Homeschool Curriculum
What is curriculum?
Curriculum is basically a grouping of subjects of study. We tend to
think about curriculum by organization or subject. For example, any public
high school curriculum in Texas is required to include math and science.
Math and science are just parts of the curriculum.
But even these parts are "curriculum." The school selects a specific
science curriculum for biology that includes a textbook, labs, and
software. So "curriculum" is actually a pretty broad term. The definition
by Dictionary.com is "the aggregate of courses of study given in a school,
college, university, etc." Also note that this definition of curriculum
would include "studies" not based on a textbook.
So what does this mean for homeschoolers?
If you assume that curriculum is a course of study, then whatever a
homeschooler studies is his or her curriculum. That's not the answer a
newcomer expects or even wants to hear. New homeschoolers often want
someone to hand them the curriculum they can use to teach with. I think
the mindset is along the lines of the first day of class in school when
the teacher gives you the books for the year. That's something people
understand.
However, as a homeschooler, the school isn't going to hand you your
curriculum. It is up to you to decide what will be included in the
curriculum within the constraints of homeschool requirements for your
state. In Texas, whatever curriculum you choose must be "designed to meet
basic education goals of reading, spelling, grammar, mathematics and a
study of good citizenship."
If you think about it, that's not a very specific requirement. It
doesn't mention history or science nor does it even say that you have to
use a curriculum that is at the appropriate, for the lack of a better
word, grade level. So that still leaves new homeschoolers stuck with
deciding what to use for their curriculum.
Curriculum is really two questions
Ultimately, what many new homeschoolers don't understand is that the
question of curriculum for homeschoolers is really a combination of two
questions:
What do I want to teach my children?
How should I teach it?
It isn't until they go to a homeschool bookstore or a website to buy a
"package curriculum" for their children do they begin to realize that
as a homeschooler, curriculum isn't decided for you; it's something you
have to decide for yourself.
So initially, new homeschoolers see these two questions as a matter of
deciding between Sonlight or Saxon or some other package of textbooks,
workbooks, quizzes, answer sheets, and teacher lesson plans. It is only
after sitting down and struggling to keep up with the suggested lesson
plans or finding that their children "don't get it," do new homeschoolers
start to think that there might be more than one way to "get it."
The goal of curriculum: do they get it?
Once you see that your children "get" math by playing fantasy football
or "get" reading by writing and producing their own plays, you realize
that the concept curriculum goes beyond a collection of books and subjects
assigned by someone else. Maybe your curriculum will include books on
geology as well as software for computer programming. The point is that as
homeschoolers, curriculum doesn't have to be something that comes from a
textbook publisher. Simply because selected curriculum meets some
organization's standards doesn't mean that it will meet yours. Curriculum
is whatever collection of methods and resources that you use so that your
child will "get" the topics you decide to teach by whatever
standards you set.
It's both a scary and liberating concept. Do you get it?
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