A Just War Theory of Homeschooling

an oldie but a goodie

Given the increasing popularity of homeschooling among faithful Catholics, it is vital that those who practice it — or are thinking about trying it for their children — have a fully Catholic understanding of the family and the nature and meaning of education. Without it, their good intentions can go astray, following the exaggerated individualism of the culture instead of the mind of the Church.

Some enthusiasts claim that homeschooling is the Catholic approach to a child’s education, but neither history nor the teaching of the Church supports this exclusivity. Though homeschooling is an important and virtuous pursuit, some families are drawn to it through a mistaken ideology — a shadow image of Catholic culture, Catholic education, and the family itself.

Catholic and Western tradition have always held that education is communal. Since man is a political or social animal — as Aristotle, Cicero, and St. Thomas Aquinas tell us — we must never neglect the communal dimension of education. Nothing short of complete family engagement — father, mother, and child — in the learning process will secure a proper education. Families may come to grave peril if fathers remain disengaged from their children’s education, or if other families are not sought out and some degree of inter-family education is attempted.

Of course, by this I do not mean something so simple as the "socialization" of students, which critics of homeschooling often throw at us — the old argument that if John and Mary do not have an opportunity to eat bologna sandwiches on the playground with 300 students and talk about Hannah Montana, they will grow up to be social deviants. The "value of socialization" is usually a code for the regimented ethic of pop culture, which has no virtue and is of no importance.

I mean something much more radical and (perhaps initially) more difficult for homeschoolers to accept: that education is for the perfection of the child, and the child is perfected for a life in society.

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