In the land of late-night cheer, There's a host we all hold dear, Jimmy Fallon, full of glee, With quirks as far as eyes can see.
He dances, sings, and plays bizarre, With games that take things way too far, From lip sync battles, wild and loud, To skits that leave us all spellbound.
His laughter's like a joyful song, It echoes through the night so long, With guests who join his crazy ride, In Jimmy's world, there's naught to hide.
He'll dress in costumes, act a fool, Yet somehow always stays so cool, A master of the unexpected, His charm is truly well-reflected.
So here's to Jimmy, superweird, A host whose antics we've endeared, For in his world of endless fun, He's truly second to none.
Eventually you have to tell your kids the truth about things. You can't shelter them forever. This includes exposing them to the realities of the world experienced by kids at all too young an age in public schools. It also includes the reality that there are bad men who rise to power within the Church. Men who will use their authority to target people they don't like and/or teach heterodoxy.
Eventually and in first grade are two different things. No competent gardener puts the tender young shoots in the ground before the frost just to watch them be blackened and killed. Nor does he keep them from sun and fresh air when their roots have matured and they can withstand the wind. He discerns when to shelter and when to transplant.
Agree 100%. This is one of the beauties of homeschooling. While parents are fallible, no one knows better when their children are ready for the hards truths of the world
The “sheltering/protecting” quote caught my attention too! Now I am curious to hear the perspectives of the parents of the two young people interviewed here. I love reading about the experiences of those young adults who were homeschooled as children- I think there’s so much to glean, as a homeschool parent myself. I would also be curious how the received experience of the children compares/contrasts with the experience of the parents who made the decision to homeschool for various reasons, and to make changes in schooling choice over the years. I bet there would be some similarities and many differences in the way they would be discussed by parents and children!
Now it occurs to me that you were maybe responding to the choice of the parents in SD to not discuss the new policy with their children. Yes, it’s interesting, isn’t it, but especially at this early date when much may change, I think it’s an interesting and probably prudent choice on the part of the parents, and maybe different from the presuppositions of many outsiders about what “those homeschoolers” must be like!
I know that the charge of over sheltering is irksome to homeschool parents. Believe me I'm right there with you. I should have been more explicit in my statement. In my experience most homeschool parents are very intentional in this regard. They understand instinctually that they need to expose their kids to the realities of the world so that they're exposed in a healthy way. In contrast many public and private school kids are exposed outside their parents' knowledge and often in unhealthy ways. I don't mean that as a scold to public school parents. I'm not at all a homeschool absolutist. It's just the nature of the thing. And of course sometimes homeschoolers won't always make the best choices either
I guess my main point is that the Cardinal and his staff should be aware that homeschool families will feel obligated to tell their kids the truth about the situation at the right time and in an age appropriate way just like they feel obligated to teach their kids about other hard truths of the world.
We're a second-generation partly-homeschooled family; I was homeschooled 1st thru 6th back in the 90s, and I homeschooled my step kids for six years (late elementary thru early high school). My parents stopped homeschooling me due mainly to financial considerations, and I hated middle school and tolerated high school. We both started and stopped homeschooling our son due to mental health and wellbeing concerns, and started and stopped homeschooling our daughter through her choice. If we could do it again (or if we're blessed with more kids) the biggest change we will be making isn't necessarily school- related. It's screens. We made a huge mistake putting smartphones in our kids' hands, and my husband now wishes he hadn't raised them with TV and video games either, even though that was his primary means of bonding with them when they were little and he was a busy, exhausted single dad. I think we will probably homeschool any future kids, but if we wind up deciding that they need a classroom, we will be specifically seeking out a school that is skeptical of tech, like Montessori or Waldorf.
I think that insight about screens is very important. I would offer one more alternative to possibly consider: like-minded parents who commit to something like Wait Until 8th, which was introduced at our parochial school last year. More than half the parents in each grade level (and much more than half in some) have committed to not giving their kids smartphones at least until after 8th grade — or maybe never, for some families. Parents also started a Blessed Carlo Acutis initiative to look at how to use tech well for ourselves and model that for our kids, and how to hold boundaries about tech well for our kids and any friends that come over.
Yes, those are great ideas if you can get enough parents to commit to them! In our kids' generation (they have now graduated) there were just not enough parents willing to open their eyes to the dangers of tech. Including us, frankly. We learned the hard way and it was really, really bad.
Fair point! My oldest is in 7th grade, so we’re a little behind you, but one of the prime movers in starting the Bl. Carlo initiative at our school is a woman who has a “wide” family and saw, exactly as you’re saying, how detrimental phones/screens/social media was to her older kids and so changed how she approached all that with her younger kids. And a lot of my friends, whose kids are just entering junior high, are absolutely on board; I think more parents now are cautious about opening the Pandora’s box of tech for their kids.
I have always been a firm supporter of homeschooling families. They are the backbone of any parish that I have been assigned to. I am very grateful for their witness. Back in the late 1960’s and throughout the 1970’s when, for the most part, a lot of Catholic schools went through the tumultous post-Vatican II crisis, my parents helped run and develop a parent run elementary school in Ridgefield, CT. Holy Innocents school at a huge impact on my younger brother and sister. Both my other sister and myself were already in high school when Holy Innoncents school began. My youngest sister who attended elementary school at Holy Innocents is a traditionalist Dominican nun doing amazing work. She attributes much of her vocation to those formative years at Holy Innocnets. My brother, who attended Holy innocents, is an awesome dad, fervent Catholic, and an amazing husband. He says that Holy Innocents was life changing and formative. Parent run schools, like Holy Innocents, started before the homeschooling movement took off. I am a firm supporter of homeschooling families.
I was homeschooled K-12 and then went to Benedictine, not unlike the students interviewed here. I have a few thoughts I'd like to share, in relation to both homeschooling and BC.
