.
9. We went to a local gemstone festival and he learned about everything there are budgeted out what he wanted.
10. He learned about safety procedures for working around machinery, including equipment.

If he had stayed in school, he may have learned some of these skills. That’s rather the point, skills learned are transferable. He wouldn’t however, have learned about lapidary and geology. At best it would have been a sidelined hobby. My son was fully engaged in all of this, excited to learn. He was engaged. He might have been learning something else and that’s fine too, but this is what he wanted to learn and I’m so glad I had the freedom to give him that.

I am not asking for total freedom to have every ounce of government departments kept away from me. I am happy to annually have my new program approved and to prove that my child is learning and making progress. I think that the goals set of numeracy, literacy and a range of learning areas whatever we might choose them to be is fair. I also think it’s a fair compromise to anyone who is worried that some children of home school families are not learning anything and are just falling through the cracks. How could we be sure? There are plenty of abusive families where children are in the school system. I don’t want anyone thinking that home school is an easy road to abuse or neglect. It isn’t. I can prove that. So can my local government department when they look at my records and are welcomed into my home every year for a home visit. And if you meet my children as many adults have, they’ll look you in the eye, talk to you about all sorts, confidently and be happy, educated and safe. In it’s current system, with freedom, support and love, it’s working very well for us.

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