Many home educators, perhaps even most, begin this journey backwards. They decide to home educate and then the first thing they do is pick a curriculum. They may ask friends what they use and buy that. They may pour over catalogs looking for the latest “best”. They may do an internet search to find free.
Now, when we began home educating it was no different, except it was hugely different. We had very little to pour over. There was no internet. We may not have known another home educator. (We didn’t.) And if we did, they were using one of the very few curriculums available.
Today you have it much tougher. I can’t imagine how difficult it is for a new home educator to begin to wade through all that is out there. But I think that is an even greater reason for beginning this journey at the right end of things – and that isn’t by choosing curriculum.
I don’t know why our minds tend to work backwards in this area. Perhaps it is human nature. No doubt it has something to do with the way we were educated. We tend to look at the externals, the effects, rather than, or at least before, the internal, the causes. We look at the what before the why or the how. The problem with that is the why and the how dictate the what. So even if we aren’t discerning the why and the how first, someone else has and the what you choose is based on someone else’s why and how.
This backwards approach even works itself out in how we teach our children.
To be continued… Lord willing, tomorrow.
