Janine is the mother of 6 young children. She believes that an elite education begins in the home.
Beginnings
She spent a lot of time playing with and teaching her oldest daughter when she was young. Her husband took note of that. He had many different experiences with his own education.
They had planned to send their children to private school, in part because of their faith. They were also interested in prep school for the educational value. But since they wanted a bigger family that became cost prohibitive.
While her husband was doing research, he discovered interesting facts about the psychology of schools. He wrote a book about it, and they decided to homeschool. He discovered that you could get the best of each of those schools at home.
Revealing School
His book is somewhat controversial; it is called Revealing School. It begins with some of his experiences in school and some of the problems he saw.
In the second part of the book, he talks about the origins of school as we know it and its Prussian origins.
In the third part he talks about educational psychology. This details some of the common things you see at school and how it relates to the child’s thoughts about success and how they think and act.
True Purpose of Education
The true purpose of education is key. We can all agree that we want to ensure that children have what they need to be successful in life and to be happy.
Janine feels that schools are lacking in that. In our society, many people are struggling financially. There are family struggles and issues with relationships. Young people increasingly have these issues, and it affects their mental and emotional health. Physical health is another issue. All of these things are the true purpose of education: faith, family, finances, and fitness (health).
People need to be educated on these things. They aren’t brought up in school. Those four main purposes of life are important, and Janine wants her kids to be successful in all these four areas.
She wants them to be able to do more for their communities. They try to focus on those four things.
First Things First
For example, Janine says that her kids were struggling with chores. There are times when the kids are fighting or dealing with character issues. For their family, those things take precedence over academics.
Facts aren’t going to give you what you need to succeed. They feel reading, writing, math, etc. will come. You can train a man’s character and they will learn all they need to succeed, but it’s very hard to succeed without that basic character.
When they were struggling with chores, they had to stop their other projects and take care of first things first.
Mom Learns Too
Janine says that she has learned so much as she is learning alongside her kids. One main lesson is how ingrained she is with her own education. She struggles with some habits that she learned in her education.
People talk about the socialization aspect of school, but Janine feels that the socialization aspect is a huge reason to stay home and homeschool, because socialization in school is a different thing.
If you look up groupthink experiments on YouTube, it shows how Janine feels about the socialization aspect of school.
Janine says that she still has to get over this, to stop comparing her kids to other kids that are in school. She has to remind herself about her ultimate goals. She has learned that her kids are amazing, natural learners, but she has had to shift her idea about what is important to learn and how the kids learn those things.
She has had to reprogram her self to find a system that their whole family loves.
What does Education mean to you?
There is a free library at bluemanoracademy.com with lots of resources. Janine loves to help people think big with education and to realize the magic of childhood and realize how easy it is to foster that love of learning.
No matter what your education choice, it’s a great idea to think about what education means to each of us as parents and educators. Choose what we want to focus on in the home, so that the things that are most important to us are being taught to our kids.
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