My Ideal Education

Ok, so I posted this meme on Facebook and it’s getting a lot of play.

I thought I’d take the time to talk about what I consider my perfect educational model. Right now, in our current society, I favor homeschooling. I think it’s the only way to avoid indoctrination of one’s child, to instill virtue, piety, discipline, and also to provide the framework of a good, solid education. There are a ton of ways to do homeschooling: it can be a single family, or families can coordinate to have little pods of kids learning together. I would almost always choose homeschooling right now over any other educational method. If I had to create my own K-12 curriculum however – let’s do a thought experiment: let’s imagine we can do this for a newly formed school – this is what I’d do. 

Firstly, home-ec and civics would be taught in every single grade (age appropriately). Home-ec would involve learning how to cook, sew, mend, budget, change a tire, basic home repair, how to shop on a budget, maintain a home, how to understand taxes, insurance, personal finance/investing, and things like compound interest (my god-daughter understood this at five). Civics is self-explanatory: it is a privilege to live in any community and young people should be raised with a sense of their responsibilities to that community. What does it mean to be a good citizen? We talk a lot about our rights, but not so much about our responsibilities. Part of civics is learning how our country was founded, why, and how our government works. 

From K-12 I’d also have self-defense and shooting skills taught. (Think I’m crazy? Through the 50s, there were shooting clubs at school and kids routinely brought their guns. What changed? Not the guns but the society and its psychological lack of care for its people). There would be art and music classes, serious classes with each child learning at least one instrument as well. Art includes what we might term crafts, textile work, pottery, etc. in addition to art history, painting and drawing and each child would be expected to choose a craft upon which to focus, in addition to learning to draw and paint. Not everyone is going to be a Van Gogh, but the practice enriches their world and teaches them to appreciate art, you know, that thing that elevates our souls to the Gods. I would also start teaching them chess in kindergarten to hone their minds in strategy and critical thinking. 

Also, from K-12, there would, of course, be classes in History, Mathematics, Sciences, Computers and coding, English – grammar and literature, creative writing, rhetoric (including how to judge sources for their bias or legitimacy, i.e. media savvy and critical thinking, also public speaking). In Kindergarten, I’d teach ASL. In first grade kids would start learning Latin and this would continue through graduation. In second grade, children would learn penmanship, cursive, and calligraphy – decent handwriting, the maintenance of which would be rolled into the rest of the curriculum. In this grade, a modern foreign language would be added (the kids can choose). In seventh grade, they take up ancient Greek; and in ninth grade, a second foreign language (again, the kids can choose). 

Throughout K-12, there would also theology classes. How to read theologically. How to understand our cosmological stories, how to develop virtue and ethics. There would be religion classes focusing on polytheisms and how to cultivate devotion and piety, what to do in ritual, our sacred stories, etc. because this is my school, and I can do that. This would include participatory age-appropriate rites and pageants and such to make ritual engaging for them when small. In grades 9-12, children will volunteer at a local temple or with a local spiritual technician, but they can also take courses in comparative religions, ritual studies, ethics, etc.. I’d require yearly community service from Kindergarten, even if it’s something like cleaning up a park or visiting a nursing home. They need to be invested in where they live. 

I’d do 4H things. Kids would have a community garden, bee hives, and a small selection of live-stock (chickens, goats) and they would learn to garden, and to tend and care for these animals and plants. As part of home-ec, they’d be learning food preservation as well. All of this can be made fun for the very youngest grades.

What would you add?