Craig Harrison - 'Your Child's Best Teacher: A Father's Perspective on Home Education'

TRANSCRIPT

Shanxi: Hello, this is Shanxi Omoniyi host of MPE's “Homeschool Hints” podcast to encourage you wherever you may be on your homeschool journey.

Today I have a very special guest with me, Craig Harrison, and he's written a book recently about his experience as a dad who's not just homeschooling, but a dad who does most of the homeschooling himself. And he's also a fellow New Zealander. Craig, can you tell us a little bit about yourself and your homeschool journey? 

Craig: Sure, I am probably a reluctant homeschooler. I didn't intend to go in this direction. My wife and I both went to public school growing up, so home education wasn't on our radar as our children got up to school age.

But the way I ended up getting into it, I grew up in New Zealand, and my wife and I moved over to the US in 2010 when our youngest was 1 year old. We had our second boy over here, and my oldest was getting up to school age, so we started looking around at local schools, and even at that point we thought that he would be enrolling in a local school.

Now my situation at the time was that I was still looking for work. I'd been unable to find employment since I moved to the US, and my wife had been offered a full-time job, and so I knew that I needed to take responsibility for the children at that stage.

But I thought, well, if they go to a public school, then at least once they're in school, I'm more flexible with my time as well, so I wasn't excited about the idea. But my wife’s family started talking about home education, and when I heard that I thought, uh-oh, that's going to end up being me that has to do it.

So I didn't plan to be teaching my children. I didn't plan to be raising them. But that's just how it worked out and I think looking back, we know that God directs our steps, and we believe that's the best decision that we could have made to educate our children at home.

But for me, actually doing it and having my wife being the breadwinner for the family, it did have an impact on me. And it was reluctant to start with, but that I've learned a lot along the way, and we're very pleased that we went that route. 

Shanxi: Do you want to give the title of your book for people who are, you know, just tuning in and haven’t been introduced to you previously? 

Craig: Yes. So the book is called ”Your Child's Best Teacher: A Father's Perspective on Home Education.”

The motivation for writing it initially was that because I'm a dad who has been doing the teaching, men think differently to women.

And so I thought, well, that's something that is distinctive about my experience, which may be of interest to other homeschoolers, particularly homeschooling mums, to see how a dad has gone about doing it.

But I think more importantly than that, my background is as an engineer, I trained in science at university. And that has given me a a different mindset as well. Engineers see the world in a particular way, and I thought that is providing a perspective as well that most home educators probably haven't thought about.

So the plan was to write the book about how I've gone about teaching our children as a dad, and as an engineer. And it isn't that I think I've gone about it the right way or that there are particular things that people need to do. It's more just, this is a different perspective and we can all learn from people's perspectives, and how everybody chooses to educate their children? Well, that's up to them.

But if they can learn from somebody else, and if they can learn from the perspective of a dad and an engineer, then that will enrich their journey as well. So that was the initial motivation.

But I realized as well that I should speak directly to fathers that are educating their children. There aren't a lot of them out there. The figures that I've seen are that at least 90% of homeschool teachers are the mums and the remaining 10%, they wouldn't all be the fathers. They could be grandparents or relatives that are doing it, but there are definitely dads that are out there.

I’ve been in touch with some since I wrote the book, and I know that with the flexibility that people have these days, more and more fathers have the opportunity to take on this role.

And so I wrote a section specifically for fathers, talking about the issues that I had to face with being a dad, with being at home while my wife was the one that was out there working. So that's specifically for fathers.

But I think that mums could also benefit from that, particularly those that have given up a career in order to raise their children and to teach their children, because society these days tells us that in order to be fulfilled, women should have a career. And when they give that up, there are implications for that. And I think that what I had to face could also be of benefit to many mums as well.

But then the third part of the book talks about education in general, and I felt that before talking about my perspective as a father and the ideas and the approach that I had taken, it would be good to understand clearly what education is, and what the distinctives for home education are. So the first part of the book is about education. It's about a defence of home education, and why I believe that that's the best approach for teaching our children. 

Shanxi: What do you think are some challenges – you probably mentioned this in the book – but what do you think are some challenges that go hand in hand when it's the dad, not the mom who's responsible for the home education of the children?

