Homeschool Conference 2010: Prof. Joseph Pearce (#2)

OK, at some point, I’m going to have to finish writing up the homeschool conference.  Preferably, before we re-start school for the year (which happens the first full week of August for us; it’s just too hot to be out, so we might as well be inside, studying, so that we can be outside gardening come May).

Next up was Prof. Joseph Pearce again, this time discussing “Reclaiming Christian Culture.”

One of our goals in education, and homeschooing in particular, of course, Prof. Pearce said, is to hand on the inheritance of 3,000 years of Western Civilization.  If it’s true, furthermore, it is not just western, it belongs to the whole world.  It also has to be noted that it is synonymous with Christendom, i.e. Catholicism.

Looking at history, J.R.R. Tolkein noted the, “splintered fragments of the one true Light that comes from God.”  God, Prof. Pearce pointed out, watches over everyone’s path.  In history, particularly, God was preparing the Greeks through gifts of creativity and reason.  That stream would combine with the Christian faith fulfilling the Old Testament to form what we call Western Civilization.

In Greece, Socrates, Plato, and Aristotle, by reason, concluded that there must be gods.  Eventually, the philosophers’ thought moved towards the conclusion that there must be one god.  Also, the philosophers saw the physical world as the expression of the supernatural world that powers it.  Later, Augustine “baptized” Plato, discussing him with Christian eyes, just as Aquinas would later use the Greek philosophers to help explain certain points of Christian doctrine.

Of course, the Enlightenment dismissed all of this beautiful synthesis of faith and reason (which the Catholic Church has always held as complimentary) as the Dark Ages, since everything before the dawn of the philosophes had to be darkness and ignorance, right?  Prof. Pearce pointed out that “Enlightenment” was a name the new movement claimed for itself, not that anyone else decided they actually merited; he holds that “the Disenchantment” would be a more accurate description of the movement.  Quickly, there was no more beauty or order, only accidents.

Tolkein fights this view in his creation myth in the Silmarillion, with the music of creation.  Similarly, C.S. Lewis writes a creation myth for Narnia that includes the “song of Aslan.”  Scientists have found twenty physical constants that have to exist for the universe to allow for life (the odds of them all being right are like the odds of looking for one particular grain of sand on all of the world’s beaches).  Yet, our modern mindset is firmly rooted in the accidentalness of existence.

And so we come to modern times.  The Church is, yet again, in exile.  This shouldn’t alarm us terribly, Pearce pointed out; exile is the norm.  Jesus was rejected, the English martyrs were killed and others were exiled, etc.  Always, at some level, exile is the normal state of things for Christians.  He cited the “Salve, Regina”, “… and after this, our exile…”, describing our hope for Heaven, our true home.

So, this is our challenge as parents: to pass on the valuable inheritance of Western Civilization to our children so that they can pass it on.  Prof. Pearce gave five steps to this process:

1. Have children.  Rather obvious, isn’t it?  But birth rates aren’t just plummeting among secularists.  The problem here is that secularism and worldliness are “very successful parasites,” in Prof. Pearce’s words; fight against them, but don’t be too shocked if not all of your kids remain faithful Catholics.
2. Love in the home.  The example of loving parents is a witness to the love of Christ and the Church.  It is (or should be) an indissoluble union of self-sacrifice.  And it’s more attractive than the cheap immitations the world offers.
3. Sacramental life.
4. Change the world.  You can’t perfect it, but you can work to move it in the right direction.  Particularly of note here is the concept of subsidiarity: the family is the heart of economics and politics.  Whatever undermines the family is to be shunned.
5. Pass on the inheritance.

G.K. Chesterton said, “A thing worth doing is worth doing badly.”  We want to do it well, obviously, but we should be willing to do it badly, Prof. Pearce explained, because the alternative is not doing anything at all.

And that’s not really much of an alternative.

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Homeschool Conference 2010: Dr. Ray Guarendi (#2)

Apparently, I was getting tired of note-taking by this point.  Or it’s just that I’ve heard a lot of Dr. Ray’s talks.  Whichever, I have very, very brief notes for this one.

Demand respect.  Reserve your heaviest consequences for disrespect; it is the foundation of relationships and the most likely problem to harm your child’s future.

Your child’s reaction to the discipline shows what they think of the discipliner.  (Uh-oh…)

Myth: “You can make them cooperate, but you aren’t teaching them.”  Dr. Ray said this is a psych professionals’ fad.  The current idea is that time-out is just a “time out from positives,” except that any kid will tell you that time out is a punishment and, at best, boring as heck.  Dr. Ray pointed out that God runs the world with consequences.  We would be wise to learn from that.  (My kids’ favorite whine, “But I don’t want the consequences!”  Well, then don’t do the action!  I can’t tell you how many times I’ve repeated that one…)

And, finally, strict discipline yields less discipline.  It seems counterintuitive, but only at first.  If your discipline is firm and prompt, you will have to do less.  If you just sort of whine, “Ok, honey, can we pick up our toys now?  Please?” you will be doing a lot more work to discipline… and you’re going to be a lot more frustrated, because the kids will learn that you don’t really mean it until you’ve said it fifteen times.

