Show HN: Great Books Homeschool beta program | Hacker News Reader

Show HN: Great Books Homeschool beta program

greatbookshomeschool.com

45 pointsjkurnia73 comments

I built this customizable literature-based K-12 homeschool curriculum, based on my experience as a homeschool parent. It's designed especially for intellectually curious kids who love to read.

One of the main benefits of homeschooling is the ability to design customized programs of study that let kids learn at their level of challenge in each subject. But since designing custom curricula from scratch requires a huge time commitment and familiarity with children's literature and academic materials, most homeschooling parents don't take advantage of this potential and instead opt for prepackaged curricula.

Great Books Homeschool eliminates a lot of the work involved in designing a complete and rigorous curriculum for homeschooled students. The website generates a default program of study for each student, then helps parents customize it. Transcripts and other records are generated automatically.

Pricing is normally subscription based, but we're offering complimentary access for twelve months to the first 50 users who sign up for our beta testing program. In return, beta testers are requested to complete a monthly questionnaire about their experience with the curriculum.

If you would like to participate in the beta testing program, please first create a free trial account at https://www.greatbookshomeschool.com. Once signed in, go to https://www.greatbookshomeschool.com/parent/beta-application... and complete the application form.

Questions and comments are welcome!

Open articleView on HN

I have a question about home schooling in general. I'm a teacher with 20+ years of mathematics teaching experience at a community college. I don't know how to teach physics, chemistry, literature, reading, grammar, biology, etc. I especially don't know how to teach such topics to children. I don't know how to spot a learning disability except in an extreme case or to know if a student likely needs special education.

What makes parents with no specialized training think they can do better than the public school system?

My sister homeschooled all 8 of her kids from kindergarten through high school and it shows. It especially shows among the younger kids. Three of the younger kids clearly needed special help and had learning disabilities but her pride prevented her from getting them tested or even acknowledging the possibility that she was wholly incapable of adequately teaching them.

What is it about teaching that makes people with no training think they can do better than trained professionals? Do such people think they can be a police officer without training? a nurse or doctor without training?

I don't intend this to be confrontational. I'm curious about the thought process. I know there are cases where a parent can be better than what is provided by the public school system but I think far more parents are homeschooling who shouldn't be. I assume you are the exception and your efforts at homeschooling are justified.

Part of it is the statistics. I don't fault people for deciding to homeschool at this point as long as they make sure other needs besides education are addressed, because the data are there and it doesn't show conclusively that homeschooling is worse, though it doesn't show it's better either. If it was much worse on average, that would show. Also a common pitfall is homeschooling only out of protectiveness. That alone isn't a very good reason to homeschool - at least not before other options including going to another school or perhaps even moving are exhausted. Protectiveness can be the start of researching about homeschooling but people should have more reasons homeschooling is likely to work well for them other than just that it's safer before actually starting to homeschool IMO.

First: If you need help, get help. If you can't do it, stop trying to do it.

Second: There are communities (homeschool co-ops and such) that can help.

Third, though: Do not underestimate yourself. You know a lot of physics for a third-grader. You can teach that, even if you have to read the textbook right beside the student. (You may not be able to by high school, though.) And you have a great advantage. One of the key things in teaching is classroom size. The difference between a classroom of 30 and an classroom of 4 is massive.

I do not know how to teach physics to a 10th grade student. I don’t know the subject well enough to explain it. I don’t know it well enough to come up with insightful examples. I especially don’t know chemistry, biology, literature, and other topics well enough. It would be hubris to think that I and a bunch of other equally ignorant people can do a better job than trained professionals.

The help I need is provided by the public education system. The help is in sending my kids to public school.

Here’s an example that illustrates my position. Due to experience with teaching mathematics I know that it requires a lot of effort to convince a student that the reason 2x+3x is 5x is because of the distributive property. One could not possibly know this and why this is true without experience/knowledge. I haven’t the slightest idea of similar situations in other subjects. I know force is mass times acceleration but I have no idea how difficult a concept this is for new beginners because I have no experience with teaching this concept to beginners. I don’t know what examples to use when a student doesn’t grasp this concept.

