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Why Do I Homeschool?

7/19/2015

By: Kim Jernigan, Middle School Tutor, CHA

I am often asked why I homeschool. My responses vary depending on the day, my mood or how well homeschooling is going at the moment. Really, for each of my children, the answer might be radically different. However, I was recently asked this question again and I realized that I am actually on the ‘back end’ of homeschooling (my youngest starts high school this year!) and that I can now reply ‘after the fact.’ As I pondered my answers, I decided to jot down some of my thoughts for those moms and dads that are just setting out on this journey. And it is a journey full of twists and turns, good days and bad days, but a journey certainly worth the effort.

I remember the first time someone challenged me on homeschooling my first son. We started that journey nearly 20 years ago and a well-meaning mom looked me squarely in the face and asked ‘what qualifies you to teach your son anything?’ (mind you, this was kindergarten!). When I picked my jaw up off the floor, I responded that I was his mom and thought I knew best for him. It wasn’t that I was anti public school (my husband is a public school teacher so I honestly do see the benefits of public school, but I also see, first hand, some of the pitfalls of public schooling), but we had just decided to give homeschooling a try. In our early years, I really loved just reading with my kids. And that would be my first piece of advice to any young mom. Read, read, read! Go to the library and get stacks of books (just don’t lose them!). Read aloud, have your children spend time just looking and musing over books, get books on tape and have them playing in the car. Stories are wonderful and capture your child’s imagination. When they have finished reading, have them write or draw about what they have read (just a sentence is sufficient) and have them retell the story back to you. All of this is homeschooling!!!

Another reason that we chose homeschooling for our family was that we are a musical family. We had our kids in piano lessons, guitar lessons, drum lessons, voice lessons and now flute lessons. Our children didn’t necessarily love practicing, but they loved tinkering with their instrument or writing music. Homeschooling allows them to break away from a difficult book or assignment and they can play music. One of our greatest loves as a family is that we play music together at our church and we love to sing together. This was a true gift from God and one that may not have materialized in the same way had our children gone to public school and used their musical talent in a band or orchestra. Maybe your family is particularly interested in math and science and LOVES to experiment and solve problems at home. We have friends right up the road who are math/science geniuses and their children have had time to pursue these avenues and have been able to invent/solve problems and have patents on some of their work that will help our community and world. Again, probably an unintended goal in homeschooling for this family, but certainly one they love to celebrate.

Some folks may homeschool because of a sport and while that was a reason for homeschooling my gymnast daughter, it certainly wasn’t our main reason. She loved to compete and homeschooling made that much more possible for our large family. Once she ‘retired’ from this grueling sport, she gave more of her time to academics and music.

Interestingly, one of those ‘hind sight’ reasons for homeschooling is that my kids have learned how to be in relationships with people like I never learned as a teenager. Girl/boy drama has been a non-issue with us and for that, I am SO grateful. I’m not saying that homeschooling is the only way to accomplish this, as the home atmosphere is where these expectations should be set and I do see positive relationships in situations other than homeschooling. In our co-op, the students tend to move in ‘packs’ and have much more of a group dating/socializing mentality. The boys and girls become such good friends and enjoy just being together. I have loved that my kids have good guy and girl friends and have not really sensed expectations that they should be dating or pairing off. This is one of those unintended benefits, but I will take it!

So, why do I homeschool? The reasons are many. I didn’t even mention that one of my sons had learning issues and needed much extra time from me. I was able to read more, write more, go to therapy more, etc. than I would have if he had been in public school. For each child, I would have to give different reasons for homeschooling and for each year, I might have given different reasons for homeschooling. And that would have to be how I sum this up. Consider each child, consider each year. One child at a time…one year at a time.

This is a journey. Some days you will cry because of how hard it is. Some days will take your breath away as your child reads for the first time or makes some sort of cool discovery. It is a journey that is WELL worth your effort, WELL worth setting your career aside, WELL worth the gray hairs and WELL worth the incredible amount of work. Won’t you join me in the journey?

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Senior Address, Graduation, 2015

7/14/2015

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Joshua P. Hochschild Ph.D.
Dean of the College of Liberal Arts, Associate Professor of Philosophy
Philosophy Department, Mt. St. Mary's University, Emmitsburg, Maryland

FELLOWSHIP IN THE JOY OF LEARNING

Thank you Karen for that introduction, and Catherine for inviting me to speak tonight.

Let me begin be offering blessings and thanks to the teachers, staff and leadership of Christiana Homeschool Academy.

And let’s all offer praise and honor to the parents.

And finally, the reason we are here tonight, congratulations to the seniors.