I’ve watched my own kids’ behavior nosedive when they know the relative in charge isn’t going to actually enforce discipline like Mom and Dad; it’s ugly.  I’m not saying they’re angels for me 24/7, but they’re significantly better for me, because, darn it, I listen to Dr. Ray.  (He is wonderful for those days when your neighbors, acquaintances, relatives, and strangers at the mall are nagging you for being too strict.  It’s nice to know someone’s on your side in the goal to raise great kids, not just barely tolerable ones.)

For more Dr. Ray, check his website.

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Homeschooling Conference 2010: Mr. Dale Ahlquist (#1)

You will notice as the summaries continue (interrupted these past few days by re-planking a deteriorating deck and a lovely little case of heat exhaustion… someday, I hope to learn “pacing myself”), that I chose to attend the more philosophical talks at the conference.  I attended a few talks that sounded like they’d be more hands-on, “do this, don’t do that”, practical advice, but, well, they weren’t.  (With one major exception: watch for Mrs. Billing in a few days.)

That being said, let’s continue with Mr. Dale Ahlquist, president of the American Chesterton Society, with “What is the basis for education?”

(There will be more Chesterton on the blog in the future, because I did exactly what I told my DH I would do: as soon as the vendor area opened, I headed straight to the ACS table and bought one of almost everything.  I did, however, refrain from standing on a chair, waving my copy of Lepanto, and yelling, “If you buy nothing else, you have to buy this book!“… mostly because I’d forgotten my copy at home.  That, and DH gave me that, “Oh, please don’t do that, there might be people we know at the conference…” look when I told him my plans.)

(Parentheses are horrible, addictive things, aren’t they?  (Or is it just me?))

Mr. Ahlquist opened, as usual with several pertinent quotes from G.K. Chesterton, on the excuse that he was going to have a very short talk… and a very long introduction:

The more doubtful we are about whether we have any truth, the more certain we are that we can teach it to our children.

We are learning to do a great many clever things.  The next thing we have to learn is not to do them.

The obvious effect of frivolous divorce is frivolous marriage.

The moment sex ceases to be a servant, it becomes a tyrant.

We’ve come up with the best communications in all of history, precisely at the moment when we have nothing to say.

In Chesterton’s book What’s Wrong With the World, he cited four main things behind the chaos of modern “civilization”: big government, big business, feminism, and public education.  Why?  Because they all undermine the stability and importance of the family.  (At a homeschooling conference, of course, public education became the main source of discussion for the rest of this talk, but the ACS is having a conference in August in Maryland of the same title as the book.)

The problem with education, Ahlquist pointed out, is that we fail to define it.  Everyone agrees that education is a wonderful and desirable thing.  But what are we actually teaching?  Everyone is educated… many of us were just educated wrong.  We learned how to be ready for work, for the world, for politics… but not for the home.  Our modern education system treats the home as preparation for school, when the school should be preparation for a happy home life.

I could hold up as an example the many programs about reading to your children so they’ll be ready for kindergarten.  What about reading to them so they’ll love the stories, or love language, or learn from the stories, or remember the time they spent with their parents?  No, no, it’s about getting them ready for the artificial construct of the modern school.

Chesterton argued that the home is the large, expansive thing; the world is narrow, with everyone in their circumscribed specialty or office.  Home is where all the important things happen.  (Although, today, birth and death have been removed from the home to the specialists’ offices, so that home is often as irrelevant as the bedroom community: yes, you sleep there, but your real life is all lived somewhere else, and nobody is very committed to the faceless, community-less suburb.)

About the time the world decided we should not be coerced about the form of religion, we decided we should be coerced about the form of education.

And, at this point, Mr. Ahlquist announced that he had actually finished his introduction and was going to commence the talk.

“Education is truth in the state of transmission.”  Every education teaches a philosophy, regardless of whether it claims to be doing so or not.  In Prof. Joseph Pearce’s biography of Chesterton, he recounts an incident where Chesterton argued against a minimalist approach to teaching religion in the public schools.  Not yet a Catholic, Chesterton argued that teaching only the Bible would, in effect, be teaching a Protestant view of religion, since Protestants hold that the Bible is sufficient, while Catholics hold that the community of the Church is the necessary background to teaching the Bible.  Proponents of the law insisted that they weren’t teaching a philosophy of Christianity; Chesterton would say that they were, they just weren’t admitting it.

Ahlquist proposed four key factors in a Catholic education:

1. An integrated approach to teaching: subjects must fit together, your Catholic faith must be the backbone of your teaching, and your faith should inform every subject.  Faith doesn’t go in that little box over there, separate from math, which is also separate from science, which are all wholly unrelated to literature.
2. Provide a classical education: we must acknowledge the importance of tradition.  There is a reason why some things survive and others are forgotten.  Yes, Chesterton has been neglected for decades, but he is not forgotten.  I could say that St. Augustine has been neglected, as well, but who even remembers the Arians he fought except as a defeated heresy?  There are reasons why St. Augustine and Chesterton and Shakespeare and dozens of others survived as “classics” while their contemporaries have vanished.
3. If you exalt education, you must exalt parental power with it.  We are not too bold for rules, Ahlquist paraphrased Chesterton, we are too timid for responsibilities.  Those who would throw off the rules of parental authority (and, often, the traditional morality that goes with it) are often appealing to our laziness about our responsibilities, not our boldness about throwing off the rules.  Besides which, I would add, there are only new rules, not a lack of them.  I hate to bring Disney in as an illustration, but do you remember in Lion King, where Scar is telling the hyenas they’re going to kill the king?  “Great idea!  Who needs a king?” they answer.  Of course, Scar is going to be the king after they’ve killed the rightful one and the rightful heir, and he turns out to be an awful and disastrous tyrant.  Getting rid of the rightful power (parents) doesn’t mean no authority, just a different authority.
4. Educate your children to be warriors.  Prepare them to transform the world so it’ll be easier for them to educate their children.  If we, as Christians, fail to take an interest in the world, there is absolutely no guarantee that the world will fail to take an interest in us.  Quite the contrary, in fact.

