Home Schooling Is Worth the Effort: It Protects Children’s Bodies and Souls – It Can Make Them Smart Too

Dr Shaw makes an excellent case for homeschooling. At least it shields them from the atheistic child abuse of the public/state schools.

From the Catholic Herald

By the Hon. Joseph Shaw, DPhil (Oxon), FRSA, Chairman of the Latin Mass Society of England and Wales and President of Fœderatio Internationalis Una Voce

The only people involved in a child’s education who have an overview of the whole process, from babyhood to adulthood, and who truly know the child, and his or her needs and ambitions, are parents.

They are their children’s primary educators, in a sense that encompasses the moral relationship between parent and child, and the practical and biological relationship.

To a teacher, your child is one among many pupils, as they try to get the class through the syllabus with as many children as possible keeping up, and not too many getting bored. They know little about what else their pupils are learning, or have learnt up to now.

It is simply impossible for teachers to pay that much attention to any one child. No teacher, however conscientious, can take the ultimate responsibility for a child’s education. That burden can never be lifted from parents. It follows that parents must know what is going on in their children’s school, and intervene when necessary.

This implies a partnership between parents and schools which is becoming seriously frayed. Twenty years ago I saw, as a new parent, that schools were adopting sex education programmes that they were very unwilling to let parents see. This attitude is incompatible with real collaboration between parents and teachers, and destructive of trust.

The consequences of values-free sex education have truly come home to roost today, as it has clearly contributed to an epidemic of sexual assaults in schools. This problem has been joined by others: the linked crises of competence and self-confidence in education.

The cultural self-confidence that is the basis for all education has eroded. Why teach Shakespeare, if one culture is no better than another? Wasn’t mathematics invented by white men with regressive views on race? Isn’t it racist to enforce standards of behaviour that children of some ethnic backgrounds can find harder to meet than others? But without self-confidence in the knowledge and culture one is passing on, education becomes impossible.

This has contributed to a crisis of competence. Our children are increasingly being taught by a generation of teachers whose own teachers thought that English spelling, French grammar and mathematical skills are hindrances to authenticity, rather than the necessary conditions for creativity. How many newly qualified teachers have a real mastery of their subjects?

I’d love to send my children to school, but it would have to be one where neither my children’s bodies nor their souls are systematically endangered, and it would have to have the will and capacity to teach them the fundamental knowledge and skills of a coherent set of subjects. Schools like this exist, but there is no guarantee that there is one within commuting distance of where any one of us lives. The alternative is to make provision for one’s children’s education in some other way – at home.

Home education is simply education other than full-time in a school. It may well incorporate professional teachers, as tutors, or occur in the context of a home education cooperative. It may well include preparation for public exams leading to conventional university applications. It may be the best option for one child in a family, and not for another. It may only be for the earlier or for the later years; it may be just for a period of time for all sorts of reasons.

There is no model for everyone to follow, because people choose it for all sorts of reasons and to meet all sorts of needs. This in itself can seem intimidating, but it is a well-established phenomenon in the UK and the US, and ideas and materials abound. There are networks of Catholic home educators, many of them grouped around places where the Traditional Mass is available.

Parents do not take the decision to home educate lightly, because it implies a big commitment of time, and often money as well. Those who do, however, find that it has an advantage which helps to balance the recourses available in a school: teaching can be far more responsive to the needs and abilities of the child.

Children aren’t bored or left behind because the teacher can immediately tell when it is time to move on, or if it is necessary to explain a point again. The efficiency and rigour possible with home education make up for an awful lot of astroturf sport pitches and similarly expensive facilities, while more time spent with adults, and with selected children – in out-of-school activities, for example – can be a better basis for socialisation than the typical playground.

In the US, where statistics are easier to come by, home-educated children do better than average in standardised tests, and are getting into elite universities in ever larger numbers. This is despite the fact that this category includes many children who have faced educational challenges.

Only parents can judge if their circumstances demand and make possible home education for their children. This is often more about will than about resources, however. Home educators are not all wealthy or highly educated. Home education may be about nurturing the next Mozart, but it may equally be about a child finding a place of safety and affection away from a toxic school.

Catholic parents can take comfort from the graces of the sacrament of matrimony. Since it is our duty to protect and educate our children, God will be with us in carrying this out, however difficult it may seem to be.