Overstuffed School Schedules vs. The Learning Lifestyle

There’s a new school year coming up, and as you plan it can be tempting to create a school schedule that would stagger a grad student. I know — I’ve been there. I’ve started school years with so many classes planned for my boys that it would have taken 16 hours a day to finish.

Fortunately, I always got a reality check. It usually arrived around lunchtime of the first day or so, with the realization that we’d finished maybe 2/3 of the essentials, and there was absolutely no way that anyone’s attention span was going to last through the remaining fourteen electives.

Over time, I learned that we could study any number of topics without weariness if we adopted Charlotte Mason’s wise advice on short lessons, and did two other key things:

1. Eliminate busywork
2. Live a learning lifestyle

Eliminate busywork

Busywork, in my opinion, kills the joy of learning for most children. There are always a few students who seem to enjoy filling in blanks in workbooks or writing answers to all the review questions in a chapter before taking the test. However, time spent doing those things is often time wasted.

I would much rather see young people reading attentively, annotating the text, narrating, taking notes or sketching maps and diagrams. We never did tests (other than the year end assessments of language arts and math that was required by the state), but if your students must take a test, try having them take it after a careful reading and narration. If they pass the test, they move on; if they don’t pass, they can do the relevant review questions.

This encourages students to pay attention the first time through, and to work efficiently so that they can progress more quickly. In math, it works well to have students do all the odd-numbered problems. If they do them correctly, they can move to the next lesson,. If not, they can go back and finish the even problems.

There is no virtue in wasting time pumping out page after page of busywork when a concept is understood. It stifles natural curiosity, and wastes time that could be better spent reading classics, building relationships, or even playing outside. Gifted children can experience extreme frustration and burnout when they cannot move at their natural pace, and this is a miserable, pointless experience that can negatively affect them for many years.

Live a learning lifestyle

Rather than isolating learning in a daily four-hour block of time Monday through Friday, be willing to spread learning throughout the day. We listened to Lyrical Life Science, grammar, Spanish, and other song tapes while fixing dinner, read great books at bedtime, listened to classical music or audiobooks while cleaning house or riding in the car, looked at fine art and practiced drawing or painting on rainy days, and generally made educational activities a natural, enjoyable part of our life together.

We found that if study materials for those fourteen electives were in the house, they would usually be used. Not during the scheduled school day, and not always together, but someone would eventually settle down with the French-language Tin-Tin books, or get out the knot-tying or wood-carving kits and try something new. We read Macbeth together when the power went out and a storm howled around the eaves, and kept journals when we traveled. We never did the entire geography curriculum, but it was a fascinating supplement whenever we needed more information.

A lifestyle of learning means that resources are available when the time, interest, and circumstances are right. If students find that it’s safe to explore a new subject without suddenly being assigned an entire unit study on the topic (I’ve heard of that happening!), they will be much more likely to embrace the learning lifestyle and learn on their own.

Finally, just leave time for things that matter

There is much to learn in order to be literate, and the school years can provide only a beginning. A lifestyle of learning can strengthen relationships, make family time more interesting, and build a strong foundation for future learning. Best of all, it won’t stifle curiosity and squelch delight in learning because you accomplish more in much less formally-structured time. Charlotte Mason was a strong advocate for keeping formal lessons short, while living a balanced life with time spent indoors and out, reading, learning, and playing, and I’ve seen firsthand that the learning lifestyle works well. I recommend it!

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