Finally, when you’re feeling that maybe they’re right, maybe education should be left to the experts, the people with the educations to do teaching, and you, as mom and dad, just really aren’t up to teaching your own kids, remember Chesterton’s warning: “We are in a horrible and deadly danger of taking educated people seriously.”

And then laugh and carry on.

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Homeschool Conference 2010: Dr. Guarendi #1

Dr. Ray Guarendi is a psychologist dealing with troubled children and families.  He has ten children, several with special needs and/or learning disabilities, all adopted and all homeschooled.  And he’s absolutely riotously funny.

“Yep.  I’m a great homeschooling dad.  I’m not bragging, but I’m a huge help.  I mean, seven years ago, one of the kids knocked a book on the floor, and I looked at it and said, ‘Uh, honey?  Do you want me to pick that up?’ ”

Dr. Ray’s first talk at the conference was called “Why be Catholic?”  Raised Catholic, he had drifted away from his faith as a young adult, and, since his wife was Protestant, ended up very active in a Protestant denomination.  This was the story of how he left and how he came back to the Catholic Church.

First he contrasted old and new atheists.  The old-fashioned atheists says there is no God, therefore, I can do what I want.  The logic follows, but the intial premise is wrong.  The new atheist says, “There is a God, and He thinks just like me.”  The new one is much more dangerous, and might be the #1 religion in America, frankly.

Anyways, after becoming very active in his wife’s denomination, Dr. Ray started to feel that he had some questions that weren’t being answered.  The number one question, finally, was which system (Catholic or Protestant) is consistent within itself?  If the system contradicts itself, it’s eliminated as truth.

Looking for answers, Dr. Ray asked his pastor and some of the more experienced Christians his questions.  If the Bible and the Holy Spirit will lead us to all truth, as they taught, then how did we wind up with more than 30,000 Christian denominations?  What happens when the “Holy Spirit” leads people to different conclusions?  (Abortion, divorce/remarriage, etc.)

The answer: “Ray, you’re being unfair.  We agree on the basics.”

(And this is where he sidetracked into an explanation of how being a philosophy minor can permanently mess up your brain and your life.  He described sitting in class, unsure if the professor was really there and fighting the urge to go slug him to find out…  Anyways, he brought up the problem of tautologies, a proposition that’s true in itself and unarguable.  And, so, back to the discussion…)

Dr. Ray: “But what are the basics?”

Pastor: “The things we agree on.”

Dr. Ray: “Ok, so why do we agree on them?”

Pastor: “Because they’re the basics.”

*sigh* Ok, that didn’t help him, so, moving on…  Dr. Ray pointed out that there are tons of ex-Catholics in Protestant churches bad-mouthing Catholicism.  Most of them say they know all about Catholicism, but are actually, frankly, completely clueless.  (I would hold up an aquaintance and a close relation as excellent examples of this.)  Plus, ex-Catholics, Dr. Ray pointed out, are about as reliable a witness as ex-spouses.  Would you really want a potential employer surveying your ex-spouse and the neighbor who hates you as job references?  Of course not: it wouldn’t be a fair picture.

Dr. Ray started looking for a fairer picture.  And some answers.

Next question to the pastor: you teach once-saved-always-saved, but when someone botches it, you say, “Well, you weren’t really saved when you prayed the prayer because you must not have meant it.”  But you told me I was saved, you quoted verses to me to prove I was saved, I lived under the assumption that I really meant it… and now you inform me that I was never saved at all?  Then who is saved?  What kind of assurance is that?!?  (I have a friend who, after three or four “praying the prayer” events up through her teens, just sort of buried the question, because nobody could answer it, and who wants to fear for your salvation all the time?  Eventually, she became Catholic.)

It gets worse.  Eventually, Dr. Ray pointed out, if you try to defend something logically indefensible, you sound stupid!  (I could apply this to a few of the other speakers at the conference who will not make the summaries.)

The last straw was somewhere about the time Dr. Ray tried to argue Early Church Fathers with the pastor.  “The Early Church Fathers learned from the apostles and said this.  Ok, Peter was with Jesus himself for years.  If Peter was here and you could ask him, would he say to baptize infants?  What would he teach about the Lord’s Supper?  Would you believe him?”

The pastor said she’d believe Peter if what he said accords with Scripture.  Huh?  But this was one of the guys who wrote Scripture and orally passed on the Gospels…

Dr. Ray said he finally got to the point where he was standing in his kitchen telling his wife he wasn’t sure if he could be  a Christian anymore.  It didn’t make any sense.  He couldn’t logically hold the contradictions together anymore.

