The Gift of Homeschooling

by Leane VanderPutten

I don’t like blanket statements and I try not to make them. I have been around long enough to know that what is good for one family is not the best for another. I wrote this article as a response to the statement, “If there is a good Catholic school close by, parents are obligated to send their children to it…”

The Gift of Home Schooling

How very grateful I am for the gift of homeschooling…for the grace to have been willing to lay down my life, as a mom, to teach my own children. I am grateful for the fortitude and strength to carry on in spite of difficulties, inadequacies and persecution.

I, personally, am a person with many interests, many hobbies and a thirst for knowledge in areas I am interested in. When I entered marriage, I had been involved in many extracurricular activities that filled my days with opportunity, development and enjoyment.

Did I have time to continue to pursue all those interests and hobbies in all the schooling years of my children? No, I didn’t. Instead, each day was given to my children as I monotonously taught them their ABC’s, their 123’s, their Catechism, etc.

It is brave and sacrificial for conscientious parents to home school. And when I say conscientious, I mean those parents who take this duty seriously. They are courageous and true warriors…

From Father John Hardon:

“For Catholic parents to live good Catholic lives in our day requires heroic virtue. Only heroic parents will survive the massive, demonic secularization of materially super- developed countries like America.

“And consequently, far from being surprised, parents should expect that home schooling will not be easy. Any home schooling in the U.S. which is easy today is not authentic Catholic home schooling. If it is easy, there is something wrong.

“Today, Catholic parents must not only endure the cross, resign themselves to living the cross, but they are to choose the cross. In case no one has told you, when you chose home schooling, you chose a cross-ridden form of education.

“This is the age of martyrs . . . and a martyr is one who suffers for the profession of his faith. There is red martyrdom and white martyrdom. There is bloody martyrdom and unbloody martyrdom.

“You have to live a heroic Catholic life in America today. God will use you and provide you with the knowledge and the wisdom, providing you are living the authentically heroic Catholic life.”

Fr. Hardon goes on to say…

“Home education is the development by the parents of the whole personality of a child from infancy to adulthood. It is education because it draws out, from the Latin word educere, the natural and supernatural potentialities of a person.

“Some of these potentialities are latent in a child from conception and birth; others are present from the time of Baptism. The parents’ primary duty is to cooperate with God as Author of nature and grace to draw out the latent powers in the child whom they brought into the world.

“It is home education twice over. It is first of all home education because it is done by the parents, without whom there would be no home. It is secondly done at home, within the ambit of what we commonly identify as our domicile.

“Notice, I prefer to speak of home education rather than home schooling. This is to emphasize the domestic personal character of the education, rather than its institutional structure.

“When I speak of home education by both parents, I mean both parents and not only by the mother. It may be that time-wise: the mother devotes more time to the training of her children than the father. No matter.

“What is important is that both mother and father are involved; there is a contribution to the children’s up-bringing that, having a miracle, only the father can provide. His share in the education of the children is imperative.

“Moreover, home education does not absolutely exclude all other forms or sources of teaching the children. But in every case, and I mean every case, the home is the primary source. All other, or any other educational agents or agencies are

•secondary to the home,
•auxiliary to the home
•dependent on the home
•subordinate to the home
•chosen by the parents and meant to be helpful, never competitive with the
home.

“What is the span of home education? It is the whole personal and social life of the child; it is the bodily and spiritual well-being of the child; it is the physical, emotional, mental and volitional life of the child.”

In other words…. education outside of the home is there to supplement the Home Education…not replace it!

In my estimation, if you send your child for thirteen years, six to eight hours a day to a school, the potency of the influence of the home is much diminished. The pros of such a decision may still tip the scale for families…but that is dependent on the family situation, the parents, etc.

By Brian D. Ray, Ph.D.:

“Statistics show….

• The home-educated are doing well, typically above average, on measures of social, emotional, and psychological development. Research measures include peer interaction, self-concept, leadership skills, family cohesion, participation in community service, and self-esteem.
• Homeschool students are regularly engaged in social and educational activities outside their homes and with people other than their nuclear-family members. They are commonly involved in activities such as field trips, scouting, 4-H, political drives, church ministry, sports teams, and community volunteer work.

The research base on adults who were home educated is growing; thus far it indicates that they:

• participate in local community service more frequently than does the general population,
• vote and attend public meetings more frequently than the general population, and
• go to and succeed at college at an equal or higher rate than the general population.”

From Canon Lawyer, Benedict T. Nguyen (Gwin)

“It is clear that Canon 1136 (along with Canon 793 §1) puts the right and the responsibility of determining what are the best means to provide for the education of children in the hands of the parents. The idea that Catholic parents must, under normal circumstances, enroll their children in Catholic schools in effect usurps this right of parents.

“It seems highly unlikely that the Church, after repeatedly emphasizing the right and the primacy of parents in seeing to the education of their children, would then so limit this right as to say that it can only be fulfilled, under normal circumstances, in a Catholic school system. As the noted canon and civil lawyer Edward N. Peters wrote:

‘Nowhere does canon law mandate that parents must enroll their children in Catholic schools. Rather, canon law requires parents to live up to their obligation and determine what is the best means by which a Catholic education can be transmitted to their children. If the parents can best accomplish this through home schooling, then home schooling is not only a legitimate means, it is a laudable labor of love for parents who are trying to take seriously their vocational duties.

