Educating the Wheelers

Andrew and I both went to college, so we have two institutions that call us for alumni donations. Andrew received a nice sized grant from his college, so we give to them on occasion. [Though I can tell I've really become a parent now. The last time I got a call I said, "If you continue to call us more than once a year, you will get nothing."]

My college? Not so much. I have given to them only twice in the almost ten years since I graduated, and the person in whose name I always gave — my mentor when I was there — no longer works there. I am a little ambivalent these days about the value of my education I had while I was there. I can’t say it’s the institution’s fault, but it does make me less eager to pony up money to them. [Note: I never received any grants or financial aid of any sort, but I did work as the assistant manager in the dedicated computer lab for math and science students. The manager of that lab was the aforementioned mentor. What I learned from her during that time is the knowledge I used once I graduated.]

There weren’t a lot of women doing Computer Science while I was there, so for my first few years out, I would get the occasional invitation to come back and speak on a panel to the current crop of CS students to let them know “what it’s like” on the outside, and how what I learned at our fine institution helped. It was an odd experience, because I graduated in 1996 — the reality of the situation at the time was that I could have fallen off the back of a turnip truck and been employed in the high tech industry in Seattle during those years.

I realize this is completely incoherent. Sorry. Heh.

My parents never talked to us about money when we were growing up. In fact, the only thing I can recall is that when we got our checking accounts in out teens, they would be on the lookout for the telltale “overdraw” notices from the bank in the mail, and laugh at us when they inevitably came. Responsibility by humiliation, I guess. Heh.

I started college at 16 and remember vividly my prof in my College Algebra course walking in one day and announcing that we would spend the day talking about compound interest, because he wished that someone had explained it to him at our age. It left a powerful impact on me — one of the few lectures I remember vividly from that year. [I also recall my philosphy professor exclaiming "God is dead!" re: Nietzsche and getting mad that no one was riled up. Hey, lady, we're 3.5 hours into a Monday 6-10 evening class. You're going to have to do better than that...]

Of course, I didn’t immediately apply those lessons to my life, because I was an idiot. But he was the first one to get the seed planted.

Andrew and I will be homeschooling our children, and I spend a lot of time thinking about how to start talking to them about money earlier on. Some things are obvious — raise them in a frugal environment! But then there is the issue of allowance and deciding how much to let them know about the family finances. As I mentioned above, my own family kept all of that opaque and I didn’t know anything about anything until, well, my 20s after I’d been on my own for awhile and made huge financial mistakes. I honor my parents’ decision on that matter, but I don’t think I want to go down that route with my own kids.

Audrey has been learning up a storm lately.

She knows her alphabet [and can sing the song!] and letter sounds, knows the numbers 1-10 solid and loves to count things, and knows a huge number of general vocabulary words — great since she lagged way behind in communication for awhile there. In the last few days, her favorite activity bar none has been playing with Tux Paint on her Dad’s tablet computer. She has it totally nailed. She can start the program, use almost any of the tools or brushes and start new pages. She likes to draw faces, rainbows and umbrellas. She’s not even 2! It blows my mind.

I’ve been looking into Sonlight Curriculum a bit while trying to learn more about homeschooling. I’m not an evangelical Christian [they are], but it seems pretty adaptable. In fact, I am currently part of two Yahoo groups – SL Catholic and SL Secular – that are all about adapting it to fit other points of view.

Sonlight appeals to me because there are no textbooks. I tend to agree with the more Charlotte-Masony idea that textbooks tend to squeeze the life out of a subject and can turn just about anything interesting into drudgery. I’ve gone through some elementary level science, math and English texts and they’re pretty bleak.

When I was a kid, I was excited about learning and not excited about school. And it eventually occurred to me that perhaps there was something wrong with that. [I ended up leaving high school after the 10th grade and moving to the local community college where things were much different.]

For my birthday this year, my husband purchased Sonlight’s Survey of British Literature high school curriculum and I’ve been working through that while raising Audrey. It’s wonderful so far, though slow going.

I’m working my way through Beowulf, and it appears that I have had the wrong idea about that poem. The translator mentions in the introduction how alien the poem seems to modern audiences, particularly in comparison to, say, the Iliad. Even if you don’t really know much about Classical Mythology or have never read the Iliad before, basic cultural literacy is going to make many of the names and much of the plot familiar to you. Not so with Beowulf, none of it seems to have wormed its way into our culture. Unless, of course, you watched Firefly and then realized, “Hey! That’s where he got the reavers from!” Once you make it over that hump, though, it’s a rip roaring good time. It’s brash and it’s brusque and it feels like it would go well with a beer.

Well, I guess we know now that we won’t be attending the Waldorf school down the road. It’s a bit of a shame, though, since it’s within walking distance, and the campus itself is quite beautiful.

We had been a bit worried that the curriculum wasn’t math/sci enough, but we’ve always assumed that it’s our job to supplement gaps in curriculum if need be. Andrew was particularly concerned by how weak they were on computers/programming. Now, looking further and harder into their philosophy and curriculum on the net, we can see that it really doesn’t match at all what we want.

One of Andrew’s big concerns [and I agree] is that whatever course we take with her, if we ever have to put her back into public school, we want to ensure that she is ahead of public school standards, not behind. I didn’t get the feel that would be the case with Waldorf.

Not to mention some of the stranger touchy-feely/spiritual stuff in their philosophy. I won’t get into that here, but suffice to say, that’s not really our ball of wax, either.

I stumbled across this post today [via Joanne Jacobs] on how widespread early calculator use affects later academic performance. [Hint: it's not good.] My post-partum memory is fuzzy, but I seem to recall not using calculators regularly until my college statistics class. In fact, I still have my trusty TI-36X from that class and still use it. [I've since sold the TI-81 that I used in calculus.] I always enjoyed calculating in my head — I remember working at San Francisco Street Bakery in college, and I’d keep running tabs for folks as they picked out their items and would announce their total to them before I even got to the cash register. Cheap fun. Heh.

I’ve been reviewing different math curricula lately — there’s a fairly wide variety of approaches out there, but my gut tells me that tried-and-true like Saxon or Singapore Math is what most effectively teaches math competence. [The girls who babysit for us -- and who are homeschooled -- use Saxon.] One thing I like about them is that they discourage calculator use.

We are within walking/biking distance of a Waldorf school. We have mixed feelings about sending Audrey there. On the plus side, they seem to have a fairly interesting curriculum, and you can be assured that most of the parents are very involved. On the negative side, it might be a little touchy-feely for our tastes. It’s too early to tell yet what Audrey’s academic interests are going to be, but both Andrew and I are fairly technical math/science/computer types — Waldorf doesn’t seem to emphasize those enough for our taste, but I’m not sure that’s a showstopper.

Our first daughter, Audrey, is nearly 7 months old, and already my husband Andrew and I are struggling over where/how to educate her.

The current options we’re kicking around include public school, Catholic school, the very nearby Waldorf school and homeschooling.

Admittedly, I’m not thrilled about public school. I went to a handful of public schools and a handful of Catholic schools. I had a good experience at a small, neighborhood Catholic school, a great experience at a small, rural public school, a poor experience at a wealthy Catholic school and and particularly crappy experience at a suburban “good” public school. I left there after the 10th grade and started at my local community college. But Andrew had a good experience in the Austin, TX public school system [years ago], and isn’t nearly as jaded as I am. At the risk of stereotypical old cooter “everything is going to hell”-speak, I do feel like the public schools have only gotten worse since we were there.

Thankfully, we have a few years to decide.