Practical Help for Young Parents and Homeschoolers

Our daughter-in-law, Rebecca, sometimes recounts the story of the first time she sat in on one of my Geography classes designed (by me) for my home schooled children. As I recall, she (Rebecca) was about 18  at the time, and of course had always attended the public schools. She and our eldest son are now the proud and doting parents of three sons and two daughters (they’re not really doting parents, I just made that up). All of which children who are of school age are educated at home by their parents using the Christendom Curriculum.

The highlights of Rebecca’s story just mentioned may be summed up in the fact that the entire experience was altogether new to her, bottom to top, start to finish. Don’t get me to lying about what the particular lesson in question was about or what precisely it entailed. I do not recall, but nor does it matter; the point is that it made a profound impression on Rebecca’s young mind that she has never forgotten and likely never will. The twofold question is (1) why it made such a lasting positive impression on her, and (2), whether her positive takeaway was justified or simply the product of youthful female enthusiasm. I shall strive to answer both elements of the question in the following paragraphs. I report, you decide.

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Every school curriculum without exception consists of a philosophy of education coupled with a methodology suitable to its purposes. People wonder why the public schools (and many private schools for that matter) are such failures regardless of how much money we taxpayers (cheerfully or not) contribute to them. The answer is, simply put, bad educational philosophy and bad methodology to boot. These are fundamental problems no amount of money can ever fix; we might just as well be lighting every dollar of it on fire or dropping them into a bottomless pit. That is to say, if providing a better education for our children is the goal of these ever-increasing expenditures, which of course it is not.

It’s important here that we lay down the rule that the problem with public education is not bad or incompetent teachers per se; bad or incompetent teachers, such that they are and to what extent they actually exist as a percentage of the whole teacher pool, are a symptom of the disease, not the disease itself. Of course, the so-called education “experts” will tell you that persons like myself know little to nothing about educating children. They have apparently convinced themselves of this, and I have neither time nor inclination to try to un-convince them of a conclusion their minds are already firmly settled upon. To engage in such a pursuit would be a huge waste of time and bandwidth on my part in particular. Therefore, we will not venture down that dead-end road.

What I am about to share with you would never even occur to the average professional school teacher or administrator; not because they’re stupid people, but because they have been, on the whole, thoroughly indoctrinated to believe what they believe, and, of course, their livelihoods depend on their promoting what they tout to be a “world-class education,” and the only institution equipped with “trained professionals” qualified to provide it.

Meanwhile, and if the PEERS test is a reliable indicator, just because a private school adds the word “Christian” in its name, this does not necessarily mean it is imparting a Christian Worldview to its students. Indeed, fully ⅔ of all putatively Christian private schools nationwide, according to PEERS test results, are in fact NOT developing in their students a significant Biblical-Christian Worldview. Let what that portends for the future sink in good and deep Southern Man!

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I submitted the Maury Map Drawing article for publication here some time back because I intended to use it as a springboard by way of which to offer practical help to homeschoolers in a future article or articles. This is the kind of help I’ve been asked to provide on lots of occasions in the past, and herein you’re going to get some whether you like it or not. And by “practical help,” I do not just mean the stringing together of words into sentences and of sentences into paragraphs to form an article or an essay-length tome as it were; I mean to say that I am going to share with you sample student work and sample lesson plans to attend and compliment that work. Without further ado, let us begin with our ten year-old son, Joshua’s, very first try at Maury Map Drawing, to wit:

Instead of asking you to describe what you see in that drawing, allow me to explain what I see in it for your edification.

First, I see a hand-drawn, hand-labeled outline map of Blount County Alabama done by the Maury method in which several prominent features stand out: (1) The grid system utilized is included as a prominent feature of the map not only to aid the student in making his outline more correct throughout, but also to subtly introduce to him the coordinate grid system, otherwise known as latitude and longitude, he will be using with increasing frequency in his future studies.

(2) The outline itself is done as a work unto itself because, unbeknownst to him or her – the student, we are strictly abiding in whole-to-part educational methodology/avoiding part-to-whole progressive methodology. We first want to establish what shape the whole county takes on in outline form; we can, and will, begin to add in details (political, topographical and so on) later on bits and pieces at a time.

