Catholic homeschooling: parents teach their kids for a variety of reasons - mainly white middle-class religious-based home schools - Faith Education in the Home

National Catholic Reporter, August 29, 1997 by Pat Marrin

The Pittsburgh diocese this month published a set of guidelines for Catholic homeschoolers, a move believed to be a first and one that could signal a willingness on the part of the wider church to take a closer look at the growing homeschooling movement.

The document, "Faith Education in the Home," calls homeschooling a sign of diversity and a "powerful witness" to the long-affirmed role of parents as "primary educators" of their own children. At the same time, the document reminds parents of the legitimate role of the bishop as chief catechist and his "responsibility to ensure that all materials used in Catholic education are in full conformity with the teachings of the church."

The Pittsburgh guidelines are one indication of the growth of homeschooling and the challenge the phenomenon could pose to structures traditionally entrusted with handing on the faith to new generations of Catholics. They reflect the hope of many dioceses that homeschooling is a sign of life and not a farewell from some of the church's most ardent parents.

The precise character of the young movement, however, is yet to be determined. In Pittsburgh and elsewhere, an attempt is being made to embrace the movement. At the same time, it is clear that many of those engaged m homeschooling are motivated more by a conservative dissatisfaction with what is seen as liberal structures than a desire to find new ways to cooperate with the local bishop.

Fr. Kris Stubna, secretary for education for the Pittsburgh diocese, said the policy there was developed over the past year by a task force made up of pastors, principals, homeschool parents and diocesan authorities. Stubna said the document recognizes the positive aspects of home education, that "some parents are experiencing a kind of vocation to give this kind of time and energy to their children as family educators."

A call for cooperation

The guidelines urge close cooperation between parents and the local church in curriculum development, the selection of approved materials and for sacramental preparation.

Stubna said that despite the media attention given to homeschoolers who are angry with the church, in his experience "the vast majority of Catholics who are homeschooling are positive about the church and just want some help."

The Pittsburgh guidelines try to balance the interests of parents with the role of the bishop in order to promote cooperation and avoid the kind of conflict that sometimes characterizes more traditionalist homeschoolers who withdraw not only from the parochial school but from the parish itself.

The bishop's role in approving homeschool materials and the insistence that homeschoolers work with their parish in sacramental preparation has become the testing ground for that balance and cooperation.

It is hard to identify Catholic homeschooling as a movement. There are no national governing organizations, and the exact numbers, even from fervent advocates, are relatively small -- possibly as high as 70,000 students nationwide, less than 3 percent of the total K-12 Catholic school enrollment of 2.6 million.

Still, this many parents pulling their children out of the local parish school -- both a loss of revenue and a rebuke to Catholic education -- prompted the National Catholic Conference of Bishops to send questionnaires to diocesan school offices to assess the extent and causes of such disaffection.

The result was a 1996 study confirming a small and widely dispersed number of parents opting for home education and cathechesis. Many were prompted to begin homeschooling because they were unhappy with the sex education and religious instruction offered at parish schools.

The Pittsburgh guidelines, which flowed from that initial inquiry, take the view that Catholics caught up in the larger cultural wars over education need not feel they must take their concerns and their children outside the church.

Catholic homeschooling is a recent phenomenon closely linked with the well-established homeschool movement among Protestant evangelicals, who claim over two million loyalists, or approximately 4 percent of America's school-age population. Catholics share some of the demographic characteristics of the larger group, described as predominantly white Christians, middle to upper class in both income and education, with religious or moral at the heart of the decision to homeschool in about 85 percent of cases, according to the 1996 Information Please Almanac.

Dr. Brian Ray, director of the National Homeschool Research Institute in Salem, Ore, just completed a national survey and offers a "soft" estimate of 1.3 million homeschoolers, with Catholics at about 5.3 percent or 67,000 participants. Ray said he has noted a growing presence of Catholics attending national meetings of leaders from state homeschooling organizations. He estimates the movement is growing by about 15 percent a year.

Homeschooling rests heavily on the principle that parents are the primary educators of their children. This right takes precedence over state control and is the basis for the legality of home-schooling in all 50 states. To start schooling at home, some states require only that parents inform the local school district of their intention to keep their children out of the system. A few states require that parents register as "private" schools. Curricula may be submitted but need not be approved, though records must be kept and standard testing usually guides home curricula toward common proficiencies.