Catholic Homeschooled Children: Hardest Heads in the World

As the abuses of the public school system become more and more exposed (thanks in part to the fiasco that was distance learning during Covid), homeschooling in its many forms is becoming more and more streamlined.  In large numbers parents are remembering that for the vast majority of human history they were the primary educators of their children, and they did not need some third party to tell them they were qualified.  I know it is becoming more streamlined because more and more people I run into have opinions on the matter.  I myself was homeschooled, and have received varied responses, all the way from “yeah, I figured” to “you’re not at all what I was expecting”.  I suppose there are some ways in which I am very stereotypically homeschooled, and some ways which I avoided some of the worse elements of a product of homeschooling.  While working for 3 years in student life at a college that attracted many Catholic homeschooling students, I gained a much better appreciation for some of the stereotypes we embody, and have distilled this appreciation to four points formulating a somewhat controversial opinion: Catholic homeschooled graduates are some of the hardest people in the world to deal with.  

This opinion in no way discounts the validity and value of homeschooling as a superior means of child education any more than it undermines the validity of the Roman Church to say that there are a large number of Catholics in this country that do not embody Christian charity as well as our Protestant counterparts.  One immense blessing about Catholic homeschooling is thorough exposure to Theology.  These students know right from wrong sometimes better than they know the back of their hand.  By the time we are graduated, many times we can list all the heresies throughout history and the councils called to combat them.  We are steeped in both the Baltimore Catechism and the Fr. John Laux Theology books.  We benefit from being in a community of like minded people (our brothers, sisters, and parents), and because of this strongly bonded community can clearly see the contrast between the good and evil.  In the school of the domestic church, a clear ideal is put forth for the children.  As good as this arrangement is, it does serve as the foundation for all four of the following points, and benefits duly noted without recognizing some of the weaknesses we as homeschooled (and schoolers) sometimes can have, we cannot reach our full calling to be integrated human adults striving for Christ.  And so, without further ado, here are the four points which make Catholic homeschooled graduates some of the hardest people in the world to deal with.

1) They’re so right, they couldn’t be wrong.  

Different methods in Theology and Education are bound to result in different peoples, each with its own unique strengths and weaknesses.  Most parents recognize this, and are very good at arranging social events with other Catholic homeschoolers.  However, as these children get closer to graduation they often have the simultaneous blessing and curse to have had wonderful parents.  Because of these parents love and devotion to the truth, the near graduates have developed in their own minds a world view of how things are that is quite nearly correct on many levels and unadulterated by conflicting paradoxes.  Aside from the typical teenage disagreements, these students embody a worldview that is many times a deep concentration of the worldview held by the parents.  As complete as this worldview is, without the constant exposure to these “conflicting paradoxes” of different moral or theological schools of thought (which are many times just that: different schools of thought) they do not have any interior need or conviction of growth.  Their worldview is complete; they know what are the important precepts of the Faith, and there is no need to revisit that which is already set in their minds.  In fact, when challenges to their worldview inevitably do arise it sometimes presents itself as an attack on their family and upbringing, especially if they are losing the argument.  In this we can see an echo of the needless schism between the Eastern and Western Churches of early Christianity concerning the inclusion of the Filioque into the Nicean Creed.  

The argument holding this schism between the East and the West over the Filioque, Latin for “and the Son” (referring to the Holy Sprit proceeding from “the Father and the Son, Patre Filioque procedit”) originated not primarily from a dispute in dogma but a in a valid complaint over the arbitrary proclamation and administerial power overreach of Rome that it would be included, with no exception for the valid Theological school in the East which took a different approach to understanding the nature of the Holy Spirit and His place in Trinity.  Theology becomes political and tied to identity, and therefore discussion ceases, growth stagnates, and battles brew.  Parents, do not let your children merely distill your own worldview, as right as it might be.

2) They have no nuanced sense of the human condition in rational thought and experience

What happens when you have a complete, unchallengeable worldview of what constitutes right from wrong?  Often an over heady application of the moral good with no account for the human situation.  What do I mean by this?  That often Catholic homeschool graduates know right from wrong in an absolute way: but without the experience that comes from mature human living they sometimes get stuck in their own theoretical heads and miss fully human experiences, involving the entire range of human emotions.  When you are stuck in the realm of rational justification and thought, you can quite literally justify any action with the appearance of reason.  One of two things happens at that point: the person breaks themselves out of it and realize their human side (often, though not necessarily, to excess - see point 4), or they mimic the German philosopher Nietzsche.  