(As an aside, the study of Geography – which, by the way, should be a core subject, if not THE core subject, in any school curriculum worthy the name – is rightly divided into three branches. Namely (I) Physical Geography; (II) Mathematical Geography; (III) Political Geography. More on this in a future article.)

Finally (3), the next thing I see in this map is a standard of work by which to measure the quality of work done in future with other map drawings not necessarily done by use of the Maury method. This is the base standard I will hold Josh to and none of the other kids, who set their own base standards to which they may be held. Now, I said in my previous article on this topic of Maury Map Drawing that the method is not only the best means for imparting geographical knowledge to young scholars that I have personally found, but also that they thoroughly enjoy doing it and the feeling of accomplishment experienced when they’ve successfully completed a map like the one above. I could give no better illustration of the truth of what I’ve just written than the fact that merely three or four days after finishing the map you see above, Josh approached me eager to know when I thought I might be available to help him start another. Due to other constraints, I could not help him get started on a new map right away, but within only a couple of days of his inquisition we were back at it again. Below is the result of that undertaking. Keep in mind this is all Josh’s own work and none of mine; that I worked in the capacity of instructor and overseer of the project; that not a jot nor a tittle is on that page that was put there by anyone other than Josh himself.

Now, ask yourself what you see in this second map that is not present in its predecessor. I would tell you what I see, but I have other matters to attend to in finishing out this article.

The question will naturally arise to the mind of the inquisitive reader, “once a map is finished, is it just filed away and forgotten, and we’re onto another map or what?” The answer is that these maps are indeed hole-punched and filed away in the student’s binder once completed. They are not, however, permanently filed away nor forgotten.

We didn’t go to the trouble of making the map for the sake of making maps, anymore than we trouble ourselves with reading books for the sake of reading; that is what public schools do, not us. We made the map for the same reason we trouble ourselves with reading books. Namely, to develop useful skills and a repository of useful information in the process, all aimed toward the goal of fitting us for usefulness in our future stations and candidacy for a happy life in the world to come. Therefore, every map drawing exercise is attended by lesson plans that I myself make out, following the whole-to-part, 4-R (Research, Reason, Relate, Record) methodology.

Here is a sample lesson plan that I made to go along with the first map drawing:

GEOGRAPHY LESSON PLAN: MAURY MAP DRAWING, BLOUNT COUNTY ALABAMA

BLOUNT is a county located in the N.E. quadrant of the State of Alabama, U.S.A. The County was named after Governor Willie Blount of Tennessee who helped settlers in Alabama during the Creek War of 1813-1814. A man named Caleb Fryley and another man named John Jones settled at a place in Blount that they called Bear Meat Cabin in 1816. This place was later renamed Blountsville in 1827, and became the County seat until 1889 when Oneonta became the new County seat. My great great great great grandfather, Benjamin C. Morris, was a farmer and a grocer who lived with his family for many years in Blountsville until they moved west in 1870. My great great great grandfather, James H. Morris, was Benjamin’s son and was born in 1848 in Blount County. He moved west with the family in 1870 when he was 22 years-old and not yet married.

Key words to define:

• county
• quadrant
• State
• settler
• County Seat

Review Questions:

• What were the names of the first two white men to settle at what is now called Blountsville, Alabama?
• What was the name of Blountsville before the year 1827?
• Who was Benjamin C. Morris in relation to me?
• What was James H. Morris’s relationship to Benjamin, and what is his relation to me?
• In what year did the Benjamin Morris family move west?

Map Studies/map orientation:

• Locate Blount County on a county map of Alabama.

      (2) Name the several counties that surround Blount County, and on which side each

           borders the county.

      (3) In which direction is Huntsville from Blount County?

      (4) If you moved westward from Blount county, what State would you eventually cross

           into? What if you moved to the north or east?                            