1. Homeschooling can be great, but it's not a cure-all. It requires buy-in from both parents (and the child, to a certain extent) to work. This not only means keeping a consistent schedule and curriculum, but also supplementing those areas where parents aren't as equipped to educate their children—eg, math, science, and foreign languages. I had tutors for high school algebra, calculus, and Latin, since neither of my parents used math regularly or knew Latin. Obviously, tutors are a more expensive option, but co-ops, community college courses, and online programs are also excellent options.
2. Standards are important. Homeschooling is a great way to tailor your child's education to their needs and aptitudes, but it shouldn't be an excuse to ignore subjects you/your child don't like or think are unimportant (*especially* math and science), or to lower the standards on academic performance just to get things over with. I say this because I think it would be doing a genuine disservice to the child to willfully neglect a portion of their education, or to effectively lie to them about their abilities. Obviously, intellectual or learning disabilities will change what standards are reasonable (that's part of what makes homeschooling's flexibility and focus so good!), but that's very much a case-by-case kind of thing. As a personal example, it would have been easy for my parents to give up on making me do math after the gargantuan sophomore-year slog of Algebra II, but they insisted (correctly) that since I was clearly able to go further, I should. That meant doing precalculus and calc I, and although I detested it at the time, it was absolutely good for me (especially when I decided to become a physicist instead of a classicist naval officer. God laughs when you tell Him your plans.)
3. Homeschooling can't (and shouldn't) keep kids in the bubble forever. At some point, if children are going to mature, they have to face the reality of the world, including its evils and imperfections, in more than just a storybook fashion. That doesn't mean unfettered exposure to temptations or removing moral standards, but it does mean being honest about the fact that most people aren't going to think like your child or make room for their particular preferences, and that they're going to have to work with and be around them, even if they vehemently disagree. In today's climate, that especially means being honest about the existence of LGBT people, pro-choice people, and atheists, and also honest about the fact that you can work with, respect, care for, and even like people you strongly disagree with.
4. Perhaps my most biased plea, as a Catholic physicist: please don't use weird Protestant young-earth creationist books to teach your kids science. It's okay to delay touchy topics like evolution until an appropriate time, but scientific education should be done in light of the Catholic Church's teaching on the relationship between faith and reason, not "This disagrees with my literal interpretation of the Bible, so it must be wrong." The Catechism is the first and best place to start, closely followed by JPII's Fides et Ratio. After that, Augustine's five(!) commentaries on interpreting Genesis are a wonderful way to show how, well before the advent of modern science and cosmology, the meaning of Genesis' creation account was up for significant debate, and there were multiple ways to faithfully interpret the book beyond hyperliteralism. Augustine takes both allegorical and literal views, the latter not meaning six 24-hour days (he thought it was instantaneous), but rather that Genesis describes an actual act of creation by God. Conversely, young-earth creationism derives from a form of sola scriptura interpretation combined with a 17th-century Irish Anglican bishop's attempt to calculate the age of the world with the best scholarly knowledge of his time, making it both bad theology *and* out-of-date-at-best science.
Great comment. A classicist naval officer sounds like you were just born in the wrong century, but as an amateur lover of physics I’m glad you found something you enjoy. :-)
My old man was a naval officer and I liked Greek and Roman history, so I had grand dreams of going to the Naval Academy and majoring in Classics. In retrospect, I'm glad I didn't—not because I think I would've hated Classics, but because I think I make a better academic than I would an officer. Physics was sort of an accident, in that I picked it so I could be employed after graduation, but it turned out to be a very good accident. 'O felix culpa!' indeed.
I’m in a community with a ton of Catholic homeschoolers. I would have liked this article to take on a few of the negative things I’ve observed: many of the homeschooled kids I’ve known didn’t make it to college. They were often behind in reading and math, and once in Catholic school, they found group socializing difficult, at least at first. Most problematically, they tended to see most things from a single point of view and buy into Protestant conspiracy theories. Homeschooling still seems to me to be a recipe for cultish behaviors, even though I know a few families who do it very well. Catholic school seems like a much safer bet, particularly for pastors and bishops.
A lot of it depends on the curriculum, in my limited observation. Some curricula are more rigorous than others, and some parents unfortunately choose Protestant curricula, which tend to be the most conspiratorial vis-a-vis the sciences. My curriculum (Kolbe Academy) used pretty standard texts from Harcourt, Pearson, and Prentice Hall, including biology. Most homeschoolers I've encountered have been better at reading and writing than their traditionally schooled peers, but I have no idea on math, as most of my students are self-selected for mathematical ability (I teach physics). Two of my K-12 homeschooled friends at Benedictine were great at math (one studied physics with me, and the other became a chemical engineer), but that's just anecdotal evidence. I'd love to see some serious survey work on the academic performance of homeschoolers in college.
Regarding the cultism, I don't think that's a fair charge, as that implies a focus on a particular person or unified worldview—my general experience is that most homeschoolers have different reasons for doing so. Furthermore, I think it's important to remember that teenagers generally aren't known for their nuanced or sophisticated outlooks on the world (source: I was one), and sometimes that's not the fault of an education method so much as something they need to grow out of.
Thanks for your considered response. I’d really like to see the numbers on math, reading, and pupil trajectories: this is all very well documented for Catholic schools, but I haven’t seen those studies yet for homeschooling. My evidence is necessarily anecdotal, then, too. By cultish I mean sectarian—more likely to be cut off not from society, but from the diocesan Church.
As I recall, the statistics on homeschooled students shows that they are, on average, significantly superior to public school students. Not sure what the comparison is to Catholic schools. I've encountered families with kids that were definitely weak on math, generally because the parents were, but I couldn't say how widespread that is. I've also talked to a guy who taught math in conventional schools, who said that his students basically only got math if their parents knew it well. I think most people hit a block with math at some point in 12 years, and if they don't get extra help at that point, they fall behind. And since it's math, they can't just skip that bit and still understand what comes after (unlike, say, history). There are some people at my parish that are trying to provide that extra help for the kids there, and it might be a good thing for most parishes.