‘Of course, this does not imply in any way that parents who enroll their children in schools do not also take seriously their vocational obligations. The point is that among the various ways, home schooling is a legitimate and proper expression of the vocational duty of parents in the education of their children even when other means are available, including the existence of Catholic schools.

‘Home schooling is not and should not be a decision that Catholic parents make when they have no choice, but rather should be the fruit of a reasoned, prayerful consideration of what is the most advantageous way in which each individual child of theirs can acquire a truly Catholic education.’”

This was written by a Dominican Nun in the 1950’s, on the importance of the home influence…preferably in a rural atmosphere where chores and responsibility are in the forefront:

“An American writer on the ‘Forward to the Land movement’, expressed the value of rural living thus:-To live a decent, human life a man needs space for family living, a good environment for bringing up children, one where children are welcome, the possession of property so that the family can have both independence and responsibility, and a chance for genuine community living, for true neighborliness.

“Only the country can give all this. A nation can be no stronger than its families are, and they can be at their best in the country. And when to this natural strength we add the crowning glory of the Catholic Faith, when we strive to bring Christ to the countryside, and the land to Christ, we are certainly exercising a great apostolate.

“This is the ideal and the vocation we wish to hand on to our children. They will learn it best by living it, by being given an active share in it, while still young. If the chance to be truly responsible for what one does is one of the values of rural living, then the rural home must give each child jobs to do which he must do with faithfulness and responsibility.

“It is not enough that he sees, what is easily seen on a farm, that the feeding of animals, the watering of plants, the milking of cows, the gathering of eggs, the preparing of meals cannot be put aside for another day. He must share that responsibility if he is to experience the joy of a job well done.

“The jobs should not be burdensome to the child, but they should be really necessary jobs, and the child should be really responsible for doing them.

“Anyone who has had much to do with modern children, would realize their need for a sense of responsibility, and for acquiring a spirit of work and a respect for its dignity. At the same time the children will learn from sharing the family work to care for things with reverence and detachment, to use them properly – a very valuable lesson that is so hard to teach to the child who has to spend his growing years in a flat or in a few rented rooms.”

She goes on to say:

“Children should not only see the genuine concern which their parents have for the troubles of others and their readiness to give help; they should have their share in helping.

“Picnics and parties and games together are the joyful side of neighborliness; children need this, and the more serious side as well. As they grow up in the more spacious country environment, they can learn the meaning and value of quietness, serenity and solitude; but they should realize that they are never isolated, no matter how far away the nearest homestead.

“From their parents, too, children learn to take an active part in parish functions and entertainments, to give time and energy to supporting movements such as the Rural Movement, or any movement or club that is working to help the Catholic boy or girl to be, in time, an intelligent and contented member of a country community.

“It can be a very strong temptation, but parents who have realized that their vocation in life is to educate their children in God’s way, will not be found wanting. Their own love for each other and for God, is the strongest foundation of happiness in the home, and that is one reason why they will keep to themselves any differences or disagreements that may arise between them.

“They will realize that the special home virtues of unselfishness, bearing with one another, gentleness, generosity and modesty will not come without prayer and personal effort.”

She ends her talk by saying:

“I want to quote the words of our Holy Father, the Pope, spoken when he was canonizing St. Maria Goretti, the twelve year-old martyr of purity. She was, he said, “the fruit of a Christian home with its old simple method of education, a home where one prays, where the children are brought up in fear of God, in obedience to parents, in the love of truth and self-respect, accustomed to be satisfied with little, and to give a helping hand.”

“It was a country home, and Maria was a country child, who learnt early the meaning of sharing fully in the joys and sufferings of a family – the give and take of a family life.”

Do I daresay that all of this would be hard to teach a child who spends most of his life in a school?

So do not berate those who choose to home school. We give the best of our years to our children…

Were there gaps? Of course, there were. A mother and father can only do so much, especially being open to life. But God so beautifully filled in those gaps…by giving them, through our cooperation as parents, a “Life-Education”.

What kind of “Life-Education”? The life schooling that my kids got in those years were things like… working with their dad, fixing cars, building forts, cooking, sewing, gardening, the womanly arts in its many varieties, helping with housework, taking care of younger children.

They got an education in things like… being present during the religious, political and social conversations of all ages within the family, music lessons, visiting the Nursing Homes, taking part in Legion of Mary, hunting, fishing…. Would I trade that? No, I wouldn’t.

We would not have had time for these things sending our children to a school. And then the homework…ah, yes…the Homework! Such little time left for “life-schooling”!

Also and not a little thing…. the bonding I have experienced with my children…well, not enough can be said about that… except that I am grateful.

Could we have done better? Yes, we can always do better. I could also say the same for the schools we send our children to, even if it is a good Catholic one. Is it going to be perfect? No, it is not. Ask the parents who send them there. There will be plenty of negative to say, if they are honest.

As Father Lovasik says,

“We have many institutions that we call schools but the real schools where the real life-lessons are learned are in our homes.”

“To rear your child successfully, begin by resisting the first signs of evil inclinations and by sowing the first seeds of good in his soul. You can never pay too much attention to your child’s character formation in the first years. In this early period, the education of the child is based entirely on habits. On the parents depends the formation of either good or bad ones. To develop good habits in the little one is to prepare for him now the path he will follow as an adult.” -Education of Children, S. Hart

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