Our Family Learning Goals

Choosing the right curriculum is one of the most important decision a parent can make. Most parents wonder which curriculum would best meet the needs of their child. We have CBSE, State Boards,  IGCSE, NIOS and IB curriculum to choose from. I am sure I have missed a few curriculum in this list that even I am not aware of. For a subject like Maths, we have Vedic Maths, Kumon, Singapore Maths, Abacus, Russian Maths methods (and many more) that we can leverage. Given so many options, how do parents decide which method is best suited for their child? How do parents decide which curriculum is best suited for their child?

As a mother of a 14 year old, I have been through this dilemma for many years. This confusion only gets deeper when you realize that no one curriculum/method of learning is really working well for your child. I have researched most of the above curriculum listed above. I even became a Vedic Math trainer myself so that I could help my child with Math. Yet, I failed. Looking back I realize the reason for my failure. I was trying to sail our ship through rocky seas by adjusting the sails, tuning the rudder and oiling the gears. While this strategy might have helped us survive one storm at a time, it did not bring us any closer to our destination. Simply because, we didn’t know where we wanted to be at the end of the journey.

Most parents approach education from the same view as our ship ride. We just go from one standard to another, from primary to secondary to college adjusting schools, tuition’s and extra classes. Our children pass college but does this mean that they have acquired skills needed to succeed in life. Isn’t this the purpose of education? Isn’t it meant to help us understand life and succeed in life? That brings us to the following questions. How do we define success in life? What are the skills/knowledge that are needed to really succeed in life? Are children learning these skills as part of the education system?

All though, the definition of “success” depends on the aspirations of each individual, I will loosely define Success as achieving the goals we had set out to achieve. If I wanted to be a doctor and I managed to become one, I can consider myself successful in that goal of life. Those who wanted to own a million dollar car, can consider that goal accomplished when they own that car. In essence, success can only be measured if we have clearly laid out goals in our life. If we do not have goals, we have no way of measuring success. The question is that have we established these goals for our children? Or more importantly, do our children have some form of goals for themselves? Who defines success for them? Should it be us, the parents, or should it be they, themselves, measuring their progress? Can children measure their own success? Are they equipped with skills/discipline to define their goals and track them to closure?

A topic, like this, opens a Pandora’s box of questions. To keep the topic in focus, I will simply stick to our journey of identifying our learning goals. I call these “learning goals” and not “life goals” because I believe that we have not really narrowed down on “life goals” as of now. At this stage of life, our predominant focus is on learning keeping in mind a high level direction for life. If we have learnt well, we would, in time, be able to chalk out more specific life goals in the coming years.

My husband and I discussed what areas to focus on learning  when we were planning to start Homeschooling for our children. We had some high level thoughts which we narrowed down to more specific thoughts. We went though our iterations, first starting with how to learn to be financially independent, adding health, family values as we moved on. I then sat down with our children to get their thoughts and I roughly jotted down the areas that we should be focusing on, as a family. At this stage, we did not finalise how we will address each area. We figured that the “how” part would evolve constantly as we moved through different levels in each area.

To simplify things we broke up our learning goals into three broad categories in the order of importance- Soul, Body, House. Soul being the largest and most important aspect of living life. The Soul has chosen this body to live this life, hence it is important that we take care of the body. The body needs some basic things to sustain growth, which we broadly include under the term “House”. Let us look at each one of these three areas in detail to understand them. Once again, these are high level terms that we defined to simplify life for our family. They may or may not apply to your family. I am sharing these as a sample of learning goals hoping that it will help you identify and come up with the goals for your own family.

