Home Schooling Questions

[chadbrow]

Hi, We have three young children and are thinking about Catholic homeschooling. What is your general thoughts on that? Is there a general concensus on what is better, public, private, homeschool? What we’d really like is for someone with a lot of home school experience to contact us directly for some practical advice. THANKS! Please email us at chadbrow at yahoo dot com

 

[Sr_Sally]

You’ll hear advice on all sides of this issue. Of course, here you’ll hear more postitives about Catholic schools or homeschooling. I suggest you check out the schools in your area. What is your local public school like? the school district? how faithful/orthodox is your local parish school? what about other private options? is there a Catholic (or other) homeschool support group in your area? if so, check them out too. Also contact the Homeschool Legal Defense fund for info about the homeschool laws in your area. And also consider any special needs of your children that you know about now or that may come up in the future.

 

[HannahLisa]

I don’t have any advice, since I’m not old enough to have homeschooled any of my own kids. However, I was homeschooled for eleven years, and I think it was much better for me than being in public school would have been, especially for elementary and middle school. I did go to a public high school for 10th-12th grade.

 

[leonie]

Here’s a couple of nice homeschooling talks.

ewtn.com/vondemand/audio/file_index.asp?SeriesId=6147&pgnu=1

see episode #11

ewtn.com/vondemand/audio/file_index.asp

episode #170

narhs.org/node/view/190

which is a high school program, but gives a pretty good explanation of homeschooling.

ewtn.com/vondemand/audio/file_index.asp

episode 251

If the links don’t work, just go to ewtn audio archives and enter homeschool into the second search field.

A really good way to learn about homeschooling is to go to a Catholic homeschool conference.

 

[ChristineML]

I homeschool my three school-age children. I love the lifestyle, but it’s not for everyone. I buy all my books from Seton Educational Media at www.setonbooks.com. They have lots of information on Catholic homeschooling at their sister website, www.setonhome.org. Check out their “Considering home schooling?” section.

But Seton Home Study School is by no means the only Catholic book publisher out there. I searched these forums on the topic of “homeschooling” and found the post where someone on another thread listed many other publishers of Catholic curricula:

forums.catholic-questions.org/showthread.php?t=201321&page=2&highlight=homeschooling

You could visit other Catholic publishers’ sites also to get an idea of the wide range of materials available for Catholic homeschoolers.

Best wishes,
Christine

 

[Malcolm_McLean]

Hi, We have three young children and are thinking about Catholic homeschooling. What is your general thoughts on that? Is there a general concensus on what is better, public, private, homeschool? What we’d really like is for someone with a lot of home school experience to contact us directly for some practical advice. THANKS! Please email us at chadbrow at yahoo dot com

If you send your children to a public school you have effectively no say over their education. You rely entirely on the sense of responsibility of the teachers and bureaucrats.
That’s not a negligible force, and schools are not hotbeds of financial corruption, unlike public services in some countries. However when it come to it, parents and not government officials have the real interests of children at heart.

Private schools vary a lot. They tend to cater for what the majority of parents want, which is usually good examination results. Whilst they do quite a good job of achieving that, it’s rather a shortsighted attitude. Even in narrow financial terms, results are only one component of success. However you can have religious instruction.