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How Does Robinson Curriculum Work? Unofficial FAQsMaybe you've heard from a friend about Robinson Curriculum, or read a review about it but are still full of questions. Could your kids really teach themselves? Does it work? While I can't answer every question you may have about Robinson Curriculum, I have used it in our homeschool for about a year and have asked a lot of questions of the very helpful people on the Robinson Yahoo Groups. I have noticed that the most Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs) about Robinson Curriculum tend to be about...
The FAQs listed here are meant to supplement the ones listed on the official Robinson Curriculum website. I would encourage you to read the official Robinson FAQs, and their responses to common questions and concerns. The following opinions do not reflect the official position of Robinson Curriculum. They do, however, represent my own personal experience, as well as those of others I have had the privilege to interact with on the Robinson Curriculum email group, RC4JC Yahoo group.
Questions on Robinson Curriculum's Self-Teaching Method and Learning Environment
Why buy a complete home school curriculum on CD-ROMs when there are so many good books I can buy already printed? Of course, you don't have to print out the books if you already have them, or are fortunate enough to find them at your library or used bookstore. However, many people don't have access to a library with these old classic titles, or don't have time to search through garage sales in hopes of finding them. So, having the CDs makes it easy to have the curriculum Dr. Robinson recommends available without a lot of extra work for mom or dad.
Why the focus on classics and older books? If you read the books from Robinson Curriculum that were written in the 19th century and earlier, you can tell that they have a larger vocabulary and more varied sentence structure than much of the literature marketed to children and young adults today. When children read these classics, and steep themselves in such literature, many people have experienced that the children naturally pick up on the vocabulary and well-written sentence structures. Good literature, as most people would agree, provides the fuel for the engine of an excellent education. While reading great writing doesn't guarantee your child will become a great writer, it does give them a wonderful “vocabulary” (both the words and the style) to bring richness to their writing. Another reason for using older books is to minimize what many feel is an objectionable focus on political correctness found in many modern books for kids. Admittedly, any book reflects the values of its time, and no age is morally perfect and free from prejudices and moral lapses. In our family, when we came across books with prejudice or other values we didn't agree with, we took the opportunity to discuss the issues and the times in which the author lived and why we don't believe that way. So be aware there are books with objectionable material in Robinson Curriculum, just as there was and is prejudice in the real world. However, in the literature selections in Robinson Curriculum, there are many examples of people who faced issues with courage, honor, and integrity. While some of these books were unashamedly written to inspire and encourage moral integrity and character growth, others do so simply as a by-product of being good literature. Naturally, some contemporary books are wonderful, and can be a wonderful addition to a home school curriculum. We supplemented Robinson Curriculum with books from Sonlight Home School Curriculum and Tapestry of Grace, among others. However, Robinson Curriculum does not contain many contemporary books for children because, in part, many of these books are written from an underlying worldview that many Christians don't share, including the attitude that it is “cool” to be disrespectful to parents, or that there is really no one whom a child can rely upon to help find the answers to life's questions. (For an interesting article on contemporary children's literature see World Magazine, All Alone in the World?) In today's search for the latest and greatest, upgrades and new deals, we tend to forget that most of the greatest minds in history learned how to read and think without the aid of an entire industry geared towards children's literature. They simply read the Bible and the classics. Perhaps what these powerful thinkers and leaders had would be good for us, too. If I just want classic books, why not simply download books from the Internet for free? While there are many sites that have free books online that you can download (such as Project Gutenberg), to my knowledge, many of the Robinson Curriculum books are not available online. Even for those that are, you are sometimes not able to see the illustrations. I know for us pictures really helped our kids get into and enjoy the books. I also really appreciated not having to reformat them - non-techie that I am, I could just hit a button and have the book printed out. Even if you do download books for free from the Internet, Robinson Curriculum has other features besides just literature, as you can see from the contents of Robinson Curriculum. There is all of the information in the Course of Study that explains how to help your children learn to teach themselves. There are also vocabulary words, worksheets, and examinations that correspond to many of the books, and a computer program included on the CDs that helps your child master the words. While it may be billed as a “basic home school curriculum,” it still has more than just downloaded books as its curriculum. Finally, with the abundance of books available online (Gutenberg alone has 16,000 books and counting), I appreciated having someone else's input into what are some recommended core books, books that would both build up and challenge my children. I could have spent hours finding other books and printing them out, but I'll be honest -- I'm glad I didn't have to! Robinson Curriculum gave me a good balance of enough structure with enough flexibility to make the most those classic books. What about using other books not in Robinson Curriculum? The question is, what will be the core reading of your child's education? With Robinson Curriculum, you have a framework of core books that are rigorous academically and that strive to offer upright moral examples. (They are, however, not ordered around any core themes, and in general the books tend not to be across a broad spectrum of ideas and times.) The idea is that as your children gain a level of maturity through increasing contact with the classics, you can add other modern classics, or ones that challenge their worldviews more.
