Friday, December 24, 2010

Wednesday, December 22, 2010

Why You Should Homeschool Your Child

Any parent who presently homeschools could probably write books just listing reasons for removing their children from the public school system. This essay will attempt to elucidate just a few of those reasons.

It seems that only a little time needs to pass between controversies regarding curricular content in public school districts across the country. Whether the topics are evolution vs. creation or sex education vs. abstinence, school boards are constantly embroiled in heated confrontations about one issue or another. Homeschool parents can thank God not only for the certainty of teaching their child the right side of any such discussion, but also because they can completely avoid the exhausting emotional battles that their coreligionists, still trapped inside the government school system, must undertake in vain attempts to save their children from the dominant paradigm in our prevailing system of education.

Adjunct to preoccupation about curricular content in the classroom is concern about the quality of that content. Once upon a time, children in school read the classics. If a more modern work was to be read, then it would be chosen from a corpus of work that had survived some modicum of competition and criticism through the years, from authors such as Charles Dickens, Rudyard Kipling, T.S. Eliot or Ernest Hemingway. Now textbooks are crammed with stories and poems that agree with whatever politically-correct gospel is presently espoused in universities and teacher certification programs. Homeschool parents, armed only with a library card, can rest assured that their child will only learn from the greats.

Homeschool parents not only save their children from undesirable content but also from undesirable peers. It’s not news to anyone that there are a number of real, physical dangers present every day in our public school system. School bullies and deranged shooters top the list of potential threats. Furthermore, many schools, both urban and rural, are rife with drug problems and addicted teens. Sexual promiscuity among our youth is also problematic and exacerbated by the public school environment, which facilitates “hook-ups”. A significant fraction of teenage girls becomes pregnant before graduating high school and many of them have also contracted sexually transmitted diseases. Homeschool parents can breathe a sigh of relief each day as they consider how many bullets, both figurative and literal, that their children have dodged by staying at home to learn.

Homeschooling also saves children from losing that most precious non-renewable resource: time. Any public school teacher or student can attest to the great amounts of time lost and wasted during the average school day. Some of this wastage is inevitable due to the format. No one would deny the necessity, given the environment, of taking roll at the beginning of each class and making sure everyone is where they are supposed to be. Certainly, announcements are important to keep the student body informed (though a brief listen to morning announcements at your local school would also surely demonstrate that some of these constitute more wasted time.) Other losses of time are less easily defended: pep rallies or the lackluster, guaranteed-not-to-offend-anyone holiday celebrations. Necessary or not, the end result is that great swaths of your child’s academic day is used for non-academic reasons. Homeschooling not only uses your child’s time more effectively, but it gives time back to the parents and lets them choose how to utilize it. Everything done in seven hours of public school can be done in four hours at home. After lunch, parents can decide on more academics, more family time, or that opportunity longed-for but seldom seen in public schooling: real-life application of skills learned in school.

This essay is not an exhaustive list of the reasons for homeschooling but hopefully underlines some of the more dramatic justifications considered by parents when making the momentous decision as to how their children should be schooled. Certainly, the above demonstrates that the decision is more than just an accommodation for certain books or environments, but truly a determination of a child’s safety, both academic and personal.

Saturday, November 27, 2010

Wednesday, July 28, 2010

Tuesday, July 13, 2010

Sunday, July 4, 2010

The Pendulum: or How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Novus Ordo

Okay, it's been one of those nights. I couldn't sleep so I spent a certain amount of time lying in the dark, wallowing in regret and shame (hey, I'm Catholic). Then I punished myself with work (curriculum for the fall. I'm a teacher). Then I started drinking. Finally, two dead soldiers later, I figured: it's time to write the next post.

Anyway (no, keep reading, it gets better), I'm updating some sorry story I wrote years ago about my "reversion", when that was a big thing on the blogosphere. So, I've been in this back-and-forth with "tradition" and the present General Quarters situation of the Church. Off and on, I would steel myself to "only attend the ancient liturgy" in some far off hole twenty miles from my home and ignore my parish, a small, run-down sort of place with banal liturgy at best and the occasional heretic priest just barely escaping the lightning bolts that God must regularly send his direction. And all the ladies in flip-flops serving hors d'oeuvres and wine while the Priest does his Corpus Christi thing. Then, I would feel shame (nothing new there) and go back to my parish until somethingt terrible happened (priests stossing the vessels around, discussing WO - and I ain't talking about Wyoming) and so I would throw a hissy fit and run back to big Latin Mama.

Three dead soldiers. Man, I'm a lightweight. Where did my feet go?

So, now, I am back at my NO parish. And I am keeping the NO Liturgy of the Hours. That's the Divine Office for you Latin massers. Officium Divinum). And I am going to try and stay now. Even when the retired priest comes and talks about Rama and Siva and Kali (I kid. He never mentioned Kali).