> Due to experience with teaching mathematics I know that it requires a lot of effort to convince a student that the reason 2x+3x is 5x is because of the distributive property

pffft. Put two skittles next to three skittles and ask what the resulting summation is in terms of skittles.

I'm being a bit glib, but the reality seems to be that many smart people think teaching is trivial, a simple case of knowledge transfer. If you understand it, surely you can teach it to someone else.

My personal experience at uni suggests that truly brilliant people who understand topics perfectly can be Not Good at instilling understanding in others. It's a different skill imo.

Great example. It demonstrates you don’t know how to teach the subject. Your Skittles example won’t help with explaining how to add ax + bx. To generalize the concept of combining like terms we need to refer to the distributive property.

But it's not like I sit down and just invent the classes I do with my daughter. There are really good programs, which scaffold all this information and explain it to the kid (and often, coincidentally, to the parent too). For example, I know how to add, but would not know how to go systematically through all the cases and explain them to her. Fortunately the Singapore Math curriculum we use does all that and much much more, and I work through it with her.

I suppose part of the consideration would be seeing how poorly so many public schools fare and how test scores continue to fall. And now, many schools don't even have textbooks because everything is digital. Even though we have studies showing how that has a negative impact on kids learning.

Is it the solution? I dunno, but public schools are getting worse by the year so I understand people trying something different.

>> What is it about teaching that makes people with no training think they can do better than trained professionals?

Teaching one or two students whose home situation supports you 100% is a much much less daunting proposition than trying to teach a class of 30 kids (or several such classes).

The idea that teaching things to your own children (which all humans have done forever) requires specialized training and credentials seems silly. But again, that's a very different job than being a school teacher, I think.

Public schools are a recent creation. Historically, few people were educated about anything outside their immediate needs, e.g. reading, writing, history, science, math, philosophy, etc.

If you were taught anything extra, it was from a private school or tutor -- the majority of humanity is clothed in ignorance.

Children were taught what they needed to survive, e.g. farming, fishing, etc.

My spouse homeschooled our daughter during the first school year of Covid, and it was challenging. You are completely reliant upon the materials you source, and there's no definitive curriculums.

Personally, I cannot realistically conceive of many people actually teaching their kids any science, literature, or critical thinking skills.

Because the experience public school provides is an exceptionally low bar considering class sizes/ratios, commuting to and from school, etc. Also, we can pour resources into our kids public schools can’t or won’t. The data also shows homeschool outcomes to be at parity or superior to public school outcomes. We only have two kids though, and my partner is a stay at home parent. We also rely on Modulo, among other resources, for structuring education delivery.

https://www.eurekalert.org/news-releases/522078

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33204988

https://www.modulo.app/homeschool

Schools provide some of the most critical parts: consistent access to peers and a parent free learning environment. Both helped me break out of a cult-like group that my parents were knee deep into for decades.

Home schooling can have an academic advantage where parents are intelligent, well educated, above average in patience, and value education for their own kids.

IME it's more likely one of the home schooling parents had some bad experience(s) in traditional schools and are overreacting.

What you mention isn’t a schooling problem though, it’s a parents problem. And all children are free of their parents eventually. You can’t outrun bad or apathetic parenting regardless of venue, ask a public school teacher to confirm.

https://health.ucdavis.edu/children/patient-education/Positi...

https://www.rasmussen.edu/degrees/education/blog/parental-in...

If parents are a problem then homeschooling isn't going to help. Traditional school would, assuming the schools aren't complete garbage.

Sorry to hear you had a bad homeschooling experience and you disagree with the data with regards to success rates (there are roughly 3.7 million children being homeschooled currently in the US). It works for many, I’m sure there are folks it might not (you mentioned some sort of cult situation in your case; I don’t believe this is typical except perhaps if you consider religious reasons for homeschooling).

The average person with no training in teaching or education isn't going to do better than the average person with said training.

Your stats aren't all that meaningful for the following reasons. What percent of homeschooled kids meet the criteria for "structured homeschooling"? Without this information it's not a meaningful stat.

There is also selection bias going on. They tested reading, writing, arithmetic. Did they test algebra? Did they test biology? I'll bet a fair number would fail at questions regarding evolution or have a skewed view of historical facts.

