May Meanderings

I was up at 6:30 this morning, unusually early, probably in anticipation of attending my first homeschooling conference later today! I will be driving an hour to a city where such things occur. It isn't a Charlotte Mason conference; there hasn't been one of those close to my home. But I'm excited because it is being held by a Catholic company, Seton Home Study. As Charlotte Mason herself was not Catholic, it can be especially difficult for Catholic CM home educators to find good materials to suit our needs. In some ways I think we really are pioneers.

For all CM homeschoolers, the challenge exists to find living books for the self-design of a curriculum. There are full curriculum guides online, but not all are Catholic, and for various reasons it may not work to follow a single one completely. Cost of books can certainly be an issue. In the spirit of thriftiness I enjoy finding vintage treasures at flea markets, garage sales, antiques shops, and library book sales. And of course a great deal can be found through the library system itself.

I like Seton because they provide resources such as reprints of vintage Catholic readers and the Baltimore Catechism, and they incorporate historical fiction novels. When I wasn't getting very far teaching Beezy cursive writing, I ordered one of their handwriting workbooks, and it has been very effective. Today I'm going to take a look at their Bible history offerings for 6th and 7th grade. Though their curriculum is heavy on traditional text/workbooks, these often use a story format rather than the typical dry facts variety. It will also simply be nice to have a mom's day out, to listen to the speakers at the conference and experience being a part of a larger homeschooling community. Where I live there are very few Catholic homeschooling families.

It is wonderful to be able to sit out on my front porch this morning, enjoying the sunshine and birdsong. One of my favorite delights every year is getting the porch all cleaned up and reorganized. We can eat, visit with friends and family, and do our school lessons out here. I've been watching children trickle to the bus stop, and that brings me to another topic.

Last week Beezy had the opportunity to attend full days at the Catholic school where she takes a la carte art and gym classes. She was supposed to go full-time all week, but by Wednesday night she had a sore throat, so she only went for three days. That was enough of the experiment to gauge what it would really be like.

As I suspected, if we sent Beezy there full time, our family life would revolve almost entirely around school. Beezy did enjoy it. She didn't seem to mind getting up early, and she wasn't bored being there all day. What she did not enjoy was the homework, especially for math. From what I saw with all of the homework, she is working at grade level, so I don't think a transition to school life would be a problem in that respect. But a good portion of the evenings were spent with her dad and I helping with homework. One evening she visited with a neighbor friend for an hour. On another we took a family dog walk, and on the third she played outside for awhile. But allowing her to have a life in the evening meant not finishing the homework.

In addition, parents of Catholic school children are expected to do a lot of volunteer work. I put  the issue of the cost of tuition out of my mind in order to evaluate other kinds of costs. The biggest cost is time. I would spend a minimum of five hours every week driving to and from the school. In that amount of  time I can cover two days worth of homeschooling! Beezy didn't have time for the book she is reading for pleasure, or to watch our favorite shows on Netflix. I was not able to do our usual bedtime read alouds. If we were to add her weekly piano lesson, religious education class, and participation in a sport to the mix, I don't see how we would have any free time left. As children get older, even weekends are consumed with homework and extracurricular school activities.

The experience gave me a new appreciation for the ability to homeschool. My husband was dead set against losing this freedom and being chained to the school schedule and requirements. We only have one car, so on a day like today I would not be able to go a conference in a city an hour away. And in our current situation, other homeschooling friends who also have greater freedom with time can get together for play dates and sleepovers any day of the week. With not having to pay tuition, we can spend that money on lessons, classes, field trips, sports, and other enrichment activities that would have to otherwise go by the wayside. And we don't have to become exhausted and disconnected from one another in the process. I was amazed that after having my child at school for the entire day, I still had to "homeschool" in the evenings! I cannot see the benefit.

The Catholic school is great. It's a good place for those families who cannot homeschool. Beezy's class is a wonderful group of kids, and the Catholic environment is extremely important. I wouldn't consider public school unless it was the only option. But I can best live my vocation as a Catholic mother by homeschooling. Even at the Catholic school, the education is infiltrated with Common Core, and the only class in which Catholic school books are used is the religion class. The children pray there three times daily, and they attend Mass once a week. Most of the teachers are Catholic. At home I can provide an education in which the Catholic Faith permeates the entire curriculum, which fulfills the teaching of the Church in a way that the school does not. The sacrifice of time and money would not be worth it to me or my husband. I feel blessed that we can have the best of both worlds, that we can homeschool and also provide a part-time experience of enrichment classes at the school for our child.

We all want what is best for our children. I believe in a Charlotte Mason education. That is simply not something my daughter would be privileged to have at any of our area schools. The freedom of educational choice is one that we must not take for granted. We exercise our rights, or risk losing them. I choose to seize the day!

The Vintage Homeschool

Recently while traveling in upstate NY, I was browsing at a flea market when I thought of a new blog concept: the vintage homeschool. I have a lot of antique, vintage and second hand stuff in my home, plus Amish furniture, my own collage art creations, and shabby chic influences. I had picked up the vintage Catholic school book I mentioned earlier, and something clicked. I want to give my child an old-fashioned Catholic education, but at home and without the mean nuns. Actually, I have heard mostly of nice nuns. Anyway, I googled to see if anyone else had come up with this idea already and found Karen DeBeus' blog, "Simply Living...for Him". She has two ebooks which I have purchased, so once finished reading I will review those.

Karen's take on the vintage homeschool is different form mine, but in a way it's along the same lines. She and a friend coined the term while discussing simplifying their homeschooling. She refers to the pioneer homeschoolers of 25 years ago, who began educating their children at home with none of the modern conveniences, such as large curriculum fairs and the internet. They must have relied on libraries and garage sales mostly...and God. Mostly God. While I was obsessively studying unschooling, it occurred to me that I was losing focus on my Catholic faith, and that wasn't a good sign. When I put my focus back where it belongs, I started to see the negative aspects of radical unschooling, and I wrote about them. I witnessed some worst case scenarios and couldn't see how a "freedom without limits" philosophy could be Catholicized. At the core, I don't think it can. At the same time, the simplicity, joy, gentleness, and peace being portrayed by unschooling advocates like Dayna Martin really appealed to me--and still does.

It seems like being a Christian parent should lead to respecting children, but I have noticed by observing myself and others that it doesn't necessarily follow. I remember taking my parents to the counter-cultural art and music festival called ComFest (Community Festival) in Columbus when I lived there. It was begun in the 1960s as a Vietnam War protest, and to this day is put on entirely by volunteerism, with no corporate sponsorship. Free music concerts all weekend on five stages! My mom commented that people at ComFest were even nicer than people at church. When I think in terms of radical unschooling simply, without getting caught up in the secular, anti-teaching dogma, I parent better. I am kinder, and I feel so much more peaceful. And it's important to say, I can do this without abnegating my parental authority. Children and parents are equal persons in the eyes of God, but we are not the same. We have different roles and responsibilities. I had to separate the wheat from the chaff, and there is gold to be found in embracing the freedom that this life offers, but for me only in terms of putting God--and the teachings of Jesus' Church--first.

Those pioneer homeschoolers were unschoolers. They had to start from scratch and figure out how children naturally learn, and how to relate differently to their children, to find better ways to educate them and be with them. They had to shift the paradigm. I am beginning to see life/natural learning as part of the simplicity movement, and of getting back to a healthy family unit as the bedrock of society. Entrepreneurship, family businesses and farms of which children are a part, self-reliance, safe food and products, environmental sustainability, voluntary poverty, and thriving local communities do not have to be a thing of the past. We can live it, starting today, one holy day at a time.