I . Soul
Pavan and I come from a school of thought where we believe that we are nothing more than a manifestation of the soul. I (i.e my soul) has chosen to be born in this current body called Shilpa, in order to experience and evolve through this birth of Shilpa. In this context, I am not Shilpa but Shilpa is just a form or simply, a set of clothes that I have chosen to wear in this lifetime. While I need to take care of the clothes that I am wearing, I should not forget to take care of myself (i.e the soul) first. Hence, taking care of the soul is the most important learning goal in our curriculum. Lets look into how do we plan to take care of our soul?
1. Sadhana- Sadhana is similar to meditation but with one difference. While during meditation, we focus on blanking our mind of thoughts, During Sadhana we try and connect directly to our soul and the larger energy systems. I am not an expert on the subject myself and hence will refrain from elaborating on it. I will just say that we ensure that we try and do Sadhana daily.
2. Learn about the world- since the whole reason the Soul took birth in this life form was to learn and evolve, we have to ensure that we learn about different aspects of life including maths, science, languages, value systems, religions, et all. We of course don’t learn everything everyday but we find a balance of what is important for us to learn, in which way, at what time. You can say that this is the point which the current education systems mainly focus on. This is important for us, but this is just one of the cogs in the wheel, for us.

3. Sewa – Helping others unconditionally. We believe that each time we help someone, unconditionally (i.e. not expecting anything back in return of the help), we help our soul evolve. As a family, we should always be happy and eager to leverage oppurtunities to help others. Sharing our toys/books/knowledge/skills /food/house with those who may find them useful is just one way we can help others.

2. Body

As mentioned above, we consider the body as the set of clothes that the soul has chosen to wear in this lifetime. It is the medium of the soul to achieve its purpose. A fit body, will give the soul a strong medium to accomplish the goal. Considering that this is the only body the soul will get in this lifetime, it becomes even more important to take care of it. We have a few guidelines that we go by to ensure we take care of the body.

2.1 Exercise – We exercise daily. Children go to Taekwondo classes 6 days a week. Our daughter also dances each day. My son swims given the right weather. Most days he simply runs all over the neighborhood playing with his friends. I think that is the best form of exercise he can ever get. My husband and I also walk, do yoga on a regular basis.

2.2 Right Food – We eat everything including Pizza, noodles, icecreams and cakes. We make 99% of the things at home to ensure that are fresh and made using healthy ingredients. We try using wheat flour in place of Maida and jaggery in place of sugar for most of our recipes. Children understand what food provides which nutrient and they make both healthy and unhealthy choices on their own accord. I just follow the simple rule, “Eat your meal before you eat junk”. For e.g. – you can eat a chocolate after you have finished lunch. This just ensures that all the right nutrients have gone in the body. On top of it, if a little extra sugar has went, it is OK.

2.3 Cleanliness – In addition to the obvious clean body means healthy body, I believe clean body and clean house lends itself to a clean mind. Clean mind helps us in thinking clearly and remain focus on the important things in life. Having said that, I completely appreciate the need for getting dirty to really experience life. Playing in the mud, digging worms/treasure, having paint all over your rooms furniture are important to experience as well. Children always wash hands before eating and have a bath before they sleep at night, which ensures that all the germs of the day have been washed out.

2.4 Be careful – This was a point that our 6 year old son added to the list. I admit, I would not have thought about it on my own. He insisted that we should be careful while crossing the road or cycling on the road. We should lock doors before sleeping and in general be careful when we are playing so we do not hurt ourselves. I completely agree with him. For our daughter, it translates to being able to defend herself, keep us informed about where she is and if she is going to get late, using the social media responsibly, etc.

3. House – This is the last focus area for us and maybe the least important for someone who has evolved beyond the physical dimensions of life.  We are not there yet and hence we do need to focus on meeting the core necessities of life which include – Roti, Kapda and Makaan (Food, clothes and shelter). Our focus areas in this section include –

3.1 Help Each other – Since we started Homeschooling, children have more time available at their hands. We encourage children to participate in home chores and generally be sensitive to the needs of the family especially elders and young children.

3.2 Cleanliness

3.3 Earn Money

This is perhaps one of my longest blogs and I lost the steam to complete it. I am still publishing it as I needed to share with a friend seeking answers about Homeschooling.