Do workbooks equal good homeschooling?
My boys don’t like workbooks. Not even a little. They don’t like activity books or workbooks. They think they’re silly and a waste of time. If I suggest getting out one of the expensive workbooks I purchased at the school supply store (a favorite place of mine), they sneer and hem and haw. They sigh heavily and bargain with me about how many pages they have to do before they can go back outside and play.
My oldest, who is now off on his own and no longer homeschooling, liked workbooks as a small child. Or maybe he didn’t and just learned that if he did them quick I’d get off his back! Either way, I thought for a long time that the only way to teach kids things was to get them a workbook. Weird, huh? Well, we live and learn.
Jack is 5 and he hates workbooks. Hates them. And I can’t blame him. For their time, workbooks probably seemed like a good idea. But in the age of computers and other technology like the iPod Touch, having to work in a workbook just seems silly. Now, I know that there are some that will say that we need to teach our children how to work in a workbook and how to look things up in an encyclopedia. Why? Is the Internet going to go away anytime soon? I seriously doubt it. I used to spend hours laboriously looking up things in the library. I did, for the most part, love that work. But I have not lost my love for research – in fact, my day job depends on my ability to research – and I do all of it on the computer now. I still love my books, but I also love my laptop and my Kindle.
What is the difference if Jack learns math and reading in a computer program or, GASP, at the grocery store, rather than in a workbook? There is no difference. In fact, his ability to use technology, I believe, will only help him because I’m pretty sure that when he gets his first job as a fighter pilot (his current career of choice), they’re not going to give him a workbook with the controls of the plane illustrated on it and if they do, he’ll be so happy to be a fighter pilot that he’ll do the darn thing anyway.
“But how will your kids learn how to do things that suck if you don’t teach them?” I’ve heard this question for many years, in a variety of forms. How, the question goes, will kids learn to do things that aren’t “good” for them but that they have to do anyway, if we don’t make them get up every morning at 7 am, trudge off to school and then leave them there for hours doing work that is uninteresting?
Why on earth would you want to make someone do something that is unfun or uninteresting for no reason? I mean, life throws us enough curve balls. Things happen. Some days we get to go to the dentist and some days to the beach. It’s not a blast going to the dentist, so should I make my child go to the dentist everyday so he can learn that sometimes we have to go to the dentist? Umm….I don’t think so.
Kids know that sometimes bad things happen, so why not enjoy the good stuff while we can? I have three children who have worked at jobs. They don’t always enjoy getting up and going to the jobs, but they enjoy the reward they get from the job and that’s enough to motivate them. Just like everyone else. I didn’t have to make them practice getting up everyday at 7 am just so someday they would. That’s silly.
Anyway, workbooks aren’t fun to some people. So don’t do workbooks. Just because you homeschool or unschool it doesn’t mean you have to have a school at home. What fun would that be? Isn’t the reason you left school to get out of the “school” way of doing things? I want my kids to learn. And I want them to love to learn. Forcing them to do boring, uninteresting things just because it’s what I did when I was kid is silly. If I wanted to be like that, I’d make them go to school.
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