Home
/
RELIGION & LIBERTY ONLINE
/
Homeschooling a parent’s choice, not the state’s
Homeschooling a parent’s choice, not the state’s
Nov 14, 2024 11:56 AM

Decades ago, when I was first ordained a priest, I shared a prejudice that many people hold: I thought homeschooling families were odd. I believed schooling children at home deprived such children of opportunities to be with other children causing them to be less able municate with others, socially awkward and reclusive and narrow in their experience and understanding of the world that they would one day have to grow up in and navigate.

That was until I actually met homeschooling families. This happened when I was serving in a chapel that had daily Masses serving largely downtown workers. Most of ing were business people who e either before they went to work or during their lunch hours. Among my congregants was a mother with three young children who e regularly. Aside from the regular fussiness of children being asked to sit quietly for a thirty minute service, I was impressed at how attentive and well-behaved the children were.

It was my custom during those years to e people as they entered the chapel and to greet them once again at the conclusion ofliturgies. This afforded me the opportunity to get to know, even if only slightly, this family.

One day as the little gaggle entered the chapel I greeted them and noticed that one of the little boys–perhaps six or seven years old–was holding a napkin in his hand with something folded into it.

“What have you got there?” I asked.

Beaming with pride, he extended his hand to me and unfolded the napkin to reveal a hideous, almost prehistoric looking insect, lying dead on the crease.

I suspected he could see the horror in my face but he simply said, “This is a Tettigarctidae,” pronouncing the word precisely, “Homer writes about them in the Iliad. They are very interesting because they hibernate for long periods of time before emerging.”

“How interesting,” I said. “I’ve never heard of them before… Well, let’s begin Mass then, shall we?”

A day or so later I received a letter, addressed to me in childish handwriting, in my mailbox.

“Dear Fr. Sirico,” it read. “I must apologize for the mistaken information I gave you the other day before Mass. The bug that I found was not really a Tettigarctidae. I took the bug home and looked in our books and found that it was really a Cicadidae which is related to the Tettigarctidae. They as very similar, but the Tettigarctidae are only found in Australia. The Cicadidae are in America. Sorry about the confusion.”

My first reaction was to bust out laughing; but my second reaction was wonderment. As time passed I was extended an invitation to dinner at this family’s home to meet the father of these children. I spent a lovely evening conversing with the whole family–not just the adults–about a wide range of things.

Perhaps what left the deepest impression on me that evening was the relaxed intelligent conversation I was having with children who looked me straight in the eye, asked me questions and listened to my replies. I felt free to ask about their philosophy of homeschooling and why they chose to make such a serious counter mitment to it. I also mentioned my curiosity about the insect research.

The mother helped me to understand that education was only part of the broader formation of her children’s lives. Life is filled with opportunities for learning, like the discovery of the bug on the way to church, and the discovery of what specific type it, in fact, was.

I was amazed and frankly embarrassed that something so simple and natural had escaped my grasp until getting to know that family.

All of this came to mind when I read of the recent ruling by the European Court of Human Rights that the parental rights of two homeschooling German parents were not violated when:

In August 2013, a group of at least 20 police officers and social workers raided the Wunderlich home and took away their four children. ADF International, the legal group representing the parents, claimed that the action left the family traumatized.

The children were placed in a children’s home for three weeks. Though they were eventually returned to their parents, their legal status was not clear. The children were enrolled in a school from 2013 to 2014.

Homeschooling has been illegal in Germany since 1918 and the Court ruled that:

“Based on the information available at the time, the domestic authorities had reasonably assumed that the children were isolated, had had no contact with anyone outside of the family, and that a risk to their physical integrity had existed,” the court said.

The court acknowledged that the parents later submitted learning assessments showing that the children had “sufficient knowledge, social skills and a loving relationship with their parents,” but this information was not available to officials when they decided to withdraw parental custody in a temporary and partial manner.

In other words, the state acted out of ignorance presumptuously seizing children from their home. And yet a court, allegedly dedicated to human rights, has ruled the parent’s rights were not violated? When the state can seize healthy, social and intelligent children from loving parents simply for educating their children according to their conscience no rights worth the name exist.

Parents have a natural right and responsibility to raise and educate their children, not the state. It is also parents who know best the needs of their children and who have the greatest incentive to make positive choices for their formation, not politicians and meddling bureaucrats.

Not all families are willing or able to effectively home school their children but, when many of our schools struggle to form children intellectually and morally, homeschooling parents who choose to make mitment should be applauded for their effort and not presumed guilty of negligence.

I shudder to think what might have happened to that first homeschooling family I met had they lived in Germany. Would they too have had their children taken from them? I have stayed in touch with this family all these years and watched these children grow up. The two little boys are now both physicians and fine young men. Homeschooling was a blessing to this family, a blessing that allowed them to be a blessing to each other and which equipped them to be a greater blessing to the world.