Nietzsche, to grossly summarize his work and end, inherited a philosophical wasteland of thought.  Realizing many of the errors that came before him, he started again and put forth a worldview that was so nearly correct on many things with one fundamental flaw: he did not admit of a God.  Nietzsche was so right on so many things but still could not reconcile why something was missing, he literally went insane.  Am I claiming that heady homeschoolers will go insane?  No.  I am positing that mimicking Nietzsche for these students is adherence to a correct worldview with a fundamental flaw, making them more and more embedded in their own theoretical ideas that they can at times lose their human side.  This fundamental flaw in the worldview of Catholic homeschool graduates is an over-dependency on rational thought alone: the absence of what makes a thought a human thought, marrying experience with rational thought.  Parents, do not stress the rational element of man as a rational animal to the detriment of the animal part.  

3) They have no sense of Sobernost.

In point one, I mentioned the possibility of theology becoming identity.  Well, moral values can easily become political and identity-centric as well.  Oftentimes, Catholic homeschool graduates leave the home and go on to college and the workplace, where they encounter the very large population of people who do not hold their same values.  Armed with the correct moral compass instilled by their parents, these graduates sometimes develop an attitude towards their fellow man that takes the form of an opposition: because they cannot see themselves ever holding or committing such atrocious sins as their peers, they consider themselves to have a radically different and incommunicable advantage over them.  A small sense of superiority in their invincibility of their own morality ensues.  In short, they have no sense of Sobernost, as depicted in Russian literature

Russian literature is dark, and amazing.  Utilizing nuances of language to denote emotion and tenderness towards peoples and born of the anguish that only thousands of years of military turmoil, political unrest, and brutal cold can create, Russian lit contains more raw reflections on the human condition in the valley of tears than any other genre.  One of the fundamental principles demonstrated by the characters in Russian lit is the concept they call Sobernost, which in English can best be described as the interior response in a person when one sees another human convicted and marched to the work camps of Siberia.  In Sobernost, the emotional response is not “Look at that Criminal”, or “How terrible is that!”; instead it is a fundamental understanding of the distress and misfortune that that person experienced which led him to this moment, regardless of being deserved or not.  Sobernost elicits within the mind the attitude of “There, but for the grace of God, go I.”  How does this look in real life?

The path of righteousness is a razor-edge walk, which we all fail at continuously.  Aristotle claims that everyone acts towards what they suppose to be good or right in that situation.  Augustine echoes this in solving the problem of evil when he posits that evil does not exist per se, but is merely an absence of good or a twisted good, i.e., what would otherwise be good but done by the wrong person, at the wrong time, or in the wrong amount.  We are not different from those who commit any number of the mortal sins possible to commit; in fact we are one lapse of judgement, one refusal of God’s grace, one misinformed and even well intentioned bad decision away from the path towards damnation ourselves.  What is more, when these failings inevitably do occur or seem acceptable, someone who considered themselves up to now incapable of such evil cannot see the path forward to grace and forgiveness.  Parents, do not let the well-founded moral principles you instill in your children to become either a sense of invincibility from committing serious sin or a radically substantial difference between them and those who do sin in such ways.  

4) Their parents are the ATF 

What parent does not want to protect their child?  It is an admirable, natural, and human aspiration to protect your children from dangers both physical and spiritual.  Because of the constant loving presence of their parents throughout their childhood, Catholic homeschooled children are perhaps the best protected children on average in the world!  With a clear moral compass and well founded education in both Theology and general academia, these graduates are ready to enter the world and take it by storm, beginning with earning their BA through a traditional 4 year college.  And sometimes, that’s as far as it goes: exposure to the deep nuances of the human condition, a multitude of supposed mature (and unsupervised) interactions with the opposite sex and that pesky peer pressure, these Catholic graduates are primed to break through their over-rationalization of morality and party!  Even at Catholic colleges, evil and excesses are present and available.  Just on a rational level: there is no world in which you put anywhere from 100 to 5000 young adults together where bullying, hazing, sexual activity, and substance use (usually limited to just alcohol) is not going to happen.  In smaller schools such occurrences are admittedly lower, but this is because of the population difference: the average as a mathematical figure remains the same.  Parents are often at a loss as to how this could happen “at a Catholic school”, and much less cannot believe that their child was involved.  Believe me, they were involved.  The reason?  Much the same reason many adults buy a flamethrower, or a sawed off shotgun on a whim: the ATF is too all-encompassing and has said they can’t, and somehow the buyers have found a legal way of doing it anyway.

