Today’s guest post is written by Catherine Malone: freelancer, academic, adjunct instructor, home school parent.
Gretchen Rubin’s book The Happiness Project spent a number of weeks on the best-seller lists, and the ensuing press caught my eye several times. Even though I’m not usually drawn to the self-help genre, after coming across this article I decided to read the chronicle of her year-long quest to increase her personal happiness. Rubin’s system felt quite familiar to me, and I realized that she applies to the goal of happiness much of what Susan and Jessie apply to the goal of home education. As well-intentioned a parent and educator as I believe I am, I realized that I had never stopped to consider the goal of happiness in our homeschool (which we enjoy referring to as the Malone Academy for Gifted Girls), and I wondered if some of Rubin’s principles might improve our day-to-day learning experience.
Just as Rubin set out to increase her happiness despite an already content existence, we have been very happy with our nearly three years of home education, and I’m not looking to make things more “fun” or to lighten up academically. But it seemed to me that using Rubin’s approach might be a valuable tool to help smooth over some of the bumps we’ve been experiencing this year, as well as provide my daughter with tools to facilitate her own emotional development.
Rubin utilizes a system of 12 commandments (“Lighten up!” and “Do what ought to be done” stand out) as well as 20-some “Secrets of Adulthood” which often do relate directly to the homeschool experience (examples: it’s okay to ask for help, bring a sweater, by doing a little bit each day you can get a lot accomplished). Here are two commandments that I found particularly useful as a home-educator.
Rubin’s first commandment is “Be Gretchen,” and obviously, one should substitute their own name in that sentence. It may seem self-evident, but I realized I often waste a fair bit of time trying to turn our homeschool into something else. It’s easier just to be the Malone Academy for Gifted Girls. This means that we don’t try to be as rigid with our schedule as our other homeschooling friends, that we listen to classical music while we do our work and make a pot of tea as soon as we settle down into the school routine. It means that we start with math and need a snack by 11:00. Right now it means that elaborate craft projects tend to frustrate both of us (I hope that will change one day), but we really enjoy reading aloud. Realizing the things that define our homeschool and what we enjoy (and don’t) has provided me with an excellent standard by which to consider extra-curricular activities and schedule deviations. For instance, we do like big expeditions or one-off field trips, so we make time for those. The weekly playground meet-up, however, falls at a difficult time for our preferred schedule, and it’s often full of homeschoolers who don’t share our values, so instead of trying to force it, we let it slide by.
Rubin’s sixth commandment is to “enjoy the process.” I’m not sure if I did this much in the first few months of homeschooling. I was too nervous that we might miss something and too scared that if my daughter wasn’t ahead of her school-bound peers, I would be a failure. Following the guidelines of The Well-Trained Mind can help here or it can hurt. While the advantage of the book is that everything is laid out for you, so you aren’t always wondering what the next step is or what materials you need, the risk of trying to do everything within a school year, or week, or day, can make you rush when you should be – wait for it – enjoying the process. It’s the oddest things my kid wants to stop and focus on, and sometimes it takes me a few deep breaths to realize that we’re at what Montessorians call a sensitive period, where knowledge is more readily absorbed. Susan and Jessie remind us of that several times in The Well-Trained Mind. For instance:
“As you work through first-grade science, don’t forget that you can stop at any time and dig deeper into a subject. If the child develops a sudden devouring interest in mushrooms or guinea pigs or the skeleton, that’s fine. Spend three weeks collecting pictures, checking books out of the library, and making detailed pages. The purpose of the first-grade notebook is not to “complete” the study of life on earth somehow. It’s to develop the child’s curiosity….you want to hear your child say, “Oh good. I love biology.” (160)
While there is certainly a line that has to be drawn for academic standards, I am trying to give into this resolution more and more. For example, my daughter simply hates writing the lab sheets for her chemistry experiments, and it was making her frustrated and unexcited to study science. So, we’ve switched to writing the lab reports on my laptop, with her dictating the lengthier portions and working on her typing skills for shorter segments. It’s made a difference in her level of enthusiasm to separate the skill of writing from the study of chemistry.
Approaching the ongoing project of improving our homeschool through the lens of happiness has truly provided me with new insights into this adventure. We want our children to be well educated, but we also want education to make them happy. One of the most compelling sentences in The Well-Trained Mind what Susan writes at the beginning of Chapter 2: “I loved going to school at home.” While still holding ourselves to the standards of classical education, I think it’s worthwhile to consider how to try our best so that our children will say the same thing.