This being said, however, I found as time went on that I really wanted to help my children process what they were reading. We use Tapestry of Grace now and have been very pleased. You can read more about our journey and various information about Tapestry of Grace here. Does Robinson Curriculum present history in a chronological, four or five-year cycle? Robinson Curriculum chooses not to focus its studies around history as its core because the goal of the curriculum is to help children master the more primary, foundational skills so necessary to building a life-long enjoyment of learning -- reading, writing and mathematics. According to Dr. Robinson, acquiring skills in these foundational subjects needs to take center stage in your child's day and mind. For Robinson Curriculum, the fundamental question is not what is the flow of history (interesting as that may be) but how can my child develop the academic skills to succeed in his or her life's journey of learning, including understanding history.
If most of the books are written before the 20th century, how will my child learn about modern history? Does this mean that Robinson Curriculum neglects modern history because most of the books are written before the 20th century? That is certainly a valid concern. In our family we supplemented with modern history books, often as read-alouds so we could discuss what we read about. In the end, for us, we found that we missed the lack of focus on understanding the flow of history.
Why focus only on reading, writing, and arithmetic? Won't my children miss out on history, geography, science, read-alouds, and all those other interesting subjects?
What about history and geography? True, history and geography are not listed in the daily schedule as distinct subjects. However, much of the material included in Robinson Curriculum does, in fact, deal directly with geography or history. Your children read numerous first-person historical narratives or descriptions of events and places in the readings. You don't need to add those subjects as a separate subject; your children will be learning naturally about those other subjects as they read the literature selections. However, I have to admit that since we switched back to Tapestry of Grace my children have a much better grasp of history. When we think of learning science, often we lump together different aspects of this huge field of study. When you stop to think about it, however, science encompasses at least three areas -- descriptive science (where you read about or explore the natural world), experimental science (where you experiment or play with magnets or see how a motor works), and quantitative science (where you use calculus and other upper-level math to explain what is happening mathematically). I don't think it is quite accurate to say that Robinson Curriculum doesn't recommend science for the early grades. What it doesn't recommend is presenting science as a separate subject in the early grades, and presenting quantitative science before your children are ready for it. Robinson Curriculum does recommend and contain information on descriptive science that children can read and understand at their level of development. There is a great deal of excellent information in the Encyclopedia Britannica included on the CDs, and in other recommended resources. For younger children, the Arthur Scott Bailey books have wonderful stories relating to the natural world. With Robinson's focus on reading, there is plenty of time for the children to read about the world around them and about science topics during their independent reading time, too. As for the experimental aspect of science, while that isn't a formal subject, there is plenty of time to pursue that as part of the extracurricular time. Sure, go ahead and go on nature walks with your children, take apart toasters, grow beans and see how much water they need to thrive. These are all good things, and with a curriculum such as the Robinson Curriculum that focuses on the basics, there is still plenty of time to do this after their other schoolwork is finished. When we used Robinson Curriculum I was able to fit science fairly naturally into the rhythm of our lives. Learning science through lots of reading and free-time for experiments was freeing for us at that point in our lives. I was encouraged that a scientist, Dr. Robinson, recommends this method. Remember: the idea is to make the “main thing the main thing.” Reading, writing and arithmetic are the core subjects because they give your children the tools to learn science and other subjects. As a scientist, Dr. Robinson did not feel that quantitative science in the early grades was an essential part of the academic day. That doesn't mean that there should be no scientific discovery or exploration, however. There can be as much of that as your child wants after the core subjects have been studied for the day. Does Robinson Curriculum include read-alouds? In sum, the reason for not adding more subjects -- whether they are science, geography, history, a foreign language, or something else -- is that every time you add something, you have to take that time away from something else. You can't just keep adding more. I can tell from personal experience that kids who feel overwhelmed with their workload are not very happy campers! I remember how unhappy we were when my 8 year-old daughter felt overwhelmed with assignments, interesting as they were. I would tug, she would pull; I would prod, she would find some excuse. What a breath of fresh air to switch to Robinson Curriculum and see her start to feel competent and excited about what she could do. What a difference! However, there are other ways to minimize frustration for your children even if you do use a teacher-directed program. So, much of your decision will rest on other factors, such as what kind of literature you want and what kind of interaction you want with your children. Robinson Curriculum is a complete home school curriculum that unashamedly emphasizes the basics. The idea is that through success and mastery of the crucial skills of reading, writing and arithmetic, your children will have the tools and self-confidence to say, “Hey, I can learn! I can figure this out on my own!” This is good preparation for them to have a life-long love of learning no matter what other subjects - science, art, history -- that they want to pursue. I enjoy learning with my children and doing creative projects together. Wouldn't we miss out on learning together if they are using a self-teaching curriculum? Perhaps you want to keep such activities part of your day. If so, you may wish to use the free time in the afternoon for such hands-on learning activities. The goal for Robinson is not to take out the fun of learning; it is to give the mental tools that will make learning enjoyable for their entire lives. That being said, however, you may have noticed that your child seems to want everything to be “fun” or “entertaining” in order to be interested in it or apply himself to it. This is the idea of “education as entertainment” which Robinson Curriculum aims to avoid. A core value of Robinson Curriculum is to help our children develop self-discipline to help them do their job well even when it isn't fun. Thus, we need to ask ourselves if those hands-on activities are encouraging our children to build an excellent academic foundation? Or are they taking time and energy away from the core academic skills needed? You know your child best, and what he or she needs, and there are people who use Robinson Curriculum on both ends of the spectrum.