I agree with Joseph, Protestant curricula can be a problem. For quite a while, they were the only curricula readily available to homeschoolers, but that has changed. Likely the problem will dissipate as other curricula become more common. On the other hand, as a former homeschooler with a physics degree, my engineer father taught me to be pretty distrustful of science. When done correctly, one might call it the scientific method. Most scientific theories are wrong, you just get the math close enough for your application and roll on. And historically, politics in science has generally resulted in bad science. Or really, any motivating factors besides love for the truth.
Pastors and bishops do not have the right or obligation to decide how children are schooled. Unless they have children, at which point their rights and obligations extend only to their own children. But I don't see why being homeschooled should cut you off from the diocesan Church. Does the bishop ignore everyone who isn't a Catholic school student? If so, there's a bigger problem.
Thanks for your insight on math. That makes sense.
There’s a wealth of studies on the superiority of outcomes for Catholic education to public, but I don’t know whether there are such comparisons between Catholic schools and Catholic homeschooling. I’d really like to read that.
Pastors and bishops do have an obligation to support parents in educating their children, which is where it gets interesting. Parents are the primary educators, not the sole educators.
The sectarianism observation comes from my experience, and I think it’s connected to the missed opportunity to be a part of the larger parish community that comes with the parochial school. But again, this has only been my experience, here in my own diocese.
My point was not that parents are the sole educators (at the very least, children should be hearing a sermon every week from a bishop/priest/deacon), but rather that the decision-making power resides with them.
I'm still not following the sectarianism-parochial school connection. Most parishes don't have schools. Most people in parishes that have schools are not students at that school (they're adults, or too young, or publicly schooled even if not homeschooled). Every sub-group within a parish has something of a unique experience that those who are not members don't get, but I've never thought of this as something that would cut anyone off from the diocese or larger parish community, either for those in or out of the group.
I've never been part of a parochial school; is there some sort of special insider Catholic track there: parish, diocesan, or otherwise?
If you’d like to learn more about Catholic schools, I’d suggest the sociological work of Fr. Andrew Greeley and the more recent writings of Jared Staudt. I’m not making an argument about homeschoolers necessarily being sectarian, but rather an observation from experience. Not all homeschoolers behave this way, by any means.
In my anecdotal observation, there is sometimes—certainly not always—a tendency among the adult parents at a parish with an attached school to view the parish as a nifty, included with the exclusivity of tuition amenity of the school instead of viewing the school as an apostolate and themselves as there to be part of a larger community.
I don't quite follow what you mean by being 'distrustful of science.' It's true that all empirical knowledge is contingent and can be falsified later, but I don't think that makes the current existing scientific knowledge untrustworthy unless you have a good reason to distrust it. For example, the fact that the Standard Model of particle physics can't incorporate gravity implies that it's ultimately incomplete and will need to change.
However (and I'm not accusing you specifically of this), I've noticed that people who emphasize the contingency of scientific knowledge tend do so to try and cast doubt on whatever they take issue with, eg, "Evolution's just a theory!" Such a statement doesn't actually argue with evolution on the merits, it just tries to make it sound tenuous without a basis, which is intellectually dishonest. I think it's good to remember that scientific knowledge is falsifiable, and our understanding of the world does (and should!) change. That said, it typically only changes when we encounter new evidence that contradicts existing theories, and at least in physics, it tends to change in the direction of nuancing our existing understanding rather than completely overthrowing it. (Eg, quantum mechanics changes a lot about the classical physics picture of the world, but it needs to reduce to the classical picture when you zoom out enough. It also relies on classical ideas regarding conservation of momentum and energy to make sense.)
The scientific method involves a lot of people hammering away at various theories to try to prove them wrong, as cunningly as they possibly can. The prize goes to the most effectively distrustful. I think there are still scientists testing whether Newton's assumption equating gravitational and inertial mass is accurate. So many decimal places.
The way science is taught, generally does not explain the strengths and weaknesses of a theory, but simply presents what the theory is and all the reasons *for* it. You have to get pretty far into learning science to start hearing about the weaknesses of the theories. For example, the timelines inherent to the theory of evolution rely heavily on dating practices that have large errors, or to assumptions regarding how various rock formations were formed (e.g., the Grand Canyon being formed over millennia, rather than decades, which is now reliably disputed). The lack of attention to the error margins in publicly presented data, combined with the lack of discussion of the reasoning for and against the theories, results in science being taught with assurances that there's tons of evidence, but no actual evidence being shared. Essentially, the scientific method is explained, and the scientific theory is explained, but the scientific method is rarely applied to the theory in the actual explanation. And yes, there are a lot of people who announce "it's just a theory", as if that was an argument. But they were taught by people announcing "it's a scientific theory", as if *that* were an argument.
The biggest problem with this is that many people grow up thinking that trusting science and trusting scientists are exactly the same thing. And as soon as they find scientists who are wrong about something, some accordingly stop trusting all science, and sometimes the scientific method as well. The second biggest problem is that a lot of people who would really get their jollies out of figuring out new things, are raised thinking there's very little to figure out.
I like what Richard Feynman said about classical physics. Paraphrasing, he said that its theories are numerically breathtakingly close to reality. But philosophically, they are completely wrong. Likely, so are our current theories. I expect engineers to not really care about that, but physicists are constitutionally required to.
1. "The biggest problem with this is that many people grow up thinking that trusting science and trusting scientists are exactly the same thing. And as soon as they find scientists who are wrong about something, some accordingly stop trusting all science, and sometimes the scientific method as well."
I 100% agree with this statement. The reliability of empirical methods as such doesn't not guarantee the reliability of any one scientist's work, and it certainly doesn't grant them automatic competence in other areas like ethics or philosophy.