> What makes parents with no specialized training think they can do better than the public school system?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rAzsJt1Q7Jc

lol

> What is it about teaching that makes people with no training think they can do better than trained professionals?

My guess is Dunning-Kruger effect and studies highlighting academic benefits from homeschooling.

Your question quickly progressed from polite inquiry to decidedly confrontational and personal. I kind of loved it. :) I'm sorry about what happened to your sister's disabled kids.

The general reason parents can confidently provide primary education is that a) good educational materials are easy to research and acquire, b) the benefit of education closely tailored to a child's strengths and weaknesses meets or exceeds the benefit of institutional pedagogical theory and classroom management skills.

In secondary education years, access to material and closely meeting needs still factors, but the parents' operating principle is increasingly about pulling in the best sources available. That often means community college or part-time high school classes.

There are also a lot of homeschool co-ops, pods, and other resource and skill-sharing arrangements. Lots of variety.

All your examples of authority figures are trained to be effective over a high volume of lower trust interactions with the general population, relying on professional incentives to perform. They are needed but they're most effective when complementing and backing up parents who cannot for whatever reason provide care, correction and education at home.

Interesting idea!

Anyone who likes the idea of a great books program should check out St. John's College in Annapolis MD and their curriculum:

Suggested book curriculum by year: https://www.sjc.edu/academic-programs/undergraduate/great-bo...

All in one PDF: https://www.sjc.edu/application/files/4115/4810/0934/St_John...

There's also the old Britannica Great books printed book set. You can just look at their book list and get them one by one when you're ready:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Books_of_the_Western_Wor...

Also, almost all of these books are old enough that their copyrights have expired so you can download them for free from the Gutenberg e-library: https://gutenberg.org/

For example, here is a free copy of Plato's Gorgias:

https://www.gutenberg.org/cache/epub/1672/pg1672-images.html

One feature I've wished for is some way to format these free books and make them more reader-friendly. That would save future readers time to do it themselves. I would pay for something like that.

There's also the famous Harvard Classics, or the 5-Foot Shelf, sold as a kind of primary-sources curriculum, complete with a reading plan:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Harvard_Classics

A Great List of Great Book Lists:

http://sonic.net/~rteeter/greatbks.html

[EDIT] On this:

> Also, almost all of these books are old enough that their copyrights have expired so you can download them for free from the Gutenberg e-library: https://gutenberg.org/

I'd caution readers to also evaluate in-copyright editions, especially in the case of works in translation. Used books are cheap and it's worth getting the best possible translation (however one chooses to evaluate that) if one is going to spend hours with it.

And:

> One feature I've wished for is some way to format these free books and make them more reader-friendly. That would save future readers time to do it themselves. I would pay for something like that.

Standard Ebooks?

https://standardebooks.org

Not comprehensive, but they've got a lot.

There is also a set of study guides that go with the old Britannica Great Books set called "The Great Ideas Program"! Somewhat hard to find nowadays though.

Dr. Eliot (of Harvard Classics) also edited a 10-volume Children's Classics set, with (IIRC) a reading guide similar to the one included with the Harvard Classics.

Homeschool dad for 12 years here. I like the direction you are going, I see this as useful, productive, helpful. My concern is your pricing seems to be pretty far off from what homeschool parents generally pay. I would suggest something more in line with $40-$100 a year. more than that you will get a lot of hesitation, less than that, it might come across as not valuable.

$40/month for a list of books to check out at the library seems a bit much. Transcripts aren't difficult so what additional value do you offer for that price?

Thanks, this is helpful to hear. It's interesting that one of the main pieces of feedback we get is about pricing. Some people say that it is overpriced, others that we should be charging more.

To answer your question, we have quite a bit of original content and functionality beyond the book lists and transcripts. And based on my experience assembling customized homeschooling curricula for my kids, the book curation in itself is a major value add. If it saves the parent just a few hours of research time, or connects the student with just a few resources beyond what parents could find on their own, it would be worth the cost for many families.

The main differentiator in a homeschooling curriculum is what the student will spend his/her time doing and reading, and optimizing this seems like it would be worth paying for a service rather than relying on free book lists from the internet. That's our hypothesis, anyway.

