Education: September 2004 Archives

Now that our phone line and internet is hooked up again, I have spent part of the day surfing the net. In so doing, I couldn't help but notice some of the debates over homeschooling take place. While nobody disagrees that the education usually is superior to that of public schools, there is some question as to how well adapted homeschooled children are socially after they graduate.

In my experience, it depends upon the parents. I have seen both good and bad. In one particularly egregious example, one of my friends roomed in college with a homeschooled fellow who grew up in a very sheltered environment -- to the point of social inneptitude. For example, he was clueless as to who Darth Vader was.

Another story takes place within the context of a particular post-conciliar traditionalist schisms, which has attracted many adherents to a certain geographical locale. As soon as the girls reach their late teens or early twenties, they marry guys in their late thirties to early forties. They simply cannot relate to guys their own age, as the girls find the guys their own age too socially immature and too sheltered to maintain decent employment and support a family. So, obviously, this is the downside.

On the other hand, some of the most socially well-adjusted young men I have met were also homeschooled. I'm thinking, in particular, of a friend of mine whom I met through the FSSP. His parents were both military officers and took the view that homeschooling was about raising their children to be tommorrow's Catholic leaders. Therefore, they didn't see homeschooling as sheltering their children, but as an apprenticeship to maintaining one's faith while venturing forth in the real world.

So besides the usual homeschooling activities of catechesis, reading, writing, mathematics, history, geography, etc... their kids also participated in sports, the arts, community service, choir practice, boy scouts and even scuba-diving (my friend's father explained that this wasn't just phys-ed, but a reinforcement of the lessons learned in mathematics and geography as well.) Another homeschooled friend of mine, who I met through the charismatic movement, did small-aircraft piloting rather than scuba-diving.

In each case, some of the other parents in the respective parish thought these parents were too libertine, wasteful and risky with the lives of their children. But their children have all turned out well. They came out from homeschooling well-adjusted young adults, with real life skills and capable of assuming responsibility. All have all kept the faith. They are all grateful for their home-schooling background, and remain close to their parents. One is about to graduate with a double-degree in fine arts and engineering. The other is a well-liked pilot and aircraft mechanic. Both are active in their faith.

On the other hand, a lot of my homeschooled friends whose parents sheltered them have turned out aweful. The one that breaks my heart the most is an ex-girlfriend who rebelled against her parents, got involved with a drug-addict, had a child that was given up for adoption, never finished high-school, and now works in the so-called "adult entertainment" field and is bitter against both her family and the Catholic faith. Others have become a variation, albeit not as bad.

So my point is that homeschooling depends upon the parents. If parents use homeschooling to shelter their kids from the real world, this is not good. But if parents use homeschooling to prepare their kids for the real world, then the results are much better than a public school education.

The same can be said about private Catholic schools. I know some traddy schools that simply shelter kids, and the kids graduate knowing all sorts of facts and figures, but still socially and emotionally immature. On the other hand, St. Gregory's Academy -- under the auspices of the FSSP -- openly has as its purpose not only classical education of teenage boys, but their formation and growth from boys into responsible young men. Thus the boys are expected to participate in sport, theatre, music and various social activities. When they graduate, it is a educated and well-adjusted young men.

Whatever other -isms they believe, most professors believe in postmodernism. My definition of that term is: "The belief that there is no absolute Truth, there are only 'truths' that are constructed in our minds. Dialogue is, therefore, not a tool that can be used to discover Truth, but merely a word-game that people use to construct 'reality' in their minds."

That isn't an exhaustive definition of postmodernism, but I think that's a fair summary. Where does this idea come from? I'm sure Beregond can give us its supple, nuanced intellectual history, beginning with Decartes' revolutionary idea that knowledge begins with one's intellect and not the senses, and extending through his (Beregond's) bete noir, Immanuel Kant.

However, I am not an intellectual, and although I do not doubt the role of ideas in the formation of the postmodern critique (for it is surely not a philosophy), often I look to more concrete things when I ask why someone thinks a particular way. I submit that one of the reasons is the university library.

Not just the library, to be sure -- there is also the Registrar's office, the deans, the Faculty Senate, and all the other little rule-making and -enforcing entities on campus. But the library is the entity I am mad at tonight, so the library will be my example.

You may know, if you've read Catholic Light before, that I'm finishing my M.A. thesis project (Open Source Shakespeare). To accompany the site, I am writing a substantial paper, and so I have checked out books from the library. Tonight, I realized that 13 of them are overdue, and I owe the library $32.50.

I figured I'd pay the fine and renew the books. Not so fast! the library Web site said. There is a hold on my library privileges. I called the library, where a recording told me that I would have to bring in the books before I could renew or check out books.

"That's got to be a mistake," I thought. "I'm done with classes, and I'm rarely on campus. Surely they aren't going to make me physically go to the circulation desk."

I called the circulation desk. A nice young lady confirmed that yes, indeed, I would have to drag 13 books halfway across the county in order to get my records cleaned up.

"Is this some kind of collegiate hazing?" I asked. She didn't get the joke. "Let me get this straight: if I come in, I can renew the books, right?"

"Yes, absolutely. Come to the desk, and we'll check them in, and check them back out to you," she explained.

"And why can't we do that over the phone?"

"They have to be checked back in, because they're late."

"I know they're late, and I'll pay the fine. I have no problem with that. But I'd rather not have to make a 40-mile round trip just to renew some books."

"Hold on for a moment, please." Sound of a brief, muffled conversation. "Yeah, my supervisor says you have to come in person. Otherwise, we'd have to do an override."

I thanked her and hung up, without asking the obvious question: what's bad about giving me an "override"? Would it disturb the balance of the universe if they simply said, "Yes, Eric, you can keep the books you need. Don't worry about using your vacation time at work, or leaving your family for most of an evening. We'll renew the books and you can pay the fine the next time you're on campus"?

Nobody else has requested any of the overdue books. I'll pay the fine, or else they won't give me a diploma. Either this is a petty punishment for forgetting the due date, or it's a dumb rule that nobody has thought about but must be followed unquestioningly.

Library book regulations are a small thing, to be sure. But they are part of the web of intricate, arbitrary rules that make up the modern university. Other American institutions (except governments) actively try to make things easier on the people they serve. Not universities, which are run like medieval fiefdoms, complete with their own legal systems.

It's unsurprising that academic professionals — who know no other life, having spent their adult years in this milieu — would think that Truth is a construct and words are weapons used to advance one's personal will. That is precisely what their workplace teaches them.