Homeward (Part 3): The Village is not the villain

When we first started thinking very seriously about homeschooling the boys, I saw a pro-homeschool advertisement that went something like this:  “I homeschool because I’ve seen the village and I don’t want it raising my children.”  I have to admit that my response to that advertisement was visceral.  In short, it made me angry and really moved me away from making the decision to homeschool for a while.  I deeply felt the elitism of a certain sect of the homeschooling population and it made me recoil.  We sent our children to our church school since kindergarten and never once did we do it thinking that we were sending them so that the school could raise them for us.  Never once did we think that sending them to school undid the first 5 or 6 years of child rearing we had already accomplished.  This one little quotation, presumably meant to exhibit some measure of disdain for evils of the populous “village,” really undid a lot of movement toward homeschooling for me.

Let me be clear, there are bad influences out there in the big bad world-village.  There are plenty of people and places I try to avoid out of protection and prudence. But, I absolutely object to the notion that sending a child to a traditional school is the same thing as sending them away to be “raised.”  There are certainly levels of presence that an individual parent has in a child’s life, often corresponding to lifestyle choices.  For the first several years of our first two children’s lives, they saw their father very rarely because of his rigorous eighty hour or more residency work week, plus in-house hospital call every 4^th night.  That wasn’t easy for him, our children, or me, but even this limited exposure to their father afforded us valuable time for quality early parenting.  There is much to be said about quality versus quantity in any parent-child relationship.  And simply because my husband wasn’t able to spend quantity time with his young children, didn’t mean that he was abdicating his parenting.  His work in providing for our family was a part of his parenting.

There are many considerations and motives for parents choosing a multitude of lifestyle and parenting choices.  Each particular situation is loaded with its own set of challenges and rewards.  And no one situation is the perfect solution to protect a child from the evils of a village or the malaise of an at-home parent.  A mother who sends her baby to day care from 6 weeks old until he enters a traditional school and after-school care regimen, obviously deals with the unique challenges of parenting that particular level of access affords.  She is not necessarily abandoning her child to the village.  And conversely, a parent who never hires babysitters, practices attachment parenting, and is constantly with her child day and night deals with an entirely different set of parenting challenges.  She is not necessarily shunning the village, nor is she necessarily doing it all right.

As one who rarely had babysitters, never sent my children to mother’s day out or pre-school, I can honestly say that the quality of my time with my children didn’t always correspond to the quantity of the time I spent with them as young children.  The fact that the village had very little with my children’s early years, doesn’t necessarily mean that my choices rendered perfect products.  I think, as parents, we are all challenged to use whatever time we have with our children as best we can.  And, we must safeguard not to look too long in the direction of other parents who have made different lifestyle and parenting choices.  It isn’t helpful.  If we are using our time well—whatever measure is afforded us, we needn’t feel the paranoia of the big-bad world village tainting. . .er, raising. . .our children.

But, if there is anything understandable about this sense of paranoia it is that I, like most parents, want to believe I’m in control of what my children hear, see, and experience.  I do think that we would fall on the “protective parents” side of the fence.  Maybe that’s why we would even consider homeschooling in the first place?  We want to do everything in our power to make our children’s lives conduits for grace and goodness and there is a lot of badness out there.  As followers of Christ, we want our children to be His saints.  This path to sainthood, as we all know from stories of so holy men and women, is often fraught with some degree of estrangement from the norm.  Saints typically live outside the box—just maybe not always outside the village.  The people of God historically built up walls to fortress the sacred, and I think we all create for ourselves protective barriers.  When I considered it more, I realized that this must be where the disordered disdain for “the village” arises.

But, with a little more digging, I also realized that isolation from the evils of village life is not the sole path to sainthood.  Some of our most wonderful saints were villagers, a few of them living in some not so wonderful villages.  St. Therese of Liseux, though by all accounts thoroughly loved by her parents and siblings, was sent away to live with a wet nurse as a baby, then again sent away to school at a Benedictine abbey at age 8.  I don’t know many homeschoolers who could argue with the product of that traditional school placement.  And even as she entered her beloved Carmelite community, she was hardly among the most tender of companions.  The village tempered her and prepared her for her mission in ways that an alternate lifestyle may not have.

St. Kateri Tekakwitha, the American Indian saint, was orphaned as a young girl and quite literally raised by the village, which then shunned her because of her Christian faith.  Even a village set on your mortification can be a fertile ground for sainthoood.

