I keep coming back to this piece over and over again.

Something about it hits me crossways.

Maybe because all of my children are now older, and although we *were* pretty "luddite" (the word this columnist uses) when they were small, we didn't give them any good guidance as to *how* to use screens once they moved on to the next phase of life. And, spoiler? Screens were and will continue to be part of that next phase.

Maybe because screens can be an excellent delivery system for very traditional classical education, if the teachers are skilled and the administration is keeping an eye on the quality of instruction.

Maybe because this description of home school days strikes me as just a little rose-colored.

Maybe because I'm a historian. You know what happened to the Luddites, right? We live in a factory-dominated world. So far, resisting new technology has *always* turned out to be a dead end. (I'll post some more about AI when I can pull my thoughts together on it.)

Resistance isn't the key. Responsible incorporation is. I'd like to see more pieces on responsible incorporation.

Feel free to respond (or disagree).

**

For too many homeschoolers now, just as for their public-school peers, homeschooling means… logging into school every morning on a device. Just how normalized is this? A public-school teacher acquaintance bemoaned to me recently that a friend of hers, who had decided to homeschool her middle-schooler for one semester for medical reasons, was frustrated with the idea of her son spending hours each day on a device. Is there any other way to homeschool, the teacher friend asked me? Why, yes, there is, of course, but even the teacher had no idea—and thus no knowledge to impart.

In light of this default acceptance of school-on-devices and online intervention as the default solution already for the youngest learners, even in home schools, I would like to offer glimpses of a counter-option that is easier (yes, really), less stressful (yes, truly) for both children and parents and, most important, is better for the character formation of young persons and their parents. It also requires no equipment to purchase, which is rather nice for those on a budget (like my family).

But it requires going old school, medieval even, in the use of technology. It requires creativity. Most of all, it requires the entire homeschooling family to live as humans—as persons—fully present, engaged, and interactive.

I have previously written about my family’s approach to unschooling, which in a nutshell involves using a curriculum only for math (because, well, math) and languages—at the moment, koine Greek for my eight-year-old scribe. For all other subjects, we simply go to the library weekly and check out a lot of books.

What this means is that with the exception of approximately one hour (often, even less) of structured school time, the rest of the day is largely unplanned. Let me preempt your next question: just what do we do all day, in this case? No, there’s no TV time—we do not even own a television. Rather, we spend hours each day reading—both read-alouds and also individual time for reading or listening to audiobooks. The kids are always conducting creative projects—coloring, painting, building something, playing games of their own invention, writing letters to friends and relatives. Last but not least, we spend a lot of time outside, even in the winter. Everyone—adults too, by the way—needs more time outside. We have an annual membership to the zoo, so we try to visit as often as possible. We also go to the local botanical gardens on every free admissions day.

At different points in the year, we participate in structured classes or activities. The five-year-old just completed a five-week introductory ballet session and will enroll in another one later this spring. The eight-year-old attends a weekly homeschoolers book club, which is finishing up its discussion of C.S. Lewis’s The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe. Both kids have attended art classes at times, and we have done multiple seasons of soccer. And there are weekly activities for kids at our church.

**

mereorthodoxy.com/homeschooling-luddite-style ... See MoreSee Less

10 minutes ago

Now that the new edition of THE WELL-TRAINED MIND has been out for a little over a week, I wanted to take a minute to respond to our wonderful readers…some of whom are unhappy that 1) the book is priced the same as the previous edition but doesn’t include the resources and 2) they didn’t realize the resources weren’t IN the book any more.

Listen, dear readers, I hear you. Bear with me for a minute.

I’ll tackle 2) first by straight up throwing Norton under the bus. The original copy for the book was definitely misleading, including the descriptive text that went out to Amazon. The phrasing didn’t make it clear that you’d have to go to welltrainedmind.com for the specific resources. We sent them corrections and new copy and appealed repeatedly for those to be pushed out to Amazon.com and all the other online outlets. For whatever reason, this did NOT happen until right before the book came out.

(Also, the original language made clear that you had to go to welltrainedmind.com for the resources, but Amazon refuses any copy that includes another website, so we had to rephrase AGAIN.)

We did everything we could with social media posts and newsletter mailings and podcasts to clarify this, but it’s hard to fight the Database That Rules All.

Now let me tackle 1).

If you’re not in publishing, you probably don’t realize how much printing costs have gone up. Have you noticed that all books now cost more? Paper costs and labor costs have doubled since the pandemic. If this new edition of TWTM included the resources and was the same length as the last edition ($39.95), it would have been priced at $54.95.

In fact, Norton originally priced the Essential Edition at $44.95. I spent a long time on the phone with editor, production manager, etc. BEGGING them to change this. I said: It’s more expensive than the last edition, and the resources have to be subscribed to separately. They said: This is accepted cover price for a book of this length. I said: Please don’t do this! Finally Norton agreed to drop the price to $39.95, which is still a little under-priced given paper and production costs.

Yes, you now have to pay $12.95 for a year’s access to all of the updated resources. If those resources were in the book, you’d be paying a little MORE than that total, and we wouldn’t be able to update them.

I’ve also heard a demand that people who buy the essential edition should get a code for free access to the resources. Well…the problem is that Norton declined to host and maintain those resources. We do that here at the Well-Trained Mind Press. Norton gets the income from the book. We (who are doing all the website work and recommending the resources) do the labor of providing the resources. And since Norton and Well-Trained Mind Press are two different companies, there was no good way to have a purchase from one company grant access to the work done by another company.

With all that said? You never make a big change without upsetting a certain number of people. This big change was 100% necessary. There was absolutely no way to keep all of those resources in *print* when it’s so simple (and cheap) to update them online. And books go out of print so much faster than they used to (we had to change almost all of our middle grade science texts because the publishers, as a sales tactic, now issue brand new versions every three or four years). This allows us to be responsible, nimble, and provide the best service we can.

And that’s what I wanted to say. ... See MoreSee Less

1 week ago