The Father’s Role

by John Clark | Does social networking fulfill man’s need to partake of society, thus removing his binary reduction to man or beast? Is the internet a society at all? These are philosophical questions best left to sociologists. I don’t have the answers. I merely ask them in an everyday, pedestrian sense.

Inspired by C.S.Lewis, John Clark explores 5 options to help your homeschooler become a home-grown philosopher - because the world needs it.

by John Clark | As I have written previously, on the nights when I’m able, I like to watch the show Jeopardy and try to amaze my kids with my knowledge. (These are the kinds of things you do when you’re old—you get exhausted by failing to impress the world, so you spend your evenings in front of a television set in the hopes of dazzling your offspring.)

by John Clark | This Christmas, I prayed to God: “I know that there are certain and special ways in which you want me to spiritually advance this Christmas. Please show me what they are.” During late December of last year, I read John Janaro’s book, Never Give Up: My Life and God’s Mercy, and I believe that this book was part of the answer to my prayer.

Every St. Valentine’s Day leaves men at a loss for telling their girlfriends or wives how much they love them. Very often, whether a dozen red roses, a box of chocolates, or a hand-written poem, nothing seems to suffice. If you homeschool husbands find yourself in this predicament, don’t feel too bad. We’ve all been there.

We can’t socialize well (because we never go out of the house); we’re not good at sports; it’s not healthy to spend so much time around your Mom; we’re not qualified to teach geography (because we never go out of the house); we’re not qualified to teach anything; snow days are healthy for kids and homeschoolers don’t get snow days, and so forth.

A few months ago, I wrote an article dealing with blaming yourself as a Catholic parent whose children have veered off course. In it, I told the story of a man who spent an afternoon in a famous museum. The man walked around and observed the paintings of Raphael and the sculptures of Michelangelo.

In my experience, no one makes comparisons more than homeschoolers. We say things like: “Mrs. Jones is better than I am at teaching math,” or “Why can’t we get our kids to do their violin practice as well as Mrs. Smith’s children?” or “That family doesn’t let their kids watch television—they’re better than we are.”

Someone mentioned to my wife lately that she doesn’t usually read my fatherhood/homeschooling columns because I use too many sports analogies. For instance, over the years, I have written that baseball is like “raspberry sorbet for the mind;” I have said that life is about “how many shots you take, rather than how many baskets you make;” and I recently wrote that being a good father was like being a “hockey goalie,” and so forth.

As I took a little trip down the memory lane of my mind, I started to explain to my little children that, although I was 42 years old, I had never quite “graduated” from the kids’ table. At first this bothered me, but I had come to respect the camaraderie, the conviviality...

As we parents sit down to help our children with their homeschooling, I think we would have to admit that some of the biggest distractions are often the ones inside ourselves—the ones that keep popping into our minds as we attempt to teach.

Some think that a chaotic home means you can't homeschool. John Clark disagrees, and encourages you to focus on establishing something more important first.

Clichés tend to become clichés for their accuracy. “Life goes too fast” is one. A few weeks ago, a longtime family friend of ours visited us with her nine-month-old daughter.

When a person complains, his creative abilities break free. But it’s also proof to me that we fallen humans don’t commend people well; we don’t thank them enough; and we pat each other on the back far too little.

There has been a lot of worry lately among homeschooling parents regarding the “common core” curriculum. Judging by the amount of views by readers of this journal, it is the biggest issue of the day. But the problem is not so much in merely having a common core—it is in what that common core consists. Some cores are good and some are rotten.

After you finish the last page, there are books that you forget about right away. But then there are those rare ones that remain with you forever. Cynthia Montanaro’s Diary of a Country Mother is one of those. This book is a biography of her mentally-challenged son, Timothy, whose life was cut short in an accident as a teenager. Montanaro, a homeschooling veteran, says that she wrote it as a celebration of Tim’s life, but most of all as a “thanksgiving journal to God.”

First, stop insisting that you “went wrong” with your kids. I don’t know exactly how Jesus felt when He was betrayed by Judas. But I do know this: I know that Jesus did not wonder where He went wrong with Judas. Jesus didn’t “go wrong.”

I was asked to write an essay about the book that had most changed my life. This book was my answer. Relating the account of Denton’s ordeal as a prisoner of war in Vietnam for nearly eight years, it is clear that his struggle to practice his faith and keep his sanity during this time were beyond heroic.

My father, an accomplished carpenter, always seemed to be building “one more bookcase” to meet the literary demands of his wife. For all the things that our large Catholic family did not have, we had a treasury of books. My mother’s consummate genius in homeschooling pedagogy reached its zenith with a simple rule for her children: you can stay up as late as you want as long as you are reading.

It’s often lamented that babies don’t come with manuals.  Of course, this isn’t true—babies do come with manuals.  They are called “parenting books.” There are books that tell you how ...