For better or worse, ladies and whatsits, this is my spice drawer. I am not naturally an organized person, but at some point I noticed that if I laid the flat-sided glass bottles on their sides, they fit nicely and stayed in place, which meant that I could arrange round bottles around them, and keep everything turned with the label up so that I could see at a glance what I was dealing with. If I want the chili powder, I can put my hand right on it. The longer I keep the drawer this way, the less I will have to look to put my hand on the right thing. My hand will just know where the chili powder is. It already knows, generally, where the spices are, and this makes my whole daily-cooking enterprise easier, smoother, less stressful, more keyed to success. Among other things, I'm a lot more likely to know when I'm out of chili powder, and a lot less likely to experience that disturbing revelation in the middle of making chili.
"Did I say chili? I meant curry. We've having CURRY. With tortillas. Don't ask why."
Meanwhile, I own other things that need to go in drawers. The potato masher, for example. We don't have potatoes very often, mind you, but I do like a good potato masher.
I like my potato masher. I like my spices. Why not put them in the same drawer?
Well, for one thing, at this point I have so many spices that there's not room for the potato masher in that drawer. If I really wanted to keep the potato masher there, I'd have to take out some spices.
But for another thing: why? Yes, putting the potato masher in the spice drawer accomplishes one possible goal, that of not having the potato masher lying randomly around on the kitchen counter. But does it really make my life easier to throw it in with the spices?
I submit to you that it does not.
I also submit to you that this is an extended metaphor, and like all metaphors, it's bound to go wrong somewhere. The whole point of a metaphor is that it is NOT the thing you're comparing it to, and there is always going to be some frisson of unlikeness, just as there is a frisson of likeness. You may read meanings into that frisson of unlikeness; as the poet and critic Mark Jarman has pointed out, this is exactly what you should endeavor to do when you encounter that frisson in a poem, and that this is a lot more productive and interesting than just saying, "Well, that metaphor didn't work."
In the case of a blog post purporting to answer some Frequently Asked Questions . . . well, I don't know. It's enough, I hope, to say that my spice drawer is a metaphor for something, and that I do understand that metaphors fall short.
So, what are these Frequently Asked Questions?
Today the Frequently Asked Questions are questions on the theme of multiple curricula and the advisability of combining several that you like.
Well, basically, that is the question. If I am attracted to Curriculum X, Curriculum Y, and Curriculum Z, why can't I just kind of do them all, and have the best of all possible worlds?
Some pragmatic thoughts about that:
To be honest, I think that if you're combining multiple curricula, you run the risk of inadvertently sabotaging a lot of inherent structure, and making things harder for yourself and your child than they have to be. Every program has a structure. The intrinsic structure of a curriculum like Mater Amabilis, for example, may be different from that of another program, but each one is set up to work on a particular schedule in a particular way.
Additionally, any program is designed to offer what its creators have determined to be a reasonable amount of work for the student's level, on a schedule that is determined to be reasonable. Curriculum development, as I have learned the hard way, involves a lot of balancing and projecting, so that you aren't prescribing a 57-hour school day for some hapless fourth grader.
A curriculum is meant to touch on every branch of learning appropriate to the child's level in some age-appropriate and effective manner, all of which – what constitutes age-appropriateness and what constitutes effectiveness – is largely defined by the philosophy driving the curriculum. All those pieces are intended to work together, to balance each other, to provide enough-but-not-too-much in any one area, and across the whole big picture of the school day.
Things begin to get difficult when you start to build a lot of other stuff in. There's often a temptation to layer on curriculum, because more seems like more, or because you're anxious that you're not covering something adequately – but this to me seems like a recipe for chaos and burnout. Any given curriculum is designed to be *enough.* If you start combining them, "enough times two, or three, or four" starts to add up, and it doesn't add up to "more enough." It adds up to "too much," and "too many different directions."
This, I think, is where a lot of parents and students start to feel overwhelmed. Oddly, it's often where people decide that a Charlotte Mason education "isn't working" for them, because those elements never get done, in conjunction with the classical memory program and the composition program and the spelling program and the "make-a-poetry-book" project and the "round-the-world passport stamps" exercise for geography.
