Thoughts on Mastery

When I started homeschooling, I literally brought school home.  Then I read and read and read and we settled into the Well Trained Mind / Classical Education.  I like the general ideas and although I am sure there are kids who thrive on unschooling, none of them live in my house.  I think if we tried unschooling my boys would literally lie on the floor and do nothing.  So we work away at classical education.  Some days are better than others and I come nowhere near doing all the stuff in WTM.  This week I am struggling with the boredom of mastery.  I think we have a lot of problems in our country connected to the poor quality of education and I think a lot of that can be connected to the lack of mastery of basic information like reading proficiency and math facts.  So in our homeschool we focus on mastery.  When I start to struggle, everything I read is to mix things up or do something different, but no one out there seems to be talking about the value of pushing through and reaching mastery.  Besides the obvious advantages of the actual mastery of the material, there are non-academic advantages to mastery.  Mastery develops self-discipline and teaches the value of hard work and sticking to a job that is hard.  As the homeschool mom though, I just plain get tired sometimes and I need to be reminded of those same things not only for my boys, but for myself as well.  As I stick to my goals of mastery despite the boredom or frustration, I am continuing to develop my own self-discipline and I am teaching my children that these are life long goals worth developing.  Beyond all that, there is great power in mastery.  Once a child has pushed through the difficulty and boredom and actually mastered something hard they feel stronger.  Then the next difficult thing they approach they have greater confidence that they can do it.  This is a beautiful cycle that keeps coming around.  So the next time you are struggling watching the grass of mastery grow remember all the blessings that come from pushing through the difficulties and reaching the goal.