When You Sigh My Mind Inside Just Flies

If you’re new in town, Unorganized Hancock are my children. One is 20, the other 12. The 12-year-old is currently being homeschooled by my wife. He is interested in computer programming. He has memorized the scripting language for an ancient FPS game called Doom that used to run in MS-DOS, booted from a floppy. If the game sounds stupid to you, you’re not paying attention. It was an amazing piece of programming for the time, and the method the authors used to project 3-dimensional space as you pass through it, using only a few lines of code, is as elegant and clever as Brunelleschi’s version for drawing on paper. I have no idea why he leaned to do that. He just found it interesting.

He gets bored. Playing the drums is just something he does. He’s not all that interested in it. I have maintained publicly that he is the best drummer in the world at his age range for over three years now, but have been mostly misunderstood. People see professionally produced videos of youngsters playing drum solos with no songs attached, or playing along with moronic metal songs from mom’s boyfriend’s Metallica library, but those children are not musicians. They are performing data entry. They hit the drums at a designated time in a designated order. They are not making music with anyone, whether or not the source material is even music at all. When my little boy was nine, he was playing with another person (his brother) for three, one-hour sets, for money, in front of hundreds of people. That’s a musician. He has been the best 9,10,11, and now 12-year-old drummer in the world because he’s been the only one.

As I said, he gets bored. We’re poor and live in an isolated place. He has to amuse himself a lot. He asked his brother to find some free software he could use to make animations. He has been drawing animations in MS Paint, because it came with his computer, but it’s so laborious as to defy description. His brother found a free version of Flash, which is very primitive, but it does allow you to actually animate things. Big brother loaded it on his computer, and he suggested he make an animation to go along with a version of the Beatles It’s Only Love. The boys had recorded it some months ago and didn’t know what to do with it. The recording sounds orchestral, but it’s just singing, an acoustic guitar, and a bass. Those boys can twiddle some knobs, though, can’t they?

No one showed the little guy how to use the software. Homeschooling teaches people that learning is an approach, not a curriculum to be memorized. He just found what he needed on YouTube and then got underway. He worked entirely by himself with no input from any of us. He laid out the sort of little visual story he wanted, drew all the cells with his computer mouse, and aligned the music to the visuals. It only took him a few days to get it all done. When I first saw it, I asked him how he was able to get the mouth shapes to align perfectly with the words being sung. He said he looked up some form of encyclopedia that showed pictures of mouths as they form phonetic sounds, and memorized it.

I asked him how it was possible for him to do all this. He said, “Well, I’ve had the program for almost a week now.”

Oh.

[Update: Many thanks go out to Saul J. from Warwickshire, UK, for his generous contribution to the boys’ equipment fund via the PayPal button. It is very much appreciated]
[Up-Update: Many thanks to our friend Chasmatic from the Land of Enchantment for his continuing generosity via our PayPal button. It is very much appreciated]

Homeschool 101: You Know The Drill

If you’re new in these parts, these are my homeschooled children, who call themselves Unorganized Hancock, performing at a function hall in the little town where we live in western Maine. The older one is still younger than many high school seniors, but he’s got his diploma already. The little one is eleven now.

I’ve written from time to time about homeschooling, but no one pays any attention to anything I say about it. The Instapundit and many other large, ocean-going  ships of the blogosphere have linked to my essays about homeschooling, and strangers come and go, and usually launch into their diatribes about how homeschoolers are weirdos that don’t vaccinate their kids and only learn about chemtrails or how fracking causes autism, depending on which cable TV shows you prefer. Others assume my kids won’t have time to learn to read and write because they must be chanting the Paternoster all day, with no time left for none a dat book lernin‘.

I’ll try one more time to explain what’s going on, then I’ll give up. What you’re looking at are the fruits of the only approach to education that works. I won’t equivocate one iota: It’s the only approach that works. Please try to understand what I wrote, right there in simple, declarative, italicized words, so that you can ken what I’m driving at. We teach our children at home because we want to use the only approach to learning that works for humans. The. Only. One. Here it is. You’re welcome:

There is no new math, or old math for that matter. No matter how many other approaches other people try, how much mewling is transcribed on the Internet about socialization, or how many tennis balls you put on the bottoms of the legs of your kindergarten chairs, it’s all wrong and it doesn’t work. Like a volume knob that makes the radio louder when you turn it clockwise, and diminishes the sound when it’s turned counter-clockwise until it clicks off, the design was perfect on the first attempt and cannot be improved. Every variation after that will be worse. People who want to break new ground without doing anything constructive will change the way that knob operates to become notable for the novelty, but it’s always worse.

Human children can only learn constructive things by one approach: Drill, Drill, Drill — Test. What you’re looking at is the culmination of Drill, Drill, Drill — Test. To be more specific, you’re looking at the test. Like duck’s feet on the pond, the drill, drill, drill happened in the rehearsal room where it belongs. When drill was done, they were ready for the test.

The impresario running this performance approached me halfway through and told me that the other acts didn’t show up, and asked if my boys could play for more than their scheduled half-hour. UH pulled this song out of a hat, and many others, and played them more or less perfectly, and even added mugging for laughs by the little one. Simply playing the song was nothing for him or his brother. Playing that song was just the residue of drill, drill, drill, long ago, and they’d done their homework.

Before someone says, sure, if the kids spend all their time on music at the expense of their other studies, anyone could produce an eleven-year-old playing music for money, and a big kid that can do the same with only an eleven-year-old to help him, I need to be plain again: Music is treated as extra-curricular activity at our house. The little one doesn’t even care about playing the drums. He likes electronic music. And before you try saying these kids must have a leg up somehow, like private tutors or something, you need to understand that we are profoundly poor, living way below the poverty line, and they learned to play music like this in a room with no electricity or heat. You don’t need those things to Drill, Drill, Drill — Test. If you like the way they play a Beatles song, you’ll love the way they decline verbs, because the same approach is used for everything.

Both children receive Drill, Drill, Drill — Test for every subject, taught by their mother. They can write, and spell, and add, and know the difference between carbon monoxide and carbon dioxide, and everything else kids in public schools do not know, because the administrators won’t let the teachers drill, drill, drill, but make the kids take the tests anyway, and fail miserably.

Drill, Drill, Drill — Test is the only approach that works. There isn’t another one. If you’re trying another one, you’re wasting your time, and another human being’s life. It’s really that simple.