Home education

2024 Author: Seth Attwood | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-16 15:55

What is the advantage of education in family homesteads? Who teaches children? The role of parents in the education of the child. Physical labor as the basis for cognition of the surrounding world. The role of nature in the development of adults and children. Home education is already a reality.

Svetlana Vinyukova explains why children do not like to go to school

Detailed article on the topic: Who goes to school in the morning …

Homeschooling: Personal Experience

Since the readers discovered a desire to get acquainted with the Russian experience of home schooling, I decided to start, perhaps, with my own family, since this does not require arranging interviews, collecting and summarizing data - of course, I will also do all this over time and bring it to your attention. … Please do not take this article as a general program of action, because it describes our and only our private experience of the transition from school to home education. More general recommendations will be given in the following publications.

You need to start, perhaps, with the fact that I myself am a teacher by education, graduated from A. I. Herzen in 1991 and then worked at school for four years - first as a teacher of world art culture, then as a specialty - as a teacher of the Russian language and literature. For four years, I realized that I would not be able to work in the system of public general education for all the reasons that I wrote about in my article "Myths about schooling." Therefore, in 1995 I left school and then my career was in no way connected with pedagogy. It took place in completely different areas: in the publishing, information and advertising business. Over the years, I got a varied life experience in different areas, went very far from my original profession and, to be honest, completely forgot that I was a teacher, not a business woman. And so it continued until my own children grew up and reached school age. It was then that I faced the same problems as before - but from the other side, from the side of the parent, not the teacher.

School through the eyes of a parent

I have two children, the eldest is now 14, 5, the youngest is 9, 5. At preschool age, my daughter did not create any particular health or behavioral problems for me, so I sent her to kindergarten from the age of three, while I myself was engaged in building a career. like many modern women. From the age of six I sent her to a school - of course, to a private one, carefully going through the options and choosing, according to numerous reviews of friends, the best of them: an elementary school at Anichkov Lyceum. In fact, in the middle and senior grades at the Lyceum then they taught excellently, the teaching staff was excellent, the best conditions were created for the study of children - small classes of 5-10 people, comfortable premises, polite and attentive service staff … And the teacher in my daughter's class she was very sweet - young and kind. For some reason, her youth and kindness did not bother me - I sincerely hoped that these qualities would not be superfluous in elementary school, especially in a class in which there were only 6 students. The fact is that young teachers who have just come to school are full of youthful idealism and misconceptions about what kind of relationship is appropriate between teacher and students. This prevents them from working normally, which is possible only in a situation of balance between reasonable strictness and reasonable friendliness.

In this case, this is precisely the situation that took place. Once, entering the classroom, I found a picture that struck me as a former teacher: out of six children in the classroom, only two were sitting facing the blackboard, where the teacher was helplessly crumpling. One boy was sitting on the front desk with his back to the board and banging on the table with a ruler. The other two threw soft toys. Another girl looked at them and laughed hysterically. Of the two exemplary students, one was my girl. Despite the clamor reigning in the class, she obviously tried to listen to what the teacher was mumbling there, and to copy the assignment from the blackboard into a notebook.

Most of all, the teacher's behavior struck me: she stood by the wall, shifting from foot to foot, not trying to stop all this disgrace and saying something like: "Well, kids … well, let's write this sentence in a notebook …" etc. etc. etc. It is interesting that at that moment I was seized by "noble" indignation: I instantly remembered my teacher's past and in no time put things in order in the classroom, simply taking the ruler from the boy on the desk, and from the boys - the toy with which they were thrown. When they looked at me indignantly, I calmly reminded them that they were actually in class, and there was a break for games. This was quite enough for the children to calm down and get down to business - after all, no special efforts were required for this, it was just the first grade for six-year-olds. When I asked the teacher what was going on in the class, she guiltily told me that the school leadership has an orientation towards a friendly approach to the organization of the educational process, that she is forbidden to order children, that she should involve them in their studies in other ways, and why they something doesn't work. Then everything became clear to me: in fact, it is not for the same that parents pay money, so that evil teachers would drill their cute crumbs! And if the conniving policy of the administration is superimposed on the usual inexperience of a young teacher, then the situation of anarchy in the class, even the smallest, becomes inevitable. I did not begin to tell the poor girl-teacher all the harshness that I had at the ready - especially since then I myself was not ready to change anything, there was great hope for the Russian "maybe", and that the curve would take out. …

However, the result of such training was predictable: we finished zero grade with the same knowledge at the output that we had at the input. Time and money were gone. Therefore, the next year, my daughter solemnly went for the second time to the first grade of a public school, to a friend, an experienced primary school teacher. This time the result was quite satisfactory: this teacher knew her job, knew how to keep discipline in the class and teach children. Unfortunately, a year later, due to family reasons, we had to move and change schools, and then move back and return to the same class a second time, after finishing elementary school, in the fifth grade.

