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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.
Well, I thank JSP for that little demonstration of the sort of thing that made the original discussion of this subject so unpleasant.
Of course a traditionalist Catholic ocean scientist studies mackeral not herring!
I’m glad I missed the “early days.” I abhor unpleasentness, especially in the blogsphere where there is time to think about what one has written before hitting the “submit” button.
There is one most appropriate phrase that comes to mind:
AD MULTOS ANNOS!
Thank you all for this most wonderful forum and for allowing me to participate in it.
Oftentimes converts (and many reverts who had bad uncatholic upbringings) can be overconfident when it comes to the many dangers in the world to our immortal souls. God has been so amazingly generous to rescue a convert from eternal darkness; it’s so easy to presume this type of generosity for everyone.
“I survived public schools; and look at me now, a devout, traditional Catholic.”
What this person fails to realize is that God has acted extraordinarily with this amazing moral miracle of conversion – a miracle greater than a mere natural miracle like raising someone from the dead or causing the sun to dance in the sky. A conversion from a life of darkness is a greater miracle than these.
But just because God has acted thusly in one circumstance, doesn’t mean he will do so again for another particular case.
Surely, he expects the convert to provide a thoroughly Catholic upbringing for his children, and to protect them from a world always eager to destroy their souls or at the least ready to damage their souls and thereby make living a life of virtue harder.
We cannot take on a bunker mentality. We must be in the world, but prudent. As St. Peter says ‘be of sober spirit, be on the alert. Your adversary, the devil, prowls about like a roaring lion, seeking someone to devout.’
I think in general Clara’s comments regarding the concern of quality of education are silly on their face. But to accept them for the sake of argument, I’d rather my children have a better shot at Heaven than at Harvard, or even Cornell.
Fr. Bailey, your participation here has been unambiguously beneficial for all of us. Thank you for the good wishes; I too hope we may continue for many years!
I am a Catholic homeschooler and can understand why your comments would provoke a negative reaction, though it is unfortunate that people were rude. I hope that you have the opportunity to discuss homeschooling some time in a context that will allow you to understand and appreciate it more.
JSP’s comment about converts reminded me of what I was like as a new convert. I actually became Catholic with a sense that I was somehow doing the Church a favour. The great thing about starting off so arrogant is that just about anything would be an improvement.
In case anyone is wondering, I now consider myself very blessed to have been accepted into the Church, rather than the othe way around.
Congratulations! Two years—and without a rerun. And thanks for the compliments: “thoughtful, interested, and courteous.” I guess that’s us, “for the most part.” If you want an interesting discussion or lively debate, you’ll find it on this blog. In fact this is the only one on which I post. (See how lucky you are.) I remember my first glimpse of the site when Clara was pointing to the minor inconsistencies of Bishop W and she boldly proclaimed that women should get out from under Medievalism and humbly take their lawful place in the halls of academia. There were over a hundred contributions and a score of deletions. The male antagonists were accused of being brought up on Key Lime Pie or something to that effect. We all know who won in the end.
I wasn’t around for the discussion of Home Schooling. There are a few advantages. Let me just say that if your kid is home schooled you don’t have to sit home and worry to death about him being ambushed and fired upon on the way to recess. Nor will you have to be concerned that he will waste his hard earned money on drugs other than Prozac or Ritalin. (Gone are the good ole days when mom worried about you coming home with skinned knees from playing with the ruff knecks from across the tracks.) I realize that a too sheltered life may not prepare a child to face the difficulties of life and that facing hard reality can be the best remedy. For after all, Tarzan became the master of the jungle, while struggling for survival plunged in midst of the Apes and learning to use his superior intelligence—and a sharp knife, I believe. But then again, our simian ancestors weren’t armed with semi automatic weapons. It’s a tough decision.
Joe Six Pack, I thank you for putting your points so clearly and kindly. I do understand your concern, and you’re right that we converts should not lose sight of the great miracle that was granted us when God shepherded us into His fold. Of course, if the choice is between “Harvard and Heaven,” we shouldn’t need to think twice about it.
The thing to recognize, though, is that that isn’t necessarily the choice. Parents have a responsibility, not just to teach their children the basics of the faith, but also to prepare them to be soldiers for Christ in the actual society in which they are going to live. Even just surviving in the modern world isn’t so easy, let alone surviving as an orthodox Catholic. Living in the “information age” as we do, we’ll help them a lot by giving them a solid education. And they need to have some idea of what they’ll be facing, and how they should handle themselves, when they set out to live their own adult lives. If they don’t learn these skills, they may be in for some rude shocks when they make the transition — the kind that could damage their souls, not just their chances of “worldly success.” Don’t underestimate the resentment and alienation that young people can feel towards their parents when they find a radical and unexpected break between the upbringing they were given and the adult world as they actually find it.
So, do I think that homeschooling will leave kids naive, feeble-minded, and clinging fearfully to their mother’s apron=strings. No, not necessarily. Insofar as “socialization” means only “learning how to interact with people,” there are other possible outlets for doing that, though you have to be realistic about what the possibilities are within your area. If you have a large and active homeschooling co-op in your parish, that’s great; if your child is the only one in fifty miles not attending school, he’s likely to be pretty lonely. But also, there’s more to socialization than just learning how to make small talk. You need to know how American society — not just within the parish but in a larger sphere — works. It is admittedly a trick: your kids need to gain an understanding of what their society is like, and of how to operate within it, without absorbing all the norms and assumptions of said society. In order to achieve that, I think some exposure is necessary before the age of 18… but not too much, or the wrong kind. School is one of the main places where most people learn this kind of stuff, both the good and the bad parts. So there are things to worry about whichever way you go on the homeschooling question.
Academically, it’s been pretty well documented that homeschoolers, on average, perform higher than public school students on standardized tests. I tend to see that, more than anything else, as a pretty damning statement about our public schools, and I also think it’s pretty clear that any public school child with active, intelligent parents who get involved and personally supplement his schooling, will also tend to perform substantially above average on standardized tests. (I went to public schools, and my parents’ expectations for our academic performance there were pretty high — if we brought home a low score or a bad report card, “I’m above the national average” would have been about the most damning thing we could have said for ourselves!) Nonetheless, these stats do seem to show that sending your child to public school won’t always be in his best interests even on an academic level. But I’d add two caveats. First of all, averages are just averages. I’ve also seen stats to show that the great majority of parents who decide to homeschool have themselves received more than the average level of education. If we go around recommending this indiscriminately to everyone (the schools are evil! Keep your kids at home!), some people will be homeschooled by parents who themselves have only a rudimentary education and those kids are likely to get a very deficient education. I’ve known cases like that, too, and it particularly concerns me with regards to traditional Catholics since they love to simultaneously trumpet that 1) women shouldn’t get too much education, and 2) mothers should homeschool their kids. Academics aren’t everything, but they’re something, and it’s very hard to teach something you don’t know. Just another thing to think about.
But the second caveat is: if we agree that public schools are in really bad shape, then the fact that homeschoolers average somewhat better than their public school counterparts isn’t that great of a recommendation. It may be a reason to pick the one over the other for your own children, if those are the two choices, but on a larger level we should be trying to figure out some better solutions, because in principle, schools are a good idea!