Craig : The first one that really jumps out to me is that as men, we feel a responsibility to protect and provide for our family. That's our role, and I believe that God made men and women differently, and that he designed women in general to be more nurturing and empathetic and men to be the warriors and the ones who fight for their family and provide for them.

And there's the verse in I Timothy 5:8, which as I was going through this process before I started writing the book, that was just burning in my mind. That if we do not provide for our families, we are worse than unbelievers.

And as a Westerner, when you see the word provide, you think, provide financially. That's the first thing that comes to mind.

So it wasn't until I started writing the book that I began to wrestle with these questions, that one in particular about whether, as a dad, I was a failure because I wasn't providing financially for my family.

And what I found in looking at that verse in particular is that God isn't talking about finances. He's talking much more broadly than that, and it doesn't really apply to earning an income to provide for your family, because we can see in Proverbs 31 that God values women that are entrepreneurs and that are earning as well.

Well, what I came to see is that as a father, I was protecting my children. I was sacrificing the opportunity for a career in order to provide for my children’s education and to raise them. And I realized how important that was to protect our family, to make sure that we flourished as a family. And that was my role as a dad, to protect and to ensure that my family grew strong. And so in my particular case, it meant that I was the one that was at home. My wife was working.

That may not be the case in many situations, but that, I think, was the biggest struggle that I had to face.

I talk about other things that I face as well, and one of them is that usually when people introduce themselves, they give their name, and they say what they do for a job. And even though I know better now, I still cringe whenever I hear that. When I introduce myself, you know, it's not just, I'm Jim and I'm a plumber, or anything like that.

I met somebody and they said to me, Well, obviously you work. What do you do? And I'm thinking, I… and my wife got annoyed at me.

She said, what you do is far more important for our family. And husbands have been telling their wives that ever since, that what they do is more important. But when I had to actually live it, when I had to live and breathe the fact that this is a much more important role than out there working, it's much different to be in that situation than just tell your wife all you're doing, you're doing something very important for our family.

 So it was something that I had to deal with as well, is to answer the question. Well, what do you do? What is your role? And to do that confidently and not feel that guilt or that feeling of inadequacy when they come across that.

Shanxi: What is your go-to introduction? I'm curious. <laughs>

Craig: Well, like I said, these things I know the answer, but it's still hard to say it. But what I've come to understand is that I am protecting my family, raising my sons, and making an impact in society.

It's a common thought that strong societies are built on strong families, and if we don't have strong families, we can see around us what's happened to our culture, to our society, as families have broken down. So I'm protecting my family. But I'm also building a stronger society by building a strong family. 

Shanxi: I know sometimes I have a little fun with it, depending on the situation, of course. You can say something like, you know, I'm tutored to 0.0% of the entire population. I'm a very exclusive tutor. Only the best students can receive my instruction. <laughs> But yeah.

Craig: That's true. I did try that way once. Somebody at church asked me whether I found a job and I said yeah, I’m a private tutor to two gifted children. 

Shanxi: I love it. <laughs> What do you think are some benefits that came with your role as you know, a home-educating dad, that maybe people might not think of when they first think of a dad being the primary home educator?

Craig: Well, I think that one of the benefits of being a dad, but also being an engineer is that I didn't lack confidence in what I was teaching.

And I hear about homeschool parents that wonder whether they're doing the right thing, whether they can provide the education that their children need, whether their children will suffer because of it.

And that to me isn't even a question. Of course they can do it. Of course they can do a great job, and you don't have to have the background that I have had to be able to do a fantastic job for your children.

I think it's a misunderstanding of what education is and what parents’ role is in the family, but I never had to struggle with the thought of being inadequate for teaching, and I think if the dad is, well, you tend to be more proactive and more hands on.

I am biased towards science and mathematics, and so I taught my children that right from early on, to prioritize that, I guess, in our education.

I have a sister-in-law who has a Fine Arts degree, and I think it's interesting comparing the way I've gone about it to the way that she has. And her girls are so good at art and writing, and those sorts of activities, and my boys did science and mathematics and logic and electronics and things like that.

