A Challenging Education

Why Rigor?

By Amy Barr with The Lukeion Project 

Recently I was reading a discussion posted to a Classical education group. The OP was a parent of a student in 7^th grade trying to frame a good educational plan for her child while not over-stressing him. Her question was simple yet complex: Why is it important to provide a rigorous education for one’s child? What is “rigor”?

Rigor is too often defined as simply “challenging” (lots of AP classes) or maybe just college preparatory. A rigorous education is more than just being academically busy, though many programs and students treat it that way. I see three main components that help define a rigorous education for any student.

1. Thorough

Education is a luxury. Over a lifetime we fortunate few will enjoy a window of opportunity to focus specifically on our own education. While our earliest years should feel like play, as we mature in our education, we must gradually learn that education is a thing we do for ourselves rather than being a thing done to us in the form of a lengthy check list of chores before certificates of completion are offered.

Statistically, most do not mature much beyond “consuming” education primarily by completing check lists and seeking certifications with few distinctions or preferences for the quality or intensity of each part, provided each required category is completed. Even students who have limited interest in an academic future will finish half their high school courses as dual enrollment to save “time and money” at the college level. Once at college they’ll often find those dual enrollment classes weren’t much of a challenge after all and credits need to be repeated.   

A rigorous education is one that exceeds base levels and goes beyond check boxes. Students read the whole piece of literature, not just the summary. Learners master a topic at level rather than just cursorily “cover” the topic workbook style for a given period. They might “take” French for the expected two years in a check-list model or, with rigor, they might learn enough that they can navigate and converse in the language with relative ease. Both approaches take two years, only one matters in the long run.

A rigorous education is thorough enough that each level is a proper foundation for the next for as long as the learner chooses. If she comes to completely understand the mechanics of English in middle school, she can stand on that foundation to master even more interesting things in writing or foreign languages in subsequent years and eventually enjoy a wide variety of options professionally in the future as a writer, speaker, journalist, or interpreter.

The check-box education may result in the same certification of completion in the same number of years as a rigorous education. Only rigor builds a foundation to stand on and as you build and climb to even higher goals. If you have the choice between a heart surgeon who was at the top percentile of her exclusive cohort or one who enjoyed a program that allowed 100% to pass with minimal effort, you wouldn’t hesitate to pick the first one as you grow to appreciate rigor in education.      

2. Challenging

A rigorous education must always push a student to go just beyond his current skill levels, whatever those levels might be. This is why a student doesn’t need to be academically gifted, per se, to deeply profit from a rigorous education to the same degree that an academically gifted student will. The goal is to constantly challenge yourself and perpetually try things that are just beyond your reach. If you plant a sapling tree but leave it tethered, supported, propped, and protected, it never becomes robust enough to weather storms. Challenging yourself in your own education helps you weather the storms to come as they certainly will.

There is no real distinction in the outcome of an unchallenged gifted student and a well challenged average student who braved a rigorous education.  

Real challenges in education even at the college level are now rare. Public education is not designed for rigor. Private education is only a little better. In both approaches, education is diluted to increase the commodity of students who check their boxes and get their papers. Profound topics that once challenged human minds for centuries are now efficiently reduced to short summaries followed by multiple-choice questions in a pass-fail course with unlimited tries. Challenging doesn’t “pay” anymore for most schools.

Unusually, rigor works at The Lukeion Project because students who achieve mastery at a lower level are ready to climb to our next steps. We don’t list our classes as “9^th grade English” because a student must go back to basics or even surge forward to the levels that challenge them so they can build up.

3. Comprehensive

A rigorous education doesn’t decide a student’s path prematurely. A student with a strong interest in dinosaurs or chess at age 10 is still led through a robust selection of literature, art, music, writing, philosophy, public speaking, and foreign language along with more typical STEM topics and even basics in the garden, kitchen, and shop. We need well-rounded electricians, astrophysicists, and journalists, please.

Why is Rigor Important?

In terms of overall life satisfaction, being genuinely challenged by a subject and then enjoying a sense of achievement by overcoming that trial is a true boost to ego and self. Nobody looks back on a check box education as being intrinsically rewarding. Ever hear a grandparent entertain the family with harrowing tales of doing the bare minimum or going through the motions or just staying busy until time expires? A big part of feeling confidence is the assurance that, having overcome challenges before, we can overcome them again.

A person gains the confidence to continue to bigger challenges when she has a history of prior success over actual challenges. In a world of participation trophies and easy wins, we have a generation of deeply depressed young people. They’ve not overcome anything difficult before and, as adults, don’t know how... and are terrified they can’t.  

Every student’s rigorous education should, ideally, be crafted for her and well-suited to him. Rigor means that the next level up should be difficult to reach without strong effort. Top grades should not be granted to anybody that merely followed the instructions but no more. There’s a level above that! Rigor means that excellence—overcoming the challenge fully—is not a check list but a genuine victory.  