Finally, he decided that he needed to go to the best witnesses.  When you hear something weird about someone, you go to the person, you go to the people who heard him.  With Christianity, that means the apostles who heard Jesus and the people they directly taught.

“Have nothing to do with the heretics, because they do not confess Jesus’ body and blood in the bread and wine.”  – Ignatius, made a bishop by the apostle John

The Early Church Fathers taught infant baptism, that contraception was morally wrong, the bishop of Rome was to be respected and obeyed, etc.  Presenting what he was reading to his pastor and others, the response was, “So?  They could be wrong.”  But these are the people who gave us the idea of the Trinity, they were the witnesses to the Resurrection.  If you don’t trust their testimony on contraception and infant baptism, then why believe them on anything?

It’s sort of like, Dr. Ray went on, the people who want to say, “Jesus was just a good moral teacher; that God stuff was added later by his apostles.”  … but you believe that the teachings are authentic, so are the apostles reliable witnesses or not?  You can’t have it both ways.

As they understood Dr. Ray was considering returning to Catholicism, people countered with the “scandal” of transsubstantiation.  Dr. Ray countered with the example of an ordinary quarter.  Science tells us that that quarter is 99.999% space; we perceive a solid object because of all those electrons going the speed of light around closely packed atoms.  But your senses tell you that the quarter isn’t moving and it’s solid.  Are you so confident that your senses see everything in the host that’s really there?  (St. Thomas Aquinas talked about the “accidents” our senses perceive and the reality of what is there.)

We believe in the scandal of the Incarnation (the God of the Universe was a baby, leaking out of every available orifice… not exactly awe-inspiring, at first glance).  So why not the Eucharist?

So, to finish an already long and rambling story, Dr. Ray came back to the Catholic Church and his family converted.

He closed with one final topic of conflict.  Until 1930 all Christians (except for a few way-out-there fringes) condemned contraception as evil.  In 1930, the Anglicans declared that contraception was morally licit, under certain restrictions that were rapidly ignored.

Did the Holy Spirit change His mind?

In 1968, the Pope called a council of twenty-three experts in various fields to advise him on the question of contraception.  The council overwhelmingly (19-4) told the Pope to allow contraception, that the prohibition was outdated, people were overrunning the planet, etc.

After a break for prayer and consideration, the Pope came back in and thanked the council for their time, but that he was rejecting their advice, since we have no power to tell God He’s wrong by preventing conception where He has caused it.

The critics rolled their eyes and said, “See?  That’s what you get with some old, celibate guy in charge…”

Years later, scientists discovered that oral contraceptives are frequently not contraceptive, but actually cause an abortion of an already conceived child.  Other forms of contraceptives can also be abortifacient.  By that time, most people were so addicted to the convenience of contraceptives, they didn’t want to hear it.

God had protected the Catholic Church, almost completely alone, from condoning the chemical Russian Roulette of contraceptives and encouraging the murders of untold millions of children.

Which is exactly what the Church teaches about itself: that God will protect the pope from teaching error in matters of faith and morals.

(Get tapes at the IHM Conference website.  Dr. Ray is so much better than my summary!)

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Homeschool Conference 2010: Fr. Papa and Dr. Moran

The first talk at the IHM Conference in D.C. was Fr. Papa and Dr. Moran speaking on “Why Homeschool?”

Fr. Papa opened, briefly, highlighting the difference between knowledge and wisdom.  Of course, we need knowledge, but it doesn’t do it much good if we don’t have the wisdom to use it.  On a related note, we need to educate not just to make a living but to point our children to eternal life.

Many people claim that public school will teach our children to defend their faith in a hostile world; homeschoolers often object that this doesn’t seem an appropriate expectation for, say, a grade-schooler.  Fr. Papa concurs: “If you throw a canary into a snowstorm, it doesn’t get stronger or wiser- it gets dead!”

Finally, Fr. Papa reminded us that we can’t measure our children by the same yardstick we use for ourselves.  We adults are all called and expected to be saints, but, “The Church is amazed when a child becomes a saint.”

Dr. Moran then followed by breaking down homeschooling into three levels of importance:

1. Religion: catechism, theology, Scripture, saints’ stories.  “They need to know that you’re there to make them saints first.”  Instill a love of the Faith; they may leave as young adults, but most will come back to their childhood training.
2. Reading, math, and English.
3. Afternoon: science, history, other more enjoyable subjects.  Let’s face it, most of them aren’t paying quite as much attention by then and need some subjects that are a bit more engaging and/or less mentally taxing.

On the temptation to compare your family to other families that are “at daily mass every single day, full rosary every night, all home-cooked meals, all kids at least one grade level ahead, etc.”… 1+2+dinner=Super Mom!

Finally, she reminded us to expect the devil to mess with us if we’re doing anything near the right thing to bring our kids up solidly Catholic and to make them resistant to the evils in the culture.

And pray to accept the crosses that God is going to send you today.

