Culture

A day or so ago, I was talking with a fellow homeschool mom about standardized testing and how especially we, as homeschoolers, get concerned about the scores. I believe a lot of that has to do with the need to vindicate our choice to homeschool and show that we are doing a plenty fine job, thank you very much (not that we'd say that, but I know I feel that way sometimes). And, yes, I completely realize that standardized testing is a means of showing progression in knowledge, but it is not the end all which is an easy trap to fall into. Then yesterday, I was reading a smidge in A Charlotte Mason Companion and came across this quote that clarified the downfall of focusing too much on standardized testing and not enough on as she calls it, culture.

We owe it to our children to stimulate in them a wide range of interests in their elementary years. Wherever we go, whomever we talk to, whatever we see can be of some interest to children if we stand aside and let them question and consider or examine and research. It should not be "How much has our child covered?" but "How much does he care?" and "About how many things does he care?" Charlotte's method of education that teaches children to care supports culture. Children go beyond just becoming interested in someone or something. They develop a deeper understanding - a greater appreciation - when relations are formed. They become cultured. A system primarily supports cram. Make your choice - culture versus cram. Others may feed the sausage machine. I would like to remain outside the factory and, like Mr. Gibbon suggested, "Look on education as something between the child's soul and God." As he says, "Modern education tends to look on it as something between the child's brain and the standardized test,...There is an issue at stake. It is part of the whole modern policy of quick returns, of the substitution of immediate and temporary values for ultimate and absolute ones."

Pumpkin carving, super fun and completely a new thing for James