Do it Anyway

Lessons from the Green Beans

By Dr. Susan Fisher with The Lukeion Project

This summer we had a bumper crop of green beans in the garden, and I decided it was finally time to put aside my fear of explosions and use my pressure canner for the first time. I won’t bore you with the humiliating details of my canner-side vigil, and the parting texts to friends whom I was sure I would never see again. The upshot is the beans came out fine and the house is still standing. A few weeks later when I canned my next batch, I was much calmer and that is where this blog post began – literally in a chair next to the pressure canner on the stove.

Just like most people, as I watched the pressure valve on my canner, I was thinking about Cato the Elder. Ok, that first part was a joke, but I really was thinking about Cato the Elder, an influential senator and historian of the early Republic, whose work and thought influenced statesmen and orators like Cicero and many others. He was also known as Cato the Censor for his strong opinions, particularly about self-reliance, hard work, and discipline.

While it is easy to dismiss Cato the Censor as a cranky old coot, with an overly starched toga who shook his noble fist while shouting at kids to get off his lawn, he does make some good points. First and foremost is the point that all of us, young or old, ancient or modern, cranky or not, tend to slack a bit when things get too easy. To be fair, we are animals after all and all animals lean toward slacking, since moderating energy expenditure is imperative for survival. Since this is a natural inclination, it falls to the vigilant like Cato the Elder to periodically remind people of the dangers of kicking back too much.

As the valve jiggled back and forth at ten pounds of pressure, I thought how easy it would have been to give in to my fear of learning pressure canning and just freeze the beans, pickle them, or not grow so many in the first place. Green beans are plentiful in Ohio, after all, and it is much easier just to get them at the store. However, this is just the sort of danger against which Cato was warning. Had I given in to my fear of the pressure canner, I would not have learned a new skill, nor would I have some nice quarts of green beans for this winter. 

Feeling smug that I hadn’t gone the easy route where the green beans were concerned, I started thinking about other areas in which, by Cato’s reckoning, I might have slid into slackerdom and was thereby missing out. This mental inventory led me to three pertinent questions for myself and others for determining whether one is taking the easy route to their own detriment:

• When is the last time you tried something new?

• When is the last time you tried something scary? (I’m not talking about alligator wrestling here, although if that’s your thing, then more power to you. I’m talking about things that people do regularly that you have psyched yourself out about.)

• When is the last time you told yourself you were incapable of doing something?

If you answered “a long time ago” or “I can’t remember the last time I tried something new” for questions one and two and/or “yesterday” for question three, odds are that you have given in to fear, laziness, or inertia and are on the road to becoming soft. (I can hear that overly starched toga rustling from here.)

Luckily you don’t need a crusty old coot of a Roman to point his bony finger in your face to get you back on the straight and narrow. Three words will do the trick. Grab a pen and write these down: Do it anyway.

• This is new – I don’t know how to do it! Do it anyway.
• I know that this is safe, but I’m scared. Do it anyway.
• There are so many sentences here to translate. Do it anyway.
• I might make a mistake. Do it anyway.
• It would be easier to get my answers off the internet. Do it anyway.
• I left this assignment until the last minute, and I’ll never finish in time. Do it anyway.

“Do it anyway” is the key to shutting down all the excuses that allow you to cop out, give up, or take the easy way out. More importantly, these three words are also the key to guaranteeing success, new skills, and growth. Do it once and you might have some quarts of green beans. Keep at it and you’ll have character, of the sort that would make Cato the Elder very pleased indeed.

6 Ways to Improve Executive Function

Plan, Monitor, and Execute Goals

By Amy Barr at The Lukeion Project

Not that long ago it became pedagogically fashionable to reject the old-timey learning methods that worked well for the last several thousand years. Big tech solutions, apps, and shiny expensive learning systems have replaced reading, writing, and formal reasoning. Now few conventionally schooled students ever read a whole book (excerpts only), are seldom expected to memorize much (apps are always available), and are trained for highly uninspiring multi-choice standardized exams like life depends on them. Likewise, educators are expected to provide an extensive infrastructure of detailed and colorfully prepped study aids to help serve up pre-digested information for easy student consumption.

Pedagogy was once an art. Learning was once a joy! Executive function, the cognitive processes and mental skills that help an individual plan, monitor, and successfully execute their goals, was both the method and result of a decent education. Plan, monitor, and execute goals? Educators are now being replaced by apps and students are being equipped for nothing much beyond a lifetime of playing with those apps.   

How can a student gain control of her own education and build his executive function? How can a student learn to plan, monitor, and successfully execute the goals of any academic mission now or in the future?