All that stuff looks great. I know, I've been there. You page through the catalogs that come in the mail. It used to be that you went to the conferences in person and wandered past the tables in the vendors' hall, and all the curricula called your name as you drifted by . . . believe me, I KNOW. It's all called my name, too.
And sometimes I have answered. I have said, "Yes, yes, take me away, you wonderful whatever program! Do the work for me! Be more for my children! Just do it!"
Can I just confess here that maybe it's me, but I don't really think it is, except in the sense of "me and my poor self-regulation with regard to impulse purchases" . . . but this has never ended well in my house?
No matter how much I want to offer, of every possible educational world, just in case: every homeschooling day I have with my children is still exactly one day long.
Every homeschooling curriculum out there is designed to give you what is (at least theoretically) possible to do, one homeschool day at a time. Trying to layer on more than one is essentially like trying to send your child simultaneously to multiple schools. Really, that's exactly what you're doing, even though it might not strike you that way, because your child is sitting at the same kitchen table the whole time.
No biggie, you say. I'll just combine all my favorite parts.
But . . . what if your favorite parts are all history? Or literature? Or geography?
Most of us don't, in my observation, think, "Wow, I adore that curriculum's math." This may be because a lot of programs say, "Pick your own math," I don't know. And choosing math curriculum is its own issue, and no, you can't really layer on multiple math curricula very successfully, either, now that I think of it, unless you're so good at math that you can just naturally teach it off the top of your head, using various books as resources. That would not be me.
In my admittedly limited experience, the conversations tend to go more like this:
Wow, I love Curriculum X's history.
Wow, I also love Curriculum Y's history.
Maybe I can just kind of meld them together.
Here is where you need to stop and ask yourself: WHY? WHY do I want to meld these two programs, whatever they are (I just picked history because that's a popular item)?
Is it really because I will end up with something better and more workable for my child?
Or is it because I am afraid to choose one over the other?
If the answer to the first question is yes, then the next question is HOW?
HOW am I going to take the history sequences of what amount to two different schools and somehow make them into one coherent course (preferably that doesn't leave me asking all these questions all over again next year because I've set myself up never to have any idea of where I'm going with all this)?
HOW am I going to do this without essentially sending my kid to two different schools for history every day, even though he never leaves my house?
If, on the other hand, the answer to the second question is yes, then the next question is also HOW: how to choose one, how put yourself out of the misery of indecision.
I can't really answer that question for you, but here are some ideas:
If all else fails, close your eyes and pick. If you can't stop dithering, then you just have to make yourself choose. The freedom of homeschooling is also potentially a problem: you can do whatever you want, which means sometimes that, if you tend toward anxiety or indecision, there's a danger that you won't do anything, except overthink. Overthinking is a luxury your children really cannot afford.
Short of closing your eyes and picking, here are questions I would ask:
Are there boring books? I would avoid the boring books. I would avoid the scenario of "we'll read this kind of boring textbook and just make it come to life with other things." Why? WHY is there room in your life for a boring textbook? More to the point, why is there room in your child's life?
Is there a lot of busywork involved: projects, make-work, adult-driven quantitative output? In my world, that's off the list. Like the boring textbook: not worth our valuable time. Not actually learning. Goodbye.
So maybe one clarifying question to ask is:
Do I really like this program (whatever it is), or does it just seem to reassure me because it looks like what I think of when I think school, even though in most ways when I think school, I think of all the reasons why I didn't want to send my child there?
I guess at the end of the day what I'm saying is:
PICK ONE CURRICULUM AND STICK WITH IT.
Just make sure it really ticks your boxes with regard to a good education. Clarify what those boxes are – that is to say, reflect on what your educational philosophy actually is – and pick what ticks those boxes the best.
This is not to say that you can't flex that curriculum. Most of us do need some kind of framework, but we ought to grant ourselves a good bit of latitude within that framework to adjust, customize, and pace ourselves.
