Mass schooling has not been the norm for very long. In the US, it wasn't until the early twentieth century that the number of American children attending school increased to well past the majority, but at that point approximately half those children were attending one-room schools. Soon after, every state required students to complete elementary school, and by mid-century, at least half of young adults in the US had earned a high school diploma.

So, though mass schooling is perhaps responsible for a corresponding rise in literacy and general education, perhaps we have outgrown the model. Class sizes have fluctuated in public schools corresponding to school budget issues, and are currently larger than they should be for optimal student learning and well being.

My first grade Catholic school class photo shows 60 bright and shining faces, with students lined up: girls at desks in rows, and boys on the sides of the room, with one little nun in charge! That was more than half a century ago, and things have changed a lot since, but an argument can be made that perhaps a more customized venue for schooling is in order.

Of all subjects taught, math is perhaps the one that benefits most from a more individualized approach. A homeschool math curriculum can accommodate individual student's needs to a much greater degree, while also remedying many of the other challenges facing the public school system at the moment, such as conforming to the methods and materials chosen by the district.

Math is probably the subject most susceptible to trends and fads in the choices districts make for programs and textbooks. Students struggle to accommodate these many changes, as do their parents while attempting to help with homework! A homeschool math curriculum can easily opt for consistency with common sense and innovative methods that fit each student.

Perhaps an underlying factor in this tendency to experiment with different strategies on the part of public schools and school districts is the fact that schools are failing their students, not that students are failing in school. Compare math scores in the US with those of other developed countries to verify this fact. Students and their parents are subjected to and must suffer through this trial and error process in the struggle to find a math curriculum that works.

Math of all subjects has perhaps suffered most from the assembly line model. When it is approached in a piecemeal, abstract, unrelated fashion math becomes dull, losing its inherent interesting and dynamic nature, and in the process, its ability to hold students' interest beyond that of merely succeeding at mechanical computation. While the mechanical model may work for some, most students are alienated and left out of the loop by it.

In his 1991 essay, The Concept of School As a Factory, Lon Woodbury states, "When I look at contemporary schools, I see the handiwork of the best thinking of the turn of the century. However, our knowledge of people and of the world has expanded during the 20th century.

Unfortunately, this new view of the world has had only a surface impact on the way our schools are organized. It has not touched the core concept of our school system, that is that the school is modeled after a factory. He goes on to compare the factory model to mechanical or Newtonian thinking, saying that the leap into modern, relativistic science calls for a totally new model.

"The turn of the century thinkers saw the universe as a mechanical universe. Newtonian mechanics reigned supreme, and Cartesian Reductionism (the whole is the sum of the parts) was the mental tool for solving problems... Yet, Einstein's theory of relativity and modern nuclear physics have taught us there is no objective observer, and Carl Jung's summary of the change in how we look at people (the whole is greater than the sum of its parts) underlined that we must look at children and adults as whole people within their social context."

Yes, math and the students who repeatedly struggle with it has suffered the most at the hands of this mechanistic, factory model. But you can short-circuit this problem as homeschoolers, by researching options and finding a math curriculum that works for you and your child(ren). Math By Hand is just such a working option. It can be customized to meet learning styles and special needs, and any parent can easily navigate though and teach it because Math By Hand's methods are foundational, built with no-nonsense, back-to-basics components.