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Philosophy of Education: The High School Years
The High School years have been pure joy to me! If you knew me better, you'd know what an Act of God that statement represents!
At first, I must admit that I was terrified and rebellious. I did not want to home school High School. The prospect overwhelmed me. I was not strong in math, and had four younger students as well. But, when I submitted to the Lord’s plan in my life, He graciously led me, step by step, down a wonder-ful path.
I have come to see that parents who give way to fear and decide to put their children in schools purely because of a lack of confidence really miss a special chance to finish the job they started and enjoy the sweet fruit of fellowship with their teens.
Now, I have the privilege to share with you in fulfillment of 2 Corinthians 1:3-4 Praise be to the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of compassion and the God of all comfort, who comforts us in all our troubles, so that we can comfort those in any trouble with the comfort we ourselves have received from God.
I am certain that if you are in faith that God desires you to home school your High School aged children that He will provide all you need, no matter how inadequate you may feel today. Humility is a great starting place, and this curriculum is a part of His provision!
If you've never read the book Age of Opportunity by Paul Tripp, I highly recommend it! It will effectively equip you to gain vision and courage for the task ahead!
In previous pages of this site, we've been talking about the importance of sanctification and discipleship: saying that building character in our younger children should be our first concern. In High School, very little of the focus on character development truly changes.
By accepting God’s call to home school High School, you agree to shepherd your child across the bridge from child to adult.
Think about it. Your child, all his life, has risen when told to, eaten breakfast, done chores, studied schoolwork, participated in sports, etc. all at the direction of someone else—you, or the coach, or the outside instructor. Traditional schools provide the exact same structure to High Schoolers as they do to Elementary students. Bells and teachers minutely manage the students’ daily lives.
Yet, somehow, magically, in the normal pattern, High School students are supposed to learn "maturity" and "independence" in these years. They are supposed to make crucial decisions about increasingly adult matters. Driving, drinking alcohol, using drugs and tobacco, sex, and choosing a college—and perhaps a mate—all become issues during these years.
And, again in the traditional pattern, most of America’s kids, after having more or less "made it" through a High School which completely controlled daily structure and direction, are then sent on their way to a college, where there is very little structure, and usually, no accountability.
You, as a teacher of a home-schooled High School student, have an outstanding opportunity to do it differently. You can give your child much greater latitude of choice and consequences in his daily life, and help him deal with failures and successes in a godly way. He needs to become an adult. But, he needs to have guidance, wisdom, and the chance to succeed or fail "on his own"—with a safety net.
Let me give you some practical examples of how we start this process.
- Scheduling is where we started with our older children.
- We had a family meeting once a week, and all our older children were given planners. They had to plan their daily schedules themselves, and had to clear all personal dates—like babysitting jobs, friends’ birthday parties, etc.—with the family on Sunday nights.
- Over their first year of High School, we taught them how to plan their own daily lessons from weekly assignments, conduct their own Quiet Times, plan their work/play times, etc.
- After that year, when they failed in any of these areas, they reaped the fruits of their failure. One of our sons blew off math for an entire quarter. When we finally discovered it, he had to do double Algebra 2 assignments for six weeks. He has never blown off math since.
- Other times, our kids have forgotten babysitting dates and had to apologize, and if possible, plan restitution for their failures. Over and over they’ve forgotten to do errands they agreed to for me, their mother. I tried to require restitution for the inconvenience they caused to come out of their days, not mine.
All of these preliminary steps stood them in good stead as they began to have bigger opportunities: computer courses at the community college in their sophomore summer (one of my boys failed to turn in his final exam because of laziness—ouch!) and a driver’s license when turning sixteen. More recently, more computer courses led to an internship at a local computer company. Their good work ethic won them a real job for their senior year. But, in the same week, my son slugged in bed when he should have been up doing chores. This just illustrates that though he’d turn 18 in a few months, he was not an adult. He was still on that bridge between childhood and adulthood, and I’ve found that the bridge is a tricky place. One day, youths are demonstrating wonderful maturity and true Christlikeness. The next day, they’re acting like a two-year-old. Kinda like me? Hmmmm. Maybe they are adults... but maybe they’re just sinful children of God, doing their best—most of the time.
In case you're joining us without having read the Philosophy of Education pages for younger grades, here's a quick review:
Dorothy Sayers (a friend of C.S. Lewis's), wrote an essay on education called the Lost Tools of Learning in 1947. She explained how our medieval ancestors taught their children, identifying their system of education was well designed for the three different learning stages, through which all children go. Medieval children learned the basics in the "Trivium" (from which we get our word "trivial"). The "basics," in those days, were "grammar" (learning to speak Latin), "dialectic" (learning to debate in Latin), and "rhetoric" (learning to move hearts and minds [perusade] in Latin).