Your product is great. I do have a pain with the price point. I live outside the US and it's simply expensive.

Maybe consider regional pricing? If you include this and region specific books as well, your service will be golden.

Btw, what stops someone from paying for just a month or two and collating all your plans and then use it for the rest of their lives without paying you anymore? I mean this genuinely and not with ill intent.

Regarding pricing, I'd be happy to pay an amount as one time purchase for the entire curriculum vs a subscription model. Or pay one time for each bundle/grade. Just some ideas.

I looked for a sample unit and couldn't find one. Does indeed seem expensive, even if it's pretty good by the standards of such things.

Good to know. Right now the only way to view sample units is to create a free trial account.

Yeah, I did a lot of looking at these kinds of things during the Pandemic Year (didn't everyone?) and the single nicest thing to see, as far as evaluating them, was a kind of "here's what the material for a week in grade X looks like", or a sample unit if they're more unit-oriented. It's little enough that you're not giving away anything very useful on its own, but at least gives visitors a concrete idea of what they'd be committing to and what they'd be getting, if they pay.

This is really helpful. I'll see if I can add something like this to the landing or about pages.

I'd stress adding a sample for each grade, if possible. It makes it easier for your prospective buyers/subscribers to imagine what starting this program might look like, since most will be looking, initially, at a single grade or a few grades, not the program as a whole, and 6th grade, say, can be a whole lot different from 2nd grade. Avoid making them try to guess how the form and content for a lesson for a grade they're not (currently) interested in will look for a grade they are interested in.

Super bonus points if you can record a couple of the lessons being delivered and post them on Youtube or whatever—the more you can convince prospects that they can use this and have it actually work, the better, I'd expect, and videos can help fill in gaps in imagination or confidence in turning written materials into a real lesson. Kinda like how sometimes a YouTube video of a board game with complex rules being played can make one more certain about how to run it, than reading the rules a couple times.

> It's designed especially for intellectually curious kids who love to read.

What does "intellectually curious" mean here exactly? The reasons people homeschool mostly seem to be about being (over)protective, which goes against it:

"Parents were asked which of the reasons they homeschooled was the most important reason. Figure 2 and table 4 show the most important reasons students were being homeschooled in 2003, as reported by parents of homeschooled students. Concern about the environment of other schools and to provide religious or moral instruction were the top two most important reasons cited. About a third of students had parents who cited concern about the environment of other schools as their most important reason for homeschooling (31 percent). Approximately another third of homeschooled students had parents who were homeschooling primarily to provide religious or moral instruction (30 percent). Sixteen percent of homeschooled students had parents whose primary reason for homeschooling was dissatisfaction with the academic instruction available at other schools, making this the third most common primary reason for homeschooling."

https://nces.ed.gov/pubs2006/homeschool/parentsreasons.asp

It would be great if you could help some to get some what they're missing from being shielded from other schools, but to make it sound like homeschooling is more efficient and that all the time saved enables more learning does not reflect the typical homeschool experience.

Also some do online charter school where a company gets thousands of dollars a year per student to give people lousy content (when there's great free content on Khan Academy) and no social connection. It seems pretty bleak. https://www.reddit.com/r/education/comments/3r4w96/study_on_...

"Mostly" is not everyone, and frankly I tend to forget the religious weirdos even exist. All the homeschooling families I knew were doing it because the local schools sucked; even those with "gifted and talented" programs couldn't keep up.

If this scratches an itch for some homeschoolers, it's valid and useful. There will always be others for whom it is not interesting, but so what?

That's why I included the link. I didn't say that most of them were being protective for religious reasons. Just that they made a decision out of a desire to be protective. That's both of the first two categories (31% and 30%) and I'm sure some of the remainder. Of course some parents are overprotective. And I get that about the local schools sucking but who's providing a superior alternative and are you sure they are?

I'll take your word for it on the homeschooling families you knew. I knew plenty myself and saw the opposite.

> religious weirdos

I fall into that category in that I find the public education system extremely lacking in terms of (and especially) moral development. I don't appreciate the characterization of "weirdo", though you are welcome to it.