I suppose the speakers didn’t quite address the title of the talk, but they had some good points, and other speakers more thoroughly addressed a lot of the cultural and faith issues that drive us to homeschool.  So (shameless blog pitch!) come back through the rest of the week for the rest of the conference summaries: Chesterton, Dr. Ray Guarendi, Prof. Joseph Pearce, more Chesterton… good stuff!

(I promise to leave out the bad talks, including the “How to survive as a Catholic Homeschooling Mother” that was just an infomercial combined with a harangue to attend mass every single day no matter what, “You’re not really a Catholic homeschooler if you aren’t doing a full family rosary every day,” and other little gems.  Or the priest who was supposed to be talking on “Raising a Holy Family in the Culture of Death” who instead spoke on the evils of polyphonic chant (yes, chant: harmony causes too much emotionalism in church, he said) and rock and roll (Satanic), let alone Christian rock (blasphemous).  I nearly walked out of the first and did walk out of the second.  So, not all talks at homeschooling conferences are going to be to your liking, but most of them were really great.  More tomorrow.)

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Homeschool Conference 2010: Intro

I just got back last night from the IHM Homeschool Conference put on by Seton Books in Washington, DC.

It was a lot of fun, I took a ton of notes, and I have plenty to write up for all those of you who can’t make it to a conference.

This year was only my second conference.  My DH looked at me a few days before I left and commented, “Well, it’s nice you’re going, but you don’t need to go every year, right?”

Um, yes… yes, I do.

Homeschool conferences aren’t just about technique.  They aren’t primarily about getting your hands on the curricula and looking it over in person.  They’re not about networking (I ran into very few people I know (Hi, Lynne!), since the conference drew from all over the mid-Atlantic).

Homeschooling conferences are about encouragement.

After a long, at times frustrating, year, the reason I suddenly decided to go last year (and wouldn’t have missed it if I could help it this year) was the talks.  I need the encouragement.  I need to hear, “You aren’t crazy, there are very good reasons why you should be putting yourself through this difficulty that most people consider weird or even wrong.”

So, coming this week, I will be commenting on talks by Dr. Ray Guarendi, Prof. Joseph Pearce, Mr. Dale Ahlquist (president of the National Chesterton Society), and several others.  I hope everyone enjoys it.

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It’s Homeschool Conference Season!

My mom had a good visit.  First Communion, Williamsburg, the botanical gardens, the aquarium, one day of stuck-on-the-couch illness, the Outer Banks, local historic homes, and pierogi making.  We were busy.

In other news, the IHM homeschool conference website has the schedule up for the DC conference!  Woo hoo!

Why should you go to a homeschool conference?

• It’s inspiring.
• It’s nice to be in a large group of people, none of whom will look at you funny for homeschooling or ask, “But what about socialization?”
• More curriculum than you can shake a stick at.  Bring a good backpack or rolling cart.  (And have a list of what you actually need before you go!)
• A couple of days without the kids.
• Oh, yeah, and how-to workshops and advice.

Personally, I will usually pick speakers on “Why Catholics should be aware of how countercultural we need to be” over “How to teach math better.”  I figure I’ll sort out the technical details as I go (that’s what the vendors’ area is for), but I want to be reminded of the big picture.

Especially at this point in the school year, when I am beginning to absolutely despise my lesson planning book and its dictates, it’s so easy to get lost in the weeds of the “how-to” that we forget the beautiful flowers that answer the “why?”  Why homeschool?  Why go through the extra effort, the criticism, the stress, the sheer weirdness of something most of us did not do as children?

I’ve been weeding a lot lately, can you tell?  Ever notice how the weeding causes you to see only the weeds and problems, until you can sometimes miss the purpose of the garden, i.e. the flowers and vegetables?  The weeding becomes maddeningly tedious when we forget to look at what we are accomplishing.  After an exhausting, and sometimes frustrating, year of homeschooling, I’m looking forward to a solid dose of, “Keep at it, what you’re doing is important!  Look at the end result and big picture!” at the conference.

(Ok, I’m looking forward to that, and the Chesterton Society’s table, where I plan to buy one copy of everything, then stand there waving the copy of Lepanto I bought from them last year, loudly encouraging everyone passing by to buy at least one!  As Dale Ahlquist says of his first “meeting” with Chesterton through his writings, wow, this guy is incredible, and how the heck did they give me a degree without making me read him?!?)

If you’re considering a conference, look into what they plan on presenting.  The Virginia homeschool group is heavily into Creationism and rather too Evangelical for my taste; I do not attend their conference, even though it would be closer.  The IHM Conference, on the other hand, has some great speakers I really admire who I was already familiar with beforehand (and they dropped the “Ladies will be more comfortable in skirts or jumpers” requirement a few years back).  Also, check to see if your conference of choice has some sort of group deal for hotels.

Yes, homeschool conferences aren’t necessary, at first glance.  You can buy your books online or at a local homeschool store.  You can listen to encouraging talks on tv or online.

After my first conference last year, however, I don’t plan on missing one again!

