Interesting, interdisciplinary, and innovative. These are only a few words to describe the software we’re going to learn about—and its creators! Larry and Joan Bangs were homeschooling their own five kids when most of us were still knee-high to a grasshopper. Then they started an academy and began to develop some unique materials to use with their students. Join us this month as we take a tour of Wildridge Education.

TOS: It was fascinating to look at your literature. One of the brochures pictures the two of you sitting in rocking chairs on a front porch. Having reviewed the software and gotten a feel for what you are passionate about, I doubt either of you spends much time in a rocking chair! You started homeschooling in 1969 and have graduated twelve scholars. Tell us the condensed version of how that all happened.

LARRY BANGS (LB): You asked about our rocking chairs. Teddy Roosevelt once said that we may wear out or rust out. The rocking chairs will rust out, while we prefer to wear out.

I must begin by an introduction. When I completed my undergraduate studies, I took a job with Goodyear Tire and Rubber Company as a research physicist. While working in the radiation lab at Goodyear I earned a master’s degree in nuclear physics, which qualified me to teach physics at the University of Massachusetts in Amherst. After three years of teaching, I was accepted into the graduate school at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, where I earned a second master’s in astrophysics. I spent a year teaching at Williams College in Massachusetts.

By this time my wife and I had produced four children, all of whom seemed to be of above average intelligence. (We eventually had a fifth.) The oldest was about to enter the fifth grade. We lived then in Bennington, Vermont, and observed that the schools were not engaged in an approach to education that would stimulate in our children a lifelong desire to learn. My wife and I had found that learning was a prerequisite for meeting the demands of a happy adulthood. Therefore, I accepted a position teaching junior high school science in Bennington. The experience confirmed my suspicions and frustrated me to the point that my wife began to accept the idea that only a family bicycle trip through Europe would suffice to restore my faith in humanity.

Consequently, with our children Douglas (10), Becky (9), Nathan (7), and Sarah (3), we set sail from Montreal upon the Cunard ship Sylvania. Six hours later we found ourselves stuck in a sandbar. Fortunately, we were able to abandon the Sylvania and transfer to the Empress of England. However, instead of being bound for Cork, Ireland, with our bicycles, we were bound for Liverpool, England, without our bicycles. Thus we learned quickly to set worthy goals and then adjust to circumstances.

We had a week to explore England before our bicycles arrived in Ireland. One of our first stops was the Gothic cathedral in Gloucester. Our young children were less than enthusiastic about spending an afternoon looking at an old dusty church. We struck a bargain. If they could find good reason to avoid other cathedrals, we would skip Salisbury cathedral and go on to London. Once inside, they climbed the bell tower, visited the crypt, and explored the choir loft. They found a previously unknown interest in architecture. They couldn’t wait to get to Salisbury.

We bicycled across Ireland, along Loch Ness to Inverness, through Belgium and the Netherlands, then along the Rhine to Switzerland, then by train to Paris. In Cherbourg we boarded the Queen Mary on her penultimate crossing. With such an experience to stimulate interest in a wide variety of life’s treasures, the Bennington schools lost their appeal, and we moved to our 500-acre farm in the Northeast Kingdom of Vermont.

TOS: Then you opened a school so other children could attend. You sound like the kind of people that ALL KIDS would love to linger with. How did the school idea come about? Is the school still running?

JOAN BANGS (JB): As Larry mentioned, we were not pleased with the education our children were receiving, and so we moved to the farm and began teaching them ourselves. As other parents saw all that we were doing and the interest our children had in learning, they asked if we would include their children in our school. One of the students who attended Wildridge Academy was a senior. For her to receive credit for her senior year we had to be a Vermont-certified school. We also had to be certified to receive tuition funds from the local towns. Northern Vermont has had a voucher system for over a hundred years. Thus our student body grew to our maximum of 18 students, which included foreign students.

No, the school is no longer in operation. When our youngest son graduated from Wildridge Academy and entered college, Larry and I worked with students in Illinois. After four years in Illinois we returned to the farm and launched Wildridge Education. We saw a need for a revision of the middle school curriculum. We also saw a rapidly growing homeschool community in need of good materials. Thus we have taken the curriculum we developed and have presented it in multimedia and textbook form.

TOS: I read a lot about bicycles and farms. What about the city dweller who can’t be as outdoorsy as you have been? What kinds of activities can we purposely engage in to help develop our children?

JB: You are right—we were fortunate to have access to the out of doors, but we also took trips to the city. We attended lecture series at the Boston Science Museum, visited art galleries in New York City, took backstage tours of the Met, visited Wall Street, [and] had a tour of the Peabody Museum work rooms at Yale and Carnegie Hall backstage. Folks would say, “How did you get to do those things?” We just asked. When children show interest, adults are anxious to share their knowledge.

TOS: If you asked a random homeschooling parent what his goal was, he would probably say something like, “To create a lifelong learner.” What approach did you take to education to accomplish that goal?

LB: When we returned from our first trip, we began to teach our children at home. At that time, homeschooling was unheard of. The state of Vermont had few or no set policies for homeschooling. They did ask us to present a curriculum. We sat down and wrote out a 12-year curriculum, which we pursued with little change for all our many years of working in education. Our first criterion was that we would teach by example, rather than by instruction. We could not say, “Do not smoke,” if we did it ourselves. We could not ask them to train for cross-country skiing unless we went out and trained with them.