So I think that dads tend to perhaps be more hands on, more involved in activities like mathematics or practical activities. But where they struggle is on the empathy side of things, and I know that just knowing knowledge isn't what's needed for teaching it well.

I think about my older brother. He would have made a wonderful teacher. He didn't become a teacher, but it was a lot harder for him to learn subjects than it was for me. And so that made him a better teacher because he could understand when somebody didn't get it.

Whereas for me, if my boys didn't get it, I would just repeat the same thing and berate them for not trying hard enough and wonder why anybody couldn't understand the brilliant explanation that I'd given them.

And I think the biggest challenge for me is to realize that children will remember how you make them feel about something much longer than they'll remember what you're trying to teach them. I'm sure that everybody who's been through public school or had good coaches or mentors and youth activities, the ones that they remember are the ones that made them feel good about themselves.

And if you make your children feel good about themselves as they're learning, they will be much more willing to learn. And they'll remember that much more than if you just force them to do the work that they need to do in order to tick that box, and get the grade, and move on.

That's where I think moms tend to be much more empathetic and loving and kind to their children, and maybe fathers more direct and more hands on and more mathematically or scientifically minded. 

Shanxi: I would love to hear more from your perspective about how do you homeschool boys? I know, especially for moms, they might feel intimidated. I know I was especially feeling like, how do I communicate with this boy who thinks so differently from me? The usual appeals that I might make to my daughter don't necessarily work, for lack of a better word. When I'm speaking with my son, for example, like you were saying, my daughter tends to be more empathetic. She tends to want to see more about the relationships of how things work together, and my son's just interested in just finishing the project and then going on to play with Legos or whatever else it is. 

Craig: Yes, I think stereotypes is a good place to start, but they don't tell the whole picture, and so boys are different. And again, like I believe that God made husbands and wives different and allowed them to complement each other, it's the same with children growing up.

Children have different personalities, and as parents we know that our children respond differently. Something that may work for one child won't necessarily work for the other. So when I generalize, I'm very careful about that, that it won't apply to all boys. It won't necessarily always be the case, but in general I know that boys are more competitive.

A good example to illustrate this is that I'm coaching football, and for the Americans in the audience, football is soccer, and the prize giving in our club. We have a couple of girls teams and a few boys teams, and the coach of the girls team got up and talked about their season and how they had a wonderful season, and it wasn't so much about the results, but they wanted to show care and compassion to their opponents and they offered to pray for them. And even when they got beaten, you know, they developed this relationship with the other team, and so it was a wonderful season.

And I can tell you every boy that was sitting there, thinking, No, that's not us. We just want to beat the opposition. The bigger the score, the better. And I think boys are competitive. They want to win.

So I tried to use that as motivation. I found that my two boys were motivated differently. One really likes challenges. One likes to get finished and be able to focus on other things, like reading or chess or something like that. But in general, boys will respond well to competition. I think they probably respond better to being challenged by something, and they do like to know what it is that they have to do to get finished.

I think for my boys at least, the unschooling approach where you just look to see what your children are interested in and respond to their interests and develop the curriculum that way, it wouldn't work for my boys at least, that they would want to know what they have to do, how much do I have to do, let me get this finished, and then then I'm done.

On that point as well, boys need a lot of exercise. I think that's probably true more than girls. We don't have a daughter, so I can't compare directly, but we found that when they're getting on each other's nerves and when they're fighting too much, they need to go outside, run around the house to get some physical exercise. And I think that's one of the fantastic benefits for home education, is that you can do that anytime of the day.

If you've got 30 children in the classroom, the teacher can't let the boys out to go and run around, run around the school when they're getting noisy or rambunctious. But you can do that in home education. You can adapt to that, give them some exercise, and then let them focus again on these studies. 

Shanxi: You mentioned being an engineer, and how that does affect your teaching? And you know right now STEM is a huge buzzword in the educational realm, and I know many homeschool moms, myself included, might feel intimidated that since we don't have the STEM background, if we do have boys who are interested in subjects that we don't find interesting, how exactly would we go about teaching it? Or are there resources that you found helpful in your homeschool journey that are either free or low cost that other moms might feel like, I can't teach this personally, but maybe I could delegate or find resources out there that could be helpful to me in teaching my kids more about this?

