In a recent Washington Post article on homework, it was declared that homework has no value for raising test scores (except a “wee bit”). Beyond that, the article noted homework has a lot of value for creating “frustration, exhaustion, family conflict, loss of time for other activities, and potential diminution of interest in learning.”
I posted a link to the article on Facebook, juxtaposed it with a quick story about my eldest daughter reading “Ulysses” in the woods, and said, “Why do we need rocket science to prove to us that love of learning will always be stronger than compulsion?”
If you had been there for “Ulysses, ” read by a dark-haired girl whose hair goes down to her knees, if you had listened as she shared the words with deep emotion and thought (many of them memorized from having apparently read the poem on her own multiple times)… if you had seen and heard those words, against a backdrop of golden leaves, and in the midst of rustlings and the occasional birdcall, you would agree:
love is the strongest teacher.
Last year, this same daughter took an AP English class through her distance learning school. Every single poetry assignment asked for an explication of “tone” in the poems. At this point, “tone” is a code word in our house for any kind of ridiculousness in education. I asked her once if she could survive it all, and she said that since she’d grown up home educated, she’d had a long time to develop a love for literature and poems, that nothing could take away. “I don’t blame the poems, ” she told me.
I don’t blame the poems.”
And so this girl can read “Ulysses” in the woods, with love. And not care a whit about tone, except in its service to her vocal expression.
Our particular approach to home education was love based. Not work based. And definitely devoid of homework and tests. Her standardized test scores, as it turns out, are a wee bit okay, as they landed in the top 1 percentile for the SAT’s. So we are going to say it: throw the homework baggage out. Make room for love.
After she read “Ulysses” to me, we talked about the lines we especially liked. We made a pact to go back and memorize the whole last stanza, just because we want to. (Check out the poem below, and see how it calls a person to keep learning and growing. Somehow that feels apt in the context of this post. What made Ulysses want to go on? Surely it wasn’t a school assignment.)
‘T is not too late to seek a newer world.
Push off, and sitting well in order smite
The sounding furrows; for my purpose holds
To sail beyond the sunset, and the baths
Of all the western stars, until I die.
We read this part (above) aloud one more time, and then she said, “Oh, let’s not read it again right now. It will ruin it.” Imagine, if I’d made her read it anyway (and discuss the tone!). What small tenderness and sacredness would I have taken away?
I have a secret wish: for teaching everywhere to someday be organized in ways that grow out of and foster love. What might this look like?
For my daughter and I, it will look like “Ulysses” in the woods. It will look like going back to memorize, maybe with a Mischief Café thermos of tea (and bread we won’t be able to toast, but will be able to butter). Perhaps along the Mischief Café guides’ pages, we’ll craft a poem together, of long journeys or of home.
And it won’t feel like work. And all we might exhaust is the tea. As we drink down every last drop—amidst the leaning, whispering trees.
And all we might exhaust is the tea.”
Ulysses
It little profits that an idle king,
By this still hearth, among these barren crags,
Match’d with an aged wife, I mete and dole
Unequal laws unto a savage race,
That hoard, and sleep, and feed, and know not me.
I cannot rest from travel: I will drink
Life to the lees: All times I have enjoy’d
Greatly, have suffer’d greatly, both with those
That loved me, and alone, on shore, and when
Thro’ scudding drifts the rainy Hyades
Vext the dim sea: I am become a name;
For always roaming with a hungry heart
Much have I seen and known; cities of men
And manners, climates, councils, governments,
Myself not least, but honour’d of them all;
And drunk delight of battle with my peers,
Far on the ringing plains of windy Troy.
I am a part of all that I have met;
Yet all experience is an arch wherethro’
Gleams that untravell’d world whose margin fades
For ever and forever when I move.
How dull it is to pause, to make an end,
To rust unburnish’d, not to shine in use!
As tho’ to breathe were life! Life piled on life
Were all too little, and of one to me
Little remains: but every hour is saved
From that eternal silence, something more,
A bringer of new things; and vile it were
For some three suns to store and hoard myself,
And this gray spirit yearning in desire
To follow knowledge like a sinking star,
Beyond the utmost bound of human thought.
