Without the structure of a textbook, won't there be gaps in my child's education?

Many traditional schools — and at least one popular homeschool curriculum provider — boast that their curricula have "no gaps." They imply that the students who use their curricula will acquire "complete" educations, as it were, with no missing pieces.

We find this claim puzzling because we wonder how any child can be taught "everything" there is to know by the youthful age of 17 or 18.

Furthermore, we consulted several standard scope-and-sequences when we first began to develop Sonlight®, and we quickly realized that no two curricula completely agree when it comes to "what our children ought to know." Even those curricula that claim to have "no gaps" have differences between them!

And so we decided we could not create a curriculum with "no gaps" and, therefore, we would not worry overly much if our scope-and-sequence failed to match exactly the scope-and-sequence of any particular traditional school. Rather, we decided we would seek to meet the needs of evangelical Christians who want their children to grow up loving to learn.

We figure the most important thing we can do is to instill in children a sincere love for learning. That way, students will continue learning — because they want to continue learning — even after they've completed their formal "school" educations.

And later, they can pick up whatever information they happened to miss during their school years. Far better to lack a few facts and love to learn than to have all the "right" information and hate the learning process!

[Excerpted from Twenty Reasons Not to Buy Sonlight.]