My wife sent me an article about fascinating realities about education that you may not expect. If they had asked me to re-title the post, I would have labeled it 31 Reasons to Homeschool.
Here are a few things that jumped out to me:
Psychologists are drawing the conclusion that early academic learning structured around directive teaching not only inhibits creativity, but stunts a child’s natural curiosity to discover how the world works.
There are many reasons we built our preschool curriculum to be a gentle introduction to learning together. One of the big motivations, however, was to enable you and your children to discover the joy of learning. This will give you an excellent starting point for more rigorous academics in the years to come. More and more research confirms that this is the best way to approach early education.
In a primitive society, children learned necessary survival skills by mimicking their elders. It was essentially, learning in action. In modern times, academics are often taught rather than 'shown'- removing this type of opportunity from the educational process.
I think rich literature gives us the opportunity to, in many ways, "show" ideas to our kids.
...students who used e-books with sound effects, narration, music, and video were able to find and recite more information than the children who used a traditional printed text.
It could very well be that ebooks are the future. However, this point seems more to reinforce the idea that reading-aloud is an essential part of experiencing books. Just one more reason I'm thrilled that Sonlight's curriculum includes so many Read-Alouds.
Daydreaming is often seen as wasting time and sometimes a lack of the ability to focus. But recent research found the opposite is true.
Personally, I've spent quite a bit of time daydreaming. Glad to know doing so was such a great idea! <smile>
What points resonated with you? Do you disagree with any of the conclusions?
~Luke Holzmann
Filmmaker, Writer, Empty Nester
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