This is my son, mine own Telemachus,
To whom I leave the sceptre and the isle, —
Well-loved of me, discerning to fulfil
This labour, by slow prudence to make mild
A rugged people, and thro’ soft degrees
Subdue them to the useful and the good.
Most blameless is he, centred in the sphere
Of common duties, decent not to fail
In offices of tenderness, and pay
Meet adoration to my household gods,
When I am gone. He works his work, I mine.
There lies the port; the vessel puffs her sail:
There gloom the dark, broad seas. My mariners,
Souls that have toil’d, and wrought, and thought with me—
That ever with a frolic welcome took
The thunder and the sunshine, and opposed
Free hearts, free foreheads—you and I are old;
Old age hath yet his honour and his toil;
Death closes all: but something ere the end,
Some work of noble note, may yet be done,
Not unbecoming men that strove with Gods.
The lights begin to twinkle from the rocks:
The long day wanes: the slow moon climbs: the deep
Moans round with many voices. Come, my friends,
‘T is not too late to seek a newer world.
Push off, and sitting well in order smite
The sounding furrows; for my purpose holds
To sail beyond the sunset, and the baths
Of all the western stars, until I die.
It may be that the gulfs will wash us down:
It may be we shall touch the Happy Isles,
And see the great Achilles, whom we knew.
Tho’ much is taken, much abides; and tho’
We are not now that strength which in old days
Moved earth and heaven, that which we are, we are;
One equal temper of heroic hearts,
Made weak by time and fate, but strong in will
To strive, to seek, to find, and not to yield.
—Alfred, Lord Tennyson
Photo by Nicholas A. Tonelli, Creative Commons, via Flickr. Post by L.L. Barkat.
Make your own Mischief Café? Bring poetry home (or to the woods).
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Simply Darlene says
As a home educator, and previous public school teacher, the freedom to investigate, hence learn & study & appreciate & make a topic a reality, means a student has been given room enough to blend their education with their interests, their loves. It frustrates me to no end to teach to the test. Parts of speech, sentence type, diagram, label — shred it until the student despises the components of what he loved as a whole.
Sorry, I got little off the topic there. Regarding homework – do you think a student’s capacity for it has changed over the years? Back in my public school days, I rather enjoyed homework – the solitude to work and study (usually while I sat on the floor) and the sense of accomplishment. With our on-demand society, I wonder how that’s impacted the education system?
This is where and why play must stay – because in it, there is freedom to express, explore and love.
L. L. Barkat says
I know home education has a real range. We were closer to “unschoolers,” and I trusted that literacy would develop deep down from being immersed in it. And so it was.
I rather think if one could teach those things not for a test, but for the love of language, we might be on to something? Unless, I guess, the student is motivated by tests (some very few are, I understand.)
That’s an interesting question. I think the article is mostly coming down hard on homework at the elementary level. I agree. There is no good reason to take away a 5 year old’s play time at home, in service of homework. It’s a waste, and a burden. (Again, unless the student takes some pleasure in it, which surely some do. So, in that case, there could be optional “homework play,” but it would be truly optional and not graded).
Play, play, play. All my best ideas flow from it! 🙂
Maureen Doallas says
I’ve come to believe that most testing in public schools is competition- and teacher-accountability-based and resembles nothing that has anything to do with true learning.
My only recently returned from spending almost a year abroad in Central and South America. It has given him experiences that have matured him, vastly improved his Spanish-speaking ability, and left him aching for intellectual stimulation from peers. He’s always been precocious, a huge lover of books and ideas, and has set on a path of spiritual, emotional, and intellectual development that has arrived despite and not because of his public education. I’d like to think I had a wee part in all this and am delighted he has my subversive streak.
L. L. Barkat says
That is it, you know? All true education probably includes a touch of mischief (subversion), and that is, to some, problematic.
Besides, how do you test for it? 😉
Maureen Doallas says
Imagine what a school of L.L. Barkat teachers would accomplish!