2. "The way science is taught, generally does not explain the strengths and weaknesses of a theory, but simply presents what the theory is and all the reasons *for* it. You have to get pretty far into learning science to start hearing about the weaknesses of the theories."
This is true, for better or for worse. Part of the difficulty, I think, comes from the fact that it's hard to learn what the precise claims of any given scientific theory are well enough to then understand where its limitations and weaknesses lie. It's certainly hard to teach that nuance at the grade-school level, and the difficulty doesn't instantly vanish in undergrad, either. Which is not to say that it shouldn't be attempted (especially in college) but that it is *hard.*
3. "The second biggest problem is that a lot of people who would really get their jollies out of figuring out new things, are raised thinking there's very little to figure out."
I would argue more that it has to do with kids coming out of high school thinking that the sciences are the exclusive province of a specialized, mathematically capable elite, and if they're not "a math person", then there's no way they can understand and they shouldn't bother. I think that mindset hampers more people than thinking that there's very little to figure out.
4. "I expect engineers to not really care about that, but physicists are constitutionally required to."
A fair point, and I'm always happy to poke fun at engineers (if only to compensate for the fact that they get paid more), but it's also good to recognize that no one can care about everything. By specializing in physics, I may have learned enough to care about the holes in the Standard Model (and even then only abstractly, since it's not my area), but in so doing I've foregone learning deeply about a lot of other things, including pertinent scientific theories. I don't know evolutionary biology (my objections to young-earth creationism being principally cosmological and philosophical), and so I'm willing to take evolution as broadly plausible within the bounds set by the Church, but also, to be brutally honest, I just don't worry about it that much—just as I'm sure Stephen Jay Gould doesn't stay up nights worrying about why gravity doesn't play nice with quantum mechanics. I have a reflexive aversion to people who run counter to the scientific mainstream largely because they tend to go in for conspiracy theories, but I also have to be honest and admit that in a lot of cases, I haven't examined the evidence enough to empirically convince myself one way or the other.
This stat about homeschooled kids and vocations seems to be in a lot of Pillar stories recently (or maybe there are just a lot of homeschool stories). I don't think we really can draw any conclusion about this--there is no evidence that the homeschooling increased the person's decision to join religious life. Perhaps they just came from a more religious family, or their families went to mass more often, or any number of other things.
Then we similarly cannot draw any conclusion that parish schools increase a person’s tendency to receive and accept a religious vocation or that public schools do not increase this tendency.
I think we can draw certain conclusions. For one, that stifling homeschooling damages vocations while supporting homeschooling benefits vocations. It's not a 1-1, but nonetheless a relevant factor.
HISTORY: Government schools were started to help create a literate, civically educated populace. Included was the ability to read, especially to read the Bible. Later, Catholic immigrants felt persecuted by the anti-Catholic bigotry experienced in government schools. The Catholic Church built a national school system which successfully competed against "free" public schools. Later, Catholics forgot their history and took Catholic schools for granted. Once and originally created as "safe spaces", somewhere it was safe and acceptable to be Catholic, now Catholic schools are largely beige zombie institutions who stumble around with a thin veneer of pseudo-Catholicism. (for example - the incredulous shocked disbelief and revulsion when a teacher is fired after 'celebrating' their very public 'gay marriage.') Todays parents are forced to pay taxes to fund the government schools which are reeducation camps and indoctrination centers for leftist extremism. Parents who can afford private schools send their children to Saint Beige to shield them from societal collapse. Those parents are criticized by the defenders of "public education" for abandoning the public square. They are told that THEY are responsible for the sorry state of public education because they won't sacrifice their children by sending them to Moloch Public High.
*private catholic school VS homeschool*
DITTO
Parents who can, refuse to send their children to Saint Beige, in order to shield them from veneer pseudo-Catholicism of the "who am I to judge" variety. Those parents are criticized by the defenders of "Catholic" schools for abandoning the public square. They are told that THEY are responsible for the sorry state of Catholic education because they won't sacrifice their children by sending them to SAINT BEIGE cATHOLIC HIGH.
*note to Catholic bishops*
When the Catholics who are most in love with the Church are opting out of your "cATHOLIC" schools because they are afraid that their children will lose the faith because they attend YOUR schools... You should be very concerned. You should practice a little synodality and listen to their concerns.
What is happening in San Diego seems unconscionable. I suspect the idea is that the local Catholic schools are struggling and don't want to lose students to homeschooling. It seems very similar to how the public schools and teachers unions don't want vouchers or school choice.
The Catholic Church through the archdiocese and local parishes and schools has been trying to accommodate itself to the modern world. Thus, Catholic schools are increasingly only affordable to the modern family model of two working parents with two children. And Catholic education in the parochial schools and in parish catechesis is watered down because the faith is not taught or practiced in the home of the modern family. So a large Catholic family with a stay-at-home mother often finds homeschooling the most suitable fit for their family needs. A parish typically divides all its various activities up into age groups that often meet at different times and locations, and while this works when a family has one or two children, it does not work for a large family with many children of different ages.
The Ordinariate Cathedral of Our Lady of Walsingham runs a very thriving home school coop called the Holy House Academy which is oversubscribed every year. Even non- Catholic families have become involved in it, with resulting conversions in some cases as well. It is an important apostolate of the cathedral and one which strengthens the cathedral parish, too, as the home school families who participate in the Holy House Academy tend to “buy into” the parish more intensely than those who are not involved in it or some other parish program. That is a point that should be considered by San Diego and other dioceses dealing with the issue.
In the land of late-night cheer, There's a host we all hold dear, Jimmy Fallon, full of glee, With quirks as far as eyes can see.
He dances, sings, and plays bizarre, With games that take things way too far, From lip sync battles, wild and loud, To skits that leave us all spellbound.
