I want to think

I've been doing a lot of reading lately about 19th century education. What I find most fascinating is the lack of teacher's manuals to go along with the materials they used. Today if I buy a homeschooling curriculum for, say my 2nd grader; it will come with a huge supply of teacher's manuals for every subject. In it there will likely be day to day lesson plans. But what I've been thinking on the most is how these teacher's manuals don't just give me tips for teaching and teaching lesson plans, but they go as far as to tell me exactly what to say. It's not done to "control" what I teach, don't get me wrong, it's only a suggestion to help stimulate the process. I'm not faulting the curriculum makers for this. It's just that it dawned on me that we are not a very creative generation. It seems that we are so used to being told how to think that we don't know what to think, how to think independently, and certainly we don't trust what we think.

I may not be making sense here...What I'm trying to say is that I admire the texts from the 19th century. The teachers were expected to educate themselves in the art of teaching children. They didn't have to be told exactly how to do it. They were left to be creative. Today's curricula so often tell me exactly what to teach, when to teach, how much to teach, what to say, and what days to say it! I feel choked by them and any creativity I might have is snuffed out. Snuffed out because there is so much the curriculum demands that if I try to be creative then I won't have time to do the "important stuff".

I'm done with that...No more. When I think for myself, and teach my children from a book and even a textbook (yes without a teacher's manual...gasp!), they love it. It's not forced, it's fun, and it's creative. I know my own home and the abilities of my children, and so I can tailor any lesson to fit our homeschool. I can do as little as I deem fit, or as much I we care to do. And it's ok...really it is.

I have 5 young children, and I don't have time to be told to do X number of worksheet questions for X number of subjects. I prefer to choose the copywork for my children to learn handwriting. I (we) prefer not to use workbooks for most subjects (if not all...we are weaning ourselves off them, really it's me, I'm weaning my dependency on them to show me their progress). Notebooking is the creative way I want us to go. I hope I have enough courage to be creative, follow my instincts, simplify the process, but enjoy it so much more.