Are Catholic children who were homeschooled continuing the tradition with their own children?

[TheAmazingGrace]

My three brothers and I were homeschooled K-12, and our much younger sister is still in the homeschooling game. I do not intend to do the same with my own kids when they come along. Home catechesis and family field trips? Sure. Homeschooling was not without its benefits, but unless your kid is struggling with some kind of physical or mental ailment, it is not the answer to the problems with public education.

 

[De_Maria]

My three brothers and I were homeschooled K-12, and our much younger sister is still in the homeschooling game. I do not intend to do the same with my own kids when they come along. Home catechesis and family field trips? Sure. Homeschooling was not without its benefits, but unless your kid is struggling with some kind of physical or mental ailment, it is not the answer to the problems with public education.

That’s the type of answer I was looking for. How about your siblings? Do they feel the same way?

 

[TheAmazingGrace]

I haven’t talked about it in-depth with my brothers, but the sense I get is one of general disenchantment. My oldest brother has actually been the one teaching my sister for the last couple years, and even though he does his best she’s still falling behind. It probably worked best for me, because (being the oldest kid) I got the lion’s share of my parents’ time and resources, and I was always an avid reader (much more so than any of my siblings). Even so, I’m not the most well-adjusted person, and I think I could have benefitted a lot from attending school.

 

[De_Maria]

That’s too bad. I hope other Catholic homeschoolers have had a better experience. But if they didn’t, that may explain why we don’t encounter very many 2nd gen Catholic homeschoolers.

Thanks for your reply.

 

[Bataar]

I was homeschooled and was in a fairly large Catholic homeschool group. A lot of my mom’s friends homeschooled their kids. Neither myself or any of my siblings have kids, but for the most part, not only are none of the other kids homeschooling their kids, the vast majority of them have left the church as well.

 

[Xantippe]

This is interesting:

Does Homeschooling Make Children More Religious?

Many parents homeschool their kids for religious or moral reasons. Here's what studies have found.

newrepublic.com

“Baylor University sociologist Jeremy E Uecker found through his analysis of data from the massive National Study of Youth and Religion that the key factor in transferring religious commitment was the level of religiosity of the parents and not the sort of schooling children received. On average, homeschooled young adults were no more religious than demographically similar young people who attended public or private schools.”

“Cardus researchers David Sikkink and Sarah Skiles’ analysis, based on a second round of the Cardus Education Survey conducted in 2014, found that while adults raised in a Christian homeschool context were a bit more likely to hold conservative theological views, they were less likely to have an active religious life or to be deeply involved in a religious congregation than demographically equivalent public and privately schooled young adults.”

“Southern Methodist University doctoral student Braden Hoelzle’s case study of four homeschooled college students found that, at least for the students he studied, going to college liberalized homeschoolers raised as conservative Protestants. He found that the more authoritarian the parenting style, the more pronounced the liberalization tended to be.”

That’s a very small sample, of course.

“In general, both the quantitative and qualitative studies have found that most homeschooled Christian children continued in their faith when they grew up, as did most Christian children who attended public and private schools. The type of schooling did not really make a lot of difference, especially not the sort of transformative difference many parents who choose it hope for. If anything, homeschooled children, especially those raised in very conservative homes, tend to liberalize over time, especially if they went on to college.”

I believe there are also some somewhat other unexpected outcomes for homeschooling as opposed to private or public school:

FIRST MARRIAGE AND FIRST BIRTH: Comparing Religious, Home, and Public Schools

Record: Jeremy E. Uecker and Jonathan P. Hill, “Religious Schools, Home Schools, and the Timing of First Marriage and First Birth” in Review of Religious Research 56, no. 2 (June 2014):…

gaither.wordpress.com

"Uecker and Hill begin by laying out several hypotheses they will test. They expected that Evangelical, Catholic, and homeschoolers would marry earlier and have a first child earlier than public school graduates, and that this would be explained in the data by levels of religiosity of parents and of the subjects themselves, and also by their more conventional beliefs about cohabitation and gender roles.

“What they found, however, surprised them quite a bit. Graduates of Catholic schools ended up looking more like graduates of nonreligious (usually elite) private schools. Catholic schoolers married later than public schoolers and had a first child later as well. By their 30s the overall rates of marriage and childbearing among Catholic graduates were higher than among public schoolers, but it took them a long time to get there.”

 

[Rosalie]

Thank you for sharing that study! If we are able to move to the Midwest in a year or two as planned, I’ll definitely revisit the option of parochial school. I definitely wouldn’t describe us as authoritarian and our plan to homeschool is mostly based on finances and the local schools not being developmentally appropriate, but it’s always good to have more information and keep revisiting decisions.

