High school. I have gone through it 3 times, once as a teen and twice as a homeschooling mother. The 3 experiences were all different but had the same result....hatred. I went to a public school, that at the time was rated one of the top in the nation, and I was in honors (said not to brag but to let the reader know I was not in classes that had no merit). With that said, I entered college not knowing how to write (papers) and not knowing how to study and nothing but a bare minimum of things learned academically (graduated with a 3.4 GPA, again not to brag but to let you know I passes with more then the minimum). My oldest did high school pretty much on his own and made excellent scores on both the ACT and ASVAB (Navy bound graduate) but found everything we did extremely boring and it pretty much killed his love of learning. Second son was a different sort of child and after enough butting heads went into a Youth Challenge school (military run) and earned his GED by end of 10th grade. He also lost his love of learning somewhere around middle school. I am now on my 3 son and sadly it is turning out to be the same sad story. Loved school until it started getting textbooky and then the spark went out.
I don't honestly expect all his classes to be exciting and I don't expect it to be a party...school is work. But why can't work be enjoyable. For the most part I think I have found the right things for the main subjects. Daniel loves mythology so his English and Latin studies are centered around Mythology ( Classical Mythology and More for English and Latina Mythica for Latin). We solved his math hatred by switching to Teaching Textbooks and for the first time he mentioned math in a list of things he liked. Mystery of History is his world history curriculum and next year it will be combined with Sonlight (core 100). Science is the only subject I have not found a solution for. We did make it less painful by switching to Apologia but it is still a textbook and still dry, going into extreme detains that no one but a biochemist will need to learn. But even if it is a doable book it, science at the upper level has killed any love of the subject for my son. I cannot live with that, not again.
We are not talking about a child who is planning on pursuing a career in the STEM field or a student planning on going to a competitive college(if he plans on college). We are however talking about a student who loves to write, loves anything to do with weaponry, and loves trivia. Just today he over heard me teaching his little sister about comets and listened in. I happen to mention about Mark Twain being born and dieing during the passing of Halley's comet and he wanted to learn more about it. He spent time reading about Mark Twain and then found quotes about him that he had to share. This is Daniel. he hears something that piques his interest, studies it (maybe a cursory study or maybe an in depth study) and then shares his findings.
Because I do not want Daniel to follow the same trend I and my older 2 sons followed, I need to reinvent the study of science at the high school level. I keep asking myself why does science have to be taught with a text book? We can learn history using biographies, living books,original papers, and historical novels....why not apply this to science topics?
NOTE: I will be honest and add a disclaimer, as well, before I go any farther...I do not know what I am doing and if you follow anything I say here it will be like the blind leading the blind and the outcome is not know yet. Another thing...this will be tailored for my son and then retailored for my daughter. It is not a generic method. It will be tweaked, torn apart, put together and re tweaked and possibly thrown out. Please proceed with caution.
Here is my basic plan (the actual method will be written as I develop it). Use a textbook for a list of facts/terms he needs to know and let him learn about them on his own, keeping a notebook as he goes along. I also have Katheryn Stout's Design A Study Science Scope for a list of topics. Then incorporate Biographies of the scientist working in certain fields or who contributed to certain topics. Other books will be interesting ones I have come across in my search (example: for chemistry he will read Napoleon's Button and Disappearing Spoon).
I will post more once I have a better idea of what I am actually doing. Wish me luck.
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