Why Homeschoolers Can’t Answer “What Grade Are You In?”
Grade Levels Were Made for Schools… Not for Kids
There is a running gag in the homeschooling world about how confusing grade levels are for homeschoolers. When I ask a homeschooled child what grade they are in, they often have to pause and think. “Um….tenth grade-ish,” they will say, with a bit of uncertainty. Sometimes they can’t even answer; they will look at their mom, imploring her to try to explain.
Funny as this is, there’s a reason for it. When you homeschool, you individualize subject matter and scheduling, which means your children do not progress through the curriculum at a uniform pace. It is common to have a student studying 7th-grade math, 9th-grade literature, and 8th-grade science simultaneously. Some students continue homeschooling over the summer, while others don’t; some require additional half or even quarter semesters outside the regular two-semester school year to accommodate certain classes. Some take dual enrollment and are high school juniors and college freshmen simultaneously. When you start individualizing education for particular children, grade levels become less and less meaningful.
Grade levels are generally taken for granted in the academic world. They are simply part of the schooling experience we are introduced to as children, and as such we tend to accept them uncritically as a fundamental structure of the educational paradigm. But like everything else we take for granted, we ought to stop and ask ourselves why grade levels exist in the first place—What is their purpose? What problem are they meant to solve? And are they relevant in a homeschool environment?
Where Did Grade Levels Come From?
Graded schooling is based on the premise that children of similar age groups should be educated together (for this reason graded education is sometimes called “age segregated schooling”). However, this premise itself is built upon a more foundational assumption: that children should be expected to progress at a uniform pace. These are considerd recent developments in the history of education, first embraced in early modern Prussia and then introduced to the United States in the 1840s by educational reformers such as Horace Mann. It was not until the 1870s that the modern grade system became widespread. Prior to this, children of multiple ages were all educated together (as continued to be the case for some time in smaller school districts where one room schoolhouses endured into the 20th century).
What Was The Purpose of Graded Education?
We often do not give sufficient thought to how socio-economic trends bleed into other aspects of our lives, and this is certainly the case when it comes to the history of graded education. Graded education was a product of the Industrial Revolution, that era of modern history which saw the widespread scaling of mechanized modes of production. One organizational development that made the Industrial Revolution possible was standardization, the process of developing and applying uniform technical standards to allow for the efficient mass production of goods and machinery, which could be assembled and repaired more easily and with less reliance on skilled labor. The decades after the Civil War saw a standardization craze sweep American business, which gave rise to the corporate bureaucracy as we know it today.
This passion for standardization was not confined to the industrial world. It seeped into every other facet of society. The federal government, for example, undertook a massive program of standardization during this time, culminating in the Pendleton Civil Service Act of 1883, which essentially established the modern federal bureaucracy.
Howard Mann’s Influence
In the educational world, graded education emerged out of the desire to apply industrial and military conceptions of standardization to education. This was part of the platform of the educational reformer Horace Mann (1796-1859), who advocated for educational uniformity across the United States. Uniform grade levels for students were only a small part of Mann’s program. Mann also argued for standardizing the school year. He wanted consistent expectations for how many days per year children attended school. He also supported standardizing the number of hours per day students spent in class. Mann further promoted the creation of “normal schools.” These were early teacher colleges that trained future educators in standardized teaching methods. This training helped establish teaching as a professional career. That professionalization became a hallmark of modern education.
Do Grade Levels Have Relevance for Homeschoolers?
The answer is yes and no.
First, at a bureaucratic level, yes, grade levels matter, if for no other reason than that they are so entrenched in our society’s educational system that we are all compelled to retain them. For better or worse, graded education is the lingua franca our society uses to measure how far along the educational journey a student has come.
They are also helpful for evaluating the suitability of curricula. Even if I don’t apply strict grade levels to my own children, I find it helpful when books and other homeschooling resources have suggested grade levels. When a text says it is “meant for a 7th-grade reading level” or a class is advertised as a “senior-level course.” Granting that terms like “7th grade reading” and “senior level” are still a bit subjective, they do nevertheless function as helpful indicators of the difficulty and complexity of resources.
They can also help give a child a sense of where they are on the educational ladder. If you dispense with any form of grading, children may feel somewhat indeterminate about their education. It is always helpful for anyone completing a long-term task to understand where they are in the process and how much further they have to go.
Uniformity and Standardization
You will notice, however, that I have omitted mention of what Mann considered the most important reason for graded education—uniformity in the content and progress of education. This is something homeschoolers can absolutely do without. It is, in fact, the rejection of this uniformity that results in the fuzzy grade levels used by many homeschool families. Graded education emerged from a cultural milieu that was moving towards standardization, bureaucracy, and regimentation as the building blocks of social organization. Homeschooling represents a counter-movement away from these values.
Apprenticeship, Not Industrial Standardization
This is why homeschooling families should not feel compelled to use traditional grade levels to gauge progress. We now know that children’s social and cognitive development is highly individualized and does not follow the standardized progression Mann and the 19th-century reformers assumed. But if uniform progress is out, is there any other educational model we can turn to in order to assess progress?
My adult daughter, Lucy, is currently about seven months into a work apprenticeship program, and I have observed that her progress is based entirely on mastery, not on time. Her employer focuses on introducing Lucy to specific skills and building mastery in them. When Lucy masters a skill, she moves on to more challenging work. If she has not mastered the skill, she stays where she is until she has. There is no set timeframe for her advancement. She is ready when she demonstrates readiness. When she asks her boss when she will be allowed to do such-and-such a task, the boss tells her, “When you’re ready.”
This is how traditional apprenticeships have functioned throughout history. This is an ideal template for home education. We are not looking at education as a time commitment. (“Do your four years and then you’re out.”) Rather, we are seeking an opportunity to guide our children to pursue excellence in their endeavors. They move on when they have mastered a subject matter, which necessarily means they will advance more swiftly in some subjects than others.
Conclusion
The long and short of it is that grade levels can retain some value as metrics for assessing curricula and giving your children a sense of progress in their education, but we should not hang our hats on them as the ultimate arbiter of where a child “should” be or what that child ought to be doing—much less whether that child is “ahead” or “behind.” Grade levels were made for children, not children for grade levels.
What are your thoughts on this topic? Join other homeschooling parents and me in the Homeschool Connections Facebook Group or in the HSC Community to continue the conversation.
