Faith Home-Schooling

Faith Homeschooling is not simply one fact of life among many, but the fact of life, the basic building block on which all education rests.  I wish there were a more satisfying verb to use instead of homeschooling, but home-educating,  or home-teaching don't fit. Nor do the expressions home-catechizing, or teaching religion at home. Why not? Home–educating or home-teaching do not carry the serious import that schooling carries. Schooling is foundational, while teaching and educating carry a temporary nuance with them. The same is true of home-catechizing, or teaching religion at home. Another problem with catechizing and teaching religion: both imply that Faith Formation is separate from other subjects that are taught. I can't find a better way to express it: there is nothing more important, more foundational  than the faith home schooling children receive from parents during their early years.  

Every mother is called to be a teacher and school her children at home by virtue of being a mother. The same is true of every father.  What they teach, and how well they fulfill or fail their call will be a decisive factor in the lives of their children.

 We all enter the world the most helpless of animals. From birth, we are naked and defenseless. Nature provides us hands with fingers, feet with toes, mouth and tongue, and intellect with reason, but these and our other organs take a long time to develop. It will be years before we reach a small degree of self mastery, and more years still before we are able to master the world around us to some degree. Left to ourselves at birth, with nothing more than what nature gives us, none of us could survive.

 Our parents act as our eyes, hands, tongue and reason during our early years.  It is fair to say that our birthing process does not reach its end until and unless mom and dad train and teach us what to do, say, think, and feel, long before any formal teaching of subjects begins. Through Baptism, in the case of believing, practicing Catholics, parents become the very eyes hands, mouth and intellect of the Mystical Body for their children. The spiritual formation in Faith, Hope and Love which parents give children is meant to condition and transform every other subject they teach.   This Faith formation of children is not something more, or something extra, added on to an otherwise “normal” education.  Rather, it is the lens we give our children to look through in studying everything else.  This matters more than anything else our parents give us during the years before we start “school” subjects at home, or enter a school system. Why? Because Faith home schooling begins the process of a mysterious coherence of all that is learned in our young (and later mature) minds. Without the Mysteries of Faith as the foundation for the rest of our learning, knowing reduces itself to a gathering and manipulation of data in order to gain some desired end. Given the ends aimed at by the public school system, and the difficulties of providing proper Catholic or private schooling for children, any responsible parents who can home school, should do so. In any case, all Catholics today need to consciously give a religious Faith formation to their children.

 Each mother is the first teacher of her child because she stands nearest to her child in the order of nature.  She molds and shapes her baby by the way she relates to the infant. The child literally is putty in her hands, receiving the stimulus she gives, reacting, and thus being shaped into the form she imposes. Homeschooling begins as soon as the infant is placed in mother’s arms. She is his home. This schooling is more important than the child’s right to food, shelter and clothing, because it will determine his character and therefore his future destiny.  The child begins to feel, to learn what to like and dislike, to “see”  what is good and bad, right and wrong, by everything the mother says and does with it. The child absorbs her moods, tone of voice, touch, feelings, etc., without realizing his mother is shaping his character and molding him into person he will grow into. This is why everything the mother says and does is of crucial importance. Her words and deeds are the lessons and curriculum which teach him the attitudes and habits that open or close him to future learning.

  We adults make a huge mistake if we think children are not in the habit of noticing things.  Not noticing is a habit of us adults who have become hardened in unconsciousness. Like sponges, children soak up everything.  They miss nothing of what is going on around them. They do not start out in the same world we grown-ups live in, even though they end up there by the way we form them. This is why what the habits they learn, consciously and unconsciously, before they can read, write, and reason are most important.  

A child will not be capable of virtue as an adult, or of leading a life according to reason, if the hunger for what is good and true and beautiful is not planted in him long before he sets foot in any school building. A child has to have right habits instilled in him long before he can act on his own account.  What habits he acquires in his early years will depend mainly on the habits and thinking of his mother, father, and the other persons he grows up with.

 Most parents will say they want their children to “have a good life”, or to “be happy”. When asked what a good life is, or what happiness is, they are not always very articulate.  Yet, their attitudes about goodness and happiness are being transmitted to their children all the time.

 A child sees what gives mommy pleasure, what makes her cry, what she likes and dislikes, what she fights for, what she lets go of, what she rejoices in, and what she is afraid of.  He does much the same with daddy.  By imitation the child learns courage or cowardice, temperance or self indulgence, honesty or deceit, from the start of his life. This is how a child develops his heart’s ability to move towards, away from, or against all that life presents to him. Thus are his habitual attitudes and actions formed.  His lived experience with mother and father settles him into a basic feel for what happiness and the good life are. Suppose a child learns that a lie is a good way to avoid danger. He will probably tell the truth as long as it is convenient. But when the truth would expose some fault or failing of his, a lie would then be the best way out.  What is good in his mind is not the truth, but the deception that helps him avoid punishment. He has learned that deception is a good skill for him to master. He will then define goodness as being good at something, such as making money, programming a computer,  playing golf or cheating at cards. He will not know that he is deceiving himself and setting himself up for a life that will end in misery. Between the cradle and school, the home schooling he has received will predetermine what he turns out to be. The attitudes,  the movements of the heart,  that open or close him to what is good, true, and beautiful have already been formed in him.