1.       Determine the exact parameters of assignments.

This is a fancy way of saying, “READ ALL THE DIRECTIONS.” Simply following the directions for an assignment will take most students most of the way to a terrific score. Roughly a third of students will not read the directions the instructor gave for an assignment. Another third will only read part of the instructions. The remaining third (academic superstars) took the time to carefully and conscientiously read ALL the instructions and do what was asked as asked.

2.       Start at the start not at the end.

Most of us claim we do our best work under the stress of a deadline because that’s the way we’ve always done things! If you are given a week to write an essay, develop a translation, complete a short speech, or read a book, when you start that task says a lot about your executive function. A lot of students who claim to struggle academically are just struggling with time management. Those who wait until 45 minutes before the deadline to get started will never perform as well as a person who put in more time, effort, and planning. Your potential is damaged by procrastination not by a lack of academic wits. The superstars are simply those who carefully and conscientiously plan their time and use it as planned.

3.       Set up boundaries and margins in your schedule.

Some students will set themselves apart academically by taking on every honors course and every AP class, plus every chance for extracurricular sports, dramas, dance, music, debate, and every competition their community opens. Woohoo! These students are living their best life right now! Except now these students have no margin for error and no down time. One bad week might mean things derail quickly. Some of these students are burned out before they start college. Adult life is a lot less stressful than being in school…said no one ever. Trying to do it all in high school and college is likely to leave you bitter, exhausted, and usually both. Instead of doing it all, try just doing most of what you want to do. Build in down time and margin for when your family needs you to help or when you need rest, recover, recuperation. Some of us are wired to GO-GO-GO! If this describes you, knock it down to just go-go while you also occasionally stop to smell the roses. Take it from a typical type-A personality: “I wish I had stayed much busier” is not something you’ll wistfully repeat about your youth.

4.       Do some every day.

The best way to memorize something, master a new topic, or finish a huge project is in small chunks scattered through your schedule. One of the big benefits of a homeschool education is that your life isn’t restricted to 60-minute class sessions and a 10 minute passing period. If you find you get easily distracted or bored, change out your task every 15-20 minutes. Use a timer and give yourself a small reward for staying on task that whole time. 20 well-spent minutes will allow you to get more done than 60 distracted minutes.

5.       Get some support.

If you have time management issues (procrastination or over-scheduling), if you get easily overwhelmed by the details of a project (oh no! research project!), or if you get easily intimidated by the material (you are a creative who has been tasked with a chemistry class), get support. Find somebody who will help you with accountability for getting things done on time or not signing up for too much. Clarify instructions if you aren’t sure what steps to follow next. Set up a friendly competition with a sibling or peer to prompt you to do a little better each time. Find different ways to understand new material through videos, songs, charts, tutorials. In other words, don’t just abandon hope and give up. Support, help, advice, accountability are all great coping mechanisms for whatever challenge comes your way.

6.       Offer yourself some grace.

Most of us want to be good at the tasks we are assigned. We want to feel competent, and we want to manage ourselves well. As much as we want all these things to happen for us daily, we are going to encounter challenges and failures. Traffic demolished the time we reserved for homework. A sibling got sick so the afternoon was spent at the doctor’s office instead of the library. You thought you understood the assignment, but you blew right past important details at the end. These things are all part of life. They are normal issues. When disaster strikes (and it will regularly) you have to offer grace to yourself. Grace may not improve this week’s poor scores but it will help you climb back on your feet for next week’s new set of tasks. Stand up, dust off, keep going.

3 Ultra Practical Life Skills

Grow Academic Skills While Becoming a Better Human

By Amy Barr at The Lukeion Project

I speak to a lot of home educators at conferences. Some families are very practical. They make life skills a big part of a child’s education. At the same time Billy is learning chemistry, he is applying that knowledge to cooking a delicious dinner. Other families tell me that their children aren’t expected to do many chores or family tasks while their student must focus on academics at all costs. Mastering certain mundane (non-academic) life skills is the best way to develop strong academic faculties while getting ready for life.

Learning how to follow directions, how to develop multi-stage projects, and how to focus on details form the three-part groundwork necessary to accomplish practically any goal in life. Here are my favorite three (very non-academic) ways to develop yourself academically while also increasing enjoyment in life.

Learn How to Cook

How well a cook can read and follow directions is the main difference between terrible horrible no-good chocolate chip cookies and the epic kind that cause the whole family to sing one’s praises. Sure, some people go through life happy dumping frozen nuggets out of the factory package but they’ll never beat grandma’s recipe.