It is a privilege to be here and celebrate with you this evening. As Karen mentioned, my wife Paige taught here and our children were part of CHA for a few years. It was a hard decision when we stopped. We have the highest regard for mission and good work of Christiana, and I am really happy to be here tonight celebrating with you, and honoring the class of 2015.

And here they are, sitting in the front row: Cecilia, Megan, Daniel, Matthew, Victoria, Olga, Paul.

It is not very common that a graduation speaker to recite the names of all the graduates.

Some might describe the size of your class as small; I would rather describe it as humane. Most high schools are like teaming cities, and a graduating class is something between a battalion and a roving gang. CHA is more on the model of a home or a neighborhood, an affiliation of families supporting each other in good work. You seniors are blessed to graduate not just as part of a class, but as a fellowship, as a group of friends.

As I prepared for tonight, I set myself a challenge. I wrote down your first names and tried to see if I could rearrange the letters into a fitting set of words. Here is an anagram I came come up with, and I think it’s pretty good:

ACADEMIA: AMPLE LOGIC, ACTUATE LOVE WITH LEARNING[1]

Maybe that puts to much emphasis on logic? That’s not inappropriate for a classical curriculum , but here’s another one, similar, but with an emphasis on a different part of the trivium:

ACADEME: LOVE ACTUAL LEARNING WITH POETICAL MAGI[2]

Either one of these could suitably describe a graduating class from Christiana, couldn’t it? The classical model of education – with ample logic – with wise teachers (“magi”)– with poetic imagination – and most especially with love – the love of your parents and teachers, and your own love – love of learning. I propose that one of these should be the slogan for the graduating fellowship of 2015: ACADEMIA: AMPLE LOGIC, ACTUATE LOVE WITH LEARNING (or, ACADEME: LOVE ACTUAL LEARNING WITH POETICAL MAGI).

As your graduation speaker, I think I have three things to do:

1.      Praise you

2.      Give you something to think about

3.      Offer advice

(I also have a fourth thing to do – be brief!)

I will try meet my charge – praising you, giving you something to think about, and offering some advice – by connecting to something you all already know.

And here is what you already know, it is something hinted at in those anagrams about love of learning, and it is this: learning has its own distinct joy.

I had a chance to read what you all prepared about your future plans, your favorite memories, and your advice to other CHA high school students. What struck me was a common theme of enjoyment. You had memories of laughter and fun. And this was not only because of jokes or funny incidents. You found occasion for enjoyment was in the process of exercising your minds, in the very intellectual work of your education. Whether discussing great books, or performing skits, or expanding your vocabulary, you took delight. Even writing a thesis paper – hard work indeed – had its own special reward. (And procrastination, its own punishment!)

In short, the first thing that jumped out at me when I read your own words, was that you had experienced the joy of learning.

Of course, school is not always joy – I don’t think I need to even ask your parents or your teachers if you ever complained about homework, or felt bored, or anxious, or just plain sick of school. All of those feelings are natural too. But you carried through, in large part because, in addition to pain and frustration, you have indeed tasted the particular enjoyment of learning.

I must praise first, then, the people who created the conditions for this joy: those parents and teachers who weathered the low times and continued to work so that you would be able to experience the high.

But I also praise you, the students, for entering into the work, the activity, in which you find this joy.

One of the things this experience should tell you is that learning cannot be understood simply as gathering information. Joy accompanies activity. You are not a passive receptacle, into which new facts are placed by a kind of mechanical process; you are an organism, with an intrinsic desire for growth, a longing to fulfill the conditions of your own flourishing – especially the flourishing of your minds.

Flowers bloom brilliantly when the conditions for their growth are met in the field: soil, firm for stability, but forgiving for roots to grow, and rich in nourishment; sufficient water to quicken the roots and swell the veins; and light, bright radiant light pouring down energy into the leaves. So too your minds bloom when you are graced with the opportunity to exercise them – the ground of your community, firm, and nourishing, and forgiving; vital ideas circulating to and through you. And light – the bright, energizing light of truth, natural and divine, pouring forth to illuminate those ideas. So thanks and praise, once again, to your parents and teachers, for their good judgment and faith, for the curriculum and vision of Christiana Homeschool Academy, and to God, Creator and Light and Truth Himself, for providing the conditions for your flourishing.

But the conditions are not enough on their own. There must be the organism itself that responds to these conditions. Consider the flower: it does not sprout from nothing. It starts with a seed, a kernel of dynamism, with its own internal principle of life. From this seed grows the plant, and the plant is not like a robot that mechanically receives input and provides programmed responses; it has its own inner drive; it turns its leaves to seek the sun, it strives to grow taller, it can even heal itself if wounded. The plant itself must work.

