Our Eclectic Education :: the brew*crew adventure

Our Eclectic Education

We are a relaxed eclectic, Charlotte-Mason inspired, Spirit led and most often delight-directed homeschooling family of five! Around here we live with the mentality that we're learning all the time, so with the learning adventures of daily life abounding, and the Spirit Himself as our schoolmaster, the learning never stops!

In our thus far almost 13 years of homeschooling (if you count since our eldest's birth- like I do. ) we've fluctuated quite naturally between seasons of delight-directed learning (aka. unschooling) and more focused tutelage. No matter its context though, learning around here is always relaxed and eclectic in nature. Our studies also often come together within a framework of Charlotte Masonly inspired structure, ideas and routines.

Education is what survives when what has been learned has been forgotten. -B. F. Skinner

One consistency I've found in all the years of our homeschooling journey thusfar is that our eclectic education has been but a reflection of our life together: Protected, inspired, ever-changing, spontaneous and rarely ever what I'd planned (and Oh! do I plan!)! So now~ I do believe that I'm finally learning to let go of the felt (often unrealistic) expectations, and just simply enjoy the adventure! I've used the Ambleside Online free curriculum and its associated yahoo lists as a reference and wealth of inspirational resources for planning and implementing our studies for the last eight years now. Love it!

The mind of man plans his way,
But the LORD directs his steps.

~Proverbs 16.9

What freedom!!

...and the only vital method of education appears to be that children should read worthy books, many worthy books.

~Charlotte Mason

e.clec.tic \e-'klek-tik, i-\ adj [Gk ekletikos, fr. eklegein to select, fr. ex + legein to gather] 1: selecting what appears to be best in various doctrines, methods, or styles 2: composed of elements drawn from various sources

~ from Webster's Seventh New Collegiate Dictionary

education, n. [L. educatio.] The bringing up, as of a child, instruction; formation of manners. Education comprehends all that series of instruction and discipline which is intended to enlighten the understanding, correct the temper, and form the manners and habits of youth, and fit them for usefulness in their future stations. To give children a good education in manners, arts and science, is important; to give them a religious education is indispensable; and an immense responsibility rests on parents and guardians who neglect these duties.

~ from Noah Webster's 1828 American Dictionary of the English Language

A few more educational thoughts well said...

I am beginning to suspect all elaborate and special systems of education. They seem to me to be built upon the supposition that every child is a kind of idiot who must be taught to think. Whereas if the child is left to himself, he will think more and better, if less slowly. Let him come and go freely, let him touch real things and combine his impressions for himself, instead of sitting indoors at a little round table while a sweet-voiced teacher suggest that he build a stone wall with his wooden blocks, or make a rainbow out of strips of colored paper, or plant straw trees in flower pots. Such teaching fills the mind with artificial associations that must be got rid of before the child can develop independent ideas out of actual experiences. - Anne Sullivan

It is nothing short of a miracle that the modern methods of instruction have not yet entirely strangled the holy curiosity of inquiry; for this delicate little plant, aside from stimulation, stands mainly in need of freedom; without this it goes to wrack and ruin without fail.

- Albert Einstein

Click to View:

Book Lists

Our Bible & Devotional Time Favorites
Our 2006-07 Goals
A Peek at our 2007-08 Schoolyear
2008-09 Studies~ In Review Check back, I'll be posting them asap.

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Our aim in education is to give a full life. We owe it to them to initiate an immense number of interests. Life should be all living, and not merely a tedious passing of time; not all doing or all feeling or all thinking - the strain would be too great - but, all living; that is to say, we should be in touch wherever we go, whatever we hear, whatever we see, with some manner of vital interest.

- Charlotte Mason

I suppose it is because nearly all children go to school nowadays, and have things arranged for them, that they seem so forlornly unable to produce their own ideas. - Agatha Christie

A love of reading is an acquired taste, not an instinctive preference. The habit of reading is formed in childhood; and a child's taste in reading is formed in the right direction or in the wrong one while he is under the influence of his parents; and they are directly responsible for the shaping and cultivating of that taste.

- H. Clay Trumbull, Hints on Child Training (1890)

Education is an admirable thing, but it is well to remember from time to time that nothing that is worth knowing can be taught.

- Oscar Wilde

I learned most, not from those who taught me but from those who talked with me. - St. Augustine

I never teach my pupils; I only attempt to provide the conditions in which they can learn. - Albert Einstein

I remember that I was never able to get along at school. I was always at the foot of the class. - Thomas Edison

I say above all else don't let your home become [a] miniture copy of the school. no lesson plans, no quizzes, no tests, no report cards! even leaving your child alone would be better; at least they would figure out some things on their own. Live together as well as you can; enjoy life together as much as you can. - John Holt

If a man does not keep pace with his companions, perhaps it is because he hears a different drummer. Let him step to the music which he hears, however measured or far away. - Thoreau