Teaching Content

Some of you in that education-related post of a few days ago, expressed concern about homeschooling that many parents do not know enough about certain subjects to teach them to their children, who would do better to learn them from teachers who are the experts. Have you ever seen the college curriculum required for an education major to become an elementary school teacher? They have to take virtually all education courses. The typical elementary school teacher in a math class has likely not had math since she was in grade school or maybe high school herself. They don’t study the subjects they have to teach. It’s better in high school, since teachers at that level do have to have courses in a specific subject area (math, science, history, English, etc.). But it’s hard to teach children on a more advanced level when they do not have a solid foundation.

Please note, I am NOT blaming elementary school teachers, who often do a heroic job. I am blaming the contemporary educational theory that so often thwarts their best efforts. My point here is that homeschooling parents generally have just as much content-area expertise as public school teachers on the elementary level. But they are generally committed to teaching content, which they do by means of the content-rich curriculum that most of them use.

By the way, homeschoolers deal with the more specialized subjects of high school that their parents can’t handle typically by taking advantage of some excellent on-line courses, by forming co-ops around a subject-matter expert, and/or by reading and working through challenging curriculum.