Category: Education

Common Objections to Homeschooling: What About High School?
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Common Objections to Homeschooling: What About High School?

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As my son enters the final lap of his grade school career, I’ve noticed a marked increase in anxiety. An increase in my own anxiety, of course, but also in those who remain unconvinced that homeschooling for high school is a healthy option for my son. I don’t mind discussing the pros and cons of […]

New Hampshire Learns Lesson in Parental Rights
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New Hampshire Learns Lesson in Parental Rights

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Just how frustrated are American parents with the leftist Kool Aid being passed off as curriculum in our nation’s public schools? It’s come to this: Last week, the New Hampshire legislature overturned a gubernatorial veto of a bill that will allow parents to object to material being taught in school and further empowers them to […]

Special Education – “Spirituality” In Our Public Schools?
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Special Education – “Spirituality” In Our Public Schools?

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I heard a fantastic homily awhile back – well, the first part of it anyway.  Father’s initial comments set me on a train of thought that I will pass along in the body of the article.  Father asked us to contemplate the incredible gifts that God has given us.  He pointed out that we humans […]

Distributism Starts in the Home
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Distributism Starts in the Home

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My mother was the first one of us to encounter Distributism. (She’ll find that out when she reads this article!) But when she made the decision to cast aside a job title and paycheck, in the eyes of the world, to begin the world of our family with my father, she was on the path. […]

<em>Who’s Got You?</em> Observations of a Catholic Homeschooling Father
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Who’s Got You? Observations of a Catholic Homeschooling Father

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If you do an Internet search for “Catholic Fatherhood” how much data would you find in comparison to Panda Bears, Applied Linear Algebra, and Welding Theory?  According to John Clark, author of  Who’s Got You, Catholic Fatherhood comes in last.  The results respectively were 1,914, 1,706, and 284. Catholic Fatherhood netted 270 results.  Clark surmised […]

How 4-H Helps With College & Scholarship Applications
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How 4-H Helps With College & Scholarship Applications

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“My 4-H achievement record is a waste of time that no one will ever look at,” a teen grumbled at me this summer. I disagreed. Now that I’m the mother of a daughter on the quest for college acceptance letters and scholarship offers, I can back up my disagreement. Each college has its own questions […]

Teaching Tolerance in the Catholic School
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Teaching Tolerance in the Catholic School

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[This document was prepared on behalf of a group of Catholic parents to address issues locally that may also be going on elsewhere in the country. It is published here as a resource for parents who may find it useful.] Teaching Tolerance in the Catholic School: Parental Concerns and Suggested Remedies When Pope Benedict authorized […]

Jamaica’s Prime Minister Defends Homeschooling His Kids
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Jamaica’s Prime Minister Defends Homeschooling His Kids

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Jamaica’s Prime Minister and his wife recently decided to homeschool their two sons after noticing that their youngest was falling behind. Critics were quick to complain that this suggests that the public and private schools are inadequate. The Prime Minister’s defense highlights the important role of parents. Andrew Holness became Prime Minister two months ago, […]

Extraordinary Form Comes to the College of Saint Mary Magdalen
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Extraordinary Form Comes to the College of Saint Mary Magdalen

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Beginning November 2, on All Souls Day, the College of Saint Mary Magdalen is now offering its students the opportunity to experience Mass in both its ordinary and extraordinary forms.  On the Commemoration of All Souls, three Masses were celebrated: a Mass chanted in English according to the ordinary form at 7:00 AM, a Missa […]

The Myth of Homeschooling
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The Myth of Homeschooling

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The other day, I was half-jokingly trying to talk my friends into doing a reality show about homeschooling moms. Unfortunately, they weren’t buying the idea. As one put it, “I’d much rather have people believe the myth.” The Sept/Oct 2011 issue of the HSLDA Home School Court Report features an article by Michael O. Farris […]

In Philadelphia, A Model School Kindles Hope
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In Philadelphia, A Model School Kindles Hope

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For too long government-run systems have dominated American primary and secondary education. As innovations of the past two decades such as charter schools and vouchers prove, parents, children, and society benefit when government promotes rather than stifles educational reform based on choice and competition. Add to the mounting evidence another success story: St. Martin de […]

So Long, Freedom of Thought
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So Long, Freedom of Thought

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The college years used to be known as a time to explore new ideas, adopt new identities and embrace — and discard — new affiliations. You could arrive on campus a political conservative and leave a liberal; enter a staunch atheist and exit a devout believer; declare yourself a biology major, then switch to theater […]