I guess what mainly bugs me about the homeschooling discussion is that it doesn’t seem very honest. If you google “homeschooling socialization” the first thing you’ll get is about fifty hits from parents or homeschooling organizations loudly declaring how ridiculous this worry is. But I’ve personally known at least half a dozen homeschooled people who have told me that this was a real problem for them, and two or three have even remarked cynically that they think the hype about “homeschooling=good socialization” is kind of a lie. Again, I think it varies a lot according to circumstance and personality, but it bothers me that the homeschooling community seems so defensive and closed about this. Similarly with the academic concern. I understand that much of that defensiveness may come from years of being interrogated by nosy relatives and neighbors who think homeschooling is crazy, and of course it’s very rude to be too nosy/vocal about how other people raise their kids… but when you’re a traditional Catholic, that shoe’s kind of on the other foot.
Finally… you’re right of course, Joe Six Pack, that the argument “I survived X so my kids will be fine, too” isn’t a good one, especially if the thing in question is unambiguously bad. But that’s not quite the argument. It’s more like this: “Here are some things that formed and actually strengthened my faith in many ways. I’m a better Catholic (or, in my case, I am a Catholic) largely because of these things. I can’t expect my child’s life to go exactly like mine — nor would I want that, in my case — but here are some aspects of that upbringing that have been extremely valuable to me.” For the record, I don’t mean to send our kids to public schools, but in more general terms, it’s pretty natural to want to pass on to your children the things that you yourself know and have learned in life, and as part of that, you may want them to have at least some of the same experiences.
One of the toughest things about my conversion, and my early associations with traditional Catholics, is that the attitude I got from many of them seemed something like this: “Welcome to the faith! But actually, you’re completely the wrong sort of person to be here — please do your best to eradicate all the characteristics and motivations that helped bring you to the Church in the first place. We’ll provide a nice, stereotyped template to help you get started on the transition.” Of course you do need to be prepared to make some real changes — you want to become more virtuous, right? But not every virtuous, Catholic life looks exactly the same, and you shouldn’t have to be ashamed of every aspect of your character that isn’t entirely standard. Anyway, it isn’t possible to simply transform your personality like that. Just to give you some general insight into why these arguments used to drive me so crazy.
I don’t believe in evolution (to quote Charlton Heston, “Get your stinking paws off me, you ****** dirty apes!”), but I worry sometimes that home-schooling Catholics might rely on fundy protestant texts about creationism. A lot of those fundies are con men or self-deluded. These are the same guys who go to the Holy Land trying to find the Ark of the Covenant or the ashes of the last red heifer and other nonsense. For instance, some creationists claim that the Behemoth in the Bible can’t be a hippopotamus, it must be a dinosaur, because the Book of Job says its tail “is like a cedar” and hippo tails aren’t cedar-like. Well, unfortunately for them, the word for “tail” in the text is a Hebrew euphemism for another part of mammalian anatomy in which hippos are very “tree-like,” if you can read between the lines. I hope that the folks at the Kolbe Academy and other Catholic home school publishers are careful when they “outsource” to prots. The risk is that when these kids get out into the real world and find out that some of the stuff they learned from their parents was bunk they might throw out the decent stuff too.
I went to public school, and learned a heck of alot, both good and bad. When I went to college and met students who’d gone to Catholic schools, I assumed that they would know just as much as I did about sex ed., etc. Nope, they were quite innocent. I already had a low opinion of how low the Church had sagged, and so I responded with disbelief as these guys tried to tell me, no seriously, their health classes didn’t teach them the official Latin names for every last piece of the reproductive system, in graphic detail (which my country school did, two or three times over!). So Catholic schools still had that going for them as late as the Class of 2000.
“A lot of those fundies are con men or self-deluded.”
Well, actually by defintion they’re either con men or deluded.
Clara,
I want applaud your effort to “flush out” the cons of homeschooling because no matter how brightly you shine a light on the pros, the cons, like lack of socialization, will still be there and must be dealt with. Your conviction in the Faith must be able to weather the difficult times/issues that arise in homeschooling.
One aspect that has not been mentioned is that the responsibility of learning is placed even more on the child being homeschooled. At some point, he/she needs to be self-disciplined enough to learn on their own and progress in grades just like the other kids in school. Parents need to provide material, responsibily of course, but children need to understand that they need to learn and work through what they don’t understand. At the same time, parents cannot “spoonfeed”, even though this option may seem like the easiest way to go through lessons.
I wouldn’t necessarily use these reasons to avoid homeschooling, but rather as challenges that must be met and overcome to raise an educated child. If these issues are a problem, would learning at home be the best thing in raising an educated child?
Every family is different and all pros and cons need to be examined to decide what is best.
For Franciscus: thank you much for those comments. I’ve always appreciated your perspective on this, and I think you’re very right, first, that the motivation of the student is extremely important in homeschooling, and second, that older kids especially should be consulted about the choice. That doesn’t mean that every teenager should be entirely left to choose his own educational course, but his wishes should be taken into account, and whatever the family decides, he needs to understand what the benefits and risks are, and what his responsibilities will be in each case.
And actually, one particular individual I once knew who seemed not to benefit from being homeschooled was a young man with the very problem you mention: he was lazy and unmotivated. So far as I could tell, he seemed to do almost no work at all, and since his parents themselves had very little education, they weren’t able to help much. He didn’t seem like the sort of kid to get in lots of trouble, and in cases like that, I think it would be worth risking public high school if it taught him to work and to at least learn something.
On the other hand, though he himself is always utterly modest, I hope Franciscus doesn’t mind my revealing that he (who was himself homeschooled) has a very admirable work ethic. He is, indeed, one of the most responsible and hard-working individuals I know. So yes, some people are better prepared than others to handle the particular challenges of each form of education.
To Discipulus: it’s a pleasure to see you back here again! We haven’t heard from you in awhile, and your comments are always missed. I am deeply honored that we should be your favorite blog (the only one, even!) on which to post.
I never said that the choice was between Heaven and Harvard, since there’s no way to guarantee either. The choice is between having a better shot at Heaven versus a better shot at Harvard.
Personally, I don’t advocate homeschooling for everyone. I just reacted to your statements, such as, “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.”
The risks of bad homeschooling experience are generally far less than the risk of a bad public schooling experience. We’re talking eternal consequences.
First with regard to lack of socializing, I don’t see anyway to quantify and gauge this.
Would you suggest taking a survey of 18 year olds, or college freshman, coming from homeschooled backgrounds and ask them if they feel properly socialized to interact in their new world? Did you feel comfortable your first semester in college? Did you feel comfortable your first months at a new job? Most people, excepting for the most unique personality types, I think would say not entirely comfortable. So, of course a homeschool kid may attribute this totally natural feeling of uncomfortableness to his homeschooling background. So would perhaps a kid who went to a parochial school system their entire life and then went to a non-Catholic university, or a kid from small town Kansas who goes to school in Manhattan or Boston. 18 year-olds, generally, are unsocialized people.
Taking on homeschooling is a huge burden for parents. They have sole moral responsibility now for the education of their children. And, they will be held responsible before God if they fail to prepare them for the world. I heard a traditional priest say that poor homeschooling is a mortal sin.
It has huge challenges. And many parents may not be up to those challenges and this is when other options become more prudent.
I personally wonder if I could have thrived academically as a homeschooled child.
