Saturday 19 January 2008

Catholic Homeschooling in the UK

My first posting.
What shall I say? the blog title seems to express it quite succinctly.
Homeschooling is a bit like this, most days I get up and - I don't know what I'm doing; I only know that my husband and I felt like it was the Right thing to do, that it was what the Holy Spirit was calling us to do, and maybe writing things down will help me to keep finding the way forward, even though I often feel stuck.
I've spent the last few months reading other people's blogs, on and off, and never felt like starting one myself, but the things some people write are so audacious that I felt I had to have some identity in order to comment on their blogs, so in trying to do that I seem to have accidentally created a blog of my own. If I keep at it, maybe one day I will be able to say I DO know what I'm doing, at last!
We are Catholic, unashamedly and gratefully Catholic. We want the Catholic faith to be experienced as something beautiful, and true in our children's lives, and we see the rapid decline in purity in the young as something that has to be countered.
But it is not easy. Children can not live in a vacuum, they have to engage with the world. It is a difficult fence top to be balancing on. How can we enable them to keep their purity, whilst still being a part of a world where impure images, and ideas abound.
How many parents really want their children to be exposed to the front page of the "Daily Star", or whatever it is, that always has some poor exploited woman being exhibited. Why are these papers being shown in Morrisons, Tescos, or Sainsburys at child's eye level?
All our children are precious. Homeschooling is just another way, that has been shown to us, in which we as parents can try to keep them precious, and unspoilt.

4 comments:

ukok said...

Welcome to the blogosphere! I look forward to reading more of your posts :-)

LizzieD said...

Thankyou ukok, I enjoy your blog, and after reading it for a while, I discovered that your Church is not too far from us - we attend the Traditional Latin Mass there once a month or so! (We're in Shropshire). It is a lovely Church, there are some beautiful ones in your area. In fact I was admiring the fleur de lys stencilling on the walls only last Sunday - I should have taken my camera, then I might have had a decent background photo for my blog!!

Anonymous said...

is there a Catholic org in the UK that has good advice on homeschooling? You got me interested in the subject.

LizzieD said...

Hello anonymous, I'm afraid there is no organisation, as such. There used to be a Catholic homeschooling network, but that folded a couple of years ago. A lot of the Catholic homeschoolers know (or know of) each other, and try to link up with others in their area, and some families arrange meetings once a week/month etc. There are many different types of Catholic homeschooling families, (as in, ranging from those who adhere very much to the Traditional Latin Mass, to those who are at home with the New Rite,) and each family chooses their own curriculum. I would be happy to discuss the matter further with you, if you want to leave me your email address. I don't know much about blogging, and I don't want to make my email public at present, so if you leave me a comment with your email in it I can note it down without publishing your comment - I presume that's an acceptable way of getting in touch!