In this post I will follow up the discussion I started in my previous post Are Textbooks in the Homeschool Really THAT bad? If you have not read that post, you can find it here. I will now address three of the seven commonly heard objections to the use of the traditional textbook as a central curriculum choice in the homeschool. Objections four through seven will be in my next post which is part two of this series.
1. Textbooks are boring.
Well, that depends on many factors and there are some textbooks that are in fact very boring. I have a two part response to this objection. First of all, not every textbook is boring. If you have a textbook that is truly terrible, you can very confidently choose not to use it and keep looking for another. There are plenty of very interesting textbooks available for homeschoolers to use. Apologia Science is my absolute favorite. These textbooks are interesting, fun, education and did I say interesting and fun? Yes, I did and so do my children. My kids LOVE their science books. We also have two Bob Jones science books that a friend gave me. My children love them too. The one thing that really draws my kids to the Bob Jones books is that Apologia science books were all we had before getting these. The Bob Jones books are different and they have chapters about information not covered in Apologia like weather and rocks. My kids like both and use both with great enthusiasm. Shhhh...don't tell them textbooks are boring. They don't know.
My next response to this objection is simple. Just because a child finds something boring doesn't mean they don't need it or that it is a poor curriculum choice. I did not enjoy math growing up. The math book was boring (according to me). Should my teachers have looked for a new book because I found the ones I was given to be boring? Should I have been given an easier math curriculum so I could enjoy it more? Of course not. I think that as homeschooling parents, we often need to allow our children to "suffer" a little boredom every once in a while. Education is a process that should be enjoyable over all, but it is done with a purpose. The purpose is to give a child what they need to be prepared for life. However you want to tweak the purpose, this is the core of why education is so important. If you can't do your math facts, you can't do Algebra. If you can't do Algebra, you can't graduate high school and get into college. I "suffered" through my boring math books during my school years, and I learned a lot in the process.
Education can be rewarding and fun, but fun is not the factor on which I base my curriculum choices. Well, if we are talking about art curriculum, fun is a big factor. Art is supposed to be fun. But if we are talking about math or grammar, fun is not the driving force which determines my curriculum choices. Fun is a nice and a welcome bonus, but fun alone is not a deal breaker in our homeschool.
Think about it this way. Do you let your children eat chips and candy and McDonalds chicken nuggets for every meal because this is fun and it is what they like? I sure hope not. This would be very bad for your child and cause some pretty serious health complications later in life. Your children would end up with serious nutritional deficiencies. They may be having the time of their life now, but they will not thank you for this when they are grown! School can be thought of similarly. We want our children to enjoy their education, but there are times when our kids have to learn to "eat their vegetables" so to speak and continue working through a good textbook providing a solid foundation in its subject area even when they find it boring. If a delight directed school philosophy causes mom to choose an easier or more exciting curriculum that is not as academically sound as the current curriculum, your student may end up having fun now, but they probably won't thank you for it when they are grown. They will likely find deficiencies in certain subject areas and struggle unnecessarily in college.
2. Textbooks only have short selections of books in them, which deprives a student of reading books in their entirety.
In our homeschool we use Abeka readers for fourth and fifth grades. My son's fourth grade reader titled Salute to Courage contains a selection from Heidi. Last week my son decided to read his reader selection for the day aloud to his youngest brother. The little guy came to me excited and told me how the Heidi story is in big brother's reader. We were in the process of reading Heidi aloud with only two chapters left in the book. The boys love Heidi. They were so excited to see part of a book they have enjoyed so much in this reader. No one felt cheated because only a portion of the book is present. My boys were excited that the day's selection was something they were familiar with. My fourth grader noticed differences between the Abeka selection and the original. Now he is excited to keep reading his reader to see if there are other selections with which he is familiar.
This same fourth grader had another selection to read which came from Alice in Wonderland. I encouraged him to start reading the whole book after he reads the reader's selection if he finds it interesting. We already have the book. I am hoped this portion of Alice in Wonderland would spur the interest in my son to read the whole book! If not, at least he got some exposure to the story. It did it's job. He is in process of reading the whole book on his own after school hours. He is reading for fun in his free time!
On another note, "Of making many books there is no end, and much study is weariness to the flesh." Ecclesiastes 12:12. While the choice to use textbooks in the homeschool most certainly does not mean that students in such schools can not or will not be well read, one must also acknowledge that even the most avidly literature based homeschool program will leave much reading undone. My job as a homeschool parent is not to make my children read all of the classics before they graduate and leave home. No, my job is to instill in them a love for reading and to give them the tools to continue learning once they are graduated.
Finally, a reader or textbook which offers selections of well known literature can expose a student to a larger variety of literature and genres of writing than he might be exposed to if he never uses a textbook. If I let my children choose all of their reading based on their interest, my oldest son would skip poetry altogether. He is a math and science oriented guy. A textbook will not allow this.
3. Textbooks don't teach children of different learning styles.
This objection is not necessarily always true though sometimes it is the case. For example, our 2nd grade English book by Rod and Staff publishers has extra activities at the end of each unit that allow for some hands on learning that applies to the part of speech covered in the unit. My boys have enjoyed these activities and find them to be a nice break from the regular lesson's format. If there is time for us to do such an activity we definitely try to make it happen. If life is nuts and we can't, we just move on. The activity is optional.
I will say that there are many children who have a hard time just reading a book and working from it without some verbal teaching. Chalk board lessons often help these children connect what they are reading and improve their performance in their school work. A parent can give such lessons to the student from the textbook (especially if the text has a good teacher's manual to accompany it), or DVD's can offer such instruction. We use Art Reed DVD's with our Saxon math books to teach upper level math to my boys. Our DVD's have a real person that can be seen explaining the concepts in each lesson and demonstrating them on a dry erase board. Mr. Reed has been a wonderful blessing in our homeschool. Upper level math is not my cup of tea. Some of my kids use the DVD's while others get it well enough by reading the book on their own that they don't bother. It takes longer to watch the DVD. We still use our trusty textbooks, while Mr. Reed gives the extra help needed for students needing a lecture.
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