Just know that the majority of the people in the space you aspire to serve are fundamental Christians of various stripes and colors and you will lose that segment of business very quickly if you continue to demean them publicly.

I think the guy you're responding to isn't the one developing the system.

Oh, oops. He's not. @jkurnia is the creator of the linked site. Thank you for pointing this out.

I didn't say anything negative at all about religious schools! Just concern about parents deciding to go it alone! Like, there is no scheduled interaction with other people!

I can already hear the indignant "none of your business". I'm just trying to help people avoid making a mistake.

Sadly there are a lot of great, social, religious schools, and many of the evangelical Christians (not as varied as you suggest, but mostly being strikingly similar*) are more likely to throw out the social component of school and homeschool them or put them in a tiny school that not only lacks the resources but also often lacks the sense of responsibility most parents have.

* FWIW they're among the most vulnerable to televangelists and megachurches

Oh, I didn't mean my (GP) statements to apply to what you said (GGP). I apologize if I came across that way.

I agree with you, raising children is harrowing, and doing it well is difficult. Somewhere else in this thread I mentioned home schooling co-ops as a way to spread the burden. There's a lot of benefit to having community, which is something that evangelicals often lack.

Yeah they should be careful not to neglect having community. Like, at least every semester, think about whether there is enough community. And don't use something they did in a past semester as an excuse for lacking community in the current semester.

>though you are welcome to it.

No. They are not! We're offended and will not tolerate hate speech.

# Learn intolerance from the left (until we can peacefully separate)

This feels less like an sincere question for OP than it does an uninformed attack on homeschooling in general. You start with a phrase OP used to describe their target audience, imply that there is no such homeschool family, and then tangent off into unrelated attacks that show a strong lack of nuance.

Yes, there are families that homeschool for the wrong reasons. But there are plenty of others (as your own cited stats show) who choose to homeschool because the public education system kinda sucks. Those families (my own included) are very conscientious about addressing the known weaknesses of homeschooling through co-ops and other tools.

> uninformed attack on homeschooling in general

You can probably tell I have direct experience with it, yet you call me "uninformed". It's a pretty common tactic when defending a fringe group.

However, I brought information into it. There's no mention in your comment about the reference I provided. Gee I wonder why.

I did reference your data, I just don't find it to mean what you think it means. It shows that plenty of people (68%) choose to homeschool at least in part because of "dissatisfaction with academic instruction at other schools". That those people are also worried about peer pressure doesn't make them intellectually incurious.

For a bit more nuance, see this report [0]:

> This exploratory study examines the academic outcomes of homeschooled students who enter a medium size doctoral institution located in the Midwest. Descriptive analysis reveals homeschool students possess higher ACT scores, grade point averages (GPAs) and graduation rates when compared to traditionally-educated students. In addition, multiple regression analysis results reveal that students who are homeschooled earn higher first-year and fourth-year GPAs when controlling for demographic, pre-college, engagement, and first-term academic factors.

And this one [1]:

> Consistent with the findings on socialization of homeschooling youngsters and the social and civic engagement of their parents (Lines 2000a), available research finds that homeschooled adults also participate in community-based activities at rates much higher than those found in the general population (Ray 2005). Two studies in particular open a window on this issue. In the mid-1990s, Knowles and Muchmore (1995) reported that homeschooled adults were not disengaged socially or civically. In a comprehensive analysis of the issue a decade later, Ray (2004a) documented that homeschooled adults were indeed heavily involved in community life at the local and national levels and were more civically involved than the general population of adults. He found that compared to public school graduates, homeschooled adults were more likely to (1) vote; (2) be involved in ongoing community service; (3) be part of an organization; (4) write, telephone, or sign petitions; and (5) participate in a protest or boycott.

I'm not cherry-picking here, I'm literally just going down the list of results for this Google Scholar search [3].

[0] https://files.eric.ed.gov/fulltext/EJ893891.pdf

[1] https://www.educacaodomiciliar.fe.unicamp.br/sites/www.educa...

[3]. https://scholar.google.com/scholar?hl=en&as_sdt=0%2C45&q=col...

Hmm, so you did mention my data, but didn't acknowledge that I must at least be somewhat informed.

I don't think fringe is a pejorative.

