INTRODUCTION

Welcome to the fifth installment in a series of primers for the new homeschooling family. My name is Josef Stallings, and my wife Anne and I have been homeschooling our 8 children for over 13 years. For more information on our background, please see the first primer in this series here.  

This fifth primer deals with the teaching of science in the homeschool setting.

SCIENCE

Anne and I (Anne) decided years ago that we would follow a classical education approach to homeschooling. This means that we recognize, more or less, the three stages of learning: grammar, dialectic, and rhetoric. 

Grammar is taught during the grammar school years, dialectic is picked up through various doctor visits, and rhetoric just seems to come natural for all teenagers. So, we focus mostly on what we can control. In this case, grammar, which in the language of classical education means a lot of repetition, singing, and memorization.

The other pillars of classical education include reading old books and learning to read texts in original languages. Just as with rhetoric, the kids seem to be naturals at using original language in their texts, so we figured that this would also just come naturally. Anne and I insist on actually talking to our kids, rather than allowing them to text us, as we always need a translator to figure out what they saying. Talking is not much better, but we’ll take what we can get.

So, my contribution to the classical science curriculum was to select classic scientific texts that could be used to instruct the kids. This was quite easy, as there are a number of highly respected works that have been recognized as such for a long time. 

We (I) choose these books:

• Euclid’s Elements
• Henry Gray’s Anatomy
• Galileo’s Dialogue Concerning the Two Chief World Systems
• Isaac Newton’s Philosophiae Naturalis Principia Mathematica
• Richard Feynman’s The Feynman Lectures on Physics

THE FEYNMAN LECTURES

Since Richard Feynman had the foresight to put many of his lectures on YouTube, this seemed to be an easy way to get started. I’d recommend this to anyone who wants to teach science to their kids. Dr. Feynman’s delivery, simple explanation of complex subjects, and general charisma make it easy to enjoy a much-needed cup of coffee for several hours while the kids learn college-level science topics.

After listening to the first several Feynman lectures, all of the kids said that they were amazed at how easy science is. They were talking about atoms in motion, what heat is, why blowing on soup cools it off, and the fact that diamonds can burn in air! In one afternoon, they knew more about science than I learned in all of my years of school, prior to dropping out.

We were overjoyed until the kids took their tests; none of them passed. They just couldn’t figure out how to put into practice what they had learned. But that’s the beauty of classical education! They didn’t get it the first time, so they will just need to keep listening to the lectures until they finally “own” the material. That may take a day, or it may take a year. Either way, they just need to keep learning this stuff over and over until it sinks in. That’s the classical way!

THE PRINCIPIA AND THE ELEMENTS

While they were working on the Feynman lectures, I had time to make audio versions of Euclid’s Elements (actually 13 books, one per-grade, K-12) and Newton’s Principia. It is surprising that no one has bothered to make audiobook versions of these classic texts before now. I did find an abridged version of Principia in YouTube, but this used a computer generated voice, and didn’t have the expression of voice necessary to give the kids a real sense of Newton’s emotion in the text. My version ended up being about 36 hours long, and took over a month of night-shifts to record. The computer I worked on was originally intended for nuclear control systems, so it wasn’t the most powerful thing in the world, but by deleting some software and stopping some of the running processes, I was able to load up some good audio editing software and have it work passably well. 

Euclid’s Elements took a bit longer. I used the definitive Dover unabridged Thomas L. Heath editions, reading all of the text as well as the commentary. The end product is 150 hours of audio, and took me over a year to complete. I had to sneak flash drives into my duty station in order to download the audio, since I was filling up the hard drives so often. I may be stationed in the middle of the Indian Ocean, but you’d think they could somehow get me some better technology!

The kids listen to my audio recordings while following along in the books. They then attempt to follow Newton and Euclid’s instructions in order to make the geometric construction for each lesson. Anne says that they go through lots of band-aids due to fights with the compass points, but that just comes with the territory. All of the kids think Newton skipped some steps about half-way through his book, but they can’t prove it. I KNOW he did; I just can’t prove it, either.

Getting through Euclid’s elements is taking a bit longer than expected, so we’ll have to continue school through the summers.

If anyone wants to get a copy of these audio books, just drop me a note, and I’ll send you the link once my negotions with Audible.com are complete. 

HENRY GRAY’S ANATOMY

GALILEO’S DIALOGUE

This one was supposed to be fun. This one was going to serve both for science class and as a drama elective. What more could you ask for in a book? It’s almost all just three people talking to each other about fun things. Anne made costumes for the kids, had try-outs for the parts, but even with eight kids, we couldn’t get a full cast. No one wanted to be Simplicio!

I told the kids that Simplicio was the one who was a proponent of Aristotle, who was the king of science up to that point, especially in the Muslim world. That didn’t change anything. All of the boys wanted to be Salviati, and all of the girls wanted to be Sagredo. No one wanted to be Simplicio

I later found out that they had heard that it was because of the Simplicio character that the Pope had misgivings about Galileo’s writings, feeling that he was being somehow insulted. I don’t know about you, but I don’t mind being called “simple,” I’m an efficiency expert certified by the U.S. Government. 

Anyway, the play was cancelled. However, we all learned a lot and had a bunch of laughs while reading the book. We were amazed to learn that the moon has giant mountains, taller than Mt. Everest; that a man falling from a ship’s mast doesn’t get hurt; and that the ocean tides are caused by the movement of the earth. Surely Galileo was the father of modern science! He made perfect sense to me until he started saying that the earth actually moved. Come on; if that were true, wouldn’t there be really heavy winds as the atmosphere worked to keep up with the earth? Give me a break.

We commend this book for all ages and grade levels. It is high comedy at its best. None of the kids laughed while reading Don Quixote, but they were rolling on the floor with this one.

SUMMARY

Science is hard. Don’t let your kids grow up to pursue anything scientific. STEM is just the beginning; they’ll soon be blooming with this stuff, and you’ll never be able to figure out what they are talking about. Besides the Principia and Elements, which I spent hours of my life recording, we are planning to drop science as a subject from our homeschool curriculum. 

As always, I am looking forward to hearing your thoughts about this article, and our approach to homeschooling. Please leave any comments or suggestions that you have found useful in your own homeschooling experience. 

LTC Bob Smith, if you are reading this, I need an editor. Each article is getting longer and longer. Anne says that I need to be more concise. Please help!

Our next article will cover teaching grammar in a homeschool setting.

Until next time,

Josef

(Note from Anne: Nothing to say, except that I may be pregnant again. Or it could just be the coloring book. I’ll let you know. I love you!)