Posted by Peela on 18:49 Mar 2
In Reply to: Anyone hear of Robinson curriculum? posted by Jules
I keep getting attracted to RC over the years when I want my kids to work more independently (i.e. when I burn out).
The guy who set up the program is a scientist with 6 kids on a farm, the mother died, and he ended up homeschooling them himself. The kids work 5 hours a day, 6 days a week, I am not sure if they have holidays or not. Strictly no sugar and no tv/videos etc, lots of farm work. 2 hours of Saxon Maths, self taught, 2 hours of reading, and 1 hour of writing on a topic the child chooses themself, is the basic formula. No Science until after Calculas is finished.
His older kids have gone to college I think with very high scores. So it has worked well for his family, although I think they are all taking Science careers, from what i remember.
Lots of good things about it, and if i had a big family I would probably head more that direction.
One of my concerns is th lack of parental involvement- the idea in RC is for the child to work completely independently, after the early years of learning to read anyway. The Classical philosophy seems to have a strong mentoring element which I really like and am not willing to let go of. I am sure it could be integrated though.
Lots of people tweak RC though. I do believe it gives good results- depending on your perspective , I guess.