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I meant to post this last Saturday, but I was at an academic conference and I needed a few days to recuperate. Saturday was the 2-year anniversary of the launching of the blog of the Cornell Society for a Good Time. Two years may not sound too impressive, but in the world of the blogosphere an awful lot of blogs don’t make it even that long, so Deo Gratias for that, and may it live on for more years to come!
It’s interesting to look back at the early days of the Cornell Society for a Good Time, and to compare the blog then with the blog of today. Some changes I like, and others are a bit sad. For example, I miss the days when Iacobus and Ambrosius posted on a more regular basis. And, probably in large part thanks to the elusiveness of those gentlemen, the blog doesn’t have quite the jovial tone that it used to back in the day. That’s a shame, because that peculiar style of humor (which I can appreciate, but can’t easily replicate) was always a source of cheer to me on stressful or dreary days.
On the other hand, there are some respects in which I think we’ve grown and improved. The new site that Iacobus designed for us last spring is far more attractive than the old one in Blogger. The body of readers we’ve fostered is, for the most part, thoughtful, interested and genuinely concerned about understanding the Catholic faith better. I appreciate that. I think we’ve also improved when it comes to courtesy. We used to get in a lot of nasty and relatively pointless debates back in the day. That doesn’t happen so often anymore (except on those odd occasions when hoards of Alaskan natives unexpectedly invade.) Perhaps this is partly thanks to me — or, more accurately, perhaps it was partly my fault that it did happen back in the day. At that time, I had been a Catholic for less than six months. I now have a better idea where the minefields are in the traditionalist landscape and I can navigate a bit more smoothly. (For example, I remember the homeschooling thread as being a particularly vicious one — the one, in fact, that persuaded me to stop posting altogether for the subsequent two months. Were I to post on that subject today, my thoughts would be a lot more nuanced… but I’d think twice before doing that, having realized that homeschooling has incredibly ferocious advocates, some of whom view it it as tantamount to a tenet of the faith.) But I also think our readers have, in general, been quite thoughtful and courteous in their comments in the more recent past, and that is a great good.
It would be interesting to hear how each of us envisioned the future of this blog when first it was started in October 2005. I think Iosephus had big ideas from the beginning, and it was largely he who supplied the energy that got this blog off the ground. For my part, I was more or less tricked into becoming a blogger. The whole idea was explained to me as being merely a convenient substitute for the listserv on which we used to engage in heated debates. We were having a bit of a problem, because some people subscribed to the list only in order to get practical information about praying the Rosary, Scranton trips, and other group activities. Those people were getting mad about having their inboxes suddenly full of lengthy, heated emails every time we happened to get into an argument. By forming a blog, I was told, we could continue the debates without bothering people who weren’t interested, and since it would be public, we could invite literally anyone who might be interested, to join in. So I fully expected this to be, first and foremost, a forum for talking to one another, with perhaps occasional involvement from an outside friend. I was genuinely startled when people we’d never even met began coming by and leaving comments.
The bottom line is: anyone who thinks I’m a pernicious influence on the blogosphere can blame Iosephus. But for his encouragement, it would never in a million years have occurred to me to start doing this.
If other members of the Society, or other readers, would care to wax sentimental about memories from our now 2-year history, I’d be delighted! For my part, I’ll just conclude by thanking our readers and my fellow bloggers for the good times, which I hope will continue for years to come.
Happy Birthday
But what was that all about regarding homeschooling? Not to dig up a can of worms…
Hi I’m killian (hi, killian) of metropolitan new york city. I even have been known to hang out at some of the places you reference.
I am new to the profession of Catholic homeschooling so I am curious. I didn’t first do it for specifically ‘Catholic’ reasons but as I investigated it more and more realized that my faith informed the decision most primarily. It’s not a perfect situation for everyone. Some of us would like to be able to send their young ones to Monte Cassino for their schooling. Alas the choices in a culture of death are somewhat limited. k
The debate centered around the idea that God may call a mother to preeminence in some field outside the home (say a field like artic oceanography), and this may necessitate placing ones children in a near occasion of apostasy such as a public school or Novus Catholic school. And also, the aspiring oceanographer would have necessary reason to aggressively practice Periodic Continence in order to focus on her study of seals, whales, and herring.
Happy birthday CSGT!
And..
I’m a little disappointed that brother Williamson hasn’t fared better in your online poll.
And you call this a traditional blog. Pish.
Hi Killian,
Thanks for the comment, though, to be honest, I’m a little reluctant to get back into this just because our first debate on this subject was, as I say, so incredibly nasty. Not all homeschoolers are like this, obviously — your position, for example, sounds quite reasonable — but it’s always the loud and rude ones who sidetrack the discussion.
So let me just say this. I think homeschooling is a very bad idea that may, unfortunately, be justified in some cases by the grimness of the options. May be. In that memorable discussion a year and a half ago, I expressed concerns about socialization of children. This is an old complaint, and I know well that it drives some homeschoolers crazy to hear it, but I still absolutely believe that it’s a concern. I won’t say any more about that now, however, for fear of plunging back into WWIII.
But the other reason homeschooling is such a terrible idea, at least in the abstract, is that, particularly once your kids get into their high school years, hardly anyone is really qualified to teach them well in all subjects. I mean, I certainly don’t feel qualified to teach my future children all the subjects I’d like them to learn, and I would by ordinary standards be considered fairly well educated. And very often, among traditionalists, the principal teachers are supposed to be the mothers, who themselves were often discouraged from pursuing higher education on the argument that this was not their primary calling in life. I’ve examined some homeschooling materials, and they normally put a fair amount of energy into assuring mothers that “you know more than you think you know” and that effort and willingness are what really matters. Those things do matter, but I think we should be honest: it also helps a lot to actually know things and some people really are not in a position to teach their children well beyond the elementary years.
The idea of a school is that it makes sense to get together people who know a lot about particular subjects and are trained to teach them. That way, the kids will be instructed by people who actually understand things and are in a position to explain and answer their questions. This seems to make obvious sense.
I realize that the public schools often set the bar so low that improving on them isn’t necessarily all that difficult. (Although, you shouldn’t necessarily take the *average* as the important indicator in such cases, because an intelligent and motivated student can often get some pretty advanced classes even in a public high school — I know I did.) I realize also that some homeschoolers form co-ops, in which different parents will teach all the kids in subjects that they know about. (So, in other words, they form a makeshift kind of school.) And of course I know that the main reason people keep their kids home is that they have concerns about the morality of the schools — especially the public schools — and I grant that these concerns are legitimate.
So I’m not entirely unsympathetic to the motivations… I guess I just get a bit peeved about the refusal of so many within the homeschooling world to discuss the disadvantages. Again, this isn’t everybody, but many of them are very defensive, and I can’t help but see homeschooling as, at best, a desperate measure taken in desperate times. I’ve personally known quite a few homeschoolers, and I know that there are some advantages, but I’ve also seen 1) some have real problems with social adjustment or adjustment to living in society generally, 2) some who get an all-around very deficient education, and 3) some who are well-taught in some subjects but very badly taught in others, presumably depending largely on what their parents were best equipped to teach.
Again, I see that it’s a hard decision given the available options, but I think you’re surely right that the ideal is to send children to a good school.