October 11, 2009
Britain's Central Planning Death Panels
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Free Market M.D.
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Economies of Scale in Compliance
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Balan's Challenge
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The Pleasure of Telling Others What to Do
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Gonick the Great - and How He Could Have Been Greater
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More Scott Sumner
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Not From The Onion
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Thoughts on a Second Stimulus
It's not quite individual tutoring, but the price is right: The Teaching Company
http://www.teach12.com/
We supplemented our daughter's homeschooling with these starting about age 10; by the time she got her GED at age 16 (she has since graduated from the University of Texas at Austin and is pursuing a Master's degree) she had some 2000 hours of college level lectures under her belt.
And I never listen to the radio; there is always a lecture playing in the CD during my commute.
This is a good idea for another reason: there is a Ph.D. glut. How many Ph.D.'s would rather teach capable pupils from good homes than relocate their lives to Northwest Armpit State University?
I second the Teaching Company recommendation. Cost-effective way to get great lectures from college profs. I've gotten courses for myself there on Milton, Chaucer, Shakespeare, History of the English Language, Physiology, Herodotus, Intro finance.
Of course, there's OpenCourseWare at MIT for the more advanced. For continuing ed in history, I recommend History According to Bob podcast. (Maybe you don't want to expose younger kids to that - he likes getting into some gritty detail, and really loves covering (in)famous courtesans.)
The issue isn't so much finding good resources for learning material, but finding a way to confirm one has learned the material (i.e., tests and grading). That you will definitely not get for free, though there are plenty of people who will teach for free (cf Bob's podcast).
In any case, I'm sure something can be done with the "credentialing" issue. Various homeschooling programs have formal tests & graders to confirm one has covered particular material. And there's always the AP tests.
The Teaching Company is fine if you think of learning as listening to lectures. But I have a saying that
Teaching = Feedback
Lectures on DVD don't provide that.
thanks for the nice article :)