Note: All of the Catholic Homeschool Curriculum Providers (such as Seton, Kolbe Academy, etc.) have complete high school programs available. You can read more about the different programs on our Curriculum Providers page.

Structure

A reasonable amount of structure is necessary. Remember that this is one of the areas which should be individually tailored to fit the needs of your child. Some students are excellent independent learners and will really take off almost on their own. Others need much more supervision. Setting goals together will help teenagers take more responsibility for their education. Parents will be the guiding force, helping the student to discipline himself.

"I...knew I wanted a curriculum which demanded a certain amount of rigor, something challenging enough to be stimulating. At the same time I knew that I would have to be careful to ensure some success for each child." Laura Berquist, Designing Your Own Classical Curriculum

"The answer is a balance between structure and non-structure. But this balance must be reached after a consideration of various factors. These factors include the age of the student, the learning ability, the best learning style for the student, the teacher-mother's ability, and the subject matter itself." Mary Kay Clark, Catholic Home Schooling

Setting Goals

There are many fine High School programs available from Catholic Homeschool Curriculum Providers. Even if you do use a structured curriculum, it would be wise to look into college admission requirements early. The requirements for graduation in a particular program are not always enough to meet the admissions requirements for a particular college. Work with your teen on setting goals for academics and planning how to achieve them. Goals need to include plans for how many years of Math, Science and Foreign Language your teen will study. Even with a structured program there are various ways of accomplishing the assignments. For example, some students work better spending several hours on one subject without interruption and perhaps studying a particular subject, such as science only once a week. Others prefer to take things in smaller doses and study each subject every day for a shorter period of time.

Handling Tough Subjects

There are many options today for parents who are not experts in Math, Chemistry and Foreign Languages. Some parents are sending their children to public school for Math and Science. Some take junior college courses. Homeschool curriculum providers (such as Kolbe, Seton, etc.) often provide indepth support via telephone or e-mail (which is especially helpful for the "tougher subjects").Several of these schools (icluding Seton and Kolbe) allow students to sign up for individual courses in order to get that support on particular subjects without being signed up for their entire program.

Some homeschoolers swap classes with other parents (I'll teach your kids Latin if you teach mine Calculus). Some families get together and hire a teacher for one or two subjects. CDRoms and the Internet are other potential resources for these academics. Don't forget to check with friends or relatives (especially homeschool Dads) who may have some expertise in the subject you are concerned about.

Developing Necessary Skills

(such as Self-Discipline, Public Speaking, Group Discussion, Meeting Deadlines)

Getting some classroom experience seems to be very helpful in rounding out a homeschooled high schooler's preparation for college. This experience can be very helpful in developing skills such as being accustomed to meeting deadlines, having a sense of classroom etiquette, and gaining confidence in discussing and asking questions in a group setting.

Some ways to get this experience include - one or two classes at public high school or junior college or a homeschool "class" with an outside teacher or knowledgeable parent.

"...several of our students...have enrolled in community college courses for advanced math, advanced scsience, and advanced foreign languages. Taking only a single course limits social interaction with the other students." Mary Kay Clark, Catholic Home Schooling.

Note taking - Good note taking is a real life skill necessary for college and many aspects of professional and social life. In an article in the September 1998 Seton Home Study Newsletter, Mary Alice Rice of Christendom College gives some suggestions for practicing note taking outside of a formal classroom. "Since there are very few opportunities in the normal home schooling setting for listening to a lecture, taking notes, then being tested on the material, you may have to create the situations. Have him take notes on the homily at Mass, on an EWTN program, or on a talk at a public library. (It doesn't matter if he thinks the subject is boring--there'll be a few boring lectures in college as well--but it's better if it's a topic about which you know more than he does.) Three or four weeks later, write and administer a test based on your understanding of the topic, not on the student's notes. The student must not discuss the subject with you; he has to rely on what he has written."

Public Speaking -"Classroom experience", recitals, and discussion groups can all help in the area of public speaking. Remember that this isn't a skill that is automatically picked up in a conventional school either.

Writing and Spelling - Remember that some of the conveniences of home will not be available in a college classroom. Students can't rely on a computer with a spell check for tests, but must have legible handwriting and good spelling in order to succeed.

Staying on Track

Assessing Progress - Regular meetings between parents and teens to discuss progress toward your goals would be an excellent idea. Perhaps going out to dinner with you monthly or quarterly would be a good setting to discuss "how things are going." This is one of the important places for the father to be involved. Parents should listen seriously to the student's concerns - do they need more structure or more space, are they really struggling with particular subjects, etc. Don't forget to talk about what's going well and encourage your teen about the successes.

Transcripts/Record Keeping - Also see the College Board's No Transcript, Air Force Academy information for homeschoolers and Thomas Aquinas College's Homeschool Information Page.

Keeping a Journal - One aspect of record keeping that might be more important than letter grades is a journal of material you've covered - books read, reports written, experiments performed, courses completed, etc. Consider allowing your teenager to be in charge of organizing and entering information in the journal - with regular checkups from you of course. Doing this work can be excellent practice for your teen and save yourself time and energy.

Grades/Transcript - If you are very concerned about keeping a transcript, or if the college you're hoping to attend is very strict about a transcript, it would probably be wise to work with one of the homeschool programs such as Seton, Kolbe or Our Lady of the Rosary. At the very least, you should faithfully record more objective scores (such as test results). If parents are assigning quarterly grades for each subject, it might be wise to record some comments on why that particular grade was earned as well as individual test scores that were used in figuring the grade.

Portfolio - It is advisable to keep a portfolio of work samples as well. (see No Transcript )

This is the outline from a talk Alicia gave at the Minnesota Catholic Homeschool conference in 2006. She hopes to fill in the details at some point. Why Should We Educate?

• to form convictions
• to develop intelligence
• to acquire knowledge
• to form character
• to cultivate virtues

Virtues of a Homeschool Family: (in the context of Faith, Hope & Charity)

• diligence
• humility
• patience
• enthusiasm

Opportunities for Personal Growth:

• sacraments
• service
• good reading
• making connections
• developing convictions
• well-roundedness
• closeness to family
• developing independence and taking responsibility

Challenges: “Real World” Skills:

• competency
• organization
• “follow-through”
• time management
• job skills (typing, computer, basic math, etc.)
• “people skills”

Academic Skills:

• time-management
• managing deadlines
• thinking skills (underlies all other academic skills)
• outlining (organizing thoughts)