Dictating School Time versus Interest Lead Learning or Am I a Dictator

I can't count the number of times I've run into the attitude that classical homeschooing kills the joy of learning.   One school of thought in homeschooling is that as homeschoolers we have the chance to let our children follow their interest and requiring them to do otherwise will kill their joy of learning.   Those who dictate learning will raise children that never learn the joy of learning, or so the theory goes.   Children whose learning is dictated to will grow up shunning  learning because as children they didn't learn how to learn for themselves.  

I dictate school time for littles (until about age 9 or 10).  I teach reading, spelling, handwriting, math, science, history, manners, and whatever else I think my kiddoes need to learn.   But I do make sure that school time is no more than a few hours at that point, so my littles still have lots of time to follow their interest. I found it fascinating that my kids many times use that interest lead time to continue processing the learning that occurs during dictated  school time.   

I would watch as they play-acted the Story of  the World chapter we had read during school time. They often repeated the science experiments over and over just for the joy of the discovery.  At that age interest often grows out of the things learned in school time.


At about age 10 my kids have a bit more say in what they read and study in science and history. I still dictate the outline of what will be learned, but I also focus a bit more on their interest in my planning. Now that school begins to take up more of their time hours and hours of playtime is a thing of the past. So it seems fair to include their interest in what I dictate. I have to remember to be flexible as their interest are quite changeable. Susie loves fantasy books for the first three months of the school year, but than her interest shift more towards mystery. I try to keep in mind that plans will most likely need to change as the year progresses. That doesn't mean that we only read fantasy or mystery, but rather that I choose books from my list of classics that lean more towards that genre. I follow the same pattern with our history and science focus.

My youngest daughter is very interested in fashion while my oldest son is more interested in the battles that took place, so their history studies cover the same time periods and countries in different ways. At this point what they study is still dictated, but how they study it begins to become more interest led.

In high school things change again. My kids know what they need to do to graduate. That is dictated to them by me and the state of California.   They make the choices of how to meet those dictates. Two of my kids have decided to go to an actual high school. They chose to give up the flexibility of home education for the opportunity to fulfill those graduation dictates in a more traditional setting.   My oldest who graduated this past year had me as a teacher his freshman year and then chose to take classes at the community college and through an independent study program. He learned how to work within a system that dictates certain requirements while still following his interest. He chose which maths, sciences, languages met those dictates. He chose where to volunteer to meet the dictates required to graduate. He choose a very different path than I would have dictated, if I had been dictating every class he took. Thank goodness for that because what he chose helped him to discover his strengths and weakness and to decide what he wants to pursue in college and beyond.

High school is a time for my children to realize life dictates certain things, but it is up to the individual to determine how those dictates will be met.


So I suppose homeschooling in my home begins with dictating in hopes of  producing kids that have a wide range of interests and knowledge to draw on throughout their lives.

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