Is writing an hour a day sufficient to learn the writing skills and grammar they will need? Robinson Curriculum's Course of Study lays out a plan to have your children write a page-length essay every day, and correct the errors from the previous day's essay. Is this sufficient? William Zinsser, in On Writing Well, writes that “You learn to write by writing….The only way to learn to write is to force yourself to produce a certain number of words on a regular basis. If you went to work for a newspaper that required you to write two or three articles every day, you would be a better writer after six months. You wouldn't necessarily be writing well…[b]ut you would be exercising your powers of putting the English language on paper, gaining confidence and identifying the most common problems.” (p. 49 On Writing Well: The Classic Guide to Writing Nonfiction) So, if your goal is to prepare your child to gain confidence, express themselves on paper readily, and do well under a deadline (such as the timed SAT essay questions), the daily writing assignments of Robinson Curriculum may be enough preparation. If your goals include helping them to find their unique writer's voice and to blossom as a writer, you may want to look for supplementary materials. I have found the materials at Brave Writer to be invaluable. I'll write more on it as soon as I can because her materials have revolutionized how we incorporate language arts into our lives. The approach that the Brave Writer materials takes is tremendously freeing, and is easily adaptable to virtually any home school curriculum. I highly recommend any of Julie's materials. As for the grammar behind the writing, often children pick up plenty of good grammar without even realizing it while they are reading good books. You don't necessarily have to do a formal grammar study every year, either. One option that Julie Bogart (who wrote the Brave Writer writing materials) recommends is covering grammar only three times in the K-12 years: once in elementary school, once in junior high, and once in high school. You could easily use the grammar book that comes with Robinson Curriculum's version 2.2 as a resource for those times, or choose your own.
Can I use another math curriculum besides Saxon Math? Saxon Math was chosen to be part of the Robinson Curriculum because Dr. Robinson, who assembled the curriculum, felt that Saxon Math arranged the concepts clearly, explained them adequately, reviewed them consistently, and presented overall a very thorough program. As a scientist, he felt that it was the best curriculum to enhance his own children's ability to think for themselves and learn to find answers for themselves. Could you have similar results with another curriculum? Very possibly. If you have experience with another curriculum that works better for your children to teach themselves to think and learn the math, by all means, use it. The important thing is the goal - for your children to learn to think for themselves and figure out how to find the answers, not just to learn the math concepts. Saxon Math has a long track record and is an excellent means to get to that goal. Is it the only way? Probably not. What kind of computer and printer do I need?
For Mac: I have heard that some people are able to use version 2.0 with their Mac OS9, and at one point there was unsupported software for the Mac. However, I have tried version 2.2 with Virtual PC on a Mac and it didn't work satisfactorily at all for us. I therefore would strongly recommend getting an inexpensive PC to run the curriculum unless you are able to deal with numerous problems that still might not be able to be solved. We bought an inexpensive PC that we use almost exclusively for Robinson Curriculum, and it was a worthwhile investment. Printer: The Robinson Curriculum website recommends the Brother HL-5150D or Brother HL-1850. I would highly second the many happy customers who have spent the extra money upfront to buy a quality duplexing printer (one that prints on both sides of the paper). In the long run, you will be so thankful for the ease of printing out books and materials that you can use over and over again. Can you make do with a less expensive model? Sure, you don't need a duplexing printer to make Robinson Curriculum work. You can turn the pages over to copy on the other side, although you will likely have more problems with this type of printing since you will be printing a lot of pages. With the duplexing printer it is really easy to print out entire books. You can also scour used book stores and visit your friendly local library for the books, and you won't have to print out those books. There are lots of good deals at garage sales if you have the time and motivation. Will Robinson Curriculum be expensive? When you think what you get with Robinson Curriculum -- hundreds of books from K-12 ready to print out, the vocabulary flash cards, worksheets, examinations, the Course of Study and the system of learning it explains -- it is truly an exceptional investment for only $195. Even with adding supplemental materials (which some people do, but many people don't), it is still far less than other major homeschool curriculum suppliers. I often keep in mind a quote I once read: “Education is expensive but the cost of ignorance is far greater.” (Thomas Y. Hobart Jr) On this page I have trid to share honest answers to often-asked questions about Robinson Curriculum. Over time we grew to want things that Robinson didn't offer, and we switched to Tapestry of Grace. It has been a huge success in meeting our goals and my whole family is very pleased with it. You can read more about our top thirty things we like about Tapestry of Grace or our overview of Tapestry of Grace.
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