I've finished work on our parish's vacation bible school, which will begin this upcoming Monday and run all week, and now as August is approaching, I begin to look toward preparing our home education year once again. As I blog this, our oldest son is off to a rising senior picnic at the college he wishes to attend the next year. He has been entirely home schooled with the help of Mother of Divine Grace. We have remained convicted to our belief that formation/education within the family is one of the best routes to take in battling against an anti-Christian culture. Especially while reading: Hold on to Your Kids lately, I'm convinced home education may not only be a viable choice of education, but might very well be necessary to preserve all that is good in our children; I agree with the book (mentioned above), that our children need to remain parent-oriented, and no matter how good a Christian school they may attend, there is still the strong pull toward peer-orientation.
While there is no perfect school situation this side of heaven, we feel we are doing what God has truly marked us to do in raising our children as our own and as His in this fallen world. I pray always for the grace to see us through this awesome responsibility.
I posted this next reflection a couple years ago, and I think it is a good reminder to look upon today.
While there is no perfect school situation this side of heaven, we feel we are doing what God has truly marked us to do in raising our children as our own and as His in this fallen world. I pray always for the grace to see us through this awesome responsibility.
I posted this next reflection a couple years ago, and I think it is a good reminder to look upon today.
"The family is the basic and most important unit of society, the one God looks upon as its firmest support. And it is perhaps the part of society most insidiously and ruthlessly attacked from all sides.....Many lost sight of the fact that parents have the right to educate their own children, and, in the face of excessive state intervention, have ended up renouncing an elementary right and this is due in part to these inhibitions - there are imposed certain kinds of teaching dominated by a materialistic view of man. In such methods the pedagogical and didactic approaches, text-books employed, schemes of work, curricular programmes and school materials deliberately set aside the spiritual nature of the human soul....."
In Conversation with God, Vol. 3 Eleventh Week, Friday
2 comments:
Those are challenging words for Christians. I've never thought of the idea of being "peer-oriented" but that's really true. We see it as a natural thing.
It's only problematic when it's pulling youth (as in elementary & teens not fully mature or formed yet) away from their family(s) consistently and persistently...and they are being formed by peers rather than parents (values). Otherwise, friends are certainly a great blessing AND friends are friends forever if the Lord is Lord of them.....:)
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