His laughter's like a joyful song, It echoes through the night so long, With guests who join his crazy ride, In Jimmy's world, there's naught to hide.
He'll dress in costumes, act a fool, Yet somehow always stays so cool, A master of the unexpected, His charm is truly well-reflected.
So here's to Jimmy, superweird, A host whose antics we've endeared, For in his world of endless fun, He's truly second to none.
Umm, what does this have to do with homeschooling?
Eventually you have to tell your kids the truth about things. You can't shelter them forever. This includes exposing them to the realities of the world experienced by kids at all too young an age in public schools. It also includes the reality that there are bad men who rise to power within the Church. Men who will use their authority to target people they don't like and/or teach heterodoxy.
Eventually and in first grade are two different things. No competent gardener puts the tender young shoots in the ground before the frost just to watch them be blackened and killed. Nor does he keep them from sun and fresh air when their roots have matured and they can withstand the wind. He discerns when to shelter and when to transplant.
Agree 100%. This is one of the beauties of homeschooling. While parents are fallible, no one knows better when their children are ready for the hards truths of the world
The “sheltering/protecting” quote caught my attention too! Now I am curious to hear the perspectives of the parents of the two young people interviewed here. I love reading about the experiences of those young adults who were homeschooled as children- I think there’s so much to glean, as a homeschool parent myself. I would also be curious how the received experience of the children compares/contrasts with the experience of the parents who made the decision to homeschool for various reasons, and to make changes in schooling choice over the years. I bet there would be some similarities and many differences in the way they would be discussed by parents and children!
Now it occurs to me that you were maybe responding to the choice of the parents in SD to not discuss the new policy with their children. Yes, it’s interesting, isn’t it, but especially at this early date when much may change, I think it’s an interesting and probably prudent choice on the part of the parents, and maybe different from the presuppositions of many outsiders about what “those homeschoolers” must be like!
I know that the charge of over sheltering is irksome to homeschool parents. Believe me I'm right there with you. I should have been more explicit in my statement. In my experience most homeschool parents are very intentional in this regard. They understand instinctually that they need to expose their kids to the realities of the world so that they're exposed in a healthy way. In contrast many public and private school kids are exposed outside their parents' knowledge and often in unhealthy ways. I don't mean that as a scold to public school parents. I'm not at all a homeschool absolutist. It's just the nature of the thing. And of course sometimes homeschoolers won't always make the best choices either
I guess my main point is that the Cardinal and his staff should be aware that homeschool families will feel obligated to tell their kids the truth about the situation at the right time and in an age appropriate way just like they feel obligated to teach their kids about other hard truths of the world.
We're a second-generation partly-homeschooled family; I was homeschooled 1st thru 6th back in the 90s, and I homeschooled my step kids for six years (late elementary thru early high school). My parents stopped homeschooling me due mainly to financial considerations, and I hated middle school and tolerated high school. We both started and stopped homeschooling our son due to mental health and wellbeing concerns, and started and stopped homeschooling our daughter through her choice. If we could do it again (or if we're blessed with more kids) the biggest change we will be making isn't necessarily school- related. It's screens. We made a huge mistake putting smartphones in our kids' hands, and my husband now wishes he hadn't raised them with TV and video games either, even though that was his primary means of bonding with them when they were little and he was a busy, exhausted single dad. I think we will probably homeschool any future kids, but if we wind up deciding that they need a classroom, we will be specifically seeking out a school that is skeptical of tech, like Montessori or Waldorf.
I think that insight about screens is very important. I would offer one more alternative to possibly consider: like-minded parents who commit to something like Wait Until 8th, which was introduced at our parochial school last year. More than half the parents in each grade level (and much more than half in some) have committed to not giving their kids smartphones at least until after 8th grade — or maybe never, for some families. Parents also started a Blessed Carlo Acutis initiative to look at how to use tech well for ourselves and model that for our kids, and how to hold boundaries about tech well for our kids and any friends that come over.
Yes, those are great ideas if you can get enough parents to commit to them! In our kids' generation (they have now graduated) there were just not enough parents willing to open their eyes to the dangers of tech. Including us, frankly. We learned the hard way and it was really, really bad.
Fair point! My oldest is in 7th grade, so we’re a little behind you, but one of the prime movers in starting the Bl. Carlo initiative at our school is a woman who has a “wide” family and saw, exactly as you’re saying, how detrimental phones/screens/social media was to her older kids and so changed how she approached all that with her younger kids. And a lot of my friends, whose kids are just entering junior high, are absolutely on board; I think more parents now are cautious about opening the Pandora’s box of tech for their kids.
I have always been a firm supporter of homeschooling families. They are the backbone of any parish that I have been assigned to. I am very grateful for their witness. Back in the late 1960’s and throughout the 1970’s when, for the most part, a lot of Catholic schools went through the tumultous post-Vatican II crisis, my parents helped run and develop a parent run elementary school in Ridgefield, CT. Holy Innocents school at a huge impact on my younger brother and sister. Both my other sister and myself were already in high school when Holy Innoncents school began. My youngest sister who attended elementary school at Holy Innocents is a traditionalist Dominican nun doing amazing work. She attributes much of her vocation to those formative years at Holy Innocnets. My brother, who attended Holy innocents, is an awesome dad, fervent Catholic, and an amazing husband. He says that Holy Innocents was life changing and formative. Parent run schools, like Holy Innocents, started before the homeschooling movement took off. I am a firm supporter of homeschooling families.
Man, I wish we had that now. We don’t live far from Ridgefield. Our children’s parish school is such a hostile disaster.
This is a great story to show the practical consequences and experience of families affected by this policy shift.
I was homeschooled K-12 and then went to Benedictine, not unlike the students interviewed here. I have a few thoughts I'd like to share, in relation to both homeschooling and BC.