From my personal perspective of my schooldays, I remember girls being much more driven to do well for the mere sake of doing well – the type of attitude needed for homeschooling. Fewer boys were of this mindset. I for one could care less about doing an assignment that had no grade point value. Boys are more motivated by competition – doing better, or at least just as well, as your friends. When boys take exams they are motivated to well, but also I remember us boys wanting to finish ahead of everyone else. I don’t think there was a girl in the classroom that gave a hoot about finishing first – they wanted to achieve a perfect score, but they were not motivated to be the first one to walk up with their exam paper. Boys would be satisfied with a 90% in order to be the first one to walk up and put their paper on the teacher’s desk.
So, in a homeschool environment, how do you make up for this lack of competition-based motivation? It’s a challenge for parents.
I’m not advocating ALWAYS one or ALWAYS the other. Being able to homeschool, and do it well, is a blessing. And if you can do it well, if you have the financial resources to hire tutors when needed, or send them to the community college for a class or two when needed, and you have the patience and the other skills (like a baseline educational level yourself), and the time to socialize them independently by joining sports leagues or other associations for children, then it is the best option.
Children are in a fragile state of innocence as their consciences are being formed. There are disastrous consequences for damaging this innocence prior to full maturity.
I am amazed by the innocence of homeschooled children as opposed to kids in public schools.
A friend of mine is a 2nd grade public school teacher. Several years ago, she had to break up her 7-year olds from playing “hump tag” at recess time. And we can only imagine who happens or what is said when the teacher is not around.
Raising children in a traditional Catholic home, with the Baltimore Catechism and other such resources, and with the parents controlling influences on their moral consciences does some amazing things.
This is a good post, Joe Six Pack. Thank you. I can agree with most of what you say here, and in broad terms I think we’re also in agreement that homeschooling has some advantages and also some unique challenges, and individual families need to consider their situation and decide what to do.
I’m sorry if I sounded harsh with my comment about “homeschooling is a terrible idea that may nonetheless be justified by grim circumstances.” I guess I can see how homeschoolers wouldn’t like to think in such negative terms, but if you invert the claim, perhaps you can see what I was driving at: schools, at least in the abstract, are a really good idea. There’s a reason why more or less every civilized society has had them, and why Aristotle thought public education essential to any well-ordered community. Homeschooling might not be such a terrible stopgap when the school system has failed us, but let’s not lose sight of what it is: a stopgap. As compared to homeschooling, organized schools have the potential to be 1) more efficient, 2) more effective academically, since every teacher can actually know his subject thoroughly, and 3) more effective as a form of cultural transmission, since the schools can give each generation a fairly unified notion of what their society is, and of what each citizen’s responsibilities are within it. Homeschooling is in a sense quite subversive; it is a deliberate choice to deprive your child of the training and experiences that are supposed to form them into functioning citizens. I don’t deny that subversiveness can be justified when the nation in question is sufficiently degraded or corrupt, but I still maintain that the overall situation of that society must be pretty grim when teaching kids at home becomes an attractive educational option. That’s what I meant when I said that, “Homeschooling is a terrible idea that nonetheless… etc. etc.”
The other thing I wanted to add: you mentioned, as an advantage of homeschooling, that it preserves the children’s innocence. I appreciate what you’re saying, but we shouldn’t forget that real innocence (at least the kind most connected to virtue) is cultivated. It isn’t automatic. Some people are not so much innocent as unsullied; outwardly these may look the same, but the differences become apparent when real challenges arise. You can’t make your kids genuinely innocent merely by shielding them from others’ immorality.
That’s not to say, of course, that one’s life experiences aren’t relevant to the cultivation of this kind of virtue. And in all fairness, you also made positive suggestions, for example by specifying that parents should teach their children from the Baltimore Catechism, which is of course an excellent idea. I’m sure you would also agree that kids should receive essential spiritual formation through assisting at the Latin Mass as often as possible, through family Rosary prayer, perhaps through serving at the altar if they are boys, and so on. Still, it’s important not to lose sight of this unhappy truth: innocence may be powerful, but naivete is famously fragile, and until their child’s true integrity has been tested, parents may not be able to tell one from the other. Read Dangerous Liasons or I Am Charlotte Simmons to see explorations of this theme.
Particularly as regards relations with the opposite sex, a thousand abstract lessons on chastity (which I do think Catholic youth should get!) still won’t eliminate the need for some good practical guidance when actual situations begin to arise. It’s long been recognized that this is the sort of wisdom that can’t easily be obtained from a book or a sermon.
I think of St. Thomas More as a patron of homeschooling because of his involvement in his children’s education. He did hire tutors but also seems to have done some teaching personally. There is no question he gave the education of his children his focussed care and attention in spite of numerous public responsibilities.
Clara may find it noteworthy that the most academically successful of More’s children was his daughter Margaret. Her achievements (as well as the other daughters’) were the main influence in Erasmus changing his mind about education of girls. He came to see it as a worthwhile endeavour rather than a waste of time.
I do not see homeschooling as imparting knowledge, so I do not think that deficiencies in the parents’ knowledge are necessarily an obstacle. From an academic perspective, I see homeschooling as handing on a love of learning and giving children the tools for learning. My goal is self-directed, passionate, life-long learners. If I cannnot answer a child’s question about physics or astronomy, for example, this has little to do with my goal. I am trying to equip them with the motivation and skills to seek their own answers.
As far as socialization is concerned,I agree that homeschoolers need to consider this need of their children. However, I do not think that a conventional school is a good place to meet this need. Much of the socialization is unhealthy and it takes so much time and energy that little is left for superior forms of socialization. Older chidren can join service organizations or church groups. They can also engage in paid or volunteer employment. Any of these activities are better preparation for living in the world that going to school.
Oh, one other quick thing… not to be contrary, but I remember my first semester of college as a really happy time. I don’t remember social anxieties being a big factor. I mean, it did take me some time to form solid friendships, but in the meanwhile my peers seemed a lot like the kids I knew in high school, except perhaps marginally more mature. What’s to be anxious about? Meanwhile, the university atmosphere seemed wonderful to me almost from the time I arrived there, with exciting classes, instructors who really seemed to know their stuff, and all the rest. Maybe I’m an unusual case, and maybe some homeschooled person will immediately volunteer that they had a similar experience with starting college, so who knows. What I do know is that the transition from the Boulder Valley Public Schools to the University of Notre Dame was (to my own surprise, in fact) one of the really delightful periods of my life so far. Anyway.
I just want to add an appreciation for how well JSP has been writing on this subject of education. It is a pleasure to see ideas so similar to my own be this well represented.
Ah yes, JK, but St. Thomas More (whom I also admire, by the way, and it is indeed noteworthy that he was closer to Margaret than to any of his other children) could also be taken to illustrate something else: you don’t have to take your children’s education entirely on your own shoulders in order to be heavily involved in it. Homeschooling gives you more time and control, of course. But we shouldn’t talk as though the options were 1) homeschooling, or 2) complete lack of involvement in your child’s education. I dislike it how homeschooling parents sometimes talk about the virtues of educational outings, reading books aloud, at-home catechesis and the like AS AGAINST the advantages of school, as if the kids can’t have both. I went to public schools, as I’ve said, but my parents certainly devoted a lot of outside time to our religious formation, to musical education, to reading books aloud, to taking us to museums or other places of interest, and so on and so forth.
