This came in an email to me from a fellow member of a homeschool Facebook group. It looked interesting so I kept it as unread so I would remember to check out the link when I could sit down and focus on it. Sit down and focus on it. Funny, that is. Right  now the boys are playing on the piano, making their own music as I try to listen to the video. Well, there are no perfect times around here but this will do.

Please check out this video. It says a lot about our system and I don’t mean the school system we have now but even the one that existed when I was in school. I did very well in school, when I liked what I was doing, when I understood the reasoning behind what I was doing, when I found it to be relevant and to my interests. I bet most of you were the same way.

I struggle with my homeschooling some days. I wonder if I am doing it right. If I don’t sit the boys down to do their math but use a game instead am I doing it right? If I take them outside to garden, to learn about the forces of nature and how all things grow, isn’t that biology? Isn’t that learning? If I sit them down in front of a book and tell them to read it and answer the questions, narrate to me what they read or we read, do they enjoy it? Do they remember what we talked about? Will they recall events of history that we learned a week ago? All children learn differently, and I am still working on what works best for my children. I think we all want what’s best.

Whether you homeschool or have kids in school, I believe we all care that our children are learning and how they learn. That they learn what they need to know to get a job, to survive ‘out there’. But, if they don’t do well on a math test that involves sin and co-sin, tangent does it really matter if they will never want to go to university for whatever sin and co-sin would be used for? Yes, I don’t know what they would be used for because I didn’t get that part of math. It didn’t interest me and the teacher had no interest in explaining to me why I needed to know it. But, I can tell you when I go off on a tangent. 😉

We judge so often on appearance. We judge a person by paper. And I do understand this and at times there is good reason. But this video puts it all into perspective.

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D-eVF_G_p-Y]