1. Homeschooling can be great, but it's not a cure-all. It requires buy-in from both parents (and the child, to a certain extent) to work. This not only means keeping a consistent schedule and curriculum, but also supplementing those areas where parents aren't as equipped to educate their children—eg, math, science, and foreign languages. I had tutors for high school algebra, calculus, and Latin, since neither of my parents used math regularly or knew Latin. Obviously, tutors are a more expensive option, but co-ops, community college courses, and online programs are also excellent options.
2. Standards are important. Homeschooling is a great way to tailor your child's education to their needs and aptitudes, but it shouldn't be an excuse to ignore subjects you/your child don't like or think are unimportant (*especially* math and science), or to lower the standards on academic performance just to get things over with. I say this because I think it would be doing a genuine disservice to the child to willfully neglect a portion of their education, or to effectively lie to them about their abilities. Obviously, intellectual or learning disabilities will change what standards are reasonable (that's part of what makes homeschooling's flexibility and focus so good!), but that's very much a case-by-case kind of thing. As a personal example, it would have been easy for my parents to give up on making me do math after the gargantuan sophomore-year slog of Algebra II, but they insisted (correctly) that since I was clearly able to go further, I should. That meant doing precalculus and calc I, and although I detested it at the time, it was absolutely good for me (especially when I decided to become a physicist instead of a classicist naval officer. God laughs when you tell Him your plans.)
3. Homeschooling can't (and shouldn't) keep kids in the bubble forever. At some point, if children are going to mature, they have to face the reality of the world, including its evils and imperfections, in more than just a storybook fashion. That doesn't mean unfettered exposure to temptations or removing moral standards, but it does mean being honest about the fact that most people aren't going to think like your child or make room for their particular preferences, and that they're going to have to work with and be around them, even if they vehemently disagree. In today's climate, that especially means being honest about the existence of LGBT people, pro-choice people, and atheists, and also honest about the fact that you can work with, respect, care for, and even like people you strongly disagree with.
4. Perhaps my most biased plea, as a Catholic physicist: please don't use weird Protestant young-earth creationist books to teach your kids science. It's okay to delay touchy topics like evolution until an appropriate time, but scientific education should be done in light of the Catholic Church's teaching on the relationship between faith and reason, not "This disagrees with my literal interpretation of the Bible, so it must be wrong." The Catechism is the first and best place to start, closely followed by JPII's Fides et Ratio. After that, Augustine's five(!) commentaries on interpreting Genesis are a wonderful way to show how, well before the advent of modern science and cosmology, the meaning of Genesis' creation account was up for significant debate, and there were multiple ways to faithfully interpret the book beyond hyperliteralism. Augustine takes both allegorical and literal views, the latter not meaning six 24-hour days (he thought it was instantaneous), but rather that Genesis describes an actual act of creation by God. Conversely, young-earth creationism derives from a form of sola scriptura interpretation combined with a 17th-century Irish Anglican bishop's attempt to calculate the age of the world with the best scholarly knowledge of his time, making it both bad theology *and* out-of-date-at-best science.
Great comment. A classicist naval officer sounds like you were just born in the wrong century, but as an amateur lover of physics I’m glad you found something you enjoy. :-)
My old man was a naval officer and I liked Greek and Roman history, so I had grand dreams of going to the Naval Academy and majoring in Classics. In retrospect, I'm glad I didn't—not because I think I would've hated Classics, but because I think I make a better academic than I would an officer. Physics was sort of an accident, in that I picked it so I could be employed after graduation, but it turned out to be a very good accident. 'O felix culpa!' indeed.
Such a wonderful comment. Thank you! TAN publishes an elementary science curriculum that is decently rigorous and thoroughly catholic.
"Homeschooling: ‘Super weird,’ or future of the Church?"
¿Porque no los dos?
Aha! My thought exactly.
I’m in a community with a ton of Catholic homeschoolers. I would have liked this article to take on a few of the negative things I’ve observed: many of the homeschooled kids I’ve known didn’t make it to college. They were often behind in reading and math, and once in Catholic school, they found group socializing difficult, at least at first. Most problematically, they tended to see most things from a single point of view and buy into Protestant conspiracy theories. Homeschooling still seems to me to be a recipe for cultish behaviors, even though I know a few families who do it very well. Catholic school seems like a much safer bet, particularly for pastors and bishops.
A lot of it depends on the curriculum, in my limited observation. Some curricula are more rigorous than others, and some parents unfortunately choose Protestant curricula, which tend to be the most conspiratorial vis-a-vis the sciences. My curriculum (Kolbe Academy) used pretty standard texts from Harcourt, Pearson, and Prentice Hall, including biology. Most homeschoolers I've encountered have been better at reading and writing than their traditionally schooled peers, but I have no idea on math, as most of my students are self-selected for mathematical ability (I teach physics). Two of my K-12 homeschooled friends at Benedictine were great at math (one studied physics with me, and the other became a chemical engineer), but that's just anecdotal evidence. I'd love to see some serious survey work on the academic performance of homeschoolers in college.
Regarding the cultism, I don't think that's a fair charge, as that implies a focus on a particular person or unified worldview—my general experience is that most homeschoolers have different reasons for doing so. Furthermore, I think it's important to remember that teenagers generally aren't known for their nuanced or sophisticated outlooks on the world (source: I was one), and sometimes that's not the fault of an education method so much as something they need to grow out of.
Thanks for your considered response. I’d really like to see the numbers on math, reading, and pupil trajectories: this is all very well documented for Catholic schools, but I haven’t seen those studies yet for homeschooling. My evidence is necessarily anecdotal, then, too. By cultish I mean sectarian—more likely to be cut off not from society, but from the diocesan Church.