 

[De_Maria]

I was homeschooled and was in a fairly large Catholic homeschool group. A lot of my mom’s friends homeschooled their kids. Neither myself or any of my siblings have kids, but for the most part, not only are none of the other kids homeschooling their kids, the vast majority of them have left the church as well.

Now that, is truly sad.

Thanks for sharing.

 

[De_Maria]

This is interesting:

Does Homeschooling Make Children More Religious? | The New Republic

“Baylor University sociologist Jeremy E Uecker found through his analysis of data from the massive National Study of Youth and Religion that the key factor in transferring religious commitment was the level of religiosity of the parents and not the sort of schooling children received. On average, homeschooled young adults were no more religious than demographically similar young people who attended public or private schools.”

“Cardus researchers David Sikkink and Sarah Skiles’ analysis, based on a second round of the Cardus Education Survey conducted in 2014, found that while adults raised in a Christian homeschool context were a bit more likely to hold conservative theological views, they were less likely to have an active religious life or to be deeply involved in a religious congregation than demographically equivalent public and privately schooled young adults.”

“Southern Methodist University doctoral student Braden Hoelzle’s case study of four homeschooled college students found that, at least for the students he studied, going to college liberalized homeschoolers raised as conservative Protestants. He found that the more authoritarian the parenting style, the more pronounced the liberalization tended to be.”

That’s a very small sample, of course.

“In general, both the quantitative and qualitative studies have found that most homeschooled Christian children continued in their faith when they grew up, as did most Christian children who attended public and private schools. The type of schooling did not really make a lot of difference, especially not the sort of transformative difference many parents who choose it hope for. If anything, homeschooled children, especially those raised in very conservative homes, tend to liberalize over time, especially if they went on to college.”

That’s the reason I told my children to eschew college and attend trade schools. My kids are still Catholic, so that was the right choice.

I believe there are also some somewhat other unexpected outcomes for homeschooling as opposed to private or public school:

FIRST MARRIAGE AND FIRST BIRTH: Comparing Religious, Home, and Public Schools | Homeschooling Research Notes

"Uecker and Hill begin by laying out several hypotheses they will test. They expected that Evangelical, Catholic, and homeschoolers would marry earlier and have a first child earlier than public school graduates, and that this would be explained in the data by levels of religiosity of parents and of the subjects themselves, and also by their more conventional beliefs about cohabitation and gender roles.

"What they found, however, surprised them quite a bit. …

Did homeschoolers get lost in that last statement. Or are they lumped in with Catholic schoolers?

 

[Xantippe]

Thank you for sharing that study! If we are able to move to the Midwest in a year or two as planned, I’ll definitely revisit the option of parochial school. I definitely wouldn’t describe us as authoritarian and our plan to homeschool is mostly based on finances and the local schools not being developmentally appropriate, but it’s always good to have more information and keep revisiting decisions.

There’s a lot of non-homeschooling research with basically the same message–that family environment trumps school.

It’s bad news for education reform people who want to lift children out of poverty via school, but it is good news for religious families who are worried about school undermining their values.

 

[Xantippe]

Did homeschoolers get lost in that last statement. Or are they lumped in with Catholic schoolers?

Probably the groups being discussed are:

–Evangelical private schoolers
–Catholic schoolers
–homeschoolers

I do wonder how these studies deal with the fact that a lot of families jump in and out. My kids’ school, for example, started as a homeschool co-op.

 

[De_Maria]

I do wonder how these studies deal with the fact that a lot of families jump in and out. My kids’ school, for example, started as a homeschool co-op.

Yeah, it gets complicated. I have known families that homeschool some of the kids, but not others.

 

[Xanthippe_Voorhees]

Xantippe:

I do wonder how these studies deal with the fact that a lot of families jump in and out. My kids’ school, for example, started as a homeschool co-op.

Yeah, it gets complicated. I have known families that homeschool some of the kids, but not others.

Which is a perfect example of making the education fit the child, not the child fit the education. I know a wonderfully Catholic family. The oldest girl and oldest boy (child #3) go to a Catholic school. Older girl needs to focus on studies but is too much of a mother hen to the littles so she needs to be in a school of her peers. Little brother begged to go. The 2nd girl is special needs so she goes to the public school where she gets world-class assistance. The younger boy is homeschooled and the youngest child (age 2) will follow but is in a toddler co-op right now.

What matters is each child is being educated. Each year they make a prayerful decision. When kid 3 had begged to go to school, too, they took it to prayer. They have met and married with the idea that they would be a great big homeschool family. During the year they found that despite being well versed in special needs, the boy had a speech impediment and the school worked with him and it has been considered fully fixed.

Even the Catholic author of the big-family guide to Homeschooling “Teaching in your Tiara” has balanced public, private and homeschool based on her children’s needs.

Honestly, come to think of it, I can think of 3 more families of 5+ that utalize all different degrees of public, private, co-op, homeschooling and cyberschool for their kids.