Whatever we attempted to do had to have relevance. Thus we read the witches’ chant in Macbeth as we sat in the snow banks and boiled maple syrup in a kettle over an open fire in our apple orchard. We measured the heat produced by burning wood, then calculated how much wood was needed to produce a gallon of syrup. We tried to lead rather than prod.

We believed that we needed to show our children how to lead. To do this, they had to meet leaders. Thus, we invited leaders to come and speak to our children. Of all the invitations I wrote, none declined my request to come and inspire our children and the other children who had come to us for inspiration. Thus we were addressed by two Nobel laureates, Senator George Aiken, our South African councilor, an astronaut, [and] well known biologists and naturalists. In addition we traveled regularly to Boston to attend lectures at the Museum of Science. We visited many museums and concert halls to see what constituted studies in various fields. We read together aloud much literature and many technical papers from a variety of fields and never hesitated to admit that we, too, as adults, were enjoying learning.

TOS: At some point, you began to develop some of your own materials to make available to other homeschoolers. How did that happen? Is any of your curriculum material available in any other format?

JB: Larry was teaching a group of young people in Illinois. After four years, we wanted to be back on our farm full-time. At the same time, we realized that homeschooling was growing very rapidly and there was a need for materials, especially in middle school math and science. We also knew that integrating the subjects and creating a timeline through history had been effective for all of the children with whom we had worked. It was perfect—we could be home in Vermont and create our business in educational software.

TOS: I had a chance to look at two of the units for A Bigger World. They were Math & the Cosmos and Math & Music. Tell us about them.

JB: Math & the Cosmos is a comprehensive background in the science of astronomy. We ask students to explore the connections between astronomy and mythology, learn related math concepts, and apply these concepts to measuring the distance to a star and making star charts. We relate history to astronomy as we study about the Egyptian pyramids and their alignments to prominent stars and constellations. It all fits together and becomes exciting for the student as he or she realizes the connections.

Math & Music emphasizes the practical value of fundamental math skills. The program teaches number theory and the history of numbers. We wanted our children to understand the background of mathematics and the theory behind the problems they were solving. We connect music to mathematics when we help the student discover that the musical scale is based on ratios. A deeper exploration of the physics of sound and music reveals important characteristics of sound waves. Students get a taste of many types of music through a sampling of musical styles across the world.

TOS: Describe the studies for us. What types of things do the students do?

JB: The student is asked to read a textbook, which is supplemented by the computer software. The computer software is an essential tool in the program as it gives a visual explanation to the concepts. The computer also allows students to link to sites such as NASA or the Hubble telescope, where the most current photos from space are accessible in the classroom. Students are directed to do experiments, including, in the Math & Music program, testing their hearing. They use a rope to demonstrate a sound wave and learn the functions of the parts of the ear.

TOS: Does my child have to be a brainiac to benefit from these studies? What if he is a bit weak in math?

JB: When asked who should use Math & Music and Math & the Cosmos, we like to say, “anyone who does not know the material.” Gifted students find the programs interesting and challenging, and students with math weakness find [that], when integrating the math with other subjects and by visualizing the concepts via the computer CD ROM, ideas they have not understood become clear. I just had a letter yesterday from the mother of an autistic boy who has used Math & Music for the past year, and she reports that he made significant progress on his testing this year. His school supervisor was very pleased with his progress. He was able to see the practical application with the program. Parents and grandparents and teachers often remark when viewing the programs, “I never knew that before.”

TOS: What if the teaching parent knows little if anything about music or the cosmos? Is she still going to be able to use these with her children?

JB: That is the joy of homeschooling. Parents learn right along with their children. Everything the parent and student need to know is right there in the program textbook, student guide, teacher guide, workbook, and CD ROM.

TOS: Are other units planned? Can you share what you have in the works?

JB: Architecture and physics is our next science program. We have Egyptian, Greek, and ancient history programs in the works, as well as geology and geography. You mentioned A Bigger World. That is the title of our entire curriculum. When a period of history is studied, we also connect the math, science, literature, music, and art to that period. Each year, a new period of history is studied, beginning with prehistory and in six years connecting with the present. As I think about all of this again, I get very excited.

LB: The greatest threat to successful education is the intimidation produced in parents or teachers who think they must be masters of all knowledge in order to teach successfully. Rather, it is imperative that they must recognize the universal human need to know, and they must realize they must satisfy their own natural desire to know while they teach. In short, we came to realize the wisdom of Aristotle, who said two thousand years ago, “All men want to learn.” The failure of modern educators to recognize the human need to learn and strong desire to know is responsible for their failure to stimulate in our youth, and themselves, the lifelong desire to learn that produces happy and satisfied adults. They attempt to substitute entertainment for learning. Entertainment is not tantamount to learning. The former holds the mind in suspended animation while the latter stimulates creativity and thought.

TOS: I want to thank you for sharing your vision with our readers. They can learn more about these interesting programs at your website, www.wildridge.com. Or they can contact you at 1-888- 244-4379.

Joan and Larry Bangs homeschooled their five children on their farm in northern Vermont. They are both graduates of the University of Massachusetts. Larry received his master’s from the University of Akron, Ohio, and did his doctoral work in astrophysics at Rennselaer Polytechnic Institute. They remain on their farm from which they operate Wildridge Software.

Christine M. Field, TOS’s Resource Room columnist, practiced law for eight years before becoming a full-time mommy for her four children. Her husband serves as Chief of Police in Wheaton, Illinois. She is a freelance writer and the author of several books about homeschooling, adopting, and more. www.HomeFieldAdvantage.org www.HomeschoolBlogger.com/ChristineField