As I recall, the statistics on homeschooled students shows that they are, on average, significantly superior to public school students. Not sure what the comparison is to Catholic schools. I've encountered families with kids that were definitely weak on math, generally because the parents were, but I couldn't say how widespread that is. I've also talked to a guy who taught math in conventional schools, who said that his students basically only got math if their parents knew it well. I think most people hit a block with math at some point in 12 years, and if they don't get extra help at that point, they fall behind. And since it's math, they can't just skip that bit and still understand what comes after (unlike, say, history). There are some people at my parish that are trying to provide that extra help for the kids there, and it might be a good thing for most parishes.
I agree with Joseph, Protestant curricula can be a problem. For quite a while, they were the only curricula readily available to homeschoolers, but that has changed. Likely the problem will dissipate as other curricula become more common. On the other hand, as a former homeschooler with a physics degree, my engineer father taught me to be pretty distrustful of science. When done correctly, one might call it the scientific method. Most scientific theories are wrong, you just get the math close enough for your application and roll on. And historically, politics in science has generally resulted in bad science. Or really, any motivating factors besides love for the truth.
Pastors and bishops do not have the right or obligation to decide how children are schooled. Unless they have children, at which point their rights and obligations extend only to their own children. But I don't see why being homeschooled should cut you off from the diocesan Church. Does the bishop ignore everyone who isn't a Catholic school student? If so, there's a bigger problem.
Thanks for your insight on math. That makes sense.
There’s a wealth of studies on the superiority of outcomes for Catholic education to public, but I don’t know whether there are such comparisons between Catholic schools and Catholic homeschooling. I’d really like to read that.
Pastors and bishops do have an obligation to support parents in educating their children, which is where it gets interesting. Parents are the primary educators, not the sole educators.
The sectarianism observation comes from my experience, and I think it’s connected to the missed opportunity to be a part of the larger parish community that comes with the parochial school. But again, this has only been my experience, here in my own diocese.
My point was not that parents are the sole educators (at the very least, children should be hearing a sermon every week from a bishop/priest/deacon), but rather that the decision-making power resides with them.
I'm still not following the sectarianism-parochial school connection. Most parishes don't have schools. Most people in parishes that have schools are not students at that school (they're adults, or too young, or publicly schooled even if not homeschooled). Every sub-group within a parish has something of a unique experience that those who are not members don't get, but I've never thought of this as something that would cut anyone off from the diocese or larger parish community, either for those in or out of the group.
I've never been part of a parochial school; is there some sort of special insider Catholic track there: parish, diocesan, or otherwise?
If you’d like to learn more about Catholic schools, I’d suggest the sociological work of Fr. Andrew Greeley and the more recent writings of Jared Staudt. I’m not making an argument about homeschoolers necessarily being sectarian, but rather an observation from experience. Not all homeschoolers behave this way, by any means.
In my anecdotal observation, there is sometimes—certainly not always—a tendency among the adult parents at a parish with an attached school to view the parish as a nifty, included with the exclusivity of tuition amenity of the school instead of viewing the school as an apostolate and themselves as there to be part of a larger community.
I don't quite follow what you mean by being 'distrustful of science.' It's true that all empirical knowledge is contingent and can be falsified later, but I don't think that makes the current existing scientific knowledge untrustworthy unless you have a good reason to distrust it. For example, the fact that the Standard Model of particle physics can't incorporate gravity implies that it's ultimately incomplete and will need to change.
However (and I'm not accusing you specifically of this), I've noticed that people who emphasize the contingency of scientific knowledge tend do so to try and cast doubt on whatever they take issue with, eg, "Evolution's just a theory!" Such a statement doesn't actually argue with evolution on the merits, it just tries to make it sound tenuous without a basis, which is intellectually dishonest. I think it's good to remember that scientific knowledge is falsifiable, and our understanding of the world does (and should!) change. That said, it typically only changes when we encounter new evidence that contradicts existing theories, and at least in physics, it tends to change in the direction of nuancing our existing understanding rather than completely overthrowing it. (Eg, quantum mechanics changes a lot about the classical physics picture of the world, but it needs to reduce to the classical picture when you zoom out enough. It also relies on classical ideas regarding conservation of momentum and energy to make sense.)
The scientific method involves a lot of people hammering away at various theories to try to prove them wrong, as cunningly as they possibly can. The prize goes to the most effectively distrustful. I think there are still scientists testing whether Newton's assumption equating gravitational and inertial mass is accurate. So many decimal places.
The way science is taught, generally does not explain the strengths and weaknesses of a theory, but simply presents what the theory is and all the reasons *for* it. You have to get pretty far into learning science to start hearing about the weaknesses of the theories. For example, the timelines inherent to the theory of evolution rely heavily on dating practices that have large errors, or to assumptions regarding how various rock formations were formed (e.g., the Grand Canyon being formed over millennia, rather than decades, which is now reliably disputed). The lack of attention to the error margins in publicly presented data, combined with the lack of discussion of the reasoning for and against the theories, results in science being taught with assurances that there's tons of evidence, but no actual evidence being shared. Essentially, the scientific method is explained, and the scientific theory is explained, but the scientific method is rarely applied to the theory in the actual explanation. And yes, there are a lot of people who announce "it's just a theory", as if that was an argument. But they were taught by people announcing "it's a scientific theory", as if *that* were an argument.
The biggest problem with this is that many people grow up thinking that trusting science and trusting scientists are exactly the same thing. And as soon as they find scientists who are wrong about something, some accordingly stop trusting all science, and sometimes the scientific method as well. The second biggest problem is that a lot of people who would really get their jollies out of figuring out new things, are raised thinking there's very little to figure out.
I like what Richard Feynman said about classical physics. Paraphrasing, he said that its theories are numerically breathtakingly close to reality. But philosophically, they are completely wrong. Likely, so are our current theories. I expect engineers to not really care about that, but physicists are constitutionally required to.
