Tea at Trianon: Reasons to Love Homeschooling

John Wilson Croker on Marie-Antoinette

"We have followed the history of Marie Antoinette with the greatest diligence and scrupulosity. We have lived in those times. We have talked with some of her friends and some of her enemies; we have read, certainly not all, but hundreds of the libels written against her; and we have, in short, examined her life with– if we may be allowed to say so of ourselves– something of the accuracy of contemporaries, the diligence of inquirers, and the impartiality of historians, all combined; and we feel it our duty to declare, in as a solemn a manner as literature admits of, our well-matured opinion that every reproach against the morals of the queen was a gross calumny– that she was, as we have said, one of the purest of human beings."

~from History of the Guillotine by John Wilson Croker, 1844

Edmund Burke on Marie-Antoinette

"It is now sixteen or seventeen years since I saw the queen of France, then dauphiness, at Versailles; and surely there never lighted on this orb, which she hardly seemed to touch, a more delightful vision. I saw her just above the horizon, decorating and cheering the elevated sphere she had just begun to move in, glittering like a morning star full of life and splendor and joy. Oh, what a revolution....Little did I dream that I should have lived to see such disasters fall upon her, in a nation of gallant men, in a nation of men of honor and of cavaliers! I thought ten thousand swords must have leaped from their scabbards, to avenge even a look which threatened her with insult. But the age of chivalry is gone; that of sophisters, economists, and calculators has succeeded...."

~Edmund Burke, October 1790

Wednesday, May 14, 2014

Reasons to Love Homeschooling

From Aleteia:

I never dreamed we would become homeschoolers. I wanted my kids integrated and socialized. I wanted their eyes opened to the realities of the world. I wanted the values we taught at home put to the test in the real world. We tried public school and our parish school. But necessity drove me to consider homeschooling for my elementary aged children, so one night my husband and I timidly attended a home school parent meeting.

I thought I’d find a bunch of stay-at-home moms who dressed liked they lived in the 1800’s. But my biased stereotypes were set straight very quickly. Instead, I found parents, both moms and dads, who are educated professionals including doctors, lawyers, and teachers. Home schooling parents have almost nothing in common except that they care passionately about education, children, and family life.

An estimated 2.04 million K-12 children are home educated in the United States, a 75% increase since 1999. Although currently only 4% of all K12 students nationwide are educated at home, experts are predicting an exponential boom in homeschooling in the next 5-10 years. Most states even provide free online public schools, known as virtual schools or virtual homeschools for K12 students.

For a year I was afraid to tell any of my work colleagues that we were homeschooling. People would stereotype me. My boss might assume that I couldn’t possibly be committed my career as an academic pediatrician for Washington University in St. Louis. I wasn’t sure I could homeschool my kids well. I feared the whole year would be an academic failure and emotional nightmare. I was so unsure about this homeschooling experiment that I even kept a spare school uniform in case I had to send my kids back to school at the last moment.

This month our kids are finishing their second year of homeschooling. I think we can call this success! We’ve had our kids in both public and private schools, but homeschooling has turned out to be the best option for our family. (Read more.)