Greg Book Review - Homeschooling - A Family's Journey / Gregory and Martine Millman

I saw this book in the Browsing Library section at the SLC Library and decided to take a look at it. Alternative ways of educating our children have always been an interest of mine as I feel that some public schools don't have the student's best interest in mind. Before I go any further let me make a disclaimer - I love the teachers my children have had at Overlake Elementary School. For the most part, they have been incredible with the children, they are dedicated and resourceful, they make do with large class sizes and students who are not interested in the subject matter at times. Kathryn and I both love these teachers and what they do for our children. However, as a parent, we also feel a great responsibility in educating our children. Just like Primary and Sunday School, we feel that public schools should reinforce and support what we teach in our home, they should not be the primary source of teaching in our childrens' life.

Kathryn and I have talked about homeschooling before but we both don't feel it is the right time for us to do that. It is very intimidating to us, especially with the number of children that we have. We try to be as involved as we can with helping the children in their schoolwork, to promote the love of learning, to not learn just for a test or to pass something off, but to learn and retain, being able to put what you learned into context. We try to do this by different means and I can't say they have always been successful. Each child is different and each has a unique way of learning that needs to be enhanced and developed over time. Zachary and Josh learn by touching and manipulating things, they both love Legos and are very good at video games. Lauren is a reader, she will read anything you put in front of her and go find stuff on her own. Brennan is more auditory, he will hear something and immediately that subject starts to blossom in his mind, but he has trouble staying focus and concentrated on one thing. But he can remember something you said 5 years ago like you had just said it. Especially promises made many moons ago. Each require a different approach and it is wonderful.

This book was amazing, I love the approach that they took. The Millman's have 6 children and each of them has been, or is being, home schooled through experiences they are having that don't involve formal ways of learning. This way of learning through different ways is only possible when individual attention is given to each child and their style of learning. It can be accomplished through travel, through practical exercises like budgeting or cooking, through group learning by subject-matter experts, through sports (they single out judo), and by literally observing the world around them. Sure, they have some formal learning and lessons but it hearkens back to a time when the main goal of education was not to pass a certified exam but to educate the child on what was most important and what mattered.

Here are some quotes that really stood out to me -

"Everything that happens in life can be part of a child's education, as long as the child pays attention and asks such questions as "why" and "how" and someone is paying attention to help the child find the answer."

"Questions that are peripheral to the problem at hand may be central to a child's development."

"Music was indispensable to our study of history."

"Authentic education takes place in the immediate context of a personal relationship, and extends to a tradition of learning."

"So much of our homeschooling is digression that digression sometimes seems to be the whole point of it."

"There are many methods and texts and curricula, many organizations and approaches and styles, but we think that no methodology or recipe or formula will give you what you really need. The choice to work together with your children to help them learn is one that you need to make for a reason great enough to sustain you even through doubt and fear. "

"We found in the course of our homeschooling that the most important part of education is a close personal relationship that folds a child in arms of love and deep respect. This is a relationship in which the parent makes a perpetual self-gift. It means that a parent never has a moment for herself (or himself), never ever tries to take anything just for "me." This idea now seems as countercultural as our attachment to freedom. America is all about the self: self-esteem, self-sufficiency, self-improvement, self-development, self-satisfaction. It seems to be as much about the self as it is about fear and anxiety, and the more time we have spent trying to make a gift of ourselves to our children, the clearer it seems that there is a connection between attachment to selfishness and fear."

Kathryn and I admire those parents who have made the decision to homeschool their children, it takes a special parent to take on that responsibility and we know the decision is not made lightly. The kids we are acquainted with that have been homeschooled are wonderful. We have made the decision to try and enroll the children in a new charter school in Tooele in Fall 2009, the Excelsior Academy. We are hoping that this will help us address some situations we see with our own childrens' education and will provide them a wonderful, and more personal, environment in which to excel.

If you have an opportunity to read this book please do. I loved it and am seriously thinking about making it a permanent part of my library. Two thumbs way up for perhaps the best book I have read this year.