Craig: Yes. I do recognize that with my background, I am biased towards science, but I do think that mathematics is a core subject that should be taught a little and often right from an early age. And I think that an understanding of mathematics, no matter what someone ends up doing, that's important in today's world.

So even if they become an artist or musician, mathematics is still important. Somebody might want to challenge me on that, but that I think is more than just simply my bias. I think mathematics is important in terms of science.

I have changed my view over the years and as I was reflecting on the subjects more recently, I believe now that science is very important when children are young. In a book that Ruth Beecher wrote a number of years ago, she cited a study where a school board tested this, and this is what engineers do. They test things. So I was very interested in the study, and one group of preschoolers, they didn't worry about reading. They just did a lot of science and a lot of hands-on science. They played with things, they melted ice, they looked at magnets, they went down to the stream and looked at what was in the stream. They got out into the bush.

And the other group of preschoolers, they worked through a reading program and taught them how to read well.

And what they found is that a few years down the track, the children that had done the science were reading at a higher level than the children that had done the reading.

And the reason for that was that when you've done science, you learn about the world. And you learn about things. And then when you start reading, you understand what the words mean, and you understand what the stories mean. And you have a much better context for picking up reading and enjoying the reading, whereas the children that had just learned reading in isolation didn't have that context.

And so it took them longer to pick up the reading skills. So I think it's important when children are young, to do a lot of hands-on science.

I think that as they get older, if they're not interested in science, I don't see the point of doing 3 science courses in high school, to be honest. And even though I love science and my boys are doing it because they're interested in it, I'm thinking, you know, if somebody is really into literature or music or something else, what's the point of making them do science at a high school level? So early on, yes, I think you should do it.

And to me, it doesn't matter whether parents have a background in science or not. I believe that we're in a time when we have so many resources available that if there's something that you don't know how to do, there are courses. There are books, there are YouTube videos, there are all kinds of resources that you can use. What I would encourage parents to do is to just let their children get hands on and play with things. Legos are great. We took apart an old computer that we had just have a look to see what's in there and get out into nature, see what's out there, and then provide materials that they need. Or of course they can take that a bit further.

Some engineering type resources. We used an electronics kit that’s eeme.co, I think it was, rather than .com. And every month an electronics kit would come and there are instructions on how to put it together. I like the idea of Mark Robert's Crunch Labs, which is a similar sort of thing, and there's also a company called Kiwico, which provides these resource boxes as well, and they get shipped with instructions on how to build something, engineering-type things, and it teaches about engineering and science that way.

I know that those are quite expensive, so for free resources, there are just lots of YouTube videos, and taking things apart is a great way to learn stuff, and just exploring. 

Shanxi: I really see your point about how everybody should have a general mathematics background because ultimately you can trace so much in life back to mathematics. But for somebody who perhaps grew up, kind of with that aversion to math, or maybe they hadn't been taught how to see math in everyday life. Can you think of resources specifically to those kinds of people that you've found helpful?

Craig: That is something that's hard for me to do. And I told you earlier about my brother who didn't pick things up as quickly as me, but that made him a better teacher. That makes me a poor teacher in that respect because I knew how to do the mathematics. And so when my children struggled, it was difficult for me to know how to teach them.

So this, I think, is the encouragement that I would give to any parents: if you don't know something, then don't let that stop you from teaching it. I think this is a misunderstanding that we have of education in general and teaching in particular. Because education, we tend to think of, as knowledge, and we need somebody who's knowledgeable to be able to pass on that knowledge. That is not what education is.

Education is the raising of a child, and instruction in social, moral and intellectual matters. And intellectual is only a part of it. But the most important part is how we're raising our children in the moral sense.

The Bible talks a lot about wisdom. Proverbs says to seek wisdom above all. And wisdom isn't just knowledge. Wisdom is knowledge within a moral framework. So the moral framework that we provide is more important than the knowledge that we're teaching them.

But the second error I see is that we have been led to believe by the public education system that teachers have the specialist knowledge that they need to be able to educate children.