What an amazing change in class we have found!

The painful part of my observations about school, which formed the basis of my article "Myths about schooling", were obtained not so much in my teaching practice as in my practice as a parent of a child who passed from primary to secondary school. Because it is in high school that class life takes on those characteristics that I have recorded. Leaving her classmates in the second grade of elementary school as cute fluffy bunnies, very friendly and disciplined under the guidance of an experienced teacher, my daughter found them again in the fifth - already split into microgroups, closed in themselves and in their relationships within the group, stupid and lost most of their childhood charm. Like any newcomer, even one who once belonged to the same team, the daughter was immediately isolated and pushed to the margins of class life. According to her stories, she was forced to carry out changes in the library - so as not to be the object of neglect or ridicule (it is not known which is worse) by her former friends.

But it would not be so bad if the educational process was organized as it should. Alas, we are faced with exactly the opposite situation, and this despite the fact that our school is a special French, with in-depth study of languages, is considered one of the best in the area of St. Petersburg where we live.

If in elementary school the students are under the care of a strict but caring "class mom", then in high school, they find themselves in the face of several subject teachers with different system of requirements and complete indifference to themselves, as well as with a twitched class teacher, who is mainly concerned about collecting money for various classroom needs and checking diaries, they completely lose orientation and the purpose of the educational process. Here, in fact, all their various problems - educational, communication, social, somehow disguised and tolerant in elementary school, come out and flourish. My daughter was no exception. In elementary school, she was firm, good-looking (I never asked my daughter for great results) and had no problems communicating with her peers. At the beginning of high school, my daughter suddenly stopped doing well in almost all subjects - just in some (humanitarian) the situation was less catastrophic, in others (exact) - more. In the class, she received the status of a "quiet C grade student" - a student (no matter whether a girl or a boy) who always sits on the back desk, quietly like a mouse, does not raise his hands, does not create problems for the teacher - to which he responds in kind there is almost never he notices him and does not call him to the board. As a result, by the end of the quarter, such children may have one or two marks in two months in the magazine - as a rule, this is a three - and this mark automatically migrates to the report card as a mark for the quarter. This situation did not suit me at all, because I knew perfectly well that my daughter knew more than three subjects. I myself studied with her, and I imagined her level of knowledge quite adequately. I came to the school, talked with the teachers and offered them, from my point of view, a reasonable way out: they give the girl an additional task. She fulfills it, they evaluate it, talk to her about the material, on the basis of which they change the fourth grade. No sooner said than done. The daughter bypassed the teachers and received an assignment from each, after which she conscientiously puffed over books and notebooks for several days. When everything was ready and she wanted to hand over the received assignments, an amazing thing happened: only one teacher out of all with whom we spoke, agreed to talk with the girl. The rest, under one pretext or another, “could not”. One of the teachers was more frank than the others and told me to my face: “Why should I study with your daughter individually? The school doesn’t pay me for this.” The most interesting thing is that the offer of money did not change anything, therefore, what was the deep meaning of this statement, I did not understand.

A small digression about kindergarten

In parallel, another process was taking place in my family, with my youngest child. Historically, my son, unlike my daughter, did not go to my kindergarten - either a good nanny would turn up, then grandmothers would show heroism, and then, when it seemed like it became necessary, we moved to an area where it would take two to get to the kindergarten. three years before the visit.

Then we moved again, found an accessible kindergarten, and then I had a bad thought to send my son at least to a preparatory group. Because the thought of insufficient socialization tormented me and I wanted to catch up.

In the kindergarten, the son was completely out of place. Since he had no idea of discipline in the team, and if he had anything, it was a rather fragile psyche and poor health, he reacted very sharply to the behavior of other children, for which he was regularly beaten and punished by standing in corners. In the evenings, going to the kindergarten for the child, I listened to long and instructive stories about how inadequate his behavior is, how he does not know how to behave and manifests himself as socially. Of course, at home I noticed a certain tendency towards hysteria and tearfulness in the child, but nothing more. Therefore, the abundant negative information literally dumbfounded me. It was very strange: the teachers seemed to me quite sane, but I knew my child quite well and imagined what to expect from him, and what - after all, not.

Nevertheless, the kindergarten torture continued until the boy seriously and for a long time fell ill with bronchitis. We were treated for a long time and in the morning we went to the clinic for physiotherapy. And then one windy morning, as usual, we went out into the street, the son took a sip of the cold harsh wind and … began to choke. At first I didn't believe it - I thought he was playing with me. It turned out that he was really suffocating - it was an asthma attack. Already in the clinic, where I ran out of fright in a couple of minutes with the child in my arms, I was told that asthmatics very often react sharply to wet windy weather.