Of course, the plant does not have free will; if it is healthy, and the conditions are right, its work, its activity, will succeed. But still, it works. The difference between the plant growing and a human being learning is not that one takes effort and the other doesn’t, that they take different kind of effort. Human beings, blessed with free will, and tainted by sin, must consciously choose, and can choose poorly. We must work, and work freely, and work well.

Learning is an exercise of the soul, and your experience of joy in learning is proof that you have exercised your souls well. You read the books, pondered the questions, made the arguments, shared the insights. You did this, and you did it well, and you found pleasure in it.

Now here is another important point: the joy of learning is not the purpose of learning, but it is a sign of it. The purpose of learning is the pursuit of truth, and the joy you have experienced is the reward for good and valuable work that you have done.

This is something that people often get wrong about pleasure and enjoyment. They seek them for their own sake, instead of performing the activities that will lead to them. But the dancer isn’t graceful in order to take delight, she takes delight because she is graceful; beautiful music isn’t sought as the means of the musician finding enjoyment, but he finds joy in the act of making beautiful music. Real goods—goods that are hard-won, goods that are experienced through activity—have to be sought and achieved. Then, and only then, does joy find us—not as the purpose of the activity, but as its accompanying crown.

In this respect, experiencing joy in activity is like finding friendship – it happens only when you are pursuing something else. As C.S. Lewis said, “That is why those pathetic people who simply ‘want friends’ can never make any. The very condition of having Friends is that we should want something else besides Friends.” Friends find each other when they are seeking some good other than friendship, some common goal, together. So too joy in activity: you find it when you seek the good of the activity – playing the beautiful piece of music, performing the graceful dance, pursuing the truth of God’s creation, and of God himself.

The friendship you have experienced as students together is more intense because of the intensity with which you have pursued a common goal. You didn’t just hang out, you didn’t just share opinions; you engaged in a common work, striving together after a worthy goal. Together, you pursued truth, and so joined each other in the work of learning.

So together, as friends, you have tasted the joy of learning. That means that you were looking for something valuable, and exercised yourself in activities to achieve that end. It means you were successful, and that is why I say you deserve praise for it.

But now something for you to think about. This experience of joy in learning puts you in rare company. Sad to say, but joy in learning is something increasingly few people know. I know from speaking to college freshmen every year, the experience of school—especially of high school—is most commonly as something boring or painful or pointless, not just some times, but all the time; many find enjoyable about school only those things that have nothing to do with the intellectual work of school – socializing, sports, anything but reading, thinking, sharing ideas, anything but the activity of learning.

Indeed, I will go farther and say that not only have too few people experienced the joy of learning for themselves, but too few have even witnessed that joy in others.

At some point in our lives, of course, we all experienced it. Young children experience the joy of learning naturally. But many, as they grow older, have no new experiences of joyous learning, and they forget what it was like to take delight in discovery, to feel the pleasure of wonder.

Ask most students why they had to go to school, and they will say it was to graduate, to get good grades, to get a job.

It is not that they don’t have goals, or even that they have bad goals. (Graduating, getting a job – these are perfectly legitimate aims.) But their goals are not the proper goals of intellectual work, it is not the goal of learning.

And alas, the common way people talk about education today doesn’t help. Policy makers and professional educators are intent on improving education, sure, and we talk about raising standards, clarifying “learning outcomes,” and testing students on skills. But without a larger context for these standards and outcomes and skills, there seems to be very little experience of the joy in the learning – which suggests that under these circumstances, the activity of learning isn’t really happening.

So now, to my advice. If I am right, that you have experienced the joy of learning, and that this is an increasingly rare experience in the modern world, then one of the greatest gifts you have to offer the world is to share your joy in learning.

I don’t mean sharing in terms of giving people the same experience, helping them to learn so that they know intellectual joy – though some of you will wind up teaching, your own children or others. I mean allowing your joy to be apparent to others, so that they notice it, and simply in noticing it, they might be attracted to the activity of learning on their own.

To share this joy, you must have it, and to have it, remember, it is not effective to seek it. What you must do is continue in the activities that produce it, continue seeking the end – truth . You must continue expanding your mind, exercising your soul in the pursuit of wisdom.

If you do that, the joy of learning will follow, and you can display that joy to others.

How can you do this? There are many ways, great and small. Read a book, a challenging and worthy book, a classic book, “just for fun,” and talk with others about how exciting it is – especially with people who don’t think books can be exciting.