 

[ATraveller]

family environment trumps school

Definitely. Apparently, some youth pastors have noticed that teens from homes that have apathetic parents were apathetic themselves. People underestimate or minimize the effects of parents on teens.

 

[De_Maria]

Xantippe:

family environment trumps school

Definitely. Apparently, some youth pastors have noticed that teens from homes that have apathetic parents were apathetic themselves. People underestimate or minimize the effects of parents on teens.

That’s why the Catholic Church Teaches that parents are the first and most important teachers.

Gravissimum Educationis (Declaration on Christian Education)
3. Since parents have given children their life, they are bound by the most serious obligation to educate their offspring and therefore must be recognized as the primary and principal educators.
https://www.familyformation.net/ChurchDocumentSupport.asp

 

[UbiCaritas]

It will vary based on a lot of things.

DH and I were both homeschooled, and both come from Catholic families.

DH had a very positive experience with homeschooling, while I had such a negative experience that if it weren’t important to DH that our kids be homeschooled, I’d send them to the local public school in a heartbeat. I also feel very strongly that homeschooling shouldn’t be as permitted as it is, but again, that’s based on my extremely negative experiences.

In my case, I didn’t really receive an education after about 5th grade, despite being homeschooled until my junior year; my sister and I are the only women we know from our conservative, homeschool-only church who went on to college. I struggled badly socially for both my teenage and early twenties, as I awkward to begin with, wasn’t really allowed to have friends, rarely participated in extracurriculars, and we lived in the middle of nowhere. As a result, I had no idea how to interact appropriately with other people. I had been taught from a young age that anyone who did a whole host of perfectly ordinary things (watched Disney movies, wore leggings, wore nail polish, took ballet, went to school, and SO many other things) was a Sinful Person who I was to treat politely but avoid being friends with, so how, once I was thrown into high school and then college, was I supposed to talk to these apparently dreadful individuals?

If anything, I did even worse academically: while I did eventually graduate college, I really struggled in a lot of areas, especially math, science, and history. One of my parents’ “things” was that they were convinced we should all be ahead of grade level in all subjects, despite not really instructing us past about 3rd/5th grade for my sister and I respectively. This was bad in late elementary school, a nightmare in high school, and a total disaster in college. Ditto telling us from an early age that “busy work” (worksheets, for example, or online quizzes) was a “waste of time.” Well, perhaps in some classes…but this carries over rather badly in a college course where worksheets or online materials might well comprise 20-40% of one’s grade!

The attitude of “we’re right, and the rest of the world is bad, wrong, and persecutes us because we’re right” is also not a good one to bring to a formal educational environment. One example: younger sister once came to me to complain bitterly that she had received an F on a college paper, and she was sure it was because she had PROVED!!! in it that abortion was wrong and should be illegal, and her evil, liberal professor was making her rewrite her paper. When I dug a bit deeper, it turned out the assignment, for a freshman-level English class, was to write a term paper on one of the several books they’d read over the semester. Rather than turn in an essay on, say, “The Great Gatsby,” she submitted a screed on the evils of abortion, and then, with our parents egging her on, publicly accused the professor of flunking her because of her religious beliefs. Sigh.

(1/2)

 

[UbiCaritas]

2/2

DH’s family, on the other hand, while rather more conservative than I, did do a pretty good job of educating their kids at home. They used formal educational settings where needed for various subjects (science in particular), had the kids do extracurriculars with their peers, and turned out mostly-well-rounded adults who could function reasonably well both in college and in real life. I hope I can do a similar job. I worry that my own severe educational deficiencies could adversely affect our kids, and have made yearly standardized testing, in addition to the kids being enrolled in 1-2 extracurricular activities/year, one of my conditions for homeschooling as a result.

 

[DarkLight]

Hey, I’ve been that professor! I almost secretly hoped one of the students would try to complain - my faith was known to the department. Faith or not, I won’t accept a paper that amounts to “I believe X because the Bible obviously says X and the Bible is God’s plan” in philosophy class. The point was to give me a relevant argument, and that’s not really much of an argument.

 

[Rau]

Faith or not, I won’t accept a paper that amounts to “I believe X because the Bible obviously says X and the Bible is God’s plan” in philosophy class.

I recall some religiously devout students in a “philosophy of religion class”. They struggled greatly to understand why reasoning based on faith was not winning favor with the lecturer…

 

[DarkLight]

Honestly I’d even have taken a paper that presented a coherent argument on the topic based on Scripture. With an explanation of why the student was using that interpretation of the Bible over others and how it applied to the topic in question.

Unfortunately, the student failed to appreciate, not only that pure Biblical arguments weren’t the best idea, but that treating controversial interpretations as obvious and then applying them to modern situations was also simply obvious was a bad idea. I always told philosophy students in general, be very careful with what you consider obvious!