Sixth World Meeting of Families: continued

ZENIT are carrying a series of reports of events at the Sixth World Meeting of Families in Mexico City.

One report is entitled Families Praying for Families, and describes the availability of the Sacrament of Penance, of daily celebration of Mass and of Eucharistic Adoration during the pastoral-theological congress that has been taking place Wednesday-Friday.

Michael Waldstein offers a range of reflections on the situation of parents in relation to their children in the north American countries. This address urges parents to really take up their responsibility as the first educators of their children, and not to delegate that responsibility to schools, particularly given the increasingly secularised nature of public schooling. He ended his address referring to home schooling:

In describing the situation of the United States and Canada, however, I must also point to a more radical way in which parents are becoming involved in the education of their children, namely, homeschooling. According to recent credible estimates, there are about two million families in the United States that educate their children at home. My wife and I have eight children. We have been and are educating them from first grade all the way up to the end of high school. Four of them have already entered universities. The main reason why we began home schooling was the report we heard from close friends about the effect of home schooling on their family. The children, they said, became more friends with each other, because they shared the same experience of schooling in the home. The parents also became more friends with their children, because they shared more of their life. Like many other homeschoolers, we have seen that the global youth culture is not an irresistible force. It is possible to pass on our own Christian culture. The generation gap is not inevitable.

For parents who find themselves unable to home school, however, the question is raised here of the correct relations between the responsibility of the parents and the responsibilities of the school. Michael Waldstein highlights that this relationship should not rightly be one of delegation of responsibility from the parents to the school. It should represent a much more balanced, collaboration of the school in assisting parents in fulfilling their responsibility. And that, by implication, begins to set boundaries as to the engagement of the state in the running of schools. Public funding should not be equated to public control ...

The Secretary of the Pontifical Council for Migrants and Travellers, Archbishop Agostino Marchetto, highlighted Families With Greatest Challenges: Immigrants. This is a very topical question in the current situation of the world.

Further reports can be found at the ZENIT homepage.

An experience of home schooling

Diakonia is a blog I have been looking it for a few weeks now - it is on my blog roll. The poster of this blog is a permanent deacon in the United States. I have found his posts very thoughtful, which is why I go back from time to time.

Diakonia has recently posted on his experience of home schooling his children, and this is a post well worth reading. It has a context of the family's recent trip to Guatamala, more about which can be found on the main pages of his blog.

What strikes me about his experience of home schooling, and the reaction of other families that they met during their time in Guatamala, is something that occurred to me a number of years ago. It is very well described in Diakonia's post, which confirms me in what was more a "theoretical thought" than one based in experience.

The children of home schooling families learn to relate with a wider range of adults, in a wider range of circumstances, than children who attend conventional schools.

It is quite easy for a conventionally schooled child to experience essentially two types of persisting child-adult relationships: child-teacher and child-parent. And these relationships both occur in a particular environment, each with its own set of conventions. All their other child-adult relationships can be much more transitory - the bus driver, the shop assistant, aunty. Most of their close friendships will be with young people of their own, or similar, ages.

In a home schooling family, the child-parent relationship has a much wider range of settings, and breaks out of the set of conventions that can constrain other families. The children learn to relate to their parents - and to other adults that they encounter in the context of home schooling - in a much wider range of activities. Cross-generational relationship is part of their every day environment, and they become good at it. And younger children are used to learning with older children, so they are used to relating to people of differing ages. Diakonia makes a very good comment about this.

As Diakonia's post points out, too, home schooling families are increasingly collaborating with each other. The accusation of isolationism simply does not apply to home schooling that is done well. And I think Diakonia's post also communicates an experience based on a positive choice to home school - and, this is important - a choice that is not just a reaction to a bad experience such as bullying at a conventional school, though it is based on a certain dissatisfaction with what is offered in conventional schooling.

I have little direct contact with home schooling families in Britain. A few years ago, I did meet a small group of families at Youth 2000's Walsingham festival in August. The art and drama workshops that were run during the afternoons of this festival were an absolute boon for these families, and you could see their children taking part with an effectiveness and enthusiasm that was quite delightful. They also seemed to be completely at home with the aspects of "communal living" that went along with the festival. As well as the opportunity for learning and living their Catholic faith. The attendance of these families at the festival was clearly a part of their home schooling strategy - but I wonder what the children would have said if they had been asked "Do you like going to school during August?"

Towards the end of his post, Diakonia writes:

We are allowed to be Catholic, not just at home, or at church, but Catholic in everything that we do, without limitations and restrictions.

Our family through church, youth groups, city sports programs, community and neighborhood relationships, and travel to other countries, definitely gives us more access to the marginalized people of the world than most other families.