I have a conviction that if my kids read good books they will turn out okay. Especially if they have parents who love both them and said books. This, to me, seems the surest path to happiness and success and it is for this reason that I homeschool my children.

Our family’s decision to homeschool was intentional but took a while to develop. My wife and I are both products of the Georgia public school system, and I think we turned out okay. She was the only Catholic I knew in high school, so according to my knowledge, our school had a 100% success rate with Catholics keeping the faith (my wife knew more Catholics and would probably dispute this statistic.) I went to Georgia Southern University and while there, I discerned that God might be calling me to something deeply spiritual, so I started attending my first Catholic school, Mount St. Mary’s Seminary, in Maryland. My seminary education was transformational. I loved it, but I struggled with classes, which in the end, broke me, in a good way. I learned that wisdom begins with wonder. That wonder – not productivity – drives us to search for answers to our lives and the puzzles of the universe. At 22, I learned a lesson that all kindergarteners know but I had forgotten: Learning is wonderful. It was no longer something I had to do; rather, it was the foundation of a good life. When I later discerned that God was calling me to marriage, I reconnected with the one Catholic I knew growing up and married her. She was pursuing a doctorate in physical therapy, and I got a job teaching theology at a Catholic high school and spent nearly a decade there. I loved teaching.

When our kids were born, we didn’t know what to do for their education. My wife had a deep desire to be home with our kids; I wanted to bring out in them the same wonder that seminary had brought out in me. We tried a variety of things: a year in a Montessori school, which was wonderful; then another great year, at a Catholic elementary school. After I was offered a job by the Diocese of Savannah, we realized there was a large homeschooling group at our new parish. The character of these families was unlike anything we had encountered before, and they inspired us to try our hand at homeschooling. Teaching high school, one of my favorite things was working with other teachers who truly loved their subjects. Their passion was contagious, and many of the students walked away from high school with the passion of graduate students. But there were obstacles impeding the students’ success. The obstacles weren’t the school’s fault; they seemed inherent to school structure. Time with teachers and subjects was limited – large quantities of homework were used to make up for this. There was constant pressure toward what colleges wanted. I felt we focused on getting students to love the subjects (wonder), the rest of this (academic success) would follow. The limitations seemed uncorrectable. Homeschooling offered a greater freedom in structure, not subject to such limitations.

The immediate concern with homeschooling is often our children’s sociability. Will the kids become weird? So far, this has not been the case (there is the occasional awkwardness of not getting a pop culture reference – but I don’t think that’s a big deal.) The heart of the matter is: What is the center of gravity for our children? On a recent episode of apologist Matt Fradd’s Pints with Aquinas podcast, Fradd and his wife – who homeschool – discussed how moving to a new city is not catastrophic for their children. This is because moves are not a complete displacement and uprooting of their lives: Their kids have friends and do well socially, but the family is their center of gravity. As a teacher, I saw that most students’ centers focused on one other. With the student body as their culture, so much of what students decided to do was informed by their friends. The little time a teen spent with their parents and at home – when factoring in social media, extracurriculars, and just normal teenage hanging out – made it incredibly difficult for the family to be their center of gravity. I did know students whose family was that center, but this was a rare exception. There are many reasons why this is an important thing for parents to contemplate, and it goes much deeper than “sheltering your kids.” The plethora of disturbing ideas in our culture affecting children in such large swaths is not merely due to the general dispositions of many school administrations. Rather, in navigating personal situations, the predominant influence on many children is other children. Their parents – or any adult influences – are removed to a secondary tier, their voices playing an ancillary role compared to the “real life” wisdom of the most vocal person at their lunch table. These roles, of course, should be reversed; not that friend groups are bad, but they lack the mature comfort that a home should have. You do not need to homeschool to make the family the center of gravity, nor does homeschooling mean it will be. There are, however, questions that we should ask ourselves as parents. Is our family/home the center of gravity for our children? Have we created a culture where it could be?

The Church teaches that parents are the first and primary educators of their children, and this includes preaching the Gospel. The most worthwhile lessons should first be taught by parents. Then, for these things to be taught, they must be known and believed by the teachers. Neither the family nor the school can hand on our faith if we are not practicing it first. We cannot teach the joy of learning if we do not enjoy learning. School cannot help our children mature if we are not their source for real life wisdom. Homeschooling is simply the fullest expression of the role of the parent as first and primary educator. That is why I homeschool.