If all available schools are so terrible that they’re mostly just a waste of time and/or a morally corrupting influence, that might be a reason to homeschool, but let’s not turn this into a false dichotomy.
I started out with my children in school, thinking that I could do both. I could not. School left them physcially and emotionally drained. Also, it left little time for the sorts of activities that I feel are worthwhile. School had my children for the part of the day when they were at their best and I had the leftover time when all they wanted was to relax and unwind. I did have to choose, so in my case, this was no false dichotomy.
Speaking of false dichotomies, homeschooling does not mean that the parents teach every single thing that the children learn. Homeschoolers can draw on online and correspondence courses, tutors, homeschooling co-ops, apprenticeship situations, etc. There is an equal variety of possibilities for meeting children’s socialization needs. I can think of nothing that school provides that cannot be obtained some other way.
In general, the main advantage that school has over homeschooling is that it is more convenient. Homeschooling is superior to school in the same way that tailor-made clothes are superior to clothes bought off
the rack. An education that is individualized to a specific child’s needs and interests is fundamentally better than one based on the average for other children that age. There may be situations in which school is the better choice, but only when there is something that prevents homeschooling. Homeschooling, in general, is better than even a good school and ought to be the default choice.
If my 6 year old were in school, they would be teaching him to read and write. He already knows these things. At home, he is doing Latin, Greek, music, and math at his own level, not that of his classmates. I cannot imagine a school that could match the quality of his education - socially, academically and spiritually.
If that’s how it’s working out for your child, then that’s wonderful. I don’t remember my childhood being quite like that — that is, I remember being eager for other stimulating activities after school, and my “best hours” have always been in the evenings anyway. I read piles of children’s books on my own in the afternoons and evenings, and did quite a lot of extra things with my parents. But different children have different energy levels and respond to different things. I’m glad you’ve found something that’s working well for you.
But in the same vein as my “evaluate what’s good for your family” advice, I’d suggest that it’s good to evaluate what’s good for a particular child at different stages of his education. For a six-year-old, it’s probably true that a moderately well-educated adult can supervise his education fairly competently (given sufficient patience, interest, etc.) My main worry at that age would be the social one… I’ve admitted that there can be other outlets for socialization, but particularly at these younger ages, school is the main place where most children make friends with others from their area. You can sign a six-year-old up for a soccer team or the boy scouts (don’t know about the girl scouts, though) but you can’t send him out to get a volunteer job and most churches don’t have youth groups for kids that young. But if you’ve solved that problem, through active homeschooling co-ops or whatever, then great.
At a later age, though, I think kids really need informed, competent teachers. I don’t think I ever made the assumption that homeschooled kids learn everything directly from their parents; I acknowledged from the beginning that co-ops and other resources can make up for weaknesses in parents’ knowledge. But as students advance further in particular subjects, they’ll need teachers with greater and greater amounts of expertise. Internet or correspondence classes can be good, but truly, I don’t think that any of these mediums are as effective as just doing it the old-fashioned way — with students and teachers seeing one another face-to-face in an actual classroom. There are lots of benefits to that model. Co-ops can only offer as much expertise as the involved parents happen to have. Qualified, private tutors can probably do the job if you can afford to hire them in multiple subjects, but I think that’s financially prohibitive for most people.
It’s great to want to inspire your kids to love learning, but of course you also care about what they actually do learn, and some things just aren’t easy to study by yourself. I have found, for example, that my Latin improves a lot when I study it in a class, where I can discuss aspects of the translations with other students and the professor. In subjects like history or literature, or any of the humanities really, there’s no doubt that interaction with a good teacher can immensely improve one’s appreciation of the material. A person with knowledge of the subject can correct mistakes before they get too deeply embedded in one’s consciousness. He can organize a curriculum so that the student isn’t selecting material in a semi-random fashion — and he can also make particular suggestions to the interested student for what he should be reading or working on next. And, perhaps most importantly, he can provide a good counterpoint to help the student sharpen his reasoning skills.
Once you move beyond the fundamentals, it’s hard to find a better way to learn than by studying under a good teacher. And though you can try to get this for your particular kid in a piecemeal way, the fact remains that there are a limited number of competent teachers, so it makes obvious sense to bring such as there are together in a school. A good school shouldn’t be one-size-fits-all; it should offer classes of different difficulty levels so that each student can sign up for an appropriate slate of classes. To a large degree, this is already done, at least once kids move beyond elementary school. (And even in school accommodations are sometimes made. I could read and write by the time I got to kindergarten, so for the most part, I was excused from all the ABC activities and allowed to sit in the “book corner” and read.) Going to school does not mean resolving to be “average”!
I also have this feeling that, for high school students, it’s best for their education to have its locus in a community outside the family of which they are a part. I don’t have time to elaborate on this now, since I need to run off to Mass, but I’ll just throw that out there.
Anyway, this discussion is obviously now on a pretty abstract level. I’ve agreed that homeschooling may sometimes be better than any other options that are actually available for a particular child. But I’m still having trouble seeing any advantages to homeschooling that could not ideally be obtained at least as well in a good school.
Why does it seem that the contrast being drawn here is between homeschooling and public school, as though Catholic schools don’t exist? I grant that many of these schools have absolutely pathetic religious courses, and even objectionable sex ed., but academically speaking they’re still objectively much better than average public schools. Perhaps what the States need is just a brand new traditionalist teaching order of nuns or brothers.
Plus, I’d hate for my kids to be limited by what I know and care about. I took physics, calculus, trigonometry, and advanced biology in high school. I didn’t like them, but I gained “character” by doing it. I would have absolutely no interest in even attempting to re-learn these subjects enough to teach my kids even the rudiments, and I probably would not have even the patience to find some independent tutor to teach them to my kids. Hopefully, there will be a solid high school where they can learn this stuff between the hours of 8:00 and 3:00, and I have only to hear about the grades afterward (i.e. hopefully they won’t ask me any questions about them, for I will not know the answers).
Your view of homeschooling is essentially negative. You see it is something one does if one cannot find a good school. This is very different from my view. I think that homeschooling is the ideal form of educaton and that one ought only to send children to school when that is not possible. In practice, we agree that some families ought to homeschool and others ought not to homeschool.
Socialization in schools is intrinsically not good. Children should be learning social skills from those who are older and more skilled in them. At school, children are segregated by age into large groups to pool their social ignorance. (In general, age is a poor way to classify children since it only roughly corresponds to their abilities and interests.) Young children should be socialized in their families which ideally include many siblings and cousins. This natural social grouping is far superior to the artifical one in school. Church teaching is clear that the family is the basic cell of society and the place where children best learn virtue. The socialization argument for schools simply does not bear close examination.
Oddly enough, another blog that I read called “Why Homeschool”( http://whyhomeschool.blogspot.com/ ) has a link to a recent Fraser Institute report on homeschooling ( http://www.fraserinstitute.org )that addresses the issue of the effect of parents’ education level. It says:
“Poorly educated parents who choose to teach their children at home produce better academic results for their children than public schools do. One study we reviewed found that students taught at home by mothers who never finished high school scored a full 55 percentage points higher than public school students from families with comparable education levels.”