1. "The biggest problem with this is that many people grow up thinking that trusting science and trusting scientists are exactly the same thing. And as soon as they find scientists who are wrong about something, some accordingly stop trusting all science, and sometimes the scientific method as well."
I 100% agree with this statement. The reliability of empirical methods as such doesn't not guarantee the reliability of any one scientist's work, and it certainly doesn't grant them automatic competence in other areas like ethics or philosophy.
2. "The way science is taught, generally does not explain the strengths and weaknesses of a theory, but simply presents what the theory is and all the reasons *for* it. You have to get pretty far into learning science to start hearing about the weaknesses of the theories."
This is true, for better or for worse. Part of the difficulty, I think, comes from the fact that it's hard to learn what the precise claims of any given scientific theory are well enough to then understand where its limitations and weaknesses lie. It's certainly hard to teach that nuance at the grade-school level, and the difficulty doesn't instantly vanish in undergrad, either. Which is not to say that it shouldn't be attempted (especially in college) but that it is *hard.*
3. "The second biggest problem is that a lot of people who would really get their jollies out of figuring out new things, are raised thinking there's very little to figure out."
I would argue more that it has to do with kids coming out of high school thinking that the sciences are the exclusive province of a specialized, mathematically capable elite, and if they're not "a math person", then there's no way they can understand and they shouldn't bother. I think that mindset hampers more people than thinking that there's very little to figure out.
4. "I expect engineers to not really care about that, but physicists are constitutionally required to."
A fair point, and I'm always happy to poke fun at engineers (if only to compensate for the fact that they get paid more), but it's also good to recognize that no one can care about everything. By specializing in physics, I may have learned enough to care about the holes in the Standard Model (and even then only abstractly, since it's not my area), but in so doing I've foregone learning deeply about a lot of other things, including pertinent scientific theories. I don't know evolutionary biology (my objections to young-earth creationism being principally cosmological and philosophical), and so I'm willing to take evolution as broadly plausible within the bounds set by the Church, but also, to be brutally honest, I just don't worry about it that much—just as I'm sure Stephen Jay Gould doesn't stay up nights worrying about why gravity doesn't play nice with quantum mechanics. I have a reflexive aversion to people who run counter to the scientific mainstream largely because they tend to go in for conspiracy theories, but I also have to be honest and admit that in a lot of cases, I haven't examined the evidence enough to empirically convince myself one way or the other.
This stat about homeschooled kids and vocations seems to be in a lot of Pillar stories recently (or maybe there are just a lot of homeschool stories). I don't think we really can draw any conclusion about this--there is no evidence that the homeschooling increased the person's decision to join religious life. Perhaps they just came from a more religious family, or their families went to mass more often, or any number of other things.
Then we similarly cannot draw any conclusion that parish schools increase a person’s tendency to receive and accept a religious vocation or that public schools do not increase this tendency.
I think we can draw certain conclusions. For one, that stifling homeschooling damages vocations while supporting homeschooling benefits vocations. It's not a 1-1, but nonetheless a relevant factor.
*government school VS private catholic school*
HISTORY: Government schools were started to help create a literate, civically educated populace. Included was the ability to read, especially to read the Bible. Later, Catholic immigrants felt persecuted by the anti-Catholic bigotry experienced in government schools. The Catholic Church built a national school system which successfully competed against "free" public schools. Later, Catholics forgot their history and took Catholic schools for granted. Once and originally created as "safe spaces", somewhere it was safe and acceptable to be Catholic, now Catholic schools are largely beige zombie institutions who stumble around with a thin veneer of pseudo-Catholicism. (for example - the incredulous shocked disbelief and revulsion when a teacher is fired after 'celebrating' their very public 'gay marriage.') Todays parents are forced to pay taxes to fund the government schools which are reeducation camps and indoctrination centers for leftist extremism. Parents who can afford private schools send their children to Saint Beige to shield them from societal collapse. Those parents are criticized by the defenders of "public education" for abandoning the public square. They are told that THEY are responsible for the sorry state of public education because they won't sacrifice their children by sending them to Moloch Public High.
*private catholic school VS homeschool*
DITTO
Parents who can, refuse to send their children to Saint Beige, in order to shield them from veneer pseudo-Catholicism of the "who am I to judge" variety. Those parents are criticized by the defenders of "Catholic" schools for abandoning the public square. They are told that THEY are responsible for the sorry state of Catholic education because they won't sacrifice their children by sending them to SAINT BEIGE cATHOLIC HIGH.
*note to Catholic bishops*
When the Catholics who are most in love with the Church are opting out of your "cATHOLIC" schools because they are afraid that their children will lose the faith because they attend YOUR schools... You should be very concerned. You should practice a little synodality and listen to their concerns.
What is happening in San Diego seems unconscionable. I suspect the idea is that the local Catholic schools are struggling and don't want to lose students to homeschooling. It seems very similar to how the public schools and teachers unions don't want vouchers or school choice.
The Catholic Church through the archdiocese and local parishes and schools has been trying to accommodate itself to the modern world. Thus, Catholic schools are increasingly only affordable to the modern family model of two working parents with two children. And Catholic education in the parochial schools and in parish catechesis is watered down because the faith is not taught or practiced in the home of the modern family. So a large Catholic family with a stay-at-home mother often finds homeschooling the most suitable fit for their family needs. A parish typically divides all its various activities up into age groups that often meet at different times and locations, and while this works when a family has one or two children, it does not work for a large family with many children of different ages.
The Ordinariate Cathedral of Our Lady of Walsingham runs a very thriving home school coop called the Holy House Academy which is oversubscribed every year. Even non- Catholic families have become involved in it, with resulting conversions in some cases as well. It is an important apostolate of the cathedral and one which strengthens the cathedral parish, too, as the home school families who participate in the Holy House Academy tend to “buy into” the parish more intensely than those who are not involved in it or some other parish program. That is a point that should be considered by San Diego and other dioceses dealing with the issue.