When I was around 8 years old, I received a cookbook for my birthday. It was brightly illustrated, and it broke down instructions to manageable bits. I began to work my way through that cookbook. After a year or two of hard use I had prepared every recipe (even the ones calling for lime Jello). After enjoying initial success and after recovering from initial failures, I was willing to take on more difficult projects with more elaborate steps. When I was 11, I remember making an elaborate French dish with layered crepes, beautiful vegetables, and a creamy bechamel sauce. I prepared the dish from memory after watching Julia Child make it on one of her episodes. By the time I was 16, I was the head cook at a summer camp making meals for 100-200 people to earn money for college. Well before the days of heat-and-serve industrial food, everything I cooked was from scratch in a huge wood-burning stove. I did not have a cookbook there! Instead, I had learned how to follow instructions and follow the rules of cooking years earlier. It turns out that roast turkey and the side dishes for 5 people is not much different than preparing the same meal for 150 people aside from time and proportions.

Start easy! Follow a simple recipe that sounds tasty to you, master what it takes to multiply the recipe to increase proportions, and then challenge yourself to try more and more difficult projects. Learning how to follow recipes taught me the rules of food. Once I knew the rules, I rarely needed recipes anymore while I also learned the cooking steps that I could omit, ignore, break, or slightly alter without issue.

This is true for most things in life. Learn the rules of the game, follow them, and practice them well. Once you are comfortable with the skill set (cooking, martial arts, playing an instrument, building a model, crafting something, or writing a lengthy research paper), you can safely omit, ignore, break, or alter SOME parts of the instructions while you must carefully observe the important procedures that make the recipe or project work.

Learn to Grow Vegetables

Ever had a long school project that requires research, an outline, several rewrites, and lots of project management skills like patience, adaptability, and critical thinking? Many students are overwhelmed by the scope of such a long project. They often skip groundwork tasks (writing an outline or carefully evaluating resources and selecting knowledgeable research) but then try to jump right into the bulkiest part of the project without adequate preparation or planning. Science fair projects have been a staple of in education not because science teachers need another paper-mache volcano to clean up, but because students must learn how to plan, research, and develop long term projects.

There are a lot of ways to develop project management skills in life but the most practical way is to learn how to garden whatever you have a little spot in the sun, however big that spot might be. Sure, if all you have is part of a patio you’ll have different challenges than if you have a whole yard but everyone should start with a patio anyway!

Months of organic fresh veggies, plenty of sunshine, physical exercise, and brain-building mental challenges are already part of the paycheck for growing a vegetable garden. Successful growers learn essential project management skills plus how to problem solve. With a little tenacity (maybe a LOT of tenacity) you’ll figure out how to overcome challenges and work out how to harvest tasty rewards while building essential life skills.

Risk and cost management comes in as you balance planting times, frost dangers, heat, watering, and the expenses of growing from seeds or starts while squirrels, bugs, and deer threaten. The importance of research becomes clear as you solve the riddles of choosing cultivars that work in your area plus how to treat any pest or disease challenges.

Planning and forecasting the 4, 5, or 6 months you have for active growing, succession planting, and harvest echo what you might be tasked with in challenging academic program, college class, or career path. Leadership and good communication play a role when you need help weeding, crafting a new arbor, or establishing a new planting area.

Time management means you learn to attend to the garden’s needs while issues are still practicable. In the end you’ll not only have delicious things to eat (and share with neighbors and family) but also patience, adaptability, and critical thinking will develop as you combat your garden challenges and reap rewards.

Learn A Fiber Art or Two

Being able to focus on a single task is rare. Most of us have popcorn brains because we must multi-task constantly. We live cluttered chaotic lives in which we have phones, devices, texts, projects, entertainment, demands, obligations, people, appointments, classes, cats, assignments, dogs, and basic daily needs all competing for our attention. Our brains pop back and forth from emphasis to emphasis through the day. We’re lucky to spend 15 whole minutes concentrating fully on a single task without interruption so how could fiber art help this mess?  

Learning to knit, crochet, sew, stitch, weave, macrame, or even do leather work, etc., all impart the important life skill of paying attention to details in the most relaxed yet focused way possible. Work a little cross stich project. Finish a simple crocheted scarf in your favorite color. Figure out how to macrame a hanging for your favorite personal space. To accomplish even the smallest project means you must spend undivided time focusing on the details of something you will enjoy and appreciate afterwards.  

Start slow and build your skills. Focus and attention grow with practice. If you are knitting a cool little basketweave potholder, you can’t look at your phone every 3 minutes or you’ll drop a stitch! If you are counting cross stiches, you’ll have to gradually grow out of your popcorn brain habits or you’ll find yourself redoing your work three or four times. Ever try sewing a quilt? It is all about focus or you’ll wind up ripping out seams and starting over.

The best thing for our poor modern ADHD popcorn brains is gradual daily training in focus and details on things that are soothing and fulfilling to give us a nice payday for our efforts!

So, don’t omit these practical skills from life because they “interfere” with the demands of our academic development. Indeed, these things build and inform our abilities in the classroom and while making life a bit sweeter ever more.