This is not to say that you can't substitute books and materials. I have done a lot of that for various reasons over the years. BUT the key to this is to have a curriculum that is your major template.
From the beginning, for example, Mater Amabilis has been my template. I might choose another book – we read F.J. Gould's Children's Plutarch in Level 2, for example, instead of either Famous Men or Helene Guerber, which are the listed options. I simply plugged my choice into the spot for Greek and Roman history/Plutarch, taking out the listed text. I did the same with religion – our parish uses Faith and Life, which Mater Amabilis lists for catechism, so I didn't replicate it at home, but subbed in other catechetical materials in that slot. Otherwise I kept the basic structure of two saint readings a week, Bible as scheduled, and so on.
I have often cast my eyes over Ambleside Online's excellent syllabi, particularly when I needed a free public-domain option to replace some item in Mater Amabilis I didn't have the budget to buy. I've also used The Baldwin Project and Heritage History for this reason. These particular syllabi and booklists are helpful because they do in fact derive from the same philosophy as Mater Amabilis, and offer what I can trust to be living books. Again, though, if I see something I really, really want to read with my kids as a school reading, I have to look at Mater Amabilis, my template, and take something out to make room. I can't just pile on, and pile on, and pile on. I have to make sure it will work in the schedule, or it won't get done (or something else won't get done . . . in short, I have to pay attention to what I'm doing, if I want to do anything).
I have also subbed in Ambleside Online's poetry, art study, composers, hymns, and folksongs, because whereas MA has not yet developed user-friendly resources for those things, AO has. MA doesn't have folksongs, but listening to and singing a song hardly takes any time in the day – that is the kind of thing I would judiciously add into a Morning Basket, or whatever time you have scheduled when you would do these less formal cultural things. Otherwise, I substitute for what is in MA, and don't do the MA choices in those slots. I choose one or the other, not both. Again, as with the book substitutes I mentioned above, I'm subbing in things that accord with my overall philosophy and picture of what a good education is. I'm not just reactively grabbing at stuff and saying, "Let's do that, too!" I have done that . . . and everything I've ever done in homeschooling that has crashed and burned has been a "let's do that, too" choice. Honestly, if there's anything I'd love to go back and change about the last seventeen years of homeschooling – which have had good outcomes so far, mind you, and I don't have any major regrets – what I would change is this:
*I'd UNDERSTAND my chosen curriculum a lot better
*I'd UNDERSTAND my chosen curriculum a lot better
*I'd TRUST my chosen curriculum a lot better
*I'd DO my chosen curriculum a lot more as written, instead of trying to make up my own thing so much.
It's really our responsibility as educators to figure out how our whole picture is going to be coherent. This is our children's education. That's daunting, but so is the idea of classroom teaching. At some point the novice classroom teacher has to walk into the room, open her mouth, and say something. At some point, you the home educator just have to do something. And you can't do everything. And you won't do it perfectly, and there is grace, so that as long as you're trying your best, things really will be okay. God is good, and you can trust Him both to cover your failings and to help you get past them when you ask Him.
So the charge really is:
DISCERN.
DISCERN, CHOOSE, SCHEDULE.
FIGURE OUT HOW IT'S GOING TO WORK. Don't just amass a bunch of stuff and cross your fingers.
Of course your chosen template might be something other than Mater Amabilis, which is of course a matter for your prudential judgment, which is always valid.
But the "prudential" part of that really is weighing the fact that any curriculum is going to advance what its creators believe is a reasonable workload for a child of a given age, and that if you add something in, you have to take something out, so that you don't upset that balance, overload your child, and set both of you up to feel defeated.
AND it is also about weighing what your big picture really is, and doing what accords with that big picture, rather than contradicts it. Of course you're going to learn more and more as you go, but from the beginning, you want at least to entertain the vision of doing something coherent for your child, and yourself. This is one element of peaceful homeschooling, and it's what you want to move toward, in whatever way you discern to be best.
Short answer: Yes, you can put the potato masher in the spice drawer, but.