Sunday, January 4, 2015

Update on Scholarship test

Chana begged me to allow her to pull an all-nighter on Motzei Shabbos so she could finish the animation she was working on.  I said no, she has to go to bed by midnight so she has enough sleep before the test.  I suggested she wake up at 5am if she wanted to get some animation in.  She didn't.

She took a calculator to the test but said that it was easier to do the math without the calculator.  But that she didn't get any of the multiple choice answers.  So she guessed.  And she guessed on most of the questiosn.  Except ones where you had to fill in answers.  Which she left out.  It was a 3 hour test and she finished in an hour and 15 minutes.  She did not seem stressed or upset that she didn't know the answers.  She said if high school is for going to learn the answers to these questions, it's going to be boring.  She said that she didn't much see the point of her waking up and sitting through that.  She's probably right.

Interesting is the difference between her as an 8th grader taking a test and me as an 8th grader taking a test.  She doesn't feel it's an especially meaningful indicator of her value or of the value of her education.  Homeschoolers do tend towards skills and knowledge later, mostly because they are busy playing and because it doesn't make a huge difference in the long run.  Sort of like learning to read at age 3 or age 7, or learning to walk at 9 months or 16 months.

She's been animating all day and it's almost time for me to put the boys to bed and I'm not going to be very in the mood to do schoolwork after that.

2 comments:

  1. my friend, who is an educator, asked me:
    Are you ok with all this?

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    Replies
    1. Yes I am. Chana has not yet learned the skill of test taking. I am confident that if she wants to do so, she will master it quickly. And if she doesn't want to do so, she will be able to navigate her life just fine without it.

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