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Sayers argued that children in the elementary grades are especially good at memorizing things, and not ready yet for true analysis. She called this the "grammar" or "parrot" phase, and pointed out that all subjects have a "grammar" or basic vocabulary that young children are amazingly well-suited to learn at young ages.
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As children grow, they lose interest in memorization for its own sake; instead they begin to question everything. What they want to know is how things connect to one another. Sayers called this the "dialectic" or "pert" phase. I call it the "Ohhhhhh!" phase.
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Finally, when children begin turning into young adults, their hearts turn towards the meaning of life. She called this the "rhetoric" or "poet" phase. In this phase, mature people are able, when fully trained, to analyze and synthesize; to break down complex situations or ideas into component parts, and then rearrange them in new combinations that are sometimes better!
Academically, your focus is to teach High School students to think for themselves in Biblical, orderly ways. The High School years are the golden age of opportunity: your children are finally physically ready to reason and think! They have passed the "parrot" and "pert" stages, and, having passed through puberty, are into the "poet" stage, where they seek to find out who they are, and how they will understand the world around them.
In these years, they need to know more and more of the world’s philosophies, and what the Bible says about them. They need to learn to analyze God’s HIStory so that it can do what it was meant to do: instruct them. Romans 15:4 says For everything that was written in the past was written to teach us, so that through endurance and the encouragement of the Scriptures we might have hope. And 1 Cor. 10:11 says These things happened to them as examples and were written down as warnings for us, on whom the fulfillment of the ages has come. HIStory is a part of His grace in our lives: we can learn from the example and records of others, so as not to repeat their mistakes. They need to learn about worldviews, and why people believe in them, so that they can compassionately evangelize others, understanding the attractions of their beliefs, but showing them the Biblically defined errors of their thoughts, and hopefully leading some to Christ while avoiding dangerous pitfalls themselves.
There are three major tools in teaching High School academics: reading, thinking and writing.
Your child should read broadly and much.
Provide as many primary source documents as possible in his reading diet. Most of these are available at the library, but some are available in (admittedly expensive) collections from secular and Christian sources. Increasingly, many expired-copyright books are available for free on-line. This Tapestry of Grace web site seeks to find and link as many of these resources as possible. I don’t think you or your child will regret time and money spent pursuing these documents. Slogging through them is tough work sometimes, but there is simply no substitute for reading authors’ thoughts straight from their pens, rather than summaries or discussions of those writings by others.
Along with primary source documents are the literature selections, which I consider core assignments. By way of encouragement, one bright spot in studying HIStory from beginning to end, beginning in the 9th Grade (or first year) of High School and continuing on through, is that there’s precious little primary source material left from the earliest years, and most of it is Scripture! Also, the ideas/philosophies/world views of mankind get more numerous and more complex as the Story progresses, but, guess what? There’s nothing new under the sun. If your child begins at the beginning, and learns the major themes of HIStory thoroughly, he will begin to see that, for instance, the "New Age Philosophy" is nothing more or less than ancient pantheism and spirit channeling, watered down and repackaged.
By "thinking, we mean discussion. There is no substitute for discussing the great thoughts and movements of the human race from a Biblical perspective. The best possible scenario is to form a co-op, where your child will be both challenged and encouraged through peer interactions to state his views clearly and defend them accurately. This is not possible for all home schoolers, because of time and distance. May I offer a few creative suggestions?
- Use the Internet. Many Tapestry of Grace users are on-line. Parents can form "virtual co-ops" by setting up specific times for on-line discussions of each week’s lessons. We also host a forum discussion board that is advertisement-free.
- Again using the Internet, consider posting your child’s work on the "Gallery Pages" of the Tapestry site. There’s something about writing to post that differs from writing for mom’s eyes only! J
If none of these is an option for you, then YOU must become your child’s "class." Learn along with him, challenge him, stretch him. Read what he reads (at least portions of it) and discuss, discuss, discuss. Again, if all else fails, the reading and writing parts of the Tapestry program far exceed most High Schoolers’ educations, but "thinking" is so crucial that I urge you to find a way for your teen to interact with others using this program.
