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Thomas Jefferson Education
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Hi everyone, we are enjoying our first year homeschooling. My daughter is in 2nd grade and we are following the SCM year 1 plan pretty much completely with apologia and MUS. Anyhow, I had read about TJed before and keep running across it. Is anyone familiar? Would it be possible to implement with Charlotte Mason method? Any insight would be appreciated. Thank you.
I know we’ve had at least one thread about TJed. Let me see if I can find it….
https://simplycharlottemason.com/scmforum/topic/thomas-jefferson-education-and-home-companion/
https://simplycharlottemason.com/scmforum/topic/teaching-them-to-love-learning-how/
I recommend you research it a bit. You’ll find lots of questionable information about the authors of the books and about their philosophy for education.
Here’s a whole blog dedicated to exposing (what he believes to be) the falsehoods of TJed.
http://whyidontdotjed.blogspot.com/
I read the books several years ago and tried implementing some of the principles. I didn’t find that they worked at all as the authors said they would. Charlotte Mason’s methods make much more sense to me and have stood the test of time. They are clear and simple to implement with wonderful results! TJed seems very vague-it’s really about child led learning. We’ve tried that in our home and it’s never really worked out. My children really don’t know what they want to learn about and they certainly don’t know what they need to learn. I did allow my children to pick their science topics for the elementary years and they do give me input concerning their curriculum choices. However, it was too much pressure for them to constantly have to choose what they wanted to learn about. Both myself and my children just found it terribly frustrating in the end. It sounds good in theory but I just don’t think it works out well in practice.
Of course there are probably some exceptions to the rule. It seems to be a lot like unschooling. It only works really well if the parents are very academic and there is little to no access to T.V., video games or computers. Of course that’s just my opinion based on personal experience and observations of unschoolers I know in person and unschoolers I’ve read about in books or online. Some people do it really well but they are few and far between IMO.
Several ladies in my homeschool group read TJed at about the same time and we tried implementing it in our homes. None of us stuck with it. We just didn’t get the results that DeMille raved about in his book. The worst part is you’re left feeling as if it’s somehow your fault as the parent, because you just weren’t “inspiring” enough.
I think you can find all the good of a TJed in Charlotte’s principles and save yourself from having to weed out all the of the bad.
DeMille says to educate yourself as the parent. Charlotte calls this Mother Culture.
DeMille says to inspire not require. Charlotte says inspire through exposing your children to some of the best minds in history via living books, beautiful music and amazing artist.
DeMille says classics, not textbooks. Charlotte would definitely agree. 🙂
DeMille says quality, not conformity-Again, Charlotte would agree.
DeMille says Simplicity, not complexity. I think CM methods are extremely simple to implement and I would argue that TJed methods are anything but simple.
DeMille says you, not them. Charlotte says you AND them.
DeMille says structure time, not content and Charlotte would definitely part ways with him here.
Lastly, he says mentors, not professors and Charlotte taught this as well. The books are our mentors and parents and teachers are not to get in between the books and the children. We are not to lecture and over explain things but to allow the children to form their own relations with the things and people they are learning about.
Wow, that was a mouthful! 🙂
I have been studying TJEd quite a bit lately, and I find many similarities between their philosophy and CM. I follow the TJEd facebook group, and many people incorporate CM ideas. Melanie has already given a great overview of how the “Keys” from TJEd relate to CM principles. I think the authors of TJEd would agree with CM’s underlying idea that children are persons and that they are responsible for their own education. As parents/teachers/mentors, we are guides who can expose children to new ideas and provide materials and assistance, but the children will decide what to take from what we provide.
One thing I love about TJEd is the emphasis on the mentors continuing their own learning, developing and following their own missions with passion and enthusiasm. I am much more likely to be able to ‘inspire’ my children to participate in whatever we are doing when I am excited about it, instead of just saying “Read this book because it’s on the list at SCM or AO, so it must be good for you.”
I’m finding I am doing more reading aloud than I though I would at this point. My DD9 and DS7 are both excellent readers and I could just assign a chapter and have them narrate, but I am reading aloud because it allows us to learn together, discussing and enjoying the books together.
Last year I had a whole plan set out of which chapters of which books would be done on certain days and in a certain order. After learning about TJEd, we are using mostly the same materials, but in a much more fluid way. If we feel like reading 3 chapters of one book, instead of 1 from each of three books, that’s what we do. If we get excited about a topic, we take more rabbit trails and study it a bit more than I allowed last year, when I was concerned about checking everything off my checklist. If we want to do art 5 days in a row and then take a 3 week break, we do.
I agree with Melanie that if I gave my children complete freedom to ‘learn what you want’, they wouldn’t do much. They wouldn’t know what is out there to learn. I think that at first glance, that is what it seems like TJEd is about. However, after reading several blogs and articles about how people are actually implementing it, that isn’t really it. It’s about being flexible enough to catch those sparks of interest that you observe in your children and following their lead. If they are not leading in any particular direction, then I have tons of ideas of books I want to introduce or activities I think will inspire them.
I also do ‘require’ a few things, such as at least 30 minutes of math and some handwriting/cursive/spelling (different for each child).
I’m not sure if that makes me “CM” or “TJEd”, but I guess that doesn’t matter. I’ve learned quite a bit from both philosophies and think they complement each other well.
Just within the last couple of months I have been looking into this style. I was intrigued by the mentor aspect of it and am trying to implement that as it is involved with classical book reading. I don’t totally buy into all their ideas and I don’t want to give up Charlotte Mason altogether because it fits so well for us in our home. So what I am doing is taking the mentoring aspect and improving on that and also reading more classics for myself and for my kids. I am reading some along with them and then we are discussing them more in depth rather than just an oral or written narration.
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