Why I like TJED

 "Education is the power to think clearly, the power to act well in the world’s work, and the power to appreciate life."  - Brigham Young

TJED or Thomas Jefferson Education is leadership education.  It is a way of educating that is a little different than the way we usually think about education.  People can apply it's principles wether they send their kids to school or teach them at home.  I read the book A Thomas Jefferson Education: Teaching a Generation of Leaders for the Twenty First-Century by Oliver DeMille about a year and a half ago (recommended by my friend, Angela).  When I first read it, I knew this was the type of education I wanted for my children.

I won't go into great detail about this.  I highly recommend the book as well as Leadership Education: The Phases of Learning to anyone interested, but I'll just explain why I was drawn to it.

Too often in school, we are taught what to learn.  We need to know certain facts and things in order to do well on tests.  When I first started looking into homeschooling - that was my focus - what are they "supposed" to know at this age?  What should I be having them learn?

What I liked about TJED is that it focuses, instead, on teaching children how to learn, how to think.  It focuses on teaching kids to love learning.  It gives children freedom about what to learn and thus children are motivated, excited and have ownership over their own education.

I want my children to learn how to think about and evaluate things so that they can use their creativity to "think outside the box", to solve problems and lead out in innovative ways.

Basically, we learn how to think by being exposed to the great minds and ideas of the past.  We read and thus learn from the lives, mistakes and triumphs of those who have gone before us.  As we read their thoughts, we see things from their perspective and we learn to understand, to see things more clearly or in a new light.

"If I have seen further it is only by standing on the shoulders of giants."   Isaac Newton

I know that my school experience was a very watered-down version of this.  For example, I learned about a certain war - the name, the date and some basic conflicts that led to it, but I didn't ever read anyone's words that experienced it.  I didn't read about their feelings, their ideas, why they felt war was necessary or not.  Or, I learned about a certain math formula, but not about the excitement of it's discovery or the frustrations before it came about.

That is one thing that attracted me to TJED.   We read the words of people who have experienced life and what they've learned and contributed.  It's exciting and real.  It's not just bits of information that we need to know to pass a test.

On this day, we got done cleaning the kitchen and Bud asked,

"Is it study time yet?"  I said, "Yes, you can have study time now."

He exclaimed, "Yay!  I want to read  Moby Dick!" (abridged version)

and Little Miss said, "I want to read Harry Potter!"

I can't remember what Spice was reading, but I remember thinking,

"Hmmm, we must be doing something right!"

The other thing that really motivated me to do TJED is that the responsibility for learning is placed where it belongs - on the student.  Children learn from an early age that their education is their responsibility.  I can not force any of my kids learn.  I may be able to make them memorize something for a time or reiterate something I have taught, but it won't become part of them - unless they choose to learn it.

I've only really been doing TJED for about 4 or 5 months.  I tried my best the first year I homeschooled, but I was too afraid to really give the kids control over their learning.  I didn't realize that I never had the control in the first place.  It has been so great so far!  The kids are really thriving with it.  We all feel inspired to learn as much as we can.  I'll go into more detail about this later.  I'll expound a little on all of these things as I write about how I'm trying to utilize the teaching principles.  This is just a brief explanation of why chose this path in the first place.

For a quick overview of TJED click here.

This post is part of my thoughts on educating the kids.