Teaching Method for Home Schooling

Video Transcript

"I'm Jennifer Miller with the Institute for Reality, on behalf of Expert Village. One of the most common questions that we get from families that are new to home schooling, or very skeptical of home schooling is 'How do you teach those things that you don't know about?' If you failed high school geography and you can't name all the states and capitals, and you don't know what the seven continents are, then how are you possibly going to teach geography to your child at home? A question that can be asked in response to that is, if you don't know what the capital of Brazil is, how would you find out? What was your answer? Would you search on Google? Would you go to the library? Would you use an atlas? Any of those answers would not only provide the answer to what the capital of Brazil is, but it would also provide the answer to how to teach geography when you, yourself don't know it. It's impossible for any person to teach the whole body of human knowledge to another person. It grows exponentially every year. And an educated person is not someone who knows all of the pertinent facts about every subject. An educated person is someone who knows how to learn, and who lives a lifestyle of learning. So if you are an educated person, and you know how to learn, then you will know how to find the information that you don't know. One of the ways that we teach the subjects that we are not comfortable with and we're not familiar with, is by finding someone who does know how to teach those things, and teaching them to our children. Designing an education is not so much about what to include, as to what not to include. If it's a public education, a private education, a home education, someone has made the decision of what is important for a child to learn at a certain point, and how to teach it, and what we're going to leave out. Home educating your child is not about knowing everything and knowing how to teach everything yourself. It's about custom designing a perfect education for your child at the stage that he is at. If teaching geography scares you, make friends with your atlas. Start doing some reading about cultures. Start learning a new language. And before very long, your enthusiasm for what you are learning will overflow into your home school. And you will find ways to teach your child geography."