When homeschool families look at the Homeschool Study Plans I’m publishing this summer, I know what the response will be: “How can we possibly get all of that done?”
Then, the list of activities will begin, “We have to do this, and this, and that, and this.”, which, of course is false. Most of what homeschool families are doing does not need to be done, but they choose to do it, freely.
These busy homeschool schedules, filled with activities that have nothing to do with study or religion, have negative consequences: there’s not enough time for studies.
The term “extracurricular” activity used to mean that an activity was pursued when all of the “curricular” activity was completed. In fact, only the students who successfully completed the curricular activity were allowed to participate in the extra-curricular activity. There were priorities, and extracurricular activities were a reward for those who could get their work done.
Today, this is all flipped upside-down. Parents and students commonly spend more time on extracurricular activities than the necessary curricular activities–and the results speak for themselves.
For Catholic students to succeed in studies worthy of Catholic students, this modern disorder needs to be fixed. The hours that God gives us are given us to “Pray and Work” as St. Benedict put it, not play.
I challenge parents and students to give an honest account for their use of time. There are 168 hours in every week. How are these hours spent? How much time is actually dedicated to fulfilling our responsibilities in life? to Work? to Religion? to Health? How much time is just wasted in idleness?
If you track your time usage honestly, you’ll probably be surprised to see how much time is wasted. When you multiply that time by 52 weeks each year, by 20 years you have with your children, the reality can get pretty scary.
For any improvement to be made in education, Catholics must make Prayer and Study (i.e., work for those in school) the priority of our daily schedules. There are objectives that must be fulfilled for Catholic education to be effective, levels of learning that must be reached. Stopping short of these goals is to really end up “uneducated”.
With educational standards so low, Catholics can pretend to get away with this. They can stay just ahead of the public schools and pretend to be fulfilling the goals of Catholic education. We can compare our test scores to public school averages–but this is not how the Christian life is to be lived.
Rather than deceive ourselves by pretending that the achievements of public schools is the standard, we must restore the true standard of Catholic education, which is Wisdom itself. The wise men and saints of the past have, over thousands of years, worked out the course of studies that is necessary for the pursuit of wisdom. This course of study is the standard to which Catholic education must be held accountable.
When we look at this course of study, we will realize, very quickly, that it is very demanding. In history, very few could even afford to pursue it, but that’s not true today. We live in a society that makes education compulsory for all children and study is their full-time job. Teaching children that they only need to work 2-3 hours a day to “finish their schoolwork” is false. Such children are not finishing their schoolwork, but avoiding it.
We are not going to get through the course of studies recommended to us by wise men and saints if we reduce “school” time to 4 hours a day, five days a week for half of the year. No Catholics can given explain how such a schedule has come to be considered “normal” other than it’s what the public schools did in the 1800s.
This schedule and lifestyle is not sufficient for Catholic learning.
I know that most parents reading this will disagree with me–and that’s fine. As I said, this is the problem in our generation: we talk about wise men and saints, but follow foolish men and sinners.
For us to raise the bar in Catholic education, we don’t need to invent new schools or study materials. We have everything we need–and more. We have to become realistic about how we use our time and actually devote the amount of time, energy and resources to prayer and study rather than a thousand unnecessary things. Being like the other (non-Catholic) homeschool families in the community or co-op group is not going to leave us with Catholic fruits. This is what’s wrong with Catholic education and culture–and we can fix it.
Now, it may be true that some children will rebel against such a life, but that does not mean their desires should be served. The commandment is not “Parents obey your children.”. If there is going to be sin in the family, let it be the sin of children, not parents. What we should think of instead is whether the children who don’t disobey will have the opportunity to learn and do what will allow them to enjoy the best Catholic education possible.
Besides, if we are aiming at true Catholic objectives in homeschooling and some of our children resist, they will still end up with a good education that prepares them for college and career.
We can’t even get started if we don’t give Catholic learning the time it needs.
Mr. William C. Michael, O.P.
Headmaster
Classical Liberal Arts Academy
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