Look at the basic concern of most people have, money.   Since money buys material possessions, and material possessions are necessary for life, it is easy for a child to get the message from his parents that life is all about making money, or that money is the way to happiness. They may, in fact tell him the exact opposite message verbally and say, “Money can’t buy happiness.”  Yet those words will not impact him if he sees that their hunger for money and possessions is the driving force or the organizing principle around which the whole of family life is set up. Again, what else will the child think if it is ingrained  in him that he should “study hard in school” so that he can “get a good job” when he grows up?  No matter what he learns, it is secondary, a means to making money.  What is good, true, beautiful, has no value in itself and is not worthy of pursuit. Only wealth has value. This is another way of giving the child the message that knowledge and truth are not important in themselves. Nor is loving what is right and good.  None of that matters much in comparison with being wealthy. That is the good life, the happy life: getting more and more money!

This is the conventional wisdom of the day, but there is no reason why any mother and father who love their children have to educate them in accordance with the way the majority of people think.  The common opinion is not necessarily the correct one. In spite of what others do, parents should not let their children play as they please,  or listen to whatever music happens to be popular at the moment,  look at whatever they like on TV, nor have unsupervised access and use of the internet. It would be a wise practice to read to the child instead of letting him watch cartoons on TV, and play games with him instead of letting him play video games on computer.

If good moral habits developed in us naturally as we grew physically, and if our minds and hearts had no difficulty in latching on to what is right and good and using it correctly, children would need no supervision or guidance. It would be fine to leave them to their own devices until they went to school to get an education. Since children have an innate desire to know but do not know the proper way to satisfy that desire, the duty of parents is to lead their children to the good habits that will enable them to do so. The habits will then become second nature to the children and enable them to go where their first nature, by itself, cannot.  Parents who do not perform this duty end up incapacitating their children for the very education they want them to acquire.

 Special attention needs to be paid to leisure, play and music in these early years.  Why these three things? Because they have a great deal of influence in moving a child’s heart, fashioning his habits,  and forming his character. Leisure and play are not the same, although most adults think of childhood as a time when the two are synonymous.  Many adults think that the best thing to do with a child is leave him alone so that he can use his leisure time to play at whatever he wants.  It is up to him if he wants to spend hours in front of the television viewing cartoons, letting one image after another deaden his imagination and at the same time excite his nervous system.  Listening to mother or daddy read to him would be infinitely more rewarding, because it would stimulate his imagination and develop his creativity.

 Nor should a child be left to listen to whatever music happens to be popular in the culture of the day. The more vulgar the music, the more disordered the cravings it will awaken in him. Good music awakens our hearts to joy, moves us towards lofty and noble sentiments, and leaves us in harmony. Bad music strengthens base passions, disorders our appetites, and leaves us unsettled.

Play can also have positive and negative effects.  It should not be confused with wasting time, entertainment or diversion. Play, even the most simple, should have a plan and purpose to it. It may seem like meaningless activity to the child, but his play with mommy and daddy leads him into the development of different skills. The child may not always grasp the rules and structures of the games his parents involve him in, but the discipline of repetition opens him to further creative development.  A game with no rules, or one where you make up the rules as you go along, leads to nowhere but boredom, frustration and anarchy. 

None of these observations are more than common sense.  As such, they risk being a needless   restatement of the obvious. But today the meaningless, irrelevant, and harmful multiplies and flourishes in most homes. Parents and children are tempted by more distractions than they have ever known.  Education is for the future. What kind of a future are we preparing our children to face? What kind of future are we making them capable of?  How are we influencing them to make use of their freedom in light of their eternal destiny? Our lives, our families, are more insecure and fragile than they have ever been. Realizing the enormity of the difficulties, many parents understandably prefer to avoid all attempts at education. (“Let the professionals do it”, they tell themselves!) Yet it is the main function of parenting. Buying their children more and more things will not substitute for the personal attention only they can give. Nor can they wait till the children get older and  then pass the task on to the professionals.  No school teachers can relieve them of their burden.

The education of our children before they reach the use of reason is a sacred responsibility that cannot be delegated. There is no way to avoid it. Once parents realize what they mean to a child during his early years, they are compelled to turn to the God who has gifted them with children and pray for His blessings on their efforts, and His mercies on their many failures.  Their many frustrations and inadequacies are the very material of their prayer that moves the heart of God. They should kneel and pray with their children daily. This act alone teaches more than any lesson can communicate. There is no other way for parents to fulfill the impossible task He has given them. “Suffer the little children to come unto Me,” Christ said. By prayer, parents make it possible for their children to approach the Lord here, and see His face hereafter.  Daily prayer with their children shows them that adults never stop being God’s little ones.