As the saying goes among conservatives, “The ATF should be a convenience store, not a government agency!”  This is, of course, a joke, and the analogy I am trying to put forth does not apply here: of course parents should not be a “convenience store” for all the realities of adult life for their children.  However, knowing as they do that young adults sooner or later will become exposed, tempted, and experiment with some of these things, why not control the experiment?  Teach your children to drink while they are in the safety of your home; let them know and see where this much and no farther with alcohol is for them.  Show your children (especially your sons) the necessity of induction into a group by rite of passage, but that induction must be aimed towards inclusion to the group and not the degradation of the participant’s dignity.  Have definitive conversations about the opposite gender, set up situations for them where they can be unsupervised (to a point), so that they know how they will act when that is now the norm.  Talk to them about the realities of explicit media, and the very real chemical addictions it can develop: they are NOT strong enough to be exposed to this media on a regular basis and remain unscathed.  

These last two points are perhaps the hardest, and I do not envy parents who are tasked with this responsibility in the last few years.  But, like the ATF (only really concerned about the F, could care less about the A and T), parents sometimes can be primarily a one-issue shield.  PDA especially is a hot topic shied away in an absolute manner before college, but left to an ill-equipped graduate to discover from square one, PDA can quickly (and almost predictably) escalate and devolve into more intimate and less appropriate action.  Tenderness in any relationship is possible to appropriately show with some level of physicality, but must reflect the relationship that is there.  To completely forbid or discourage any PDA is to invite future calamity into the lives of the graduates: there is a reason that discovery of human sexuality (most often manifested in sexual activity) is equated with self-discovery in media.  It is an essential part of the human person, is primarily a physical function that is in humans elevated to include the spiritual.  In this, familial reading of the works of Pope Saint John Paul II are invaluable.

Typically through the process of homeschooling, the children will have near constant exposure to their mother, and what a great blessing this is!  Half of society’s problems would disappear overnight if we valued and accepted women’s choice to prioritize providing their children with a mother.  This being said, Fathers need to be very active in their family’s lives, bringing a sense of protection and constancy to the home and to all the family members.  Under the burden of Original Sin, we find ourselves falling short of the perfect goal we strive for time and again; the family is not exempt from this.  The Father fails in his duties if is not present to the home in an active way: when this happens, it sometimes seems reasonable to unilaterally accept his wife’s accusation - if she makes it - that because he is always working but she is always present, that she knows their children better than he.  Therefore, decisions on matters pertaining to the children, their education, and their discipline are primarily hers to make.  While it may be true that the husband has failed in his duties to be present to the home - and therefore the wife does know their children much better than he - it has happened that this reasoning is the start of an overdeveloped sense of protection from the parents and a lack of fatherly discipline in their lives, all as a misguided attempt at seeing the person element of the children to the detriment of the human, the animal element of “rational animal”.  Fathers, be very present in the lives of your families.

Before they leave the home, Catholic homeschool graduates should know where their left and right limits are, and how they will react when confronted with either danger or failure.  If they already know how they will react and are already aware of the human elements of life married to their rational functions, they are able to encounter danger and easily triumph over it.  Parents, do not be the ATF: allow your children to explore the animal part of rational animal while in the protection of your home.  Doing so robs the future independent rebellion so often a marker of homeschoolers (we are widely known for this among non-homeschoolers) and creates a young adult ready for maturity.  

I loved being homeschooled, and thanks to some of the most tactful navigations in the face of animosity I have encountered to this day, my parents equipped me with knowledge and experience such that I avoided some of these aspects of being a Catholic homeschooled graduate.  What is more, I fell in love and married a young woman who likewise was equipped by her parents to sidestep some of these issues.  What I lacked she helped me in, and vice-versa.  My parents and my in-laws both did an amazing job with their children, as many of those who would read this have done.  Individual success stories aside, the biggest stereotype of Catholic homeschoolers remains that they are either isolated with no social skills, or they go crazy right after graduation because they have been “restricted and protected for so long”, as one of my Sergeants once told me.  And sadly, this is actually true in a lot of cases.  But it does not have to be so: these graduates can both avoid this craziness and be equipped to quickly recover from misstep if they are exposed to some of the dangers, sins, and conflicting opinions of those they will encounter outside the Domestic Church.  Most importantly, if they can encounter their own fallibility early, in a way that does not attack their identity as member of the family, they can grow from individuals with mostly-right opinion to persons ready to move from opinion to knowledge.  In short, they can go from young adults with aspects and potential for being ticking time bombs, invincible personalities, and having mild attitudes of superiority to young adults with well integrated identities, empathy for the human condition, and well regulated passions through experience and maturity.  They will no longer be: some of the hardest people in the world to deal with.