Doing it for themselves

Sydney
9 December 2001

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Doing it for themselves

Left to right: home-schooling parents, Geoff Brown,
Marie Carles, Adrianna Saborido and Carol Brown

Home-schooling is becoming increasing popular with a number of Catholic families, although numbers are still small. At a recent Catholic home-schooling conference, Marilyn Kerjean spoke to some parents who have chosen ‘the other option’ for their children’s education

When Elizabeth turned 18 she’d never been to school, but she was well on her way to university.

Her mother, Pat Mills, had taught her, along with eight of Elizabeth’s 10 siblings, at home for all or part of their school years.

Elizabeth went on to gain a degree in Business, Hospitality and Management at La Trobe University. She has now married another home-school graduate and, her mother says, the couple will probably educate their three-month-old son the same way.

But the home-schooling option is not an easy one.

“You can’t just float along and do what you like,” says Pat. “But when the little ones first start to read and, later, when they progress (to university) it’s a feeling of ‘yes! We’ve done it together’.”

Pat Mills, who is something of a home-schooling guru (and distrib-utor of home-schooling material), says many young families are interested in taking up the home-schooling option.

They want to home-school because they want to take control of what and how their children are taught. They also cite concerns about peer pressure and bullying.

But what about the social aspects of schools? This is the question most asked most of home-school parents.

“There’s no problem,” says Pat. “If anything, home-educated students entering university or school at a later age strike up new friendships easily. In fact, others sort of seek them out.”

Pat divided her time at a recent Catholic Home-schoolers Conference in Sydney between operating a bookstall and giving advice to novice home-schoolers, such as Veronika and Graig Marquis.

The couple started home-schooling their eldest son, Nicholas, aged seven, four months ago and Veronika says she “can’t keep up” with her son’s social life.

“We get together with others for play groups and Nicholas also reads at Mass,” she says. “He’s more confident and he can communicate with adults a lot better now.”

Veronika’s friend, Gabriella De Battista, another home-schooler, has been teaching her son Anthony, eight, and daughter Catherine, seven, for the past three years.

“As parents you are teaching them from birth. And I can keep teaching them with God’s grace,” she says.

“He’s given us the gift of children. He will give us the grace to keep teaching them as well, if we rely on his help.”

Gabriella quotes US writer and diplomat James Russell Lowell – “that best academy, a mother’s knee” – and adds: “I would have loved my mother to teach me.”

Another home-schooling couple, Gerard and Lisa Doodeman, agree with Gabriella that “it’s a win-win situation”. They cite other benefits as well as the good education home-schooling can deliver.

These benefits include family bonding, say the Doodemans, who, after a bit of research and talking to experienced home-schoolers, decided recently to teach their five-year-old daughter, Therese, themselves.

“You work with them at their own rate,” says Gerard. “They don’t have to wait for others to catch up.

“But the real benefits are family and faith. Ultimately, our job is to teach them to live a holy life and lead them to heaven.”

But Gerard is keeping an open mind, too. “We’ll see. If it’s not working then we’ll take her to school.”

But what about the stresses of constantly being in each other’s company? Home schooling parents say that, far from making them want to kill each other, living in each others’ pockets every day actually makes for a more enjoyable family life.

The consensus seems to be that everyone has to learn to get along.

Parents also have to learn how to motivate and inspire their children to work.

And the whole family has to be committed to home-schooling for it to work.

Home-schooling fathers Gerard Doodeman and Graig Marquis say fathers have to be more involved when their children are educated at home.

For instance, Gerard teaches daughter Therese religion and maths in the morning; and “every afternoon when I come home it’s: ‘look, Dad, at what I did today’.”

Gerard can do this because of a not so well-known aspect of home-schooling: the little amount of time it actually takes.

Marie Carles, who has been home-schooling her daughter Sarah for six years, says the clincher for her was realising that she could “teach Sarah everything for the day in three hours. That’s about the time it took to get her up and ready, pack her lunch, iron her uniform and take her to school”.

Adrianna Saborido and her husband have been teaching their son at home for more than three years also . Lessons are finished by 3pm, leaving Adrianna free to work from home for the rest of the afternoon.

But there are challenges, too. Carol and Geoff Brown, who home-school Chloe, aged five, and Tucker, 11, say the biggest challenge for parents is not grasping the information they are trying to pass on, or ensuring children have adequate opportunities to socialise, but learning to motivate them.

Geoff admits there are drawbacks to home education, but believes, like many home-schooling parents, that the benefits outweigh the drawbacks.