You see, (Here comes the shitty, stupid part where I try to make you feel bad about my childhood), (like the extra comma?), I grew up pseudo-half-Catholic and rediscovered the Church in college. It was a pretty liberal Dominican Newman Center set-up but I thought it was all "ancienty" because I grew up on McDonald's and Voltron. So I was pretty fascinated. Later, I learend about Tradition and oooooooooooh how I regret it, not because it's bad but what a rift in my soul. If only I had never known. I was so happy thinking that my bland, saccharine prayers and devotions were so ....old.

So, now I am tyrying the novus ordure thing again. And you know what? I just want to be with a bunch of people from my area, a bunch of catholics, good and bad, and try to get on, in my desperation. And simultaneously, I derive comfort from those sorry, simple books that came out of the seventies. Don't get me wrong. IF it was an election, I would vote LEFebrve everytime. But I grew up with the red vinyl NAB and the ....other stuff. So, now, eveen if I seem to display some sort of "traditio" veneer, remember I sing Haugen songs on Sunday (or Saturday evenings, cbecaus eit's conveneient).

Wednesday, June 16, 2010

Yup

Monday, June 7, 2010

A New Political Party

Announcing a new political party for the 2010 mid-term elections:

The GOMDLP (Get Off My Damn Land Party) will try to seat Robert Paxton in Congressional District 1 in the Great State of Arizona.

No Campaign Promises.

No Party Platform.

Just get off my damn land.

Thursday, May 27, 2010

Now That's What I Call Anti-Clericalism!

(in regards to events in Frankish Syria, c. 1150)

-The Patriarch Aimery of Limoges (Latin Patriarch of Antioch) ...was extremely proud and dictatorial...he did not conceal his contempt for the new Prince (of Antioch, Reynald of Chatillon).  When Reynald heard the things the Patriarch had to say about him...he had Aimery seized by his soldiers, and not content with flinging him into prison, had him flogged until he bled and then exposed on a tower in full sunlight, smeared with honey to attract wasps and flies.-

from Les Croisades, by Zoe Oldenbourg

Apparently, the King of Jerusalem, Baldwin III, secured Aimery's release, but the patriarch decided not to stay in Antioch. :-)

Sunday, April 18, 2010

Too much in the sun

My oldest son and I cleaned up the yard first, cutting weeds and dismantling an old fence we didn't need anymore. Then we brought the two younger boys out to play on the grass. I sat in the shade to watch them and drank water from a chipped glass, no lord or king on Earth more powerful than I.

Friday, April 9, 2010

Great Rock

Sunday, April 4, 2010

Saturday, April 3, 2010

Holy Saturday


Holy Saturday seems a bit awkward.  We are not required to keep the fast and abstinence of Good Friday, but it also seems absurd to start celebrating.  Yet, with the beautiful weather today in Northern Arizona, it is hard to focus on the absence of Christ.  He seemed so wonderfully present as I played with my sons behnd the house today - He was in the sun, the flowers, the intermittent creakings of the swingset and the wind that blew at opportune moments, refreshing any too-still moment with the sudden chaos of swirling dust and dancing grass.


Reflection on the Liturgy of the Lord's Passion

Last night I went to the Good Friday liturgy for the first time since college.  Since I don't remember my college days all that well, it was all new to me.  Now, I frequently go the Easter Vigil mass and will again tonight.  One thing that I have always liked about that mass is watching the change in the altar and the return of the Eucharist. 

Last night however, a few minutes into the service, I was disturbed by the emptiness of the tabernacle.  Of course, I am always disturbed by this at the Easter Vigil mass; but I am consoled by the knowledge that, by the end of mass, the Eucharist will be returned.  It was altogether more disturbing last night, realizing that I was going to leave in an hour, and the tabernacle would remain empty.  I had to walk out of the church and leave an empty tabernacle behind.

I didn't like the feeling.  I'm sure I was meant to feel that way.

Friday, April 2, 2010

Good Friday

                            Iesus
                            Nazarenus
                            Rex
                            Iudaeorum

Thursday, April 1, 2010

Saturday, March 27, 2010

Saturday, March 20, 2010

from Lauds

Wash yourselves, be clean, take away the evil of your devices from my eyes: cease to do perversely,

Learn to do well: seek judgment, relieve the oppressed, judge for the fatherless, defend the widow.

And then come, and accuse me, saith the Lord: if your sins be as scarlet, they shall be made as white as snow: and if they be red as crimson, they shall be white as wool.

Tuesday, January 12, 2010

-from the 1962 Roman Catholic Daily Missal


From all time, the Canon has been recited silently. The congregation present can contribute nothing to the sacrificial act itself; the people are present before a mystery which it is for the consecrated priest alone to accomplish. The Priest has entered alone into the Holy of Holies to pray and offer sacrifice for the whole Church.

Friday, January 1, 2010