---

Yes, finding issue with the schools is part of the response. However, complaining about the schools is not a great victory for those arguing for homeschooling. They would have to provide a superior alternative. And there isn't overwhelming evidence that either is better, because there are so many variables. And a good study would try to control for them, so it is good that the one you mentioned did.

Everybody knows schools have problems and many try to solve them or have their children go to other schools.

When parents say their kid can't possibly go to any school that has other kids in it, though in some cases, it is a bit like Munchausen's syndrome where the parent invents a problem wants to step in and be the hero. And that is difficult for a lot of children to handle.

To the extent that your original comment related to OP's post at all, you were insinuating that intellectually curious homeschoolers don't exist. Your own data disproves that, as does the data I provided in my follow-up.

I'm sorry that you had the displeasure of interacting with badly-homeschooled people. I've had the same displeasure of interacting with badly-public-schooled people, so I sympathize. If I were you, though, I would look at the statistical outcomes before making sweeping generalizations about an entire class of family.

> To the extent that your original comment related to OP's post at all, you were insinuating that intellectually curious homeschoolers don't exist. Your own data disproves that, as does the data I provided in my follow-up.

No I wasn't insinuating that intellectually curious homeschoolers don't exist.

I suggested that those in it for that reason aren't the most common and wondered where OP found people who were homeschooling out of lifestyle design and not protectiveness. Protectiveness is the most common reason. They didn't have an answer for me apparently, but I was genuinely hoping for one. I in fact know some homeschool for lifestyle design. I'm very curious about those who traveled or helped their children get their 10,000 hours in something like writing or playing a musical instrument (hell, even programming).

I'm pretty sure mine was among the better homeschooled people, at least out of those homeschooled out of protectiveness (as the original aim, the original reason for homeschooling often gets lost in the noise). The truth is that there is something missing even with the best homeschooled people.

> and no social connection

I've seen great benefits come out of home schooling co-ops. You get the ability to have your child learn at their pace and study subjects they find interesting (to a certain extent, obviously), the added benefit of a little less labor on the part of individual parents, and a social group of kiddos that are following a similar path.

Good. I've seen parents join one so they would feel good about their choice to homeschool and quit it after a year but continue homeschooling without that extra social interaction and still feel good about it.

Don't dismiss too easily the real needs to homeschool for some people.

I have a friend whose child had some learning disability. The school district's "solution" was to put them in the disabled class with an overwhelmed teacher and call it a day. Homeschooling allowed the parent to ensure their child had a full education at a pace the child could handle.

Another friend had a gifted child who was pretty bored. Homeschooling let the child plow through the material at a more challenging pace and then continue to challenge themselves with material no high school would have taught.

Homeschooling is an alternative that some people pretty much have to take for their children's sake. Homeschooling is harder for the parents than regular schooling and is not a decision taken lightly.

I like the idea. I'm having a bit of trouble picturing exactly what I'd be getting though – what format are the book lists presented in, and what sorts of materials do you include with them?

A page with a couple sample emails that I could read without having to create an account would help me. Maybe there is one somewhere, but I couldn't find it.

That's a good idea. Maybe we can include some screenshots in the homepage or How It Works page to give visitors a better idea of what it looks like when you create an account and generate curricula.

Nice to see a homeschooling curriculum that appears to be more secular!

Yes, this is a secular curriculum. It's intended to address a bit of a market gap in that respect as well.

From the overview by grade page [0]

> Note that the curriculum does not introduce writing this year. [...]

I find this strange. I have a lot of penmanship homework from my two years (!!) of kindergarten and first grade. It seems odd to me to not include it in kindergarten. Your reasoning seems to make sense to me, but I'd be tempted to teach in the way I was taught because it worked -- for better or worse -- for me.

Are there a developmental psychology resources that you use for making decisions like these?

---

From [0], you have

> We have includes Calico Spanish

It should be "We have included".

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From [0] and from the subject guides drop-down

> Supervise your child's writing practice closely in the beginning to ensure that he or she is forming letters using the correct stroke direction and order. Incorrect habits established at this stage are difficult to unlearn later.