I should herein mention that it took me between fifteen and twenty minutes to write the foregoing lesson plan up. Of course, it took me a lot longer than fifteen or twenty minutes to acquire the information contained in the lesson as well as the information to be added later, but part of being an effective teacher is doing your own scholarship work, thereby becoming the “living textbook” for your student(s). And, this is why public school teachers in particular tend not to be especially effective teachers as a general rule – because they often do not know their subjects or the subject matter; they are dependent upon textbooks and pre-written lesson plans for the information imparted to their students.

Q.: “How much time should I devote to a given lesson?”

A.: “However much time you need to impart the lesson well.” Quality, not quantity, brothers and sisters. Always. Educational “freedom” means that we are not bound, and will not be bound, by arbitrarily set time limits, ineffective methods, or study materials written and designed by the sworn and mortal enemies of true education. A lesson plan such as the above might well consist of three or four (or even more) forty-five minute to hour long sessions to complete.

Do you have a good dictionary in your home? Best better be gettin’ one if not, and getting your kids in the habit of using it and of using it properly, effectively, proficiently.

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The short paragraph I wrote about the history of Blount County Alabama and Josh’s connection to the county through his/our distant ancestors is not intended to be exhaustive by any means; it is intended to give the student (Josh in this case) a base of information, easily memorized and retained, that we will build upon in future lessons. Remember, Blount County, Alabama not only has its own peculiar history, but also its own unique topography, drainage, relief, weather patterns, elevation, etc., etc… Separate maps of a now familiar outline will be drawn in future exercises, which will also show location of cities and towns, forms and extent of relief, rivers and creeks and reservoirs of various kinds (drainage), etc. And with each will come a new lesson plan, consisting of new information in explanation of what the map is showing us; new terms to look up and record the definitions of in the notebook (building vocabulary), discussion questions, assigned readings and so forth.

Here is a lesson plan I drew up to go with Josh’s second map drawing.:

GEOGRAPHY LESSON PLAN: MAURY MAP DRAWING, STATE OF ALABAMA

ALABAMA is a State in the Southeastern quadrant of the United States. Alabama is named after a tribe of Indians who lived there before white settlers came, and whose word for their people in their language was Albaamaha. The oldest city in Alabama is Mobile. The State’s Capital is Montgomery. The largest Alabama city by population is Birmingham. The largest city by land mass is Huntsville. Alabama was admitted to Statehood in 1819, when it became the 22nd State in the United States.

Key words to define:

• City
• Capital
• population
• statehood

Review Questions:

• Where did Alabama get its name?
• In what year did Alabama become one of the United States?
• In what part of the United States can Alabama be found on a map?
• What city is the Capital of Alabama?

Map Studies/map orientation:

• Locate the State of Alabama on a map of the United States.
• Name the States that border with Alabama to its north, east, south and west.
• Name the body of water that the southwest part of Alabama touches.

Once again, the contents of the above lesson plan outline took perhaps ten to fifteen minutes of my time to write up. Point being of course that writing these lessons up does not involve a huge expenditure of my time, and is always time well spent in any case.

In closing, allow me to elaborate on a statement I made above. I said that the study of Geography should be one of, if not THE, core subjects in any school curriculum worthy the name. Indeed, I long ago made Geography THE core subject of our curriculum in our fledgling little homeschool, around which all the other subjects revolve. I chose Geography because it is the subject I know best, and because it lends itself so readily and so fluidly to a thorough study of all the other core subjects. E.g., think in terms of how many of the principles of the core subjects were necessarily utilized just in the making of those maps you see above, to say nothing of the lesson plan outlines attending them.

Now, none of this is to say that you should necessarily make Geography THE core subject in your curriculum. It is to say, however, that you should pick a subject that, as I said, lends itself so readily to a thorough study of the other core subjects, and make that subject the CORE core subject of your curriculum. Bible, Science, the various branches of Mathematics, History – pick one. I love Astronomy, own an assortment of telescopes and most all the bells and whistles to go with them. As such, I could easily make Astronomy THE core subject of our curriculum. History might be your thing; it’s certainly one of mine. But I find that the study of Geography more naturally leads to a study of history of any given period than the other way around. Same with the other subjects mentioned. Therefore, geography it was, and geography it remains.

Retake Everything. Especially Education!

-By T. Morris