In short, the son ended up in the hospital. The attending doctor, after asking me in detail about all family circumstances and listening to my confused story about the strange behavior of my child in the kindergarten, shook his head and said: “Mommy, my advice to you is to take the boy out of the kindergarten. You ask what he has such a reaction to - it most likely may be a garden. You don't really need him to go there, do you? Then forget about all socializations for at least a year. He socializes perfectly when needed. And it will be even better if he does not go to school with you, with such and such fragile psychosomatics."

This advice took me by surprise, because, like the overwhelming majority of parents in our country, I had no idea that, according to the law, my children can study not at school, but at home. And as a significant part of parents, having learned about this, I did not feel enthusiasm at all, but felt a cowardly fright and unwillingness to take responsibility for the children’s studies on my own.

Home schooling start

However, after some time, my son's health condition, as well as my daughter's problems at school, sent me in search of an alternative form of education. With the school where my daughter studied, I didn’t talk about concluding a contract for training as an external student - the experience of individual interaction with teachers discouraged me from the success of such an undertaking. I started collecting information about St. Petersburg externs on the Internet, and then - visiting them one by one and talking with the directors, since there were very few of them at that time. Based on the results of the conversation, I liked one more than anyone else, the NOU "Express" under the leadership of O. D. Vladimirskaya. I signed an agreement with this educational institution, took my daughter's documents from school, and a new life began in our family.

To say that we had a hard time means not to say anything. Our life was not at all adapted to the conditions of homeschooling, and if we also take into account that this happened in the middle of the school year, after the first half of the year, which gave very little in terms of study … In a word, we almost died from overstrain.

I could not leave work, so I had to do all my schoolwork after work. At home with the children there was a retired mother, but she did not at all welcome my pedagogical endeavors and was not eager to teach children in my absence. Therefore, I had to organize the educational process myself.

Together, my daughter and I drew up a daily routine and a lesson plan for the month in advance, which was recorded in a regular diary. In addition to her own studies, my daughter also had a duty to supervise her brother's studies, who, in preparation for regular studies, also had tasks from me (mostly, these were recipes and coloring books). In the evening I came and supervised the tasks.

Problems and solutions

Now it’s even strange to remember that once the simplest independent efforts caused such inhuman tension on our part. The first task that I set for my daughter was to learn how to master and pass the material of the school curriculum on time, without delays and transfers to another year. Everything would be nothing if not for mathematics. The daughter started her math classes thoroughly and as a result was completely helpless without the help of a teacher. I, too, was not able to radically help her on this subject and turned for help to my acquaintance, a scientist-historian, who for health reasons had to work at home. He was well versed in mathematics and agreed to help my children in organizing lessons in the exact sciences (well, at the same time, history too). It was he who suggested to me the principle of teaching, which I still adhere to: so that interest in learning does not fade, but, on the contrary, flares up, when learning something new, you need to move not from simple to complex, but, on the contrary, from complex to simple: the child must definitely try his strength in performing tasks that are not his age - just like a toothless baby still needs something to chew on. For example, after a couple of introductory lessons, my friend did this with his daughter: he asked her to complete more than 20 problems and examples in mathematics in a day (and the next day we had a test) - despite the fact that she was very, very guided in the material. relatively. The next day was fateful. In the morning, the girl told Mine that it was impossible to complete the task, but she would try. About an hour and a half were spent hysterics and banging my head against the wall. After dinner, she said that she would not be in time for more than half.

She finished half of the task by 6 pm, after which she suddenly had a second wind - or she finally understood the principle of solving mathematical problems (after all, until now she had never had to complete 10 typical tasks at once). In short, at 10 o'clock in the evening, the task was completed. The one that she considered completely impossible in the morning. It was a breakthrough. The girl got a reason to respect herself and realized that she could do much more than she thought.

However, despite such gratifying moments, of course, the first six months were a time of very hard work without any major breakthroughs. We finished the class in mid-June, but still without triples - the latter was essential.

The next year was dedicated to learning to learn. The girl had a number of problems, without the solution of which further education would in no way go beyond the framework of mastering the school curriculum as an external student:

1. lack of interest in reading, addiction to television and computer games;

2. communication problems: hyper-shyness, bad manners, inability to talk with adults and to build speech correctly;

3. laziness, lack of motivation for more serious studies.

I tried to solve each of these problems separately, as a private one - and did not come to much success. No matter how much I persuaded my daughter, how much I didn’t resort to prohibitive measures, how much I didn’t slip interesting books, her behavior did not change. Of course, I was nervous, worried, periodically despairing and wondered if I was taking too much on myself - but I was always supported by the thought that no matter how bad a teacher I was, even worse awaits my daughter at school - because at least she was not indifferent to me.