(This same report includes the statement that “By Grade 8, the average home schooled student performs four grade levels above the national average.”)
I agree that at higher levels for some subjects a good teacher can be important. You apparenly assume that schools will be a place where good teachers are conveniently gathered at one spot. In practice, schools have teachers of varying degrees of competence. I have much more control over the quality of teachers teaching my children when I do not send them to school.
I suppose it is an abstract level of discussion to compare the ideal school to the ideal homeschool. Obviously both would be very good. However, looking at real schools and real homeschools, the empirical evidence is rather clear about which, in general, is better. And, of course, parents will need to make decisions based on their specific situations.
Tobias Petrus,
My criticisms of schools have been about things like classrooms paced for the average student, age-segregation, and depending on structures outside the family for socialization and moral instruction. These apply to both Catholic and public schools.
As I understand it, you do not have children yet. I suspect that you will find that what you will be willing to do for your children will be much greater than you now expect it to be.
That Matrimony is a Sacrament means that we are given Sacramental Grace to accomplish the ends of marriage. These include the procreation and *education* of children. We are not left to rely on only our human strength when we teach our children.
I just realized that I did not give the best link I could have for the Frazer Institute article. This one is better (assuming it wraps): http://www.fraserinstitute.org/commerce.web/newsrelease.aspx?nID=4933
As well as comments about homeschooled children’s academic superiority there was this comment on socialization:
“The average Canadian home schooled student is regularly involved in eight social activities outside the home. Canadian home schooled children watch less television than other children, and they show significantly fewer problems than public school children when observed in free play,” she said.
Well done, JK.
Tobias Petrus, there are some good Catholic schools out there, but not many. Most of the good ones are run by traditional communities.
remember Archbishop Sheen said “it is better to send your child to a public school where he will have to fight for the faith rather than a Catholic school where it will be stolen from him.”
And he was only addressing the quality and orthodoxy of religious education. Now the problem is quite larger. There is an open agenda in both Catholic and public schools to legitimize homosexuality, and generally attack the traditional Catholic Faith. Also, combine this with the fact that society is more corrupt now than ever before. Children will become exposed to this corruption, through their peers, at younger ages than ever before - at both “Catholic” and public schools.
Finally, it must be understood that the collective education of our children outside the home is a new concept, historical speaking.
Can you imagine a saint’s parents, living in a morally corrupt country hostile to the Catholic faith, carting their children off to a pagan government run school to be educated?
“Hurry Philomena or you’ll be late catching the bus taking you to Temple of Artemis school”
Collective education of children is one of the errors of Russia.
In 1884, Pope Leo XIII warned that Freemasonry
“endeavors to take to itself the education of youth”.
from a 1976 article in Educational Leadership entitled “Curriculum in Context: The Changing Catholic Schools” concluded:
“A period of nearly 150 years has produced an almost common curriculum among Catholic and public schools…. the pervasive social underpinnings for both systems seem to be nearly identical now, and the curricula which stems from their shared basic values will probably continue to look more and more alike.
OK, obviously my analogy with St. Philomena is flawed since her parents were die-hard pagans, but you get my point.. right?
I doubt St. Philomena, had it been in God’s will for her to become a wife and mother, would have carted her children off to the temple of Artemis for their education..
“Your view of homeschooling is essentially negative. You see it is something one does if one cannot find a good school.”
Yes, this is indeed my view. Obviously we differ here. For example, I disagree that the socialization of a school is “essentially not good.” I do think it’s good for kids to be socialized in an environment with other kids their own age. Adults obviously play a critical role in the process too, as supervisors, teachers and exemplars. But adults are not peers. Part of being socialized is learning to interact with peers, and for kids, that means people their own age. Perhaps it’s not really necessary that the groupings be quite so precise as they are… but I don’t really think it’s a problem either. Particularly at younger ages, I do think that age says a lot about the maturity of a child, and I’m always amazed by how little “interests” factor in, particularly among younger children. (It’s we adults who narrow the field of people we can be friends with until it includes only a miniscule portion of the population. Kids seem to find ways to play with whatever other children happen to be around, provided the ages aren’t too drastically different.) Of course, if children have an extended family structure that allows them to socialize in larger groups with people of different ages, that’s great too. But, in the first place, those spheres definitely aren’t mutually exclusive, and in the second place, fewer and fewer people have that kind of extended family to fall back on these days. (And even if they do, it won’t always provide quite the atmosphere you have in mind. I, for example, do have quite a large extended family. They’re very good folks, and a great many of them do actually live in one part of the country… but as they’re all Mormons, we wouldn’t fit very smoothly into that social circle.)
But in any case, different behaviors can be appropriate in different communities. A family is one sort of community, but it isn’t the only kind you’ll ever need or want to be in. A school offers a kind of community-experience that’s rather different from home; it has somewhat different rules, different sorts of people, and different challenges from what you’ll find at home. Obviously, if it’s a deeply vicious community, you won’t want your child to be there, but presuming a well-ordered school, I think that’s a good experience for a child or teenager to have. It teaches him how to operate in a world where it isn’t presumed at all times that everyone loves him, and it helps him distinguish which aspects of his family life are common to his culture (or to humanity as a whole), and which are more idiosyncratic. Surely that kind of awareness will be useful once he gets into the adult world! I guess we just have very different intuitions about this, but I would also note that what you call an “artificial” grouping really isn’t all that artificial. Schools that group kids by age are a feature of many societies, both historically and at the present time, and even without school I think kids tend to gravitate towards similarly-aged children as playmates.
As far as the question of teachers go, I’ve admitted that this is a somewhat abstract argument, but it seems like a reasonable one. The main steps are that 1) there are certain people in society with a particular aptitude for, and interest in, particular subjects, and with a particular gift for teaching. 2) It makes sense to have those people teach a good number of students, while people with less relevant aptitude contribute to society in other ways. But, 3) in order to make such human resources available, it would make sense to organize them in one place where students could come to have access to their services. This is a school. Provided the school is run well, it seems to me like a well-conceived idea, which is why I tend to push the idea that the norm, provided good ones are available, should be to send kids to school, where relevant academic resources can be consolidated and where growing-up experiences can be shared with peers, which really does seem to me like a great good.
I’ll admit that sometimes it’s hard to know where to start with homeschooling arguments, because different advocates seem to contradict one another. For example, I hear some people argue that homeschooling is better because it’s more manageable for the kids not to have to deal with multiple different communities and multiple norms for behavior. The homeschooling life is supposed to be more complete and whole and unified. But then there are people who trumpet that the homeschooled kid’s life is packed with an amazing variety of activities (eight different ones, apparently!) and that they move in all sorts of different circles on a regular basis. It’s hard to sort out all these different claims!
And honestly, on some level, it’s probably always going to be difficult to make hard and fast statements about what sort of education is best for people. What’s medicine to one person can be poison to another, and even though we know that it won’t be perfectly applicable, we naturally tend to extrapolate form our own experience. I think a lot of people who decide to homeschool had fairly bad school experiences themselves. Meanwhile, I balk at the idea of not sending children to school in large part because I am aware of what a great good it was for me — for example, as a teenager, I benefitted greatly from being a part of my high school community. I gained a lot from the community, and also felt like I contributed some things; I knew lots of people and was known by many others; I gained a real understanding of how to handle myself in a “public” setting, in a relatively safe environment, with my parents around to give appropriate advice and correction. All this time, I also had a large family, and a church youth group, and a volunteer job, and those were all great… but I got a lot of unique and special things from my school community that I don’t think any of these other environments could have given me. And that wasn’t even a particularly good school, in Catholic terms. But at the same time, if I’d been homeschooled, I might have some completely different set of memories and experiences that would have benefitted me in some totally different way. Who can say? Ultimately we should try to let the practically available options, and our children’s own particular needs, be our guide.