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7 Quick Takes Friday: Homeschooler Conference

I was going to try to write this last week, half-way through the IHM Homeschooler Conference in Washington, DC, but the last talk finished after 9pm, I’d been up since a time of morning I’d rather forget, and I still needed a shower.  So, instead, I’ll post this as a summary of the homeschooler conference I’ll call:

Why the Homeschooler Conference Was So Wonderful

1.  Two days without the kids.  Yes, I love my kids; that’s why I homeschool, although the kids may think I’m doing it to torment them.  (“Oh, look, lightpoles!  Let’s count them by two’s…  What letter does ‘lightpole’ start with?  Come on, sound it out.”)  But, once in a while, it’s nice to love them from a distance.  Although I’m not sure how much distance is involved when the whole purpose of the weekend was to improve their schooling.

2.  The vendors’ area.  Our state homeschooler association ran a cartoon in their e-newsletter with an awed mom in a denim jumper asking, “Is this heaven?” as she surveyed the curriculum fair.  I’d view it more as purgatory (not an option, to be fair, for our state homeschooler association- it’s of a definitely evangelical Protestant bent).  But I did get almost all of my curriculum shopping done, partially just because I was so overloaded I said, “Sure, [flip, flip] that looks good.  And one of those, no I don’t need the new edition, and I have the text but need the workbooks for that…  That’ll be how much?!”

3.  Seeing people in person you usually only see on TV or hear on tape.  Very weird.  Yes, that’s Raymond Arroyo, the anchor for EWTN’s weekly news program The World Over.  I felt like I should hold up my fingers to put his face in a frame; I’m used to seeing him on TV.

4.  Getting books autographed.  This one’s very funny for me; I am so not a groupie/hero worship/fan type of person.  I may like someone’s work, even admire it, but I figure they’re really too busy to want to talk to every single person who can say, “Oh, I read your book, can I talk your ear off?”  Actually, everyone was incredibly personable.

• Dr. Ray Guarendi briefly discussed the prevalent attitudes in adoption literature with me.
• Prof. Joseph Pearce took the time to discuss his book-writing schedule as if I was the only person in line (new book from him focusing on the Catholicism of the Lord of the Rings in 2012 or so; he’s otherwise committed until then).  In the meantime, I wrote a post on his talk of the same subject.
• Dale Ahlquist signed a copy of his critical edition of G.K. Chesterton’s epic poem Lepanto with a self-depreciating smile and, “There; now it isn’t worth anything!”
• Susie Lloyd was very sweet.  (and if you haven’t read her hilarious first book of essays Don’t Drink the Holy Water: Homeschool days, rosary nights, and other near occasions of sin, I’d highly recommend it.  I’ve only just started her new one, Forgive Me Father, For I Have Kids, but she said she thought it was even funnier.  Both books are available over here.)

5.  Discipline encouragement.  Virginia Seuffert, mother of twelve, grandmother of several more, talked about order and discipline in the home, focusing around the themes of why we homeschool.  Dr. Ray Guarendi, child psychologist and father of ten adopted, homeschooled children, talked about discipline, homeschooling, and the culture.  (I also discussed his new book on adoption in my post on his talks.)  When you spend so much time going against the grain (often to the chagrin of your family, parish, pediatricians, random store clerks who obviously know better, etc.), it is a relief to sit down and be surrounded by people fighting the same battles.

6.  Homeschooling encouragement.  The ones I would place in this category also fell into the discipline category, while others fell into this and spiritual encouragement.  Why do we homeschool?  Why bother?  Because Truth matters.  Truth is freeing; “there is no truth” creates only a shallow swamp of a culture.  I especially liked Prof. Joseph Pearce’s talk “A Matter of Life and Death: The Battle for a True Education.”  (Summed up here.)  Dale Ahlquist’s talk on G.K. Chesterton covered some of the same ideas.  (Sorry, but I’m behind: I’d meant to have all the talk summaries done by now, but the Ahlquist/Chesterton post will be coming later this weekend.  Check back later.)  To sum up this point, I offer the ever-quotable Chesterton, himself an adult convert to Catholicism, and once required reading in almost every English-speaking university:

The Catholic Church is the only thing that saves a man from the degrading slavery of being a child of his age.

7.  Feeling “normal” for once.  I have never seen so many fourteen-passenger vans, pregnant women, and pro-life bumper stickers in one place.  I can’t get pregnant and my three kids still fit in a minivan, but I still felt like I belonged a lot more than I usually do out in public.  And I just loved this license plate.  I nearly passed it up, wondering what people would think of the weirdo taking photos of someone’s plates, but decided I had to get a photo for the DH:

 (That’s short for Benedict the Sixteenth, i.e. the current pope, fondly referred to as B16 in some circles.)

As always, click on the giant post-it at the top to visit Jen at Conversion Diary for everyone else’s 7 Quick Takes Friday.

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Homeschool Conference: Virginia Seuffert

Just looking at the title of her first talk, “How to Make Homeschooling Easy”, made me roll my eyes.  Oh, heavens, not another one of those people: all jeans jumpers, daily mass, never miss a family rosary, all our kids are two grades ahead and want to be priests or nuns, life is always just wonderful, sure homeschooling can be stressful- but only because you must not be doing it right!

In spite of my misgivings, I attended her talk.  Partially because I had even less interest in the other speaker in that time slot, partially because I figured she would have some good ideas anyways, even if I didn’t agree with her overall views.  I wound up being very glad I went.

