Homeschooling Composition: A Retrospective

Last Updated: 16-Feb-2020

Background

One of the unfortunate truths about K-12 composition teaching is that a lot of what the students learn needs to be un-learned once the students leave school. School essays are often about either literature or personal anecdote, neither of which is in terribly high demand outside of school. Essays often come with word-count requirements which encourage padding. In the "real world" brevity is usually preferred over verbosity.

So ... the aspects of writing that my wife and I tried to instill in our homeschooled child:

Don't Be Boring!

"Shoot the sheriff in the first paragraph."
Good grammar and correct spelling are important, but what is even more important is keeping the reader's attention. Try to have something interesting to say.

Part of not being boring is getting the reader's attention with the first paragraph or first sentence.

Lest one fear that this is impossible in non-fiction, I offer the opening paragraph to the "States of Matter" textbook, by David L. Goldstein:
Ludwig Boltzmann, who spent much of his life studying statistical mechanics, died in 1906, by his own hand. Paul Ehrenfest, carrying on the work, died similarly in 1933. Now it is our turn to study statistical mechanics.
An interesting introduction is possible. It may just be difficult. This makes successfully finding or inventing an interesting introduction all the more valuable.

Have a Point

It is a very good thing for an essay to have a point!

One can be a bit unsure when one begins — the word "essay" also mean "to attempt" — but re-work and editing should eventually result in an essay with a point.

That point should be clear to any reader and should almost always be made clear in the introductory paragraph. If the reader doesn't understand what you are trying to say, the reader will have a very difficult time following your reasons for believing what you do.

Come To the Point

TEACHER: Your problem is, you started your story on page 7.
STUDENT: What? No I didn't — I started it on page 1. See?
TEACHER: No, you started typing on page 1. You started your story on page 7.
"I made this [letter] longer only because I have not had the leisure to make it shorter."
A target word-count encourages padding.

Instead, we tried to set topics that had a (sorta) natural size. Writing tersely was then encouraged as long as enough content was covered. This can result in a back-and-forth as one encourages more exposition and THEN encourages tightening the essay to be shorter.

A target word-count doesn't do a good job of encouraging either.

Making an Argument

There are three broad ways to convince people of something and different people tend to be convinced differently. These ways are: A good essay will try to use all three:

Good Enough Detail Work

None of this is to suggest that grammar and spelling are unimportant.

Or that learning to cite sources doesn't matter (though the specific format is probably irrelevant ... as is getting all the nitty details of whatever arbitrary format the teacher wants).

It just turns out that the easiest aspects to grade (spelling, grammar, formatting details) are the least important once a particular level has been reached. We tried to focus on the other aspects with just enough attention paid to the detail work that bad spelling and grammar didn't detract from the essay.