Episode #2 | Home-Centered Learning

What makes the home an ideal learning environment? What does a home-centered education look like? Why was public education started and why were orphanages shut down?

In this episode, we’ll explore answers to these questions and discuss the big idea of home-centered education. Most importantly, I’ll share some simple strategies you can begin implementing today, no matter where your children go to school. Click on the links below to listen!

Episode Links

Charles Loring Brace | Social Welfare History Project

The Devastating Rise of Mass Schooling | FEE Stories

American Literacy Statistics | ThinkImpact

Quotes

“If socializing with peers leads to getting along and becoming responsible members of society, the more time a child spent with her peers, the better the relating would tend to be. In actual fact, the more children spend time with one another, the less likely they are to get along and the less likely they are to fit into civilized society. If we take the socialization assumption to the extreme-to orphanage children, street children, children involved in gangs-the flaw in thinking becomes obvious. If socializing were the key to socialization, gang members and street kids would be model citizens.” (Gordon Neufeld, Hold On to Your Kids, p. 18)

“From a hundred platforms, Mann had lectured that the need for better schools was predicated upon the assumption that parents could no longer be entrusted to perform their traditional roles in moral training and that a more systematic approach with the public school was necessary. Now as a father, he fell back on the educational responsibilities of the family, hoping to make the fireside achieve for his own son what he wanted the schools to accomplish for others. (Jonathan Messerli,  Horace Mann: A Biography,  p. 429.

“Around the world, parents have dramatic influence on how their children learn. But Parent Teacher Association meetings are not where that learning happens. The research shows that parents who are most active in their children’s schools do not tend to raise smarter children. The real impact happens mostly at home.” (Amanda Ripley, The Smartest Kids in the World, pg213)

“Mothers Teaching in the Home” He said:  “My mother understood the value of teaching her children about standards, values, and doctrine while they were young. While she was grateful to others who taught her children outside the home at either school or church, she recognized that parents are entrusted with the education of their children and, ultimately, parents must ensure that their children are being taught what their Heavenly Father would have them learn.” (L.Tom Perry, “Mother’s Teaching in the Home,” April 2010)

“While Gates is careful to not blame Roseland’s parents for the neighborhood’s crisis, he has decided that for him, at least, the most effective vehicle for improving children’s outcomes is not the school, or the church, or even the job center: it is the family. (Paul Tough, How Children Succeed, 42-43)

“Fathers and mothers, this is your work, and you only can do it. It rests with you, parents of young children, to be the saviors of society unto a thousand generations. Nothing else matters. The avocations about which people weary themselves are as foolish as child’s play compared with this one serious business of bringing up our children in advance of ourselves.” (Charlotte Mason, Parents and Children, p 3) 

“The education of the children will always remain the holiest and highest of our family duties. The welfare, civilization, and culture of a people depend essentially upon the degree of success to attend the education in the house. The family principle is the point at which both religious and educational life of people centers, and about which it revolves. It is a force in comparison with which every sovereign’s command appears powerless.” (Charlotte Mason, School Education pg 96)

“…no large-scale reform is ever going to work to repair our damaged children and our damaged society until we force open the idea of “school” to include family as the main engine of education. If we use schooling to break children away from parents — and make no mistake, that has been the central function of schools since… Horace Mann announced it as the purpose of Massachusetts schools in 1850 — we’re going to continue to have the horror show we have right now.” (John Taylor Gatto, Dumbing Us Down, p. 33)