I believe that the specialist knowledge that they have is how to deal with a classroom full of 20 or 30 children, all at different stages and all coming from different backgrounds, and how to manage that classroom in order for them to learn.

We don't have to deal with that in home education. They’re our children, and we know them and we love them, and so we can teach them in a way that suits them best. But if we just have the knowledge, that to me is an impediment, because just having the knowledge doesn't make you a good teacher.

And I have spent enough time at university to know that the best lecturers are not necessarily the ones that know the most. There does come a point where you do need the knowledge and the instructor needs to have the knowledge to be able to guide a student.

But there are so many resources out there as well. We can find a mathematics program, for example, that will suit our children. It might have video instruction or lesson materials that teach us that knowledge that we might not know ourselves.

I think the important thing is to model to your children how to learn. And if you don't know something, you're learning alongside them. And to me, that is possibly a more powerful way of helping them to learn, then simply saying, Well, this is the answer. You should know this, I know it, and you just do this.

Classical Conversations has the saying that the parent is the lead learner. And so I think as a parent, if you are learning alongside your child, you're setting a great example. You're helping them along the way, and then you can tap into other resources that you need.

An example of that is that our youngest really enjoys the piano. And I did play the guitar. I learned a bit of piano when I was young, and so I taught my boys for a couple of years. But I realized that I was becoming the bottleneck. So we got a piano teacher that they could teach them, and they have really blossomed under an expert tutor. And I know that they wouldn't have just sat down and learned it by themselves.

So there is a point where a good teacher who knows the material can help. But I think as a parent, we can find those people, or those resources, to fill in the gaps that we have, but don't be afraid if you don't know how to do something.

Shanxi: As you were speaking, I almost thought of it as the parent is kind of like the generalist who guides the child ahead of time and knows my child may be interested in, like you were saying, piano lessons, and then you can delegate that to a specialist. But in the meantime, you're being very efficient with your time in that you're not going out to specialists in, say, drumming or other musical instruments that you know your child is not developing or expressing a particular interest in.

Craig: Yeah, Israel Wayne said that his mother had the philosophy that if she could teach her children how to read, how to research, and how to reason, then her children would be able to learn anything that they wanted.

And so, I mentioned mathematics as being important early on. Reading is important. If somebody can read competently, then it opens up the world for them as well. So that's the first step because then that enables a child to become a self-learner.

But if they know how to research, then if there's something that they're interested in, they can go ahead and learn it.

But learning how to think as well. I've been concerned over the last few years to see the lack of logical thought in the world around us, and I want my children to learn how to think logically, how to reason.

I think mathematics teaches the mind how to think in that particular way, but learning how to reason as well so that you can be perceptive in what you're learning is important. 

Shanxi: Thanks so much. Is there any last thoughts that you'd like our audience to take away? Maybe places to find your book or to get in touch with you if they have further questions?

Craig: Sure. A couple of thoughts that I've developed over the last few months, I think, has been as I've been thinking about the message of the book. The first is that this isn't really about home education, it's about family, and educating our children at home is a way to strengthen the family.

But the bigger picture is the family, not the education part of it. It's not the knowledge. So put your family as the priority rather than the schoolwork.

The second thing is that as a parent, you are more than equipped to teach your children because you love them, and that is something that even the best teacher can't do for their children.

They can love them to an extent. They can show compassion and care. But your children are your children, and you look after them full time, and you're going to have them for a long time. They're not going to graduate out of your family, and that makes you the best person to teach them because you love them. You care for them, and you want the best for them.

My book is available on Amazon and Barnes & Noble and thriftbooks.com. I like thriftbooks. And again, it's called Your Child's Best Teacher by Craig Harrison.

I have a website as well. The website is https://books.qrx.group, and on the website I have some resources as well that I mentioned in the book, and they're available for free for parents that want to download that.

Shanxi: Thanks so much for listening. We hope you were encouraged in your homeschool journey.

Please continue the conversation with us on our website, midwesthomeschoolers.org, or email us at podcast@midwestparenteducators.org. We're also active on social media if you'd like to connect with us there.

Thanks to Kevin McLeod of incompetech.com for providing this royalty-free song Wholesome, which is licensed under creativecommons.org.