Happy Feast of St. Boniface!
This continues from my last articleโฆ
โTo each man one soul only is given; to each soul only is given a little powerโthe power at some moments to outgrow and swallow up the stars.โ
โThe Napoleon of Notting Hill, by G.K. Chesterton, Book V, Chapter III
In my first article, I lay out some of the problems I see in society today. I think that the disbandment of the โbig familyโ and the โindividualismโ of college life is not conducive of a healthy society. I end by proposing that people donโt go away to college, and instead elect to stay home and build their communities. In this article, I tell you how someone might go about that (at least in my 18-year-old mind).
To summarize: I said that college can potentially create separation which leads to disconnected families which are not healthy for society. I say that a person who goes away to college and finds a spouse is not as likely to move back home for the sake of the community simply because the spouse does not have a connection to said community. I also mention that it is unlikely that you would get recruitment for jobs in your hometown by going to an out of town college, unless you have strong connections at home. Additionally, I postulate that the idea of moving away to become โindependentโ might be more of a selfish move that is focused on the individual and does not apply to married life, which seems more geared towards dependability.
In reality, I think that we have lost, or are misled, in our view of college as homeschoolers. Homeschoolers seem to usually stop homeschooling after high school. I would like to investigate ways that we could homeschool college, or at least make it easier, cheaper, and more family-oriented.
There are the romantics that say we go to college to learn. I am sure some people learn something at college, but I think that what you learn there is overpriced, literally. Then there are the rational college goers, who have two reasons to go to college: to get a magic piece of paper for a job, or to get a spouse. Homeschool families like to send their kids away to Catholic schools such as these four:
For your benefit I have supplied some *yearly* costs:
I am trying to say that college not only creates separation, but also is unethically expensive. To be clear, this is about as much as people in our neighborhood pay in property taxes (which go to schools, ironically).
All this to say, how are we going to learn, grow, and get a magic piece of paper all while staying as close to home (which is usually as far as you can get from the โgoodโ Catholic college of the moment) as possible?ย
I think that online college is a good idea. It keeps you close to home and out of woke classrooms. You sometimes get a reduced tuition rate, and you also save money since you donโt need room and board. Here are some of the options I have researched over the last few years:
Even though there is little scholarship money to be had, tuition alone comes in cheaper, let alone the advantage of not paying for room/board.
Some good homeschoolers like to go to a Catholic school for the liberal arts side of things. They see college as a little more than just a place to get qualified. This is probably the right way to think about college: as a place to learn; but does not work in this day and age.
My first inclination, being a homeschooler myself, is to create my own liberal arts curriculum. I donโt, after all, need a degree in liberal arts to get a job, but a degree in something that people hire, like mathematics or engineering.
What if someone got a few members of his community to join together and said they were going to read Plato or discuss Aquinas every week for an hour. If you really want to do liberal arts, you shouldnโt have to have a teacher making sure you take exams. My mother went to Franciscan University for two years basically to take classes with Scott Hahn; she only took two (or three, she canโt remember). In real life, there is only yourself to take care of that department (there are very few jobs that offer classes on Philosophy and Theology). Liberal arts is something that you learn and talk about your entire life, not just in a college.
My point is that just like we try to get off of Amazon or Facebook, we have to wean ourselves off these expensive colleges, for they will leave us high and dry (some even when it comes to the faith).
In my mind, permanence needs something to cling to, or there is no point in being permanent. That most essential thing, in my mind, is a your home parish. Worship is the most important thing we do. Right Worship can create a good society. Societies fall not because of Worship, but the lack thereof, or the worship of the wrong thing. If you donโt really want to be around your parish, frankly, you should move to someplace where you do. That is the most important thing.
Really, your parish is the one that should be taking on some of these responsibilities. The job of the parish is to provide Beautiful Liturgy for the Sacraments,ย but it also has a duty towards the spiritual health of its members. Think of the irony, most Catholics go to Novus Ordo parishes, and get involved in their corny retreats. Then the high schoolers graduate and go to college, where they then get surrounded by their liberal arts. Why does Thomas Aquinas College have a monopoly on reading and discussing Theology in small groups? Why canโt Saint Anthony of Padua Catholic Church do the same?
In my mind, the job of a parish is not only to provide the Sacraments to the people it serves, but also to educate the people of the parish. A liberal arts school is great, but a liberal arts parish would be better, for it would not last four years, like colleges do, but for a lifetime (and beyond).
For, it is the old things that are always young; the big families that hold society together. A family that is close can change the course of history.
If, of course, this is all a bunch of bunk, feel free to burn it, but first leave a comment to tell me why you have such incendiary feelings.