Two of my professional (and personal) interests, Catholic education and unschooling, recently came together through an unexpected path of reading. First I read Stratford Caldecott's Beauty in the Word: Rethinking the Foundations of Education, which attempts to articulate a new philosophy of Catholic education based on the ancient Trivium of grammar, logic, and rhetoric. But to my surprise, Beauty in the Word ends with a lovely acknowledgement of homeschooling as a viable - even desirable - method for implementing Caldecott's vision, and he suggests Suzie Andres' book, The Little Way of Homeschooling: Thirteen Families Discover Catholic Unschooling as an exemplary m0del of what's possible. I'll discuss this book and my reactions to it in two parts.
As a practicing Catholic Christian who spent some of my formative years as a teacher and administrator in Catholic schools, I believe that Catholic schools are one of many viable avenues through which a much-needed revitalization of American education could take place, especially given the excellent record of Catholic schools addressing the needs of low-income minority students (see the Cristo Rey network of schools for an exciting contemporary example).
This is what brought me to Cadelcott's Beauty in the Word. But what really struck me was a small chapter at the end of the book in which he reflects on linkages between his theory of Catholic education and the work of John Holt (1923-1985), a former school teacher who created a homeschooling revolution through his radically student-centered philosophy explicated in his books How Children Fail and How Children Learn. As an example of where his own philosophy merges with Holt's, Caldecott pointed to Suze Andres' profile of 13 Catholic families in The Little Way of Homeschooling.
Andres, whose first book was Homeschooling with Gentleness: A Catholic Discovers Unschooling, takes her inspiration from the "Little Way" spirituality of St. Therese of Lisieux. Her particular style of homeschooling - unschooling - is closely linked to John Holt's and emphasizes giving children an extraordinarily wide latitude in allowing them to choose what they learn, how, and at what pace.
I realize that many of my colleagues and friends who work in K12 education (especially if they are not regular readers of this blog) may find these concepts completely bizarre. I don't have time or space here to make a case for this kind of radical rethinking of education, but I do refer you to the related posts listed below for more background on how my own understanding of these concepts continues to evolve. Here I just want to note some general reactions to Andres' book, most of which is taken up with the first-person essays written by the Catholic homeschooling moms in her personal network.
First, I'm most struck by the overwhelming theme of trust in these families' approaches to educating their children. Unschooling is predicated on the idea that children are natural learners, that they desire to learn and do not require coercion or external rewards to encourage them to do so - as long as you let them direct the process. This is confirmed by my own experience parenting small children and by my eye-opening encounters with Montessori education.
But this kind of trust runs directly counter to the typical structures of traditional American schooling, which assume that there is a body of knowledge that all children must learn, and that they must learn it at fairly precise ages and rates under the careful direction of a professional teacher. Most of this is not intentionally predicated on a distrust of children (though I recently had a teacher insist to me that her second graders never do anything without an extrinsic reward), but rather on an industrial model of education that we have inherited and simply take for granted - and that operates on an unstated assumption that kids won't learn without lots of structure.
The experience of unschooling families (and schools based on the philosophy like the Sudbury Valley Schools) suggests that this distrust of children is damaging and thoroughly unwarranted given the impressive outcomes of kids educated in a more trusting way.
Which is not to say this kind of trust is easy for adults indoctrinated in the traditional way of schooling. I'll say more on this, my reflections on the Little Way of Homeschooling, and its implications, in my next post.
Related posts:
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