I don't see an inclusion of penmanship here anywhere. As I understand it, penmanship is incredibly important for the development of fine motor skills in children (note that girls will develop faster than boys in this area of study). Are there plans to include penmanship?

<edit> Nevermind, I found it in the 3rd grade section.[1] </edit>

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> Allow your child to choose any easy readers, comic books or simple series books that appeal to him or her. The priority at this level is to establish the habit of reading for enjoyment.

Yes! I refused to learn to read until my mother got me a subscription to Sonic the Hedgehog (we had the first issue of the comic book series for a long, long time). After I got started in comic books, my reading habit was fueled by my own interests.

---

From [1]

> You should complement your child's science exploration by taking frequent trips to your local library and having him or choose nonfiction or science-related books to incorporate into independent reading time.

This is awkwardly phrased.

---

I could keep going. I want to keep going, but I've other tasks that need my attention. Thank you for creating this and I wish you luck in rolling it out!

[0] https://www.greatbookshomeschool.com/grades [1] https://www.greatbookshomeschool.com/grades#Thi

> I find this strange. I have a lot of penmanship homework from my two years (!!) of kindergarten and first grade.

I'll have to see if I can find the studies, but a lot of researchers have been finding that rushing to introduce kids to things doesn't make a great impact and in fact sometimes holds them back from lifetime achievement. (This does not apply to true prodigies.) Off the top of my head, some researchers have found that penmanship isn't that useful at an age where fine motor skills still need a lot of development, and the Soviet union found that waiting an extra 2-3 years to introduce children to math resulted in better, faster, more confident math students.

I'm wary of any educational information coming out of the USSR. Good to know, though. It makes sense that trying to force development where the child isn't ready for it will cause them to struggle.

If it makes any difference, the information I got was from ex-USSR citizens who went through the process as kids and then raised their kids in the US system. It's been corroborated by both Russian professors (of the Russian language) and engineers in the aerospace industry.

Thanks for this detailed feedback!

Re introducing reading separately from writing, this is recommended in The Well-Trained Mind and A Parent's Guide to Teaching Reading and worked well with my two sons. Both learned to read fluently at age four, but needed a couple years beyond that to develop the fine motor skills and attention span needed to form letters well. That said, many kids are ready to write at an earlier age and we try to make it easy for parents to edit the default curriculum and do things like move the first-grade writing component to kindergarten. The main point is that learning to read doesn't need to be coupled with writing.

The typo and awkward phrasing you mentioned are fixed now. :)

I couldn't find a list of said books. Which makes me assume the name is indeed a dog whistle, and not just a marketing coincidence.

Dog whistle? I don’t follow.

On the chance you really don’t know “Great Books” in some contexts is a racist trope, referring to a list of so called pinnacles of civilization, even if they are often read literally and not critically, without placing in context.

Not that they’re bad books, mind you.

But it’s like reading “The Merchant of Venice” and assuming Shylock represents a Jew, and not the xenophobia of British society at Shakespeare’s time.

tl;dr it’s what retrvn guys pretend to read.

I've never heard of this.

So, the below is considered by some to be a "racist" organization?

https://www.greatbooks.org/

Everything is the r-word... you didn't know that? It's lucrative biz!

Phenomenal! Good books are critical, and were formative to me. Add Life of Fred for math and you're golden.

We actually do include Life of Fred as an optional supplement for elementary grades and an alternative core curriculum for high school. My seven-year-old loves it!

Yuval Noah Harari is Great Books?

"Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind" is a book without much facts or evidence. Other books by the author would likely be somewhere around. So, not a great book, but more like a story book.

Though I assume they just slapped some book covers on the website in hurry.

Hello. I am truly not throwing rocks, because I think that a well-curated curriculum for this area of learning is very important.

Nevertheless, AI is upon us, so here is a link to a “Poe:Sage” answer to the question:

“what is a good homeschooling curriculum for k-12 based on ‘the great books’ of western culture.”

I hope you find this useful…

https://poe.com/s/Um9NGaFBlpJNJpNwPFSk

Thanks! I am familiar with some of these and a big fan of The Well-Trained Mind.

Our curriculum uses "Great Books" in a broader sense of quality fiction and nonfiction literature, which includes classical Western literature but also lots of modern and non-Western books.

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