Visit a bookstore or a library, and simply browse the shelves – take friend and let him or her see the fascination, the pleasure, of discovering new ideas.

As you start to take college classes, ask questions in class, and show interest, not for a grade, but out of genuine curiosity and wonder – and let people see how rewarding and exciting it is.

Work hard – your education is not over, and continuing the activity of learning means continuing to put effort into that activity.

Most of all, seek what is good, what is valuable, what is worthy, what is true. Do this, and you will find joy – and you may provide a great service to your society by wining others to the joy of learning too.

Graduating fellowship of 2015, if you do these things, YOU WILL ACTUATE LEARNING WITH LOVE and you will become POETICAL MAGI in your own right. You will join others in the friendship of the pursuit of truth, and so expand your fellowship, the rare, true fellowship that takes joy in learning.

[1] Unfortunately, when I prepared these anagarams, I accidentally substituted an “E” for an “I”. I’ve left the incorrect anagrams, read at the graduation ceremony, in the text, but include here similar anagrams with the correct letters. For the first one: ACADEMIA: I LEARN AMPLE LOGIC, ACTUATE WITH LOVING

[2] New anagram with correct letters: LOVING ACADEME: I LEARN WITH ACTUAL POETICAL MAGI

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Karen Landry, Mistress of ceremonies

7/6/2015

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And finally To the Graduates:

Congratulations! Your hard and rewarding road of life-long learning has reached another crossroads.

As one of your Great Books tutors, I want to share with you a few parting thoughts:

In your mind, I’m sure our 11th grade year together is ancient history, especially in light of all the wonderful “senior year” memories you’ve made. I, however, remember well our year together and I’ve been watching you, from across the hall. I want to ask you to shine a light on those Dark Ages with me for just a moment.

The fall of 2013 was a new beginning in many ways – some of you were new to Christiana, one of you was new to this class – and I was new to tutoring Great Books. I also see now, new friendships were taking shape at that time too. Friendships which I think will be long lasting – all the more strong and enduring due to the fiery discord in which they were forged. With fits and spurts our class moved ahead through the Medieval classics. Many of these works as a whole, or in their particulars, challenged differences we hold in a sometimes uneasy tension under the broad banner of Christianity. It wasn’t easy discussing those classic works which highlight the very issues that still divide us. And to expect 16 year olds to take it on, was asking a lot. But you did it.

Though some of you may have been tempted to throw in the towel, you held on. You stayed the course. Perhaps without fully understanding why – you stood your ground and remained engaged in the Great Conversation – valiantly fighting your impulses to push your own agendas – sometimes winning that battle and sometimes losing – but sincerely committed to the ideal of “seeking to understand” and trying to unfold what that means, what that looks like to humbly open your heart and mind to another’s point of view. Pushing through your differences and working together to get to the other side you discovered what Seneca calls “one of the most beautiful qualities of true friendship” – “to understand and to be understood”.

And so, our year ended. Though your union as a class was still slightly tenuous, as brothers and sisters in Christ you embarked on another great conversation your senior year. Among many other great authors from the classic western tradition, you tackled Descartes – the agent behind the fracturing of the entwined understanding of the human person that existed prior to the scientific revolution. You examined his arguments outlining a skeptical disembodied philosophy. And you seriously engaged in a conversation with John Paul II, who proposes an adequate anthropology as an antidote of sort to Descartes. Further up and further on you traveled – examining various forms of government, evaluating the principles underlying each according to the criteria of how each conceives of and serves the dignity of the human person.

Wrestling with seminal texts throughout your high school career – from Homer and Aristotle to Virgil and Augustine, Bonaventure, Dante and Descartes – you engaged in the core of human experience – in reality that transcends time and place. If you missed any of these works along the way, I suggest you take them on and celebrate – with food – each time you finish a new text, in honor of Mrs. Jones.

In staying the course – through science fair projects, Super Essays, Inferno Projects, Great books skits, tension-filled classroom discussions and your thesis presentations – you have inserted yourselves into the ongoing stream of conversation with the greatest minds of Western civilization, working through and discussing the most profound realities concerning the human experience, the human person, the world in which we live and the greatest mysteries of God Himself. To liberally engage in a classical education is to be free and to live a humane life – to live a life oriented to the Truth.

And now as you go forward from this place – continue to seek truth, share the truth with others and establish a lifestyle of learning for yourself. I hope you will fondly
remember this place, these people and these times and you will go forward with joy, bearing in mind what C.S. Lewis says, “There are far, far better things ahead than any we leave behind.”

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Why Do I Homeschool?

Senior Address, Graduation, 2015

Karen Landry, Mistress of ceremonies

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