St. Elizabeth Ann Seton, the American saint and patroness of Catholic Schools, lost her mother when she was 3 years old and  was raised partially by her father and his new wife who later separated.  Because of the stress of her difficult family situation, she was sent to live in the care of an uncle.  This is hardly the model for a serene family life which most homeschoolers would prescribe for our children.  And still, arguably, it is the very fact that she endured the strains of such a tumultuous early life that fostered her immense compassion exhibited in her vocation and charitable work.

St. John Bosco, the popular 19^th century Italian saint, had a very rough start to his education with poverty being an obstacle to any attempt at real scholastics.  In fact, certain accounts have him running away from home—to the village!  This was due to the constant torments of his older brother.  For this saint, the village and the people he met there were instrumental to his path to sainthood.

One of the greatest Doctors of the Church, St. Augustine, was sent away at eleven years old to school to learn pagan philosophy—hardly the best place to cultivate Christian holiness.  And yet, by his own account, his torid life in the village procured in him a restlessness that set him on the path to conversion in Christ.

And how can we forget the ancient story of the man of God, Samuel, who was given up to the temple as a baby to be raised apart from his mother, by Eli and the temple community. 

I mention all these stories as only the tip of the iceberg of how escape from “the village” doesn’t necessarily provide the surest path to the holy and wholesome things we want for our children.  The village and its inhabitants can be disappointing and challenging, but we are all called to live in community—families, neighborhoods, churches, schools, cities.  And, if we are being honest with ourselves, we can see very clearly that sometimes even our very own homes and families can be little villages in much need of redemption.  Saints are born into villages.

In retrospect, I think the major problem I had with this quotation was the light it shone on the elitist mentality of some homeschoolers—not all, some.  I am a terribly prideful person, so I very much understand where this elitism is rooted.  Yet, this notion that homeschool is superior to all other modes of education was one of the biggest initial barriers to my own conversion to the idea that homeschool could be for us.  I wondered then, even as I do now, if those who hold these views know the damage they do in proscribing all other schooling choices.  To be honest, I don’t know that homeschooling is the best choice for everyone.  Even as we are homeschooling our children today, I wonder if it will be the best choice for us always.  I’ve seen it done very poorly, to the point where I think it could almost be negligent.  I also know that not everyone has the luxury or resources to have one parent at home to facilitate a homeschool lifestyle.  I do know that whether a parent sends her children to traditional school or homeschools them, we all tap into our “village” for help and that doesn’t mean we aren’t raising our own children.

Still wrestling with these conflicts, I talked to a friend and former homeschooler about this little obstacle for me.  He commiserated and, to my surprise, confessed his own elitist mentality when he and his wife homeschooled.  This confession, again to my surprise, helped me realize that my reservations weren’t really with homeschooling.  Instead, I was reacting to what I perceived as the sort of sinful pride to which I new that I could easily succumb, if I allowed myself to believe that whatever choices I make for our family are objectively the best choices for everyone.  Not only that, it also meant that if we chose to homeschool, then I could be admitting that the  thing we’ve been doing—traditional schooling-- was inadequate and somehow less than desirable.  If I believed this and bought into the elitism, then it put me in a very precarious position of no return, based entirely on my pride.  And through my friend’s advice, I realized I didn’t have to be in that position.  I didn’t have to be in the “Homeschool good, Classroom bad” club, afterall!

My friend’s insight and the circumstances of his family’s schooling choices opened up a whole new perspective for me in accepting homeschool for today, without having to pledge allegiance forever or burn bridges.  In their unique situation, his wife, the primary homeschool teacher for their family, died tragically, even as they had a houseful of small children.  Thus, their circumstances propelled them from their homeschool into a traditional school.  And, after talking with him, I realized that most of us make our choices based on what we think is best for our children and what we can handle at the time—this time, not tomorrow or next year, but now.  My friend’s candor and kindness to me offered me a humbling reminder that everybody needs help.  We all live in the village and we need the village.

Homeschoolers are villagers, too.  Maybe for some people, they are the reclusive villagers who don’t go out much, but I honestly don’t know many homeschoolers who stay home all the time.  The benefit of homeschooling is that, when you homeschool, you typically get to pick your village a little more carefully.  And there is good and bad in that decision, too. Homeschool becomes an extension of what we have always practiced in helping our children choose right relationships and friends who are good for them.  It doesn’t remove them from the village, but helps to foster a sense of the village that is beyond the schoolyard.

As we embark on this homeschool endeavor, I hope that I can remember that ill-worded quotation in a way that keeps me humble.  I pray to God that I can avoid the trappings of elitism.  I hope that I can be thankful for my capacity to serve my children today in a homeschool environment and remain open to the other options that we have as citizens of the village.