Vision of a ‘Just Society’ is Just Plain Funny
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Vision of a ‘Just Society’ is Just Plain Funny

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If you’ve been too busy holding down a job (or two), juggling the demands of a busy family, engaging in community service and occasionally taking the wife and children out for a pizza on a Saturday night, you may not have noticed that several thousand protesters have “occupied” Wall Street, the District and other locations […]

The State of Our Personal Catholic Higher Education Bubble
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The State of Our Personal Catholic Higher Education Bubble

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I am in a high state of agitation as I write this, because unless she is able to take off a year to work and then return to school with the same scholarship status, our daughter will have to leave a Catholic institution of higher learning after a straight-A freshman year. It was a calculated […]

So, What’s the Purpose of Public Education?
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So, What’s the Purpose of Public Education?

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Barely enough time has passed for bologna sandwiches to begin rotting in school lockers, yet the 2011-2012 school year is shaping up to be one of the stinkiest ever, if we’re measuring in episodes of putrid political correctness and radicalism. Already: • A group in Brookline, Mass., is working to ban the Pledge of Allegiance […]

A (Sex-ed) Test D.C. Students Can Pass?
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A (Sex-ed) Test D.C. Students Can Pass?

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Here’s a pop quiz: What percentage of elementary school children in the District’s public schools is proficient in math? What about reading? What is the proficiency of D.C. high school students in these areas? The answer: less than half. Scores on the 2011 D.C. Comprehensive Assessment System exams showed only about 43 percent of elementary […]

Using Bullying to Club Patriotic Pledge
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Using Bullying to Club Patriotic Pledge

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Last week while thousands of children were outfitted in their “Sunday best” attire to attend memorial services for their parents, victims of the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, some children in suburban Boston were learning a different lesson about America. A group in the bedroom community of Brookline was busy advancing its agenda to eradicate […]

Schools Serving Leftist Kool-Aid as Curriculum
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Schools Serving Leftist Kool-Aid as Curriculum

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Backpack? Check. Transformers lunchbox? Check. Leftist political Kool-Aid? Check. Looks like the school year can begin. This week, millions of American children return to their classrooms. Unfortunately, the material some of them will be forced to study is controversial, to say the least. In keeping with their habit of using our educational system to impose […]

Outraged Parents Oust Gay Sex Books from New Jersey School Reading List
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Outraged Parents Oust Gay Sex Books from New Jersey School Reading List

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Two books, one containing an explicit depiction of statutory lesbian rape, and the other a homosexual orgy, have been ousted from a local high school by outraged New Jersey parents. The texts, Norwegian Wood and Tweak: Growing up on Methamphetamines, originally appeared on the summer reading list for both middle school and high school students […]

School Choice Gains Traction
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School Choice Gains Traction

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Political discourse and news media have been consumed of late by talk of debt, spending, and recession, but meanwhile the educational freedom movement has been making real progress. State legislatures across the country are giving a green light to vouchers and tax incentives that will in the future pay impressive dividends in the form of […]

The Bedroom in the Classroom: Clio is Not Amused
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The Bedroom in the Classroom: Clio is Not Amused

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Though my mastery of Greek mythology is not strong enough to know off-hand the muse of history’s sexual orientation, I do know that Clio might try to persuade her father to hurl thunderbolts from Mt. Olympus into Sacramento as punishment for defiling her beloved discipline. The crime? On July 14, California Governor Jerry Brown signed […]

The Oppression of an All-Girls Dorm
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The Oppression of an All-Girls Dorm

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My name is Kay (“Hello, Kay”) and I was oppressed for four years of my life by being forced to endure a same-sex dorm.  No matter that I chose this college for the very reason it had same sex dorms — those persons wishing to sue Catholic University of America for sexism because of CUA’s decision […]

Dances in the Catholic School: Parental Concerns and Suggested Remedies
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Dances in the Catholic School: Parental Concerns and Suggested Remedies

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[This document was prepared on behalf of a group of parents to address issues locally that may also be going on elsewhere in the country.  It is published here as a resource for parents who may find it useful.] Dances in the Catholic School: Parental Concerns and Suggested Remedies This document addresses parental concerns with […]

College Students Need Help to Keep their Faith
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College Students Need Help to Keep their Faith

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When my daughter was researching prospective colleges and universities a few years ago, she claimed for a time that her No. 1 choice was a world-famous Jesuit university in the East. A friend, revealing a touch of cradle Catholic cynicism, joked, “I thought you were looking at Catholic schools.” Ba dum ching. Or maybe you […]