At times I developed a feverish activity, heaping piles of additional tasks and materials on the children, but, fortunately, I had enough common sense and advice from others around me not to turn the lives of children into the satisfaction of my pedagogical ambitions. It was clear that the main thing - that is, personal changes, getting rid of negative habits and acquiring positive ones - was not done immediately, not in a day or two, but over the years. Therefore, I decided not to demand the impossible from my daughter, but set a narrow and specific goal for her: to timely and conscientiously learn and pass the material in the school curriculum, hoping that we will solve the rest of the problems over time, without focusing on them.

From time to time, for some sections of the school curriculum that seemed to me especially inadequately illuminated - such as the topic of Darwin's evolutionary theory in the course of biology or the topic of the Crusades in the course of the history of the Middle Ages, I selected additional literature for my daughter, which I worked with her separately, so that my daughter had an idea and about other points of view not presented in the textbook. This year, wherever possible, I tried to replace the teacher for the girl, focusing still on the school model (because I had nothing else in my mind at that moment). Her second teacher was a friend of mine, who continued to follow her math and history studies. We finished the year quite successfully, having passed all the attestations on time and received only positive marks without exaggeration. By the end of the year, positive changes began to be observed in her daughter's behavior: firstly, she became more relaxed and ceased to be afraid of communicating with adults. This was natural - after all, now she communicated with me an order of magnitude more than at the time when she was attending school, and, in addition, she also communicated periodically with her second mentor - my friend and periodically had individual consultations with attentive and friendly teachers in external studies. Secondly, she became more organized and responsible and began to do much more - since she was responsible for doing her own homework, overseeing her brother's assignments, and performing various household chores.

This was all good, but, unfortunately, the main problem was not solved: the girl still avoided reading and did not have any interest in a wider range of knowledge. I understood that until this task is solved, we will not make serious progress, because only by constantly and intensively reading, you can significantly deepen and expand your knowledge.

First successes

The next year of study, it was the task of improving the quality of my daughter's education that occupied all my thoughts. Together with a friend of mine who is my children's second teacher, we began researching the Internet to collect information about pedagogical methods that would be useful for parents teaching children at home. Here we found that the vast majority of information about such techniques is located on English-language sites. Thus began our acquaintance with the world of homeschooling, with the works of Illich, Holt, Sayers, Mason. In my head, little by little, a system began to emerge, adhering to which, it would be possible to significantly expand the scope of education and improve its quality.

With Ivan, it was easier to do, since with him there was no need to correct the mistakes made. Immediately after he learned to read fluently (and this happened by the end of the first year of regular homework), he began to study in an expanded system compared to the school curriculum, which included science and history. At first, these disciplines were studied by the boy using encyclopedias from the publishing houses Makhaon, Rosmen, and Eksmo. This year became a record for me in the number of purchased children's fiction and educational literature - I bought all the more or less interesting publications, and they all came in handy later.

The boy enjoyed learning the basics of science from encyclopedias and gradually gained speed in reading. The next year, he no longer read articles from encyclopedias, but individual books and even a series of books - at about the same speed. Her daughter's pride, of course, was regularly tormented by unflattering comparisons of her reading volume with her brother's reading volume - but this, unfortunately, did little to awaken her passion for reading.

In fact, a serious change in the older child's attitude to studies occurred only this year, when she became almost completely independent and independent in her studies from me and my help. The circle of her interests suddenly and radically expanded, and her interest in knowledge began to develop immediately in several directions. At present, the volume and level of her daughter's reading, although not yet comparable to that of her brother, is quite satisfactory for a girl of her age. As an annual project, the daughter chose a serious topic - a comparison of the cultures of Japan and England, and reads a lot on it. In addition to her studies, my daughter almost completely manages the household in my absence - she buys food, prepares food, maintains order in the house. In addition to her studies, her daughter has many interests: drawing, handicrafts, dance, theatrical art. The problem of laziness has been radically solved, as well as communication problems: she has established equal respectful relations with teachers in the external school, friends were acquired partly at school, partly through the Internet. Currently, both children are significantly superior in terms of knowledge, psychological development and socialization of their peers, schoolchildren, which has been repeatedly confirmed not only in external examinations, but also in a variety of everyday situations. My son's health problems have also been reduced to naught: this year we managed to avoid the usual autumn aggravation of asthmatics. Let's see how he will feel in the spring.

As for me, solving the problem of organizing home education for my own children brought me back to my profession - to pedagogy. Compared to the task that I am solving now, all past tasks from the field of business have faded and lost their attractiveness. This led me to change the field of activity, and now I concentrate all my efforts in one area. The success I have achieved in my family has prompted me to speak out in public in defense of home schooling. And now I consider it my duty to help other parents, anxious to find a way out of the trap of public education, to find this way out and use it to their advantage.