JSP, I don’t think you’re at all right that education outside the home is a peculiarly modern phenomenon. But I won’t deny that the actual schools we have are mostly suffused with modernism.
It occurred to me to add to this last note that collective education of youth outside the home certainly didn’t begin with the Freemasons. The Greeks were certainly enthusiastic supporters of this idea. The Spartans were famous for their collective education, and both Aristotle and Plato discuss at some length what sort of education the state should give its young. This notion is well embedded in Western culture, and not at all a Russian innovation.
Tobias Petrus, I haven’t forgotten about the Catholic schools. The reason I haven’t spoken of them is simply that I am trying to narrow the terms of the debate, so that it doesn’t explode out of control like it did the last time. Thus far this has been a remarkably pleasant, civil and even productive conversation, given the controversial nature of the topic, so I’m grateful for that. And anyway, I’m just not in a position to say much about Catholic schools.
The truth is that a good Catholic school would probably be the Doctor’s and my preferred choice for our future offspring. We’ll see when the time comes whether the chances of finding one are as grim as some people report. I don’t mind so much if the catechesis is deficient, since we can supplement that ourselves. On the other hand, especially when they’re older, we’d like them to be in a school with uniforms or at least a serious dress code (I’ve been assured by many that the dress of young women in public schools is a very bad influence on their male peers.) A good private school might be a possibility… if we could afford one.
At younger ages, homosexuality is indeed a problem. On this one I do tend to agree with Joe Six Pack that younger children really should not be exposed to it, or to the debate surrounding it. At least when they’re little, their sensibilities should be formed in a thoroughly heterosexual environment. But also, there really isn’t any good way to explain this vice to younger children. A six-year-old doesn’t have the resources for thinking about chastity, nor should he. There is no age-appropriate way to approach the question with him — he just shouldn’t have to worry about it. A school with an overt pro-gay agenda would definitely not be okay with us, particularly for an elementary-aged child.
But after all, we don’t even have any children yet, nor do we know where we’ll be living even a year from now. So. We’ll see how it goes.
A quick comment on educational outcomes in homeschool versus schools:
This is a really fruitless debate to have in the absence of real data that makes some attempt to account for the different motivations and interests of parents who choose to homeschool. The question is this: do homeschooled children have higher educational achievement because they were taught at home, or because they had the sort of parents who are willing to take the time to homeschool? I expect it is the latter that is the controlling variable; the only use of the sorts of vague stats that have been tossed out here is to refute the clearly false belief, still common to some, that it’s *impossible* to be well educated and home schooled.
Incidentally, the point that I’m making — that parental choice, involvement, and caring are more important in predicting educational success than schooling method — is the force behind the current movement, somewhat successful, to introduce voucher’s programs, school choice, etc. If such programs were to come to pass, the availability of quality school education could be considerably more widespread: the public currently shells out around $8,500 / student per year on average for public education. That, to me, is an eye-popping figure. If you got half that as a tax credit or something, almost anyone could afford those private tutors or a nice private school!
As to the attempt to standardize homosexuality within Catholic schools, one way of dealing with it is homeschooling. Another way is to fight to set up your own school or to take over the parochial one. There are several avenues of attack. I am not of the school (hah) of thought that homeschooling is bad, or even that it’s the worse choice. I am just setting out some cons, which I think are real, to see what responses they generate.
As resident classicist, I can absolutely agree with Clara that schooling outside the home is *not* a strictly modern phenomenon. If we limit ourselves to what is and is not modern, then we might as well consign the majority of people to illiteracy, which was the case during the very (overtly) Catholic Middle Ages. There is, after all, nothing at all immoral about illiteracy, many saints have been so, and it is better to be illiterate here than in Hell in the hereafter, right?
The Spartans had public education, which was totalitarian. The Spartans are a bad example because they were incredibly pro-homosexual, and also psychopathically devoted to killing. Despite what the movie “The 300″ would have us believe, the Spartans were proto-Nazis, and those guys at Thermopylae were in a certain sense not unlike the Waffen-SS.
But I digress. For public education is not the only alternative to home schooling. The Athenians pretty much left education to private families, to the chagrin of Plato and Aristotle. But the Athenians often sent their kids to private schools, so “homeschooling” was not the model. Nor were they sent to school at the “temple of Artemis” — drive that notion out of your mind. The Romans sent their kiddies off to school, as well. Quintilian, THE expert on education and honored as such by Christians long after, refers to the careful selection of paedagogues. Paedagogues were the slaves responsible for walking a child to class every morning. Boys and girls both went, just like today. St. Monica did indeed send St. Augustine off to class to learn his Greek from a schoolmaster.
Now, there was much more freedom in the ancient and medieval worlds concerning education than there is today. There were a variety of schools one could pick from. Some of the teachers were Christians, as we know. JSP proposes some apocryphal situation in which Christians don’t send their kids off to pagans to educate. But not all schoolmasters were pagan. St. Jerome explicitly told St. Paula to pick a good “magister” (i.e. teacher) for her daughter. Later on, Benedictine monasteries and — above all — Jesuit schools raised the bar. Before claiming that “sending kids to school is modern” just think of the Jesuits and all the institutions of learning they established, with a strict order of teaching, called the Ratio Studiorum. Then think of all the saints and blesseds among the teaching orders. I don’t bring this up to condemn homeschooling, just to defend the idea of sending kids to school.
There also seems to be a problem here with prudence. It is mentioned that people should be taught without regard to specific grades, but at their own speed. One cannot dismiss an entire system of education because of one particular problem, whether it is socialization in the case of homeschooling or division into grades in the case of schools. Always, always every course of action in the world will require you to forego some other attractive good. To think otherwise would be to say that one can create a Utopia here on earth. No, every course of pragmatic action entails *some* disadvantage. As for the specific claim that students are retarded by sharp division into grades, I heard the same from some of my teachers who had attended one-room-schoolhouses. My high school biology teacher said that the great thing about the one-room schoolhouse, with perhaps eight grades taught together, was that he sat through *all* the lectures and sections, so when he got done with his own work he could listen in on what the older students were doing. This sounds alot like what JK advocates.
All that being said, the public education system as such is a modern creation, and in very many countries (like our own) it was specifically set up to combat Catholic schools. Now *that* tells us that Catholic schools preceded secular ones. So teaching outside the home, or inside the home with a hired tutor, is indeed very old. Public payment for it is rather younger, and does not have as continuous history in the West. Its first examples, with the Spartans, were rather dysfunctional, as that state was a dystopian military machine. So “collective education” understood this way has a rather checkered history to say the least, but not education outside the home as such.
Last was by me.
Clara,
a hearty “Happy Birthday” to you and your fellow bloggers. I must say I have always admired your brave and insightful posts. This time you, have again, hit a hornet’s nest with a bat.
