Education, Expertise, and Interest

I feel like every few weeks I see one of these posts in which someone with multiple education degrees asks how a homeschooling parent could possibly be qualified to teach all subjects to all ages when said degree holder is despite years of training only qualified to teach specific ages and subjects.

This kind of thing points to some real problems with credentialism within our modern education system.  However, I want to leave that to one side and address two points which I think are worth highlighting.

First, learning to manage and teach a classroom with twenty children is very different from teaching your own children. I'm not convinced that we necessarily need a four year degree and then an advanced degree as well just to teach someone how to plan and manage classroom teaching.  I suspect that we could successfully train and credential people a lot faster while giving them time while in college to devote themselves to a subject matter rather than teaching itself.  However, productively managing a classroom full of kids is a definite skill, and learning it is going to take time.

By contrast, teaching children at home is often a lot more like parenting than it is like managing a large number of other people's kids in a formal schoolroom environment.

Yes, there are times when it is important to seek out some specialized materials or techniques. After quite successfully teaching the first four kids to read using the 100 Easy Lessons book, MrsDarwin had to seek out a specialized curriculum for teaching kids with dyslexia to read for our fifth child.  And then for the sixth and seventh, she was able to go right back to the old system. Special needs required special techniques. 

But a lot of the time, teaching younger kids at home is a lot like doing any other activity with them. You sit down to read or do an activity, you provide some guidance, you make sure they do their activities. While there will be occasional kids who will need something special, teaching most kids to read and do basic math is not hard for the average parent to do with a few easily chosen books.  And teaching young kids about history and science is quite honestly often just a matter of sitting down and reading aloud, or even turning them loose to watch some decent TV programs on an interesting topic.

The second topic I'd like to address, however, relates to somewhat older kids, and it has to do with teaching expertise.

While I think it's pretty obviously misguided to think that someone needs one advanced certification to teach math to third graders, but a different one to teach them science, and so on -- I can see why someone would think that someone teaching middle school or high school science, history, literature, etc. should have pretty in depth knowledge of all those topics.  How is a parent going to be an inspiring expert in all those fields?

For one thing, it's worth being honest: most high schools and middle schools also do not offer an inspiring expert in each of these fields. Certifications set minimum, but they don't create inspiriting personalities or deep expertise. You can bet that your certified high school biology teacher can explain what the Krebs Cycle is, but that doesn't necessarily mean he will have an infectious enthusiasm which makes numerous students go into biochem. A lot of well trained teachers (like a lot of trained professionals in other fields) are going to be just okay, even as others are going to be brilliant.

But even so, wouldn't the middling high school biology teacher who knows about the Krebs Cycle be better for teaching kids about biology than a parent who may not remember the Krebs Cycle at all?

So here's where I find myself wondering a bit.  Because, as in this example, a lot of adults do not remember learning about the Krebs Cycle. Indeed, you could even work in a lot of other areas of biology without thinking about the Krebs Cycle often.

Let's picture two different ways that studying biology while being homeschooled in high school might go. 

In one case, the parent picks out a solid high school biology and makes the student read the book. The parent may not remember a lot of the topics covered well, but if they run into trouble the parent does some Wikipedia work or otherwise helps look up questions.

In the other case, the student reads a half dozen popular science books on topics that seem interesting about animals and watches a lot of documentaries and YouTube science videos. The student's knowledge is very spotty, perhaps, compared to reading a comprehensive biology textbook.  However, the stuff he reads he finds really interesting and retains.  Perhaps this leads to a longstanding adult interest in a few biology related topics, and he continues to read about those through the rest of his life.  Or if he feels really inspired to go deeper into the topic, he takes biology when he goes to college and perhaps even ends up majoring in it.

Which of these is a better science education, the one which mimics a traditional classroom with a solid survey text, perhaps rather uninspiring but thorough, or the one which is spotty but driven by interest?

I think that in a number of cases, homeschoolers may end up covering some topics more in the latter fashion. They may never do the broad survey study which modern middle and high schools emphasize.

However, it may also be worth asking: how much good are these broad survey courses achieving in many average schools across the country? Are there perhaps many cases in which an interest-driven approach to learning, while in places spotty and shallower (though also with certain areas of depth) actually leaves many homeschoolers retaining more education 20 years later than some of their traditionally schooled peers? Does the breadth of a traditional course count for much if most of it is never retained by most students? 

I don't think there's any question but what a deep and broad course taught by a passionate expert, which really inspires people to love the topic, is the ideal.  But ideals don't always happen, and often people are picking between various non-ideal options. 

I do wonder whether if homeschoolers are often ending up pursuing topics with more interest, even if also less thoroughness and expertise, they end up better served for the long run.