Since our oldest is 17 and nearing the end of the 'high school' years, we are starting to get questions about where she'll go to college or what's planned after 'high school'. I believe you never 'finish school' and therefore never really 'graduate'. Everyone should be always learning and should be actively engaged in reading, writing, and developing skills.

Instead of graduation as a completion of schooling, I consider it the start of self-directed learning which should continue until death. So I plan to give our kids a list of books to read as they transition into a completely self-directed learning pattern. They will write about what they read and continue mathematics until they master integral calculus.

The details...

In his early years, pastor and theologian Jonathan Edwards (1703 – 1758) recorded a list of 70 personal resolutions which guided him throughout his life. These are available for display on your website or blog with this widget. Simply select and copy the code shown and add it to your site's html.

<br /><script type="text/javascript" src="http://www.everygoodpath.net/w.js?q=edc38243148" ></script><noscript><a href="http://www.everygoodpath.net/">Every Good Path</a></noscript>

DVD lectures from The Teaching Company. A wonderful "layman's" explanation of calculus. If you understand basic y=nx type functions, you can learn from this. One of the best.

I was recently asked to recommend good courses or books to study world history from a Christian and biblical perspective. What I've read/studied and can recommend without reservation are...

Lectures on CD or DVD from The Teaching Company. Understand and appreciate music history and fundamentals.

DVD lectures from The Teaching Company. Layman's explanation of modern science discoveries.

ISI's annual National Founding Fathers Essay Contest for high school students. Students are invited to compete for scholarships prizes ranging from $250 to $1,000 and for a library of ISI titles. Essayists will consider the life and character of the Quaker general, Nathanael Greene. A free copy of Rise and Fight Again:... The Life of Nathanael Greene will be sent to every entrant along with a free subscription to ISI’s journal of scholarship and opinion, The Intercollegiate Review. Contest Details

The unchallenged cultural assumption in modern America is that "you must go to college" or be forever lost as a second class citizen trapped in life long poverty. Let's put a pencil to this assumption and see if your typical college student is really better off...  You may be suprised to learn that an entry level worker could own a $125,000 home at age 22 free and clear with no mortgage while the typical student would need to borrow over $100,000 to buy the same home.  The young entrepreneur has 4 years work experience, owns his home outright, and is already saving for retirement while the new graduate ponders 30 years of mortgage payments [More...]

I read every issue of the Intercollegiate Review from cover to cover - sign up here for a FREE subscription. Golden opportunity, please consider it. Can't go wrong with "free".

I haven't read Real Education: Four Simple Truths for Bringing America’s Schools Back to Reality yet, but just saw this review article at ISI. The review is compelling - here are a few excerpts:

Our educational romantics assume that everyone is equally teachable, that every child would succeed at equal, developmentally correct speed, if only there were more money, better teachers, a more demanding curriculum, and the like. But Murray objects, and persuasively so, pithily citing the requisite scientific studies to prove it.

The opening proposition of this part of the argument is that “too many people are going to college,” and about this, Murray has two overarching and interrelated themes. First, most people don’t have to spend four years at a college to acquire the abilities that would prepare them for a job or profession. The run-of-the-mill B.A., moreover, is becoming a less precise and hence less useful signal to employers. But Murray’s more fundamental concern is that the vast numbers of students attending college who are not capable of doing real college work have diluted and distorted what should be a college’s true work, which is providing a truly higher education for those who can benefit from it.

Murray says, college today is not at all what it’s cracked up to be. In particular, it is overrated as a place to grow up. He describes what many of us know. Most students are able to get by with a light workload, Fridays and Saturdays are not taken seriously, faculty are often too accommodating to students, and grade inflation has undermined the transcript. Character is not only left undeveloped but is in fact positively harmed both by the campus social culture and by the naive relativism and non-judgmentalism of the intellectual atmosphere.

Note the solution is, not-surprisingly, a balance of academics, love, and wisdom in a family setting. Exactly the homeschooling paradigm, which Murray even mentions directly.

So how are these changes to occur?... Neither the educational bureaucrats in charge of K-12 education nor the major stakeholders in higher education can be counted on. In both areas, he seems to rely on a return to an educational realism rooted in love—a love of mothers and fathers for their children on the one hand and a love of virtue and wisdom by larger souls on the other— to, little by little, take responsibility for education out of the hyper-democratically beaten path. For example, he counts on the expanding homeschooling movement to evolve into a universe of alternative schools.

So keep it up Mom and Dad - you're doing great work!

See more comments on Real Education at Amazon.com.