quality, not quantity of work

Time to get a little bit philosophical. It doesn’t happen often, so I hope you will stick with me on this one. I value your input.
A couple of things coincided to get me thinking about the idea of quality vs. quantity in our homeschool.

First, I was reading Amy’s Charlotte Mason blog (as I always try to do) and was struck by her latest excerpt in which Miss Mason compares the quality of work expected of children in England versus those of other countries such as France and Germany. Miss Mason writes:

‘Throw perfection into all you do’ is a counsel upon which a family may be brought up with great advantage. We English, as a nation, think too much of persons, and too little of things, work, execution. Our children are allowed to make their figures or their letters, their stitches, their dolls’ clothes, their small carpentry, anyhow, with the notion that they will do better by-and-by. Other nations––the Germans and the French, for instance––look at the question philosophically, and know that if children get the habit of turning out imperfect work, the men and women will undoubtedly keep that habit up.

Miss mason continues in today’s excerpt:

No work should be given to a child that he cannot execute perfectly, and then perfection should be required from him as a matter of course. For instance, he is set to do a copy of strokes, and is allowed to show a slateful at all sorts of slopes and all sorts of intervals; his moral sense is vitiated, his eye is injured. Set him six strokes to copy; let him, not bring a slateful, but six perfect strokes, at regular distances and at regular slopes. If he produces a faulty pair, get him to point out the fault, and persevere until he has produced his task; if he does not do it to-day, let him go on to-morrow and the next day, and when the six perfect strokes appear, let it be an occasion of triumph. So with the little tasks of painting, drawing, or construction he sets himself––let everything he does be well done.

The second thing that happened was that I was reading the comments from my last entry and Sherry’s kind comment caught my attention:
“You don’t halfway do any project, do you?”

Hmmm…(that’s me thinking, btw)

Short answer: No, not really. Or at least we try not to.

Longer answer:

I have to say that I have long held the belief, unknowingly in agreement with Miss Mason, that we should expect quality work from our children. I would, as CM points out, rather have six perfect strokes than a page full of hurried slop. And although I do not adhere to this philosophy strictly, it does serve as an underlying guiding principle in our school.

I think it teaches our children an important lesson about the value of work when we insist that they put forward their best efforts. My children often hear me saying (echoing my own mother’s admonitions)  “Anything worth doing is worth doing well.” I strongly believe that, and I think the opposite must be true also: if it isn’t worth doing well, then it isn’t worth doing. Why give out an assignment if you do not expect it to be done well? What is the point of that? What message does it send our children when we accept less than their best?

So, when Superboy does a project, I expect to see his very best effort. Yes, on pretty much everything. But before you think I am a terrible taskmaster, I also realize that when you expect a high level of quality work you must cut back on quantity or your children become overwhelmed.

For this reason we do not do alot of daily busy work. If you look at the number of things Superboy does in a day, compared to a typical school-at-home daily plan, you might think he isn’t doing much at all. It’s true I tend to expect fewer products than alot of folks, but they tend to be bigger. He does not fill up notebooks with essays, do daily copywork, comprehension questions, or pages and pages of math problems. He is, however writing a book, reading good books and telling me all about them, writing papers on topics he feels strongly interested in, and doing projects that require him to think and grow and make use of his skills.

Am I wrongheaded in my approach? Should we instead be cranking out the worksheets and filling in the blanks? What is the fruit of all this focus on quality over quantity? I will tell you! Superboy has not only learned that my expectation is quality, but has internalized this expectation and made it his own! He knows what quality work is, can evaluate the quality of his own products, takes criticism well, and  rarely fails to amaze me in his efforts to show me what he can really do.
And he has earned the right to be proud.

And, as Miss Mason advises, we celebrate.

So…anyone care to discuss? What is your approach to quality and quantity and how does it play out in your homeschool?