Every study ever done shows that the more input parents have in their children’s education, the better. These studies are generally concerned with how well students in a brick and mortar school do, but the principle is fundamentally that parents are the best teachers of their own children. The best situation for children’s education is one where the parent is intimately involved. Homeschooling is obviously the star performer in this arena.

My curriculum was specifically written for the homeschooling situation, not for a classroom. This has consequences that I would like to bring to your attention.

First, this is a very cohesive curriculum: every single assignment is an intentional piece moving to a specific intellectual end. The grade school assignments contain preparation for the middle school assignments, which are ordered to the high school assignments. The high school assignments are ordered systematically from one year to the next, so that there is a four-year argument being constructed in most of the disciplines, as well as achieving the ordinary state standards each year.

I find that almost always, when schools or co-ops adapt this curriculum to classroom learning, they change the sequence, or the materials; in doing so they change the learning outcomes. We have found with most co-ops that the teachers or the school change the course along the way, even if they start out saying they are going to just do the syllabus, such that the course becomes a different course without the same goals and arguments.

The reason schools and co-ops do this is because it is a challenging curriculum to do with a classroom where one expects an entire class to do the course at the same pace and in the same way. Students enrolled in and using Mother of Divine Grace (MODG) as the primary provider can either push a course further if they are finding the course easy, or things can be pared back or adjusted if challenges arise. The education is then tailored to the individual student. This paring is done by someone who understands the course and its goals so that the critical arguments and formative assignments are always completed.

The bottom line is that classroom education, where the classroom is the primary learning vehicle, is necessarily problematic. The goal of the classroom, sorted by age groups, with students sitting in identical desks, and all reading the same material at the same pace, is an idea of education that is flawed. It is a move to make education factories, but real education cannot be mass produced. Students are not identical cogs to be fitted into an identical slot. Students need situations tailored to them in order to be efficient learners. But in a classroom that cannot be done. The teacher has to direct herself to some mythical ‘average child’, and cannot meet the needs of any one child. This is true in co-ops as well as in other brick and mortar situations. So, the teacher has a choice. She can dumb down the material, or she can leave behind any struggling student. Co-ops and schools that use the MODG curricula but change the materials are usually dealing with such a situation. Generally, they are trying to make either the material easier or the assignments easier. (Sometimes they add more difficult content, but completely lose the methodological goals. The assignments in the upper grades become multiple choice tests, or easy analysis, and do not demand the rhetorical or more complex analytical skills present in the syllabus as written. Additionally, the carefully crafted four-year argument present in our materials as they are written gets lost.) The academic results are not as good, students who need a challenge do not get it, but fewer students are left behind in this adjusted model.

A second problem with brick and mortar implementation of the syllabi is that these syllabi, as written, spend a lot of time on reading and writing. Discussion is good, and encouraged, but an hour or two a week is plenty. The discussion is a place where students who are prepared come together with peers or parents to examine in more detail some of the ideas to which they have been exposed. They can deliberate together on a subject that is raised by the materials they have read, and often, having had the discussion, they can move on from the discussion to write about the fruit of that discussion. That is the idea behind our MODG Learning Support classes. It is guided peer discussion, an hour a week for the appropriate subjects, utilizing the Socratic method.

This is worth a note here. The Socratic method is not ‘sharing’ ideas. It is not about random thoughts around a common subject area. It is not about seeing what might emerge from an unguided discussion. It does not require large groups of people. Read over some of the dialogues; Socrates is often talking to one person. The Socratic method is for a teacher to craft a series of questions (which have to be adaptive because they have to fit the flow of the particular discussion) that will move the student to seeing a point that the tutor wants to get to. Or, at the very least, to get to a point where the possible alternatives are clearly laid out. Socrates always has a place he wants to go when he starts his conversations. He is not asking questions just to see where the conversation will go. This is the kind of conversation I had in mind when I wrote these syllabi. I was not thinking of classroom instruction, where the teacher tells the student the information present in what he should have read. I wanted a once a week class or conversation, devoted to true Socratic discussion, which might be one on one, or might be with a group, where the student is expected to do all the rest of the syllabus assignments in his home setting.

All of this is to say that I would like you to consider using the MODG syllabi as they are intended to be used: in a home setting. Mother of Divine Grace is a school. We have teachers who grade work, we have classroom discussions, we have a vibrant community of people who are joined by bonds of concern and shared vision. We are accredited. We have educational consultants who can help your student adjust the syllabi as needed to achieve the goals of the curriculum. But we have achieved all of this without giving up on the family as the center, and without sacrificing the integrity of the arguments in the materials.

God bless you!

Laura Berquist, Founder of Mother of Divine Grace School