The guy in charge of that speaker room introduced her, finishing with the mandatory, “Please stand and welcome our speaker…” (Catholic habit, I think; that’s the habitual verbage for the beginning of mass, fitting in right after “Please silence your cell phones,” and right before the hymnal number for the opening song.  Most speakers looked a little perplexed and/or amused at a standing ovation before the speech.)

The first words out of her mouth were something along the lines of, “That’s a typo.  You can’t make homeschooling easy.  Maybe easier, but not easy.  If you really wanted easy, go ahead and go listen to Father’s talk over in speaker room #2.  I’ll wait while you leave.”

She then organized the talk around the premise that a) you need to keep homeschooling simple and doable: “The best homeschooling is the stuff you do.”  If you have piles of great ideas, enrichment activities, Latin and Greek, etc. but don’t get any of it done, then scale back to what you can really do.  And b) you need to remember why you’re doing it.  Although, as she pointed out, “It’s June; right now, most of you are so numb, you don’t remember what you had for breakfast, let alone why you’re doing [homeschooling]!”

Everyone is going to have slightly different lists of “Why we homeschool”, but Seuffert suggested these:

• 1.  Make saints- we already have too many smart, sinful Catholics.
• 2.  Raise responsible citizens- The U.S. is good; let’s make it better.
• 3.  Have a peaceful, serene, loving Christian home.
• 4.  Teach better than institutional schools.
• 5.  Be good stewards of our children- health, fitness, talents, travel.

Then, she broke it down by reason.  (Yes, I’m not discussing all of them.  Go get the tapes if you want the whole talk.)

1.  If you live twenty minutes from church, and it takes you fifteen minutes to get the kids loaded up, then daily mass may take up half your morning and it might not be a workable idea for you.  Instead, make a spiritual communion.

My Jesus, I believe that You are present in the Most Holy Sacrament.  I love You above all things, and I desire to receive You into my soul.  Since I cannot at this moment receive You sacramentally, come at least spiritually into my heart. I embrace You as if You were already there and unite myself wholly to You.  Never permit me to be separated from You.  Amen.

Also, she recommended a daily offering.  Here is one sample from Catholic Online:

O Jesus, through the immaculate heart of Mary, I offer you my prayers, works, joys and sufferings of this day in union with the holy sacrifice of the Mass throughout the world. I offer them for all the intentions of your sacred heart: the salvation of souls, reparation for sin, the reunion of all Christians. I offer them for the intentions of our bishops and of all the apostles of prayer, and in particular for those recom- mended by our Holy Father this month.

As homeschoolers, we can (and have to) constantly and patiently correct our children; no teacher can do it like we can.  We need to “patiently bear daily contradictions” and offer them up.  (Yeah, I get a lot of contradictions: “But, Mo-ooom!”)

4.  She encouraged parents to choose parent-friendly materials, stuff that isn’t just “everyone says this is best”, but materials that make the parents’ job easier.  Avoid trends, and use Catholic materials where possible (especially in science and history).  Seuffert also suggested that parents “get the book and be happy with it.”  If you don’t like it by the end of the year, pick something different next year, but avoid jumping around curriculums during the year.

 

After enjoying her first talk, I made sure I made it to her second talk, “Discipline.”  Some of it was about discipline, but it also blended into order in the home, which, of course, has something to do with order in the child’s mind.  Short, sweet summary:

• Homeschooling is the start of discipline; a teacher is not a discipline solution.
• Have an actual, posted schedule.  She recommended A Mother’s Rule of Life by Holly Pierlot.  I’ve read it; I didn’t do everything she suggested, but it is a great book.
• Get up half an hour before the kids: pray, read the paper, have a solid thought.  (At least one thought, longer than three seconds, without interruption.)
• Start school at the same time every day.  Give each child something to do so that, even if you’re changing a diaper or doing laundry, they can start on time.
• End by 3pm, get kids outside or something, play with the baby.
• Give the children real work to do, not just busy work.  (I’ll vouch that that works well for Diva; she grouses about it, but she winds up happier after she’s done.)
• Put the kids to bed at the same time every night.

(Amusing anecdote on the bedtime question.  Seuffert’s husband works irregular hours and sometimes gets home close to the kids’ bedtime.  He’ll object, “Oh, but I didn’t see them all day…”  Yeah, she replied, well I did; I’ve seen a lot of them all day.  It’s time for, “I love you, and I’m ready to love you from a distance now…”)

 

I’m not going to give away all her points; part of my point is to give the highlights, give homeschoolers some ideas to chew on that I found thought-provoking, and point you to the website to get tapes if you want more info.

But I will end with a quote that has probably made me a permanent fan of Ginny Seuffert, because I secretly suspected that I was the only *awful* mommy who said things like this.  On naptime, especially for older children: “I don’t care if you’re tired.  Go do something quiet… and out of my line of vision!”

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Homeschool conference: Dr. Ray Guarendi

I just love Dr. Ray.

Unlike some of the speakers on the schedule at the IHM Conference for homeschoolers in Washington, DC, last weekend, I’ve heard Dr. Ray Guarendi before.  (It was very strange to see him in person; I’m used to him being on tape or on TV.)  He’s refreshing after book after book after book of, “You should reason with your two-year-old.”  Newsflash: you can not reason with a two-year-old.  I’ve tried.  I’ve tried very hard.  It was sort of like that saying about trying to teach a pig to whistle; it wastes your time and annoys the pig.