Defending Freedom)

Comments
Welcome to mreligion comments! Please keep conversations courteous and on-topic. To fosterproductive and respectful conversations, you may see comments from our Community Managers.
Sign up to post
Sort by
Show More Comments
RELIGION & LIBERTY ONLINE
Solid economics at L’Osservatore Romano
Good news is not always so hard to find. Case in point: Free-market economics is making eback at the Vatican’s daily newspaper L’Osservatore Romano. Previously known as a dry read, L’Osservatore Romano (which means The Roman Observer in English) now contains provocative interviews and real news stories from around the world. This is attributable to the paper’s new editor, Giovanni Maria Vian, who was appointed to the post by Pope Benedict last October (see here for the interesting background on...
William F. Buckley – 1925-2008
Buckley & Sirico – Acton’s 2nd Annual Dinner – May 12, 1992 One of many remembrances at National Review Online: Bill died doing what he loved doing — he never left this movement he built, never left NR, he never stopped writing, never left home, never left thinking. And he’s as much a part of us today and forever as he was all these years. He’s left a remarkable legacy. ...
The fight over charitable choice
Howard Friedman, at his ever-noteworthy Religion Clause blog, reports on the brewing battle over charitable choice language in the US Senate. The Coalition Against Religious Discrimination (CARD), which includes Americans United for Separation of Church and State, is pushing for language in the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration Act of 2000 to be removed that allows for faith-based charities receiving government funds to limit their hiring practices along confessional/denominational borders. This is just the latest in the long...
Business fighting poverty
Peter Heslam, a friend of the Acton Institute and sometime contributor to our journal, is the founder of a promising initiative at Cambridge University. Begun a couple years ago, the “Transforming Business” program has recently been revamped, with a new and improved website, including a blog. The program’s goal, as I understand it, is to bring together academics and businesspeople in an effort to understand and articulate how business can play a fundamental role in distributing prosperity more widely. Acton...
The NFL on PCA (or ELCA, or CRC…)
Among the critical issues at the confluence of religion, culture, and economics is the question of TV screen size. In a move hailed by gospel-focused churches everywhere, the NFL has modified its rules, which had previously prohibited churches from sponsoring showings of the Super Bowl on screens larger than 55 inches. Church interests had argued that there was no such restriction on, for example, sports bars. One is tempted to conclude that there will no longer be any noticeable difference...
Conference for clergywomen in Wesleyan tradition
UMAction, the Methodist wing of IRD that supports traditional and historic Methodism is encouraging women in the United Methodist and Wesleyan tradition in ministry to consider attending the “Come to the Water” conference in Nashville from April 10-13. John Lomperis of IRD appropriately notes, “Many evangelical clergywomen in the United Methodist Church feel sidelined or excluded in some of the denomination’s official clergy women’s networks because of a dominance of intolerant theological liberalism.” Just last night I was talking to...
WFB: In Memoriam
Buckley & Sirico – Acton’s 2nd Annual Dinner – May 12, 1992 Rev. Robert Sirico reflects on the life of William F. Buckley, Jr., who died in his study on Wednesday, praising him as a friend, a literary genius, and a supporter of the Acton Institute. Sirico writes, “He will be lauded by numerous pendants and scribes for the incredible number of his plishments, preeminent of which is his historic role as godfather of the modern conservative/libertarian movement in the...
Radio Free Acton – Remembering Buckley and contemplating religious consumerism
On this week’s edition of Radio Free Acton, Rev. Robert A. Sirico pays tribute to the late William F. Buckley, the RFA regulars are joined by Professor Joseph Knippenberg from Oglethorp University in Atlanta, Georgia to discuss the Pew Forum’s newly released research on the American religious landscape, and we listen in to some bonus audio from Dr. Glenn Sunshine’s Acton Lecture Series address, Wealth, Work and the Church. You can listen at this link. With regard to the discussion...
Coal-powered hybrids
As I said in 2006: Without too much exaggeration, you could say that today’s electric cars are really coal-powered. If you look at the sources of electricity in the US, “coal provides over half of the electricity flowing into American homes.” That means that in one ideal world of the alternative fuel crowd, when you plug your car in, you’re plugging it in to a coal plant (this is also why the idea of consumer carbon credits is catching on)....
Free Cubans by dropping trade restrictions
In today’s Detroit News, Rev. Robert Sirico, president of the Acton Institute, argues for the end of the trade restrictions against Cuba. Fidel Castro, recently retired from the position of el lider maximo, held the small island nation in the tight grip of his totalitarian regime, effectively stagnating all economic development for the past 50 years. The United States embargo against Cuba gave Castro a scapegoat to blame for the economic woes that oppressed the Cuban population and helped him...
Related Classification
Copyright 2023-2024 - www.mreligion.com All Rights Reserved