Apr

I used to think that I was a self-disciplined person. Not anymore. Sure, I did manage to practice piano 1-2 hours/day in high school. I got mostly A’s in college. I used to think that all of my piano practice and good grades practically qualified me for a self-disciplined merit award. Hah!

Now I’m done with college, and I have more free time than I have enjoyed since approximately 5th grade. Since I love learning, this should be the most productive period of my life. I have the internet, which is bursting with free learning materials, and a good public library, and a house full of books. I like to learn, and I’m interested in lots of things.

So, let the learning begin!

Well, not quite so fast. First, I have to decide what to learn. I’m interested in so many things, but the time (alas!) is limited. So I’ll settle on something practical. Something useful. Something that I can focus on.

This is where I realize that I am not disciplined.

(I chose German as my learning-subject of choice. It made sense because we’ll be traveling to Europe this summer on a mission trip, and spending about a month in Germany. We’ll be staying with German-speaking hosts. Knowing German would be incredibly useful. So we bought Rosetta Stone.)

I’m supposed to be excited about my freedom to learn an incredibly useful skill. And some days, I am. I do Rosetta Stone. I actually work at learning German.

Other days, I think about how nice it would be to know German. I search the web for German learning tools. Or I search the web for bagel recipes. Or I just look at my Google reader. Germany is a month away, not imminent enough to make me panic. And I don’t have a test tomorrow, so there’s little to make me study today. Instead, I might explore the Foreign Service Institute Basic German course. Or I might do absolutely nothing German-related.

Learning German is such a great idea. It’s much more practical than reading random articles on whatever strikes my fancy. But somehow, I would rather read about anything (like the Montessori method, DIY Altoids tin projects, swine flu, or the NYC Air Force 1 flyover) than work on German. So much for self discipline.

Self education is a great idea, if you can do it.

Dec

I’m the proud owner of music education degree. I student taught, learned South Carolina’s ADEPT standards, and could have been certified.

If I had chosen to go on as a music teacher, my degree would have been invaluable. Most of my teachers were practical, experienced people who gave me great tools for surviving in the classroom. I had lots of useful classes.

Good classes and teachers aside, my experiences with state regulations, government intervention, and the certification process were quite negative. I tend to think that our government does few things well, and education certainly is not one of them! So I was thrilled to see the Wall Street Journal opinion piece today discussing research which suggests that “traditional state certification rules . . . hinder student learning.”

Perhaps government officials should also take note of the many homeschool moms who, without an education degree or state certification, manage to produce results far superior to state schools.