Deep Work? Mikael Krogerus on homeschooling

It's spring holidays. And with it: a break from homeschooling. By now, everyone has probably found a way to deal with it the wrong way. Looking back on the last three weeks, I can really only say one thing: I have gained a tremendous amount of respect for teachers. At the same time, it was an interesting experiment. Because you can learn a lot about yourself when homeschooling. Do you have patience? Can you calculate cuboids? How do you form the subjunctive? Is there a comma? What is an optional referendum? Do you have patience? But I have to admit, it was a bit of fun to be allowed to try and answer the age-old question that has been bothering me since my own school days: What would a timetable look like if I could decide it myself?

Deep work is the kind of work where we are absorbed and forget everything around us.

The very first measure: school didn't start until 9.30 a.m. But then what? I looked at the cryptic tasks and learning requirements with our daughter, which arrived in batches by email and WhatsApp from the school. Really, I asked myself, are we really just going to follow the school's instructions and miss out on this unique opportunity to create our own timetable? My daughter also looked a little disgruntled.

Then I remembered that an acquaintance of mine was connected to one of these schools of the future in Silicon Valley. A few phone calls later, he sent me a document that the school had given its teachers for the lockdown. It had the ambiguous title: «This is a trying time for everyone».

Try it out for everyone. I liked that. During the lockdown, I read that the kids didn't necessarily have to study the school curriculum rigorously, but rather practise what is called «deep work». «Deep work» is work where we are absorbed and forget everything around us. On the other hand, there is «shallow work», i.e. work where we are easily distracted. And during the lockdown, we should find out which activities allow children to engage in «deep work». But what about the right subjects, maths for example? Here was the next sensational tip: no matter how old the child is, start with first-grade maths, then second-grade maths, then third-grade maths and so on. As a result, my daughter suddenly made faster progress than ever before. She found maths easy and, above all, she became absorbed in the tasks. I slowly began to understand what the school was trying to achieve.

And this is what a school day looked like for us: Beginner maths, knitting (an activity our daughter loves), diary writing, pull-ups, reading a book, editing a film, singing with her mother, watching an adult series with her older brother. I wasn't quite sure if this was in line with the Swiss school rules. However, I was also not entirely sure whether the Swiss school regulations would still exist after the end of Corona. The result: our daughter was actually in deep work mode for several hours a day.

And then, after a few days, everything collapsed. Her school started asking where the assignments were? So we switched to normal mode and I became an increasingly frustrated father forcing an increasingly frustrated daughter to learn things. That remains.