In the case of schooling, you’ve obviously feel strongly about this, and that’s fine. I think that your view while valid ignores certain truths, and is based on no experience as a parent. This is relevant as it COMPLETELY changes things. I have 2 in college now and have one in HS and one who is one year old. From real world experience:
* Public schools in many places have devolved into little more than propaganda machines for the secular progressives. Some public schools rise above this, but not many.
* Many Public schools have no idea how to challenge intelligent, but energetic young boys. Many schools will push to put these bright children to be put on Ritalin to make them more “controllable”
* Many public schools have become geared to teach students to the standardized test, not to producing decent citizens or humans.
* Many public schools while having the resources to challenge students, instead have become more enamored to building “self esteem” rather than teaching.
* Catholic schools are not all equal either in orthodoxy nor educational ability. Some “good” Catholic schools are actually worse at morality than some public schools. I can point to a particularly “good” and expensive Prep school in Connecticut, in Fairfield run by so called soldiers of Christ who, frankly, seemed to be more interested in cow-towing to the wealthy students than teaching the faith. So much for the Ignatius Method of teaching.
* Most Catholic Elementary schools are very good, but, most Catholic HS are more concerned with toning down the Catholicism to attract a more “diverse” population. Again, if you think students come out with a good “Catholic” education, you haven’t had to deal with the Catholic High Schools I’ve had.
* In some dioceses (like Rochester) Ecumenism is more important than giving children the tools to stay strong in the faith, or have a Catholic view of the world. “Jesus is our buddy” is the depth of their instruction at best or, worse, just wrong. I have had the experience of having CCD teachers teaching that it is okay to refer to our Heavenly Father as “she” and that our blessed Mother was a scared and unknowing young girl. This to my now 14 year old daughter. At least home schooling of the catechism is ESSENTIAL as no one else is responsible for their soul like you, the parent.
Now, all this said, none of my 4 kids have been home schooled. My Wife and I are trying to figure out what we are going to do for our little guy. We have a few years. I am not necessarily completely convinced that home schooling is the way to go, as the school district and the Catholic school here seems better than Connecticut where I moved from. But, it is very likely will supplement with home schooling as our little guy is a bundle of mental and physical energy. He is going to need to have more than what the schools will offer.
The last post isn’t mine. Looks like I’m not the only one who has trouble with the name on the “Leave a Reply” command.
“So much for the Ignatius Method of teaching.”
Yet I propose to revive it. Too late for current homeschoolers, I know, but I’d hate for homeschooling to be the only orthodox option for Catholics. That has *never* been the case.
In response, to Ambrosius, JK, and JSP, I speak with no personal experience, you’re right, for I am single.
OOPs…that previous one was me…hmm…odd….
anyway…
Tobias,
I agree with you…I sent my sons to Catholic HS particularly for that reason and found out how naive I was. in fact, I think that a Catholic School that actually was a Catholic school with Religious (Sisters, Fathers and or Brothers) teaching using Catholic methods with Catholic content would be excellent. A moral, Godly environment, that turned out Godly and well-educated members of the faith would be ideal.
I unfortunately don’t see it happening in this particular diocese any time soon. I’m sure they exist somewhere, but not here!
>This time you, have again, hit a hornet’s nest with a >bat.
Oh, I know. You’ll note that I was wary of getting back into this issue, though at the same time, it’s something that I think about quite a lot. Anyway, as I say, I’m grateful that all participants have been quite civil this time around, unlike the last time we discussed this.
>I think that your view while valid ignores certain >truths, and is based on no experience as a parent.
Well, that is true. I’m not a parent. My assessment of public schools is based on my own experience of them, and of what I see in my siblings. I was myself in a public high school a decade ago, and I have a brother in one now, and another in his second year of college. I talk to them about their school experiences, so that also affects my evaluation.
In this thread, I’ve tried not to get into actual assessment of the public schools (trying to narrow the debate, as I told TP), but I’m not denying any of the problems you mention. I went to high school in Boulder, CO, so yeah, I got plenty of liberal indoctrination and self-esteem building there. One of the things that started the explosion in the last homeschooling thread was my claim that hearing all this liberal preaching was actually good for me — because I rejected it with such vehemence that I’ve never since been remotely tempted by that siren’s song. But like I said in my last post, it’s hard to evaluate these things. What’s poison to one can be medicine to another.
But even though I am pro-school, I don’t want to set myself up as the uncompromising foe of homeschooling, either. I recognize that people often have good and legitimate reasons for doing it, and it hasn’t been ruled out as an option for our future kids. I guess I’m partly just turned off by all that ideological vehemence that often accompanies the homeschooling movement — and anyway, it’s hard not to be a bit affronted by the implication that public schools are nothing but cesspools of sin and vice… when many of one’s own happiest memories come from there.
Thanks to Tobias Petrus for that helpful and very interesting bit on the history of schools. And thanks also to Ambrosius, whose point I certain support. Parental involvement is the most obvious positive factor in a child’s education, and it would be fantastic if a voucher program could be created to give parents more viable options.
Clara,
Perhaps a discussion about homeschool vs school is the wrong way to come at the issue. What if we started with what are our goals and ideals for education of children in general and for our own children (or potential future children)? The we could talk about what sort of schools or homeschooling would be needed to achieve the goals. I suspect that we could uncover a lot more common ground with such an approach.
Clara,
As always your comments are well thought out and written…
I’m all for whatever method that ensures that children learn Truth, magnifies the love of our Heavenly Father, and helps, but not hinders, me as a parent in raising my children to be Godly.
The schools are so different from when I was in High School over 25 years ago. Heck, some schools don’t even use red ink anymore as it may “traumatize” the kids. What bunk.
I agree that some in the home school movement are vehement fanatics. I have to say that looking past the ideology of the fanatics of any movement is a good idea. If I hadn’t done that, I would of never discovered the traditional mass…as I have to admit I had the same aversion to traditionalists. When I looked past a few vocal fanatics, I found the truth and beauty of the Mass like I had never known. Just a thought.
PAX
“I have to say that looking past the ideology of the fanatics of any movement is a good idea. If I hadn’t done that, I would of never discovered the traditional mass…as I have to admit I had the same aversion to traditionalists.”
This is a fair point, Cpt Tom. I will keep that in mind.
JK, I think your question is interesting too, but perhaps a new thread would be the best place to open up such broad questions? I’ll put that on my mental queue…
Clara,
A new thread is just what I had in mind. I’m glad this discussion of homeschooling was more pleasant for you and look forward to future discussions here about education. And happy birthday to the blog. I never did get around to saying it.
That last was from me.
“anyway, it’s hard not to be a bit affronted by the implication that public schools are nothing but cesspools of sin and vice… when many of one’s own happiest memories come from there.”
But, really, aren’t they? I was public schooled all the way through also, and have good and happy memories, and had a somewhat decent group of friends. But I also know I was exposed to a lot of crap by my peers…including by some of my closer friends.
Kids at school come from all walks of life with many experiences, and when you send your children into that for 6-8 hours a day, you have no control over what they’re getting exposed to - regardless of the reputation of the school, its quality of education, etc. They are under other people’s influence more than they are under mine, or at least influences I would approve of.