As for writing, the only truly "new" skill for High School students will be the development of "on-paper" analytical argumentation (apologetics). The brain doesn’t usually fully develop the capacity for analysis and synthesis until after puberty. Therefore, in High School, much time should be devoted to logical apologetics in the forms of speeches, essays, and newspaper editorial page submissions throughout the High School years. One can start this process in Jr. High with students who mature early.
I couldn't more highly recommend the formal study of the Latin language in either the Middle Years or in the first two years of High School. This should be followed by a half-semester course of formal logic studies. Other foci might be the solidification of grammatical knowledge, the fine-tuning of general writing organization and skills (my oldest son still has trouble with apostrophes!), and general, steady work on vocabulary expansion pursuant to taking the SAT in his Junior year. Of course, don't forget math and lab sciences!
In summary, the High School years are exciting: all the fruits of your labors (and your child's character) are about to become apparent. Your child will change more in the next four years than at any time since the first four years of his life. You are going to be a major influence in his life, and so I urge you to be diligent! Galatians 6:9 reminds us Let us not become weary in doing good, for at the proper time we will reap a harvest if we do not give up. And something I always need to keep memorizing, especially as I relate to my teens is this: Eph. 4:29 Do not let any unwholesome talk come out of your mouths, but only what is helpful for building others up according to their needs, that it may benefit those who listen.
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Learning Stages and Appropriate Goals For Them:
The Rhetoric Stage
There are three "stages" of learning that you may need to teach to, depending on the ages of your children. Here is the definition that Tapestry uses for the Rhetoric stage, which corresponds to the High School years.
The Rhetoric Stage (10-Adult): this is the stage of "analysis and synthesis"—the "what does it mean?" phase. Though we continue to seek to draw out thematic connection (as in the dialectic stage) with these older students, we are looking for more maturity in our discussions; more independent connection of events with revealed Truth, more thoughtful analysis. This stage begins in High School and continues through the student's whole life. It is the stage where one develops the skill of being able to take a range of information (primary sources, opinion papers from scholars, or perhaps persuasive essays), analyze it from a Biblical perspective, and then come to a personal conviction of truth. This conviction should always be held in the fear of God, and in openness of spirit, so that it can be re-examined if new evidence, or revelation, is brought to the learner. As mentors, our goal is to create "flexible" thinkers, who both know the truth and fear only God, but realize their own ability to be mistaken. I encourage you to develop "Bereans" in your home, taking your cue from Acts 17:11 "Now the Bereans were of more noble character than the Thessalonians, for they received the message with great eagerness and examined the Scriptures every day to see if what Paul said was true."
The truth, once discovered, should also be applied practically to one's life. Thus, the learner who discovers that abortion is murder in God's sight should resolve not to perform such an act upon any babies they themselves conceive.
In the High School years, the major tangible differences between the Rhetoric and Dialectic levels will be in the students’ reading and writing assignments, and in the quality of their discussions (especially in groups).
- Reading assignments will be more challenging, and contain more primary source materials. They will also be on a more analytic level than those assigned to Dialectic readers. Of course, in this program, many assignments appropriate to Dialectic stage students are helpful to Rhetoric students as well, and assignment charts will reflect this. But even in reading the self-same assignment as younger students, you should expect the Rhetoric learner to bring more analytic thought and practical application to his reading than will his younger counterpart.
- In writing, the Rhetoric stage student will be required to learn to write essays and papers that analyze and synthesize facts. The older he is, the more he should depart from a "nice story nicely told" and strive to learn to craft analytic essays that compare facts and concepts, and then use them to support newly organized conclusions.
Are you intimidated? Don’t be. First of all, God is faithful. If He has called you to educate your Rhetoric stage student, He will help you to accomplish the task. Tapestry of Grace will help by guiding you through the necessary steps in teaching these skills, and there’s always help on-line from the wonderful community of on-line users.
May God bless you as you pursue Him this school year! Guard your quiet time. Keep your kids accountable. Set the pace with your own life, and laugh a lot! See the good things your kids are doing: they do far more right than they do wrong! My mother-in-law has six wonderful sons and 24 (last we counted) grand-children who all love the Lord. She says the song that makes her cry every time is the old hymn We Gather Together. One line in the first stanza is "and from the beginning the race we are winning." She wishes someone had shown her the end during those depressing early days of endless dishes, diapers and runny noses. Well, dear friends, Someone has: He's the author of the story we're studying. And we win in the end, through Him who loved us and died to prove it.
Now that we've filled your with vision and confidence for teaching your children the academic subjects you desire to impart, let's return to a page that will remind us of the true purposes for which we choose to home school! Go on to learn more about grace-centered learning!
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