Even though I’m committed to homeschooling and love that we’re able to do things on our own schedule and as my daughter is ready to learn new things, I still find myself struggling with the feeling that I’m not “on schedule,” which is rather silly. I mean, whose schedule am I trying to conform to? The Grand Unified Theory of Homeschooling, and this list, appeal to me very much.

Also, I’ve been half-joking that this year as we’re unschooling, my daughter is doing her internship in child development and household management. But it’s kind of true! Since she’s older and more capable, and I’m often needing to feed the baby or put her down for a nap, I’ve been teaching my older daughter how to sweep and mop the kitchen on her own, or how to fully unload and load the dishwasher. And she’s getting a first-hand look at what it’s like to care for a baby, because she’s at home with us all day long, every day, instead of being away at school. So I would suggest that you add something to the list about a basic understanding of how to care for a small child—i.e., knowing that babies need to breastfeed frequently, take naps, have their diapers changed, etc.; I don’t think all 14-year-olds should necessarily have had the chance to care for a baby, and definitely not unsupervised, but I think it’s not a bad idea to expose your kids to babies, since most of them will end up becoming parents at some point, and even if they don’t, they’ll likely be around lots of kids in their lives.

The list is not really intended to be legalistic, or comprehensive. It’s meant to be thought-provoking — what is *really* important for a child to learn? And when must they learn it? Like you said, for those who are trying to ‘let go’ of the standard curriculum. All the little details that are the scope and sequence of most curricula are just details; if your child is missing a few ‘details’ but has the bigger picture then everything will likely be fine. Many parents fret about the details of all the little things they think their kids need to know, and it’s helpful to step back and look at not only the academic big picture, but also at the life skills which are just as important for a real education. For many people, making a concrete list is more helpful than a more abstract idea of “they’ll learn what they need”.

The other main intent of the list is to show that, if this is what your goal is to have by age 14, then it’s really not all that much time and work and effort to get there. Sometimes when kids are very young, we’re already starting to panic about teaching them ENOUGH. Knowing what your more long-term goals are helps to not worry as much about the short-term goals. Again, writing it down into a physical list helps bring clarity, and security.

This is also, of course, a very generalized list. I think it would apply very well to the vast majority of kids. But other parents might have other priorities. And that’s one of the benefits of homeschooling, of course! I love your idea of “psychological wholeness” being an essential part of their development… perhaps I’ll add that to the list.

We call ourselves “unschoolers” but aren’t completely that way – we do use a math curriculum – but my kids love math so it doesn’t smack of forced learning. I’ll have to save my comments about the age 14 timeline until after mine have gotten there – I’d say they are already thinking incredibly deeply at 12 and 10 but you used the age 14 as an average, not a rule/absolute measure.

My driving homeschooling/unschooling philosophy is that I want to help my offspring achieve psychological “wholeness” – details of learning matter much less than their development as people – they have plenty of intelligence to learn whatever they need to do what they want to do – but so many people suffer childhood trauma that inhibits their development. I am making that a priority – and it’s working well – I have wonderfully respectful relationships with them and they feel free to pursue whatever their interests happen to be. I think my philosophy and yours are quite compatible. Don’t fret the details – focus on the big picture. Mine just has more of a psychological slant.

I would definitely add they should know how to grow something and/or understand the basic origins of food.

Growing and cooking education covers all your bases; science, chemistry, math, history, economics, social studies (culture)…even art.

When we were all mixed together in high school, you could, in general, *very* easily tell who had been in early and who was late immersion. Both had similar skills in comprehension, but the early immersion kids had MUCH stronger conversation skills and FAR better pronunciation. Late immersion kids sounded like english people speaking french (ie, a heavy english accent) whereas early immersion kids sounded almost francophone.

A few years ago, our provincial education minister at the time (who is now, ironically, a friend of mine) was pushing to change early immersion from K-entry to a grade 3 or 4 entry. But to my understanding, the reasoning was never about improving french skills – it was all about english. There was a notion that students in french immersion from K ended up with poorer english skills. But again, our experience as students going through the immersion system did not support this — there was no noticeable difference in english skills once we were all mixed together in high school, and in fact, on occasion the french immersion students sometimes were even better off since we had done more formal grammar studies than the english students typically had done. (That can vary a lot, of course). But even if we were no better off, we were certainly no worse.

Cool article

I have witnessed far too many people who have habitually (or rather, enforced by others, routinely) done thus-and-such for the whole 14 years of their lives up to 14, and still never adopted it as ‘habit’ as teens –or adults.

Personally, one example is that for my entire childhood, teens included, I ate dessert after lunch and dinner. As an adult, I have never made nor served dessert routinely -or habitually- or even ever remembered it existed as a possibility the vast majority of the year.

While there is a lot of ‘science’ that suggests that anything that is done diligently for 3 weeks will become ‘habit’ there is rather more real life evidence undermining the idea… consider, for example, how incredibly easy it is for someone to ‘fall off the wagon’ of exercising or healthy eating after months or even years. It takes a single day to get into the habit of turning on the tv instead of going for a walk, run, bike ride or swim.

Otherwise, while I’ll disagree with a lot of the specifics on the list –even the idea that there needs to be a list, rather than an active, engaging and interest-driven childhood– prior to 14, I agree that almost 100% of what is drilled, taught or presented to children under that age is a waste of energy, which would be much better spent connecting with them as people.

The idea of an ideal time to ‘learn languages’ only applies to the first one. After that, there is no magical time when learning a second or fifth is harder than it was before… people just forget what it’s like to struggle in frustration as a child. It really is identical –embarrassing to make mistakes, frustrating to not already know, humiliating to lack facility and ease– at any age.

As adults, second-language learners bring ‘already comfortable with mastering one’ that young children don’t have, and the same goes for nearly anything else they’d like to learn at 14: experience in learning other things helps to learn new things faster –it doesn’t matter what the subjects are.

I can name 6 people from my own life who knew a second (even third) language as children who utterly lost the ability to understand it, or speak it, long before they were 40 –other languages really are a use-it-or-lose-it prospect, and effect that is amplified by brain structure changes in childhood. A child who only speaks French at 3 may have only an extremely simplistic and limited vocabulary at 14, if the environment needing that language disappears before they’re 7.

As for languages, I didn’t actually say anything about when hardwiring for language happens. My suggestion of knowing a few phrases in another language is absolutely just a minimum that everyone should have. Everybody should have a basic grasp of the concept of another language, and many families include no language learning at all, which I think is very unfortunate.

If you want to be *fluent* in another language, you absolutely need to start early and practice often. This falls within the ‘freedom’ of ‘individual circumstance’ that I describe. Not every person needs to be fluent in another language. You can argue for its importance, but you can argue for the importance of being fluent on a musical instrument as well. Fluency is wonderful, but is not actually required for all people. But a grasp of the basics (whether the language is french, german, or Baroque harpsichord) should be on the “essentials” for everyone.

I’m glad you mentioned this, because I did want to explain why I didn’t put it on the list even though language learning should generally be started quite young – but I didn’t want to digress too much from the main gist of the article. If your goal is fluency in a language then you will indeed start early and get as much immersion experience as you can.

Still, the general point remains valid. If along the way, your 8yo student is struggling with the subjunctive in their second language — it’s just a detail. It’s not UNimportant, but in the larger picture, it’s most likely that they will figure it out at some point along the way by the time they’re teenagers, so it’s not worth STRESSING over while they’re young.