What Really Mattered
I was sorting through another batch of my old schoolwork. Filing some things to keep, and throwing much more away, I have gained a new clarity on what are really the important gains in an education. Grade sheets I crumpled with an indifference I could not have believed a few years ago. I worked hard and was blessed with good grades, but numbers and letters—even the coveted bonus points—mean nothing much in retrospect.
I have gone now through several grade’s worth of schoolwork—several reams of paper and miles of careful handwriting. Most of it is lying, un-missed, in a landfill (or in the ashes of last winter’s fires, because most students at some point threaten to burn their schoolwork, but I actually did). What I did save were: pages marked with a “smiley face” from Mama, a really horrible spelling test (to show my own children when they have a bad day), my thoughts on (sometimes quite childish interpretations of) the stories and poems I loved, the essays and stories I loved writing, the projects I loved doing (and therefore did beautifully), colorful map-work, the (hilariously verbose and Romantic) sentences I wrote to demonstrate good grammar and correct spelling.
I was frankly shocked by this spelling test.
Numbers are emphatically not my strongpoint, but I am glad to say that I never ceased to appreciate the exactness of mathematics, the beauty of geometry, and the thrill of finding sense.
I enjoyed the challenge of completing anatomy worksheets.
This is the first page of Franky Fat, my work for an assignment to introduce nutrition to young children. As the years pass, my family is accumulating a children’s health library!
Biology is a favorite subject at our house.
What I value in this paper is remembrance—of the glow of familial love, joy in a job well done, the beauty of good literature, the drama of history, the excitement of discovery, the neat exactness of mathematics, the development of my thought and understanding and taste, even the knowledge that bad days pass and don’t matter afterwards. None of this can be quantified by a grade, but it is what matters most to me.
The question is not how much he knows, but how much he cares.
Charlotte M. Mason, British educator
Education should not be so much about
making a living as about making a life.
paraphrase from Neil Postman, American cultural critic
What I value in my home-education is not found on paper. Everything I do today is colored with the head and heart knowledge gained during thirteen blessed years of home-education. Thank you, Mama, for the hidden and beautiful work you do every day in teaching myself and my sisters and brothers. Your self-sacrifice is amazing to me, and I know it is of great value in God’s eyes, as well as mine!
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LA MATER said...
I love you too ;-), even f your beautiful essay did bring a (happy) tear to my eye!
Saturday, May 14, 2011 01:39 PM
Tuesday, May 10, 2011