Some Dr. Ray gems:

” ‘Difficult child’ is redundant.”

Don’t expect to be understood.  Your relatives may think you’re “right-wing, knuckle-dragging, over-the-cliff weirdos” for homeschooling.  (Nice to hear we’re not the only ones with those kind of relatives…)

Most likely discipline problem for women: “Talk, talk, nag, nag, negotiate…”

For men: “Oblivious, tolerate, tolerate, KILL, oblivious…”  (Gee, I don’t know any couples that sound like that… *ahem*)

“A good sign of impending middle age is when your wife gives up intimacy for Lent… and you don’t realize it until the Monday after Easter.”  (Ok, that didn’t have anything to do with homeschooling, but it was funny.)

 

In addition to being funny, Dr. Ray is very down-to-earth, self-depreciating, and chock-full of common sense.  Of course, he has ten adopted kids to knock the nonsense out of any “I’m a trained psychologist and this is how things are” theories he might have.  And, even rarer, enough humility to know that letters after your name (even PhD) don’t make you omniscient.

(I have a friend whose step-sister married a child psychologist (if I’m remembering the story right).  He’s been bragging about everything they’re going to do *right*, including redirection instead of “no”, no yelling, no spanking, etc., etc.  The kid is now a toddler and… um… not responding to dad’s methods.  Mom finally approached her step-sisters out of Dr. Dad’s earshot and asked, “Ok, so how does this really work?”)

Dr. Ray talks a lot about the culture; many of us homeschool out of concern over the culture’s effects on our children, especially the over-sexualization of younger and younger children.  (To judge from the clothes racks, my seven-year-old should be all into Hannah Montana (she’s mostly clean-cut, but a stepping stone to much less innocent entertainers.  We’re making sure Diva has no idea who Montana is.).  The culture, Dr. Ray points out, is more powerful, more persuasive, more seductive, and more entertaining than parents.  “Just a little” is not a good idea.

Another encouraging point was Dr. Ray’s illustration of “strictness”.  If the culture considers 40 out of 100 “strict” and you’re maintaining a standard of strictness that rates a 70, you will be considered weird, too rigid, etc.  The problem is, the goal of parenting is to raise wonderful human beings, and, hopefully, saints.  That requires at least a 90.  So you aren’t really thirty points better than average, you’re still twenty points low.  (One of his examples was cell phones.  If “everyone else” had one by twelve, and you didn’t think your daughter needed one until at least sixteen, but you held out until fourteen, hey, you’re doing pretty good, right?  No, not really.)  The point is not to compromise between the goal and the world; the point is to strive for the goal.  Period.

I’m not going to give away all of Dr. Ray’s points.  He’s really good.  If you’re struggling to raise saints in a culture that not only isn’t trying, not only doesn’t respect you for trying, but actively seeks to undermine you… well, Dr. Ray is very encouraging.

 

My new favorite thing about Dr. Ray, though, is his new book, Adoption: Choosing It, Living It, Loving It, available through his website.  When he mentioned he had a book on adoption, I knew right away what I’d be buying off the speakers’ desk to get signed.  I walked up with the book and my finger in my wallet photo book, and Dr. Ray looked at me and said, “Let me guess: you’re either about to adopt or you’re an adoptive mom.”  So, I flashed the photo of my adorable (and obviously adopted) kids and thanked him for writing a book on adoption, since I was so sick of getting pummeled on the adoption boards for arguing against the “adoptees are damaged, and, as parents, we have to be watching for it, if you ignore this warning you’re just naive (or worse)!” attitude as alarmist and largely unfounded.  I mentioned one very popular author in particular, and he rolled his eyes at her name.  “Yeah,” he assured me, “The book goes into all that…”

Unlike some of the other adoption “experts”, Dr. Ray isn’t relying on his own childhood experiences.  He is looking at his ten kids and the hundreds of kids who have come through his psychiatric practice.  The news is more encouraging than many people, including adoption agencies, seem to want to believe.  Dr. Ray discusses and debunks many of the bogeymen that scare people away from adoption (“adoptees are all permanently damaged by their adoption“, “the vast majority of adoptees seek out their birth parents”, “you have to practice your frequent adoption talks, or you might really mess your child up.”  Dr. Ray’s takes: no, less than 10%, and no.)

I’ve been meaning to put together a list of books I thought were really helpful on adoption issues.  Dr. Ray’s book is definitely going to be at the top of the list.  If you’re considering adoption, are in the process, or have been put off by what you’ve been told to read or have seen on the discussion boards, well, you really, really need to read this book.

 

More on the conference over the rest of the week.  The tapes of the conference are available from the IHM Conference website under the particular locations (Immaculate Heart of Mary- yes, they’re Catholic.  If you aren’t Catholic, it was still a lot of good, solid, Christian advice, at least the talks I heard.  I’m not saying the other talks were bad, I just don’t generally vouch for things I didn’t observe.)  If you can make one of the remaining conferences, I’d highly recommend it.  It’s worth the time and money.  It’s also a nice vacation without the homeschoolees.  🙂

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