Even if we had a good, moral, traditional Catholic school available, I’m still very wary of sending my children to it for that very reason. What the school teaches is one thing. What they will pick up from their peers is another. Even from supposedly “good” Catholic families…we all have different standards of what’s ok & not & what we expose our children to, or what younger kids may be exposed to by older siblings and bring back to the schoolyard. I think I’m more concerned right now as my children are still quite young and very impressionable. Do I think I can keep all bad influences away from them forever? Of course not. Right now their minds and consciences are being formed, though. I want to know and have control over who they’re with and what they’re doing. They get enough exposure to the “norm” behaviors through extracurricular activities, and neighbors. We are military, so all their activities aren’t just primarily with homeschool groups (depending on availablility of homeschoolers where we’re at).
Socialization? Periodically we get to observe the military/foreign service school kids in larger groups - how they talk and relate - and I thank God my kids aren’t among them. I ask myself, did I sound like that at that age? I hope not. Not necessarily bad language or lewd actions (though there’s some of that too), but they just sound & act like idiots. They only know how to talk and relate among their peer group, are embarrassed - for the most part - to be around their parents, and probably can’t wait to be away from adults period. Plus side for the homeschoolers - they generally don’t sound like idiots when talking, and they are comfortable around adults and probably show much more respect. They can function outside they’re peer group.
oops, last line - *their* peer group
“we all have different standards of what’s ok & not & what we expose our children to”
Like TV . . .
“But, really, aren’t they?”
I’m saying that, no, I don’t feel that the schools I attended were cesspools of sin and vice. But I don’t want to make this into a major topic of discussion, knowing from experience that nothing good will come of that.
As for the rest… of course it’s fair to want to limit to some degree the influences on your young children. But the last part seemed rather curious to me. It’s good, of course, for kids to have some semblance of “company manners” to use around adults, but it also seems to me very normal for kids to prefer the society of other children to that of adults. But maybe I didn’t understand you. Anyway, it’s probably better to leave this topic for now.
Clara, I think home schooling is a good idea but no system is perfect and I agree with you that one of the downsides is the socialization aspect. Because home schooled children are segregated—so to speak—from the average kid, by their parents rather than expose them to others with different standards, these kids have a hard time mixing in later on. It’s easier to avoid others who think differently and keep to your own comfort zone. How will they ever learn to influence others if they are trained to avoid those who think or act a little out of line–as if they are not reformable. I’ve seen this even in Traditional Chapels and it’s strange that children of parents who agree on so much about the Faith and who kneel side by side to receive Holy Communion sometimes can’t socialize with other kids because they are not up to the same standard. A better approach, it seems to me, would be to teach kids from early on to stand up and be leaders and a good influence on others.
A friend of mine who goes to a Society Chapel was telling me of an exemplary family who sits up front every Sunday to the edification of all. It’s a family of many children, well dressed, well behaved, well mannered and home schooled. He went on singing their praises and wishing there were more like them. “And after Mass they file out the side door and leave rather than stay around and talk about worldly topics with everyone else.” He thought this was a good thing but it’s pretty sad when you can’t socialize with Traditionalists for fear of being tainted. And to limit socializing to family and extended family seems degrading to the Mystical Body.
Yes, Discipule, you hit squarely on one of the things I dislike most about the generally “sheltered” childhood — of which homeschooling is obviously one of the main components. I think it can be quite dangerous for children to develop early on the idea that they are very special, much purer and smarter and generally better than most of the other children in the world (whom they are not, of course, allowed to get to know.)
I saw this to some degree growing up — Mormons aren’t as enthusiastic about homeschooling as traditional Catholics, but there are a few who do it, generally as a means of protecting the kids from the evil influences of the wider culture. Well, anyway, so when I was a kid, my brother and sister and I used to go to the local park on summer evenings to play with the neighborhood children. My older brother had a particular talent for inventing elaborate games that could be played by children of different ages and sizes (instead of just running, they would involve climbing, hiding, strategizing, collaborating with other children, etc., so that different kids could find different ways to win.) Some evenings we would get quite a crowd of kids assembled to play these games, and most of them weren’t Mormons. They might have been Protestants, Catholics, Jews, or even Wiccans for all I know; you don’t discuss religion when you’re in the middle of a wild, screaming game of Connection Tag. One time I mentioned something about this activity in Sunday School, and another girl — a homeschooled girl from an “our kids only socialize at church-organized activities, and even then we tell them to stay away from so-and-so” family — was literally astonished. “Your parents let you just play with the ordinary neighborhood kids?”
Now, I realize that this kind of playground ecumenism only extends so far, but that is not a nice or normal way for a kid to think.
I read the other day that Dietrich Von Hildebrand was essentially homeschooled the entire way through. Not bad for a homeshooler, to grow up to be regarded by a pope as a modern-day doctor of the church.
From the perspective of a parent who is called to do something extraordinary as a profession, it’s actually more than possible to do that (say oceanography? or was it something else relating to oceans??) and homeschool as well. Actually for women with demanding professions often the options can be better, either because of finances, or living in a university setting in which it is possible to find help and resources and support for doing things according to one’s family’s needs.
From the perspective of vocation, if a child is in danger due to the school options in terms of his or her faith, and the parent pursues other work which necessitates that the child stay in this track, it seems that the parent would then have to reconsider. The school options and offerings tend to follow public demand and this is not always the authority one wants to live and learn by.
In choosing what seems the best environment for our ‘least’, the littlest, vis a vis religious education, we find that the struggles of our souls as the adults are encouraged by this same environment. Don Bosco’s methodology was right, if we follow after goodness for the least among us our lives will surely be enriched as well. If we compromise and say that it is ‘good enough’ for them, then sooner or later we settle on what is less than good as acceptable for our souls as well, sell ourselves out, cheat ourselves out of an inheritance of abundance. –k
And also as to whether a given local school is a cesspool of sin and vice or not, I think perhaps it varies according to geographical area. Living in New York, little ones are exposed to sex education, either formally or informally, very early, and I have seen acting out in the first grade, witnessed adult teachers who think it is appropriate to editorialize about same gender relationships to first graders, to explain where babies come from, etc.
I never thought my public school or secular university experiences were per se bad because of the diversity of people, faiths, backgrounds, rather, I felt always and still do feel that these were positives. But these interactions do not control learning, if they ever did, in schools today, and if you look up for instance the history curriculum for New York State (one unit starts, ‘the self…’) or just listen in on the kinds of commentary and explanations given commonly then you begin to see that there are ‘other forces’ at work than the beauty of spontaneous interaction in the world.
In the metropolitan area the vast majority are not homeschooling for reasons of the faith, therefore one must agree to mix it up if there is to be any socializing. In the same way that kids like to feel that they are part of a wider culture, it’s probably good reinforcement for Catholic homeschoolers to be able to hang out with others who have made the same choice from time to time.
I don’t really worry about them ‘feeling weird’ because I believe it’s going to be a bit of a given that an adolescent is going to grow up ‘feeling weird’ if they miss all these rites of passage that in high schools today are kind of taken for granted.
Growing up in the 70s and 80s, our parents were careful about influences, tv, friends, music, just as, this is what parents do kind of thing. It’s not that the situations have changed so much as the volume of it all has become just so amplified now as compared to then, so that if it was difficult for parents to control or limit then it is nearly impossible to limit