I remember when his father and I took our only to South Africa with us. D. was in second grade; he had to take his school books with him and complete all the assignments while we were abroad. This stands as my example of how some just do not “get it”, and I am ever thankful that what D. brought back as an education were memories of the unforgettable: the safaris we went on, the climb down Table Mountain, the meeting of Zulu women in an arts cooperative, visiting a cheetah conservation camp, etc.
L. L. Barkat says
Well, we’ll see. My youngest has it in her mind to make her own small school someday.
That is beautiful (what he learned without the assignments).
Richard Maxson says
Over 12 years I attended parochial school, a school in Madrid, where not a soul spoke English, and upon returning to the states a public school. I was one who never studied until I got to college. I detested elementary and high school for the rigidity and rote demands it made of me. What I am thankful for in retrospect is Latin, Catechism, and Literature. My wife and I watched particularly our youngest daughter struggle against the same constraints we remember. Both our girls are original and perceptive and we watched the public school system in Florida daily try to squeeze them into the FCAT bottle like so much spare change. Abby had one AP Psychology teacher who sent her home those days full of things to tell us she learned and question us for hours about what makes people who they are. This one teacher brought out not only conversational abilities in her, but also artistic characteristics she was surprised to see in herself. We were so pleased we invited him to our house for dinner, hosted special events for the class, as did other interested parents. He was let go by the school for “not following strictly enough the state mandated curriculum. I believe in education and classrooms, but only to an extent. After that I say I learned as much in the woods about the world and God as I ever did in a school or a church. Poetry in the woods is like heaven it is honoring the trees that made the pages that carry the words we might leave there in the air around them.
Jody Lee Collins says
Richard, these words are glorious,
“Poetry in the woods is like heaven; it is honoring the trees that made the pages that carry the words we might leave there in the air around them.”
L. L. Barkat says
Latin is great to have had, yes! I hope it doesn’t seem I’m saying that school is all bad. Surely it’s not. There is promise. There are people who are creative. And good things can happen.
But I would delight to see a more flexible curriculum system and approaches that cultivate rather than constrain.
The woods—what fathomless teaching can be found there. Their secret landscape was where I found solace as a child, and inspiration, and a lasting poetic sense. Love what you say about the virtuous circle of reading in the woods 🙂
Jody Lee Collins says
‘my purpose holds’. Mine as well. YOu know you’re echoing so many of my own thoughts on education, Laura, and would to God there was a revolution to make it so.
The joy has been squeezed out of the days, there are back to back lessons on everything unnecessary and SO developmentally inappropriate. It is hard to not just throw it all out the window. I find myself stopping to just want to teach a child to write his name…..
The homework? Absolutely concur with the the Post article. Useless waste of time on every account.
Keep writing this truth. (And thank you for Ulysees. I’ve never read it.)
L. L. Barkat says
Revolutions begin with recognizing the pain. So I think maybe we are on our way.
As a former public and private school teacher at both the elementary and high school levels, I’ve seen the pain, been part of it, even been the source of it (in ignorance). Home education changed so much for me. Changed everything, really. I would not be the same teacher if I went back to the classroom. It is encouraging to see you already are the kind of teacher who wants to teach from a center of love.
L. L. Barkat says
oh, and as for Ulysses, I highly recommend reading it in the woods.
Or maybe at the edge of the sea. 🙂
Megan Willome says
Dang, that Tennyson can write! I’m hearing those final lines with new ears today because I am not the person I was when I read that poem at the age of your daughter–sadly, not in the autumn woods. That might have made all the difference.
L. L. Barkat says
Agreed, Megan.
And, following up on what I said to Jody, I’m now wondering what it would be like to teach poems from their centers.
So, we choose to read Ulysses in the woods or at the seaside. Can’t go to the seaside because we’re stuck in the classroom? Make one. Bring ocean sounds. Shells. Pictures of old wooden ships. Build one, maybe. A ship. It might take all year with the industrial arts department in on it.
My youngest said the other day, “Poems should be taught in poem ways. You might need to smell cinnamon when you read.”