Summary

As to what I classes I will teach for the 2024-2025 homeschool season, I apply the state of Tennessee high school requirements; meld in the UofM and UTK college requirements; and then put my own spin on things.

I have my misgivings because of the current state of academia is decidedly NOT about learning, but wearing soiled diapers. Students are to universities as folks are to Java games, YouTube activity et al consumed in today's libraries. Who reads anymore? Still, there is value in having the freedom of movement to pivot.

Background

It is funny how the folks down in vo-tech who ate paste as a kid made the genius play whereas all the "smart" kids taking Advanced Placement (like that matters) were dumber than a bag of hammers. But in my brethen's defense (and me!), that was the prevailing norm; we were told by our elders that was the play to be made. And having a college gateway made sense, finding the wheat factory workers at the chaff factory.

When they let anybody and everybody into college, chaff all around, my first degree lost its value. For Tennessee, I suppose this was kicked off in 2002 when the tax on the poor—err, the state lottery—came to town with the "Hope" scholarship. "Redistributing the wealth of the poor to the poor...brilliant!" Any time an agenda is pushed with utopian language, you know it's gotta be a bunch of mularkey.

And this leads me to examine things: is scarcity the only value of a college degree? Is today's UofM undergrad diploma worth $42,912 + financing + the lost 4 years of prime experience & wage earning? Perhaps, we ought to break it down by a program and see whom makes the cut.

Truly, there is nothing magical to a college diploma. It doesn't show that its holder can actually do anything beyond MAYBE acquiring passage beyond the human resources automated gatekeepers. As I get older, I ask, "Should we live in a world like that?"

My degrees do not impart special knowledge to me. Everything I know not from scars can be picked up in a book. Again, being directed which way to go is the kicker, and any book worth its salt does just that.

Does all of this sound like someone who once was working on his PhD. No, but it does sound like someone who kicked living on debt for a PhD to the curb for additional resources.

Application

OK, let's sweep all of those papers off the desk, what am I gonna teach this homeschool season?

Well, I wish I could teach more vocational classes! Imagine that: teaching to get a vocation! The fruit of liberal arts is about as overrated as the promise of playing professional foosball.

The other day, I dumped a wheelbarrow of cash for the kids' textbooks. In most cases, I bought the teacher's edition of each text plus only a single copy of the students to offset the expenses. I find value in Bob Jones University Press (BJU), so it is heavily featured.

There is no razzle-dazzle for my 5th grader as she's acquiring tools at Harbor Freight and Home Depot, so it is your basic run-through of Bible, Math, Science, History, and English.

I've come to loathe the term Social Studies—what does that even mean? It sounds as though I am behind a one-way mirror observing lunchtime interactions. Just call it Junk Drawer. Junk Drawer was a favorite class of mine in primary school. I pulled out of it a Psychology class I liked in high school. But, that World Geography could have been tossed out. How is that even a discipline? What, should there be an Adjective building on campus?

It reminds me of English at the University of Memphis. We had a technical writing class just for engineering students. Our ESL program had EDD's and there was some clammering for the program to be taken in by the teaching college.

As a business major, I took Business Communication with the business college, which was an English class for all intents and purposes. My take on that class: I once skipped class to go to the zoo by myself.

An element of English as a Foreign Language (EFL) is English for Specific Purposes (ESP). Think business, flight controller, etc., but it floats back to an English teacher who does not typically possess the keys to those kingdoms.

For my own contrast & comparison in graduate school, I took two web design courses, one hosted by the School of Journalism and the other one over in the MBA program. I didn't care about the actual nuts and bolts—that came easy—I wanted to understand the perspective and requirements of each discipline and then fold it into my linguistics studies.

If we strip out the useful programs out of an English department, does it just become a place of funzies, gushing about books we've read? Yeah, that just might NOT be worth that $42,912 + financing + the lost 4 years of prime experience & wage earning.

Is it possible to have a pragmatic education?

I don't know...the checkmarks are...dumb.

This is what I will be teaching 10th and 7th grader:

Fall 2024

Mondays & Wednesdays

• Systematic Theology
• Nutrition, Personal Finance, and Economics
• Spanish

Tuesdays & Thursdays

• Organizational Leadership
• History: the United States
• Geometry & Chemistry

Fridays

• The Vo-Tech Series: Electrical

Spring 2025

Mondays & Wednesdays

• Systematic Theology
• Foundations of Programming
• Spanish

Tuesdays & Thursdays

• Organizational Leadership
• Entrepreneurship
• Geometry & Chemistry

Fridays

• The Vo-Tech Series: Plumbing

Note: English is literature self-study along with a Writing Across the Curriculum approach.

Course Details

Systematic Theology

Text: Grudem's Systematic Theology

It's funny how the most important things are rarely taught. Instead, we had our daily commercials about SNES Donkey Kong and Crystal Pepsi on Channel One. As adults, what have we become? A daily life of Donkey Kongs and Crystal Pepsi colas. As Switchfoot sings, "We were meant to live for so much more. Have we lost ourselves?"

What of our character? Our legacy? What inheritance will I give?

Will my kids write twenty years after my death of how foundational it was to have me in their lives, that my voice remains in their heads?

Nutrition, Personal Finance, and Economics

Texts & Resources: The Total Money Makeover by Dave Ramsey; GnuCash; Hegemony tabletop game; content inspired by The Case Against Sugar by Gary Taubes; carnivore videos of Dr. Ken Berry and Kelly Hogan. TBD.

A combo class that I've found to have a positive correlation! On their own, they are more of a workshop/seminar. Mastering this class fusion is critical for life success.

Organization Leadership

Texts: Maxwell's The 21 Irrefutable Laws of Leadership, Goldratt's The Goal: A Process of Ongoing Improvement, Willink's Extreme Ownership: How U.S. Navy SEALs Lead and Win.

I see this as an ongoing class. There is a shortage of good leaders in this world and until we serve, we can save a lot of heartache by not following the bad ones.

The Vo-Tech Series

Text: TBD

This is my first foray of many into teaching DIY courses, putting very practical tools into my kids' hands, bringing down that car I built above so that its rubber meets the road.

History: United States

Text: U.S. History, Grade 11, 5e

More valuable than Geometry and Chemistry, there is value in understanding the past to put the present into historical context and understand.

English: Self-study & Writing Across the Curriculum

Text: Elements of Literature, Grade 10, 2e

I prefer a writing across the curriculum, writing not unto itself but purposefully.

There may be value in recognizing reoccurring themes in literature, though the why's slip through my fingers. Can you find them?

Literature is no different than those fake movie classes. Do we ask the question if we should study entertainment? What value is it for me to hand out a writing assignment on Creed's Weathered, an album I'd listened to in autumn 2002 as I drove home with my arm out the window on I-240 from work at Germantown Baptist to my place way over in north Midtown. On Fridays, it featured a Vanilla Coke and California Dill Lay's potato chips!

Frankly, I do not understand the value of giving the Creed experience more significance twenty years down the road. So it is with literature.

Checkmarks.

While this year, I am providing a literature book for self-study, as a cost-saving measure, this subject will likely be discontinued after the book is exhausted as the subject completely melts into other disciplines.

Geometry

Text: Geometry, Grade 10, 4e

We're finishing up the second half to just checkmark the req's with this one. Algebra II is coming soon. Outside of LxW, Geometry isn't featured in life. At the end of the day, a 5-gallon bucket has "5-gallon" on it...or you just know what it is...or it's a "Golly gee that's a bunch of water dripping from the ceiling—go get that vo-tech guy" bucket.

Chemistry

Text: Chemistry, Grade 11, 5e

Worse than Geometry. How many chemists do you know? The food scientists I worked with typically had a few letters behind their names, and I don't think they handed those out in high school to make that cheese powder addicting. The subject really is too specialized for secondary. But, some monkee a long time ago saw it, and required it. Monkees have been falling off and bumping their heads ever since.

Spanish

Text: BJU Press Spanish 1, 3E

If Spanish was the lingua franca of the world, I could buy into becoming bilingual. While all my friends took a couple of years of this, none of us ever broke out into Spanish. How could we have? The thing is, it really is the wrong way to learn a language. What is the motivation for the student?

The takeaway from its study is in examining your own language, which I would argue, like grammar, "What's the point if there is no failure to communicate?" Ah, we must appease the Requirements and Grammar gods!

Again, this is a checkmark. It is not the stuff of character and legacy.

Conclusion

I hope this course set gives homage to The Requirements while giving an upgrade to the kids' workshops. Maybe the biggest thing of this approach is for them to think on their own and not be like the raving mad sheep, so quick to bleat to join The Cool Kid's Table. And while I did not directly address the subject, a lot of this coursework all ties together for the Entrepreneur class.

There are times when all the world's asleep
The questions run too deep
For such a simple man
Won't you please, please tell me what we've learned?
I know it sounds absurd
Please tell me who I am

-Supertramp, The Logical Song (1979)