The Vatican officially supports homeschooling. And with their tradition of private schooling of high quality, Catholic homeschoolers often had to cope with many in their faith community who questioned homeschooling. But issues of cost, the importance of family, socialization and customization are also issues for many other families in public schools where fees keep increasing, money that many cash-strapped families could put to use in other ways to benefit their kids. The data is substantial about the economic stress on families.
The Vatican Comes Out in Support of Homeschooling - Pat Farenga's Blog - Unschooling Homeschooling - Pat Farenga:"By linking homeschools to private schools, the Vatican affirms the importance of choice in education as being more than just choosing how to learn to read, write, and calculate. The Vatican ends this statement with a paragraph that I find echoes the unschooling ethos in particular, namely that the learner should be at the center of all “development concerns” (“development,” as Illich so often notes, is an incredibly loaded term, but I’ll save that for another day) and that young people should be recognized for their contributions to society." 'via Blog this'
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| Saint Mary's Cathedral in downtown Austin, Texas. This is the seat of the Bishop of the Diocese of Austin. (Photo credit: Wikipedia) |
Catholic Education in America: Homeschooling is Not the Problem - U.s. - Catholic Online: "Finally, Fr. Stravinskas never really addresses the issue that begs to be confronted: the outrageous cost of Catholic education. It is simply out of reach for most families. Consider this: it cost us more money to put our daughter through 1st grade than it did for my husband to get a very demanding, high-tech Masters Degree from a major university. Tuition for most Catholic elementary schools is just ridiculously expensive. I'd wager that Fr. Stravinskas would declare the money well-spent because the quality of education is unmatched. I would disagree again.
I am now using a homeschool curriculum that in my opinion far surpasses the curriculum used at our former Catholic school. Not to mention the fact that homeschooling gives me the opportunity to tailor the instruction to each child, to emphasize what my child needs more, and quickly advance through what she needs less. If I see my child struggling to understand something, we don't just move on ahead like a classroom teacher must. The goal is to learn, not just get through a textbook."
The Diocese of Wichita has proven it can be done. They are presently the only diocese in the country where children of active parish members can receive a K - 12 education tuition-free! What's stopping every other diocese from doing the same thing?
Beyond the tuition, my husband and I honestly got sick to death of all the "extra" costs associated with the school. We were required to purchase a certain amount of Scripp each month, plus participate in a Fundraising program (if we didn't sell enough of the fundraising stuff, we'd be charged a couple hundred dollars to cover our cost). School lunches, field trips, different uniforms for winter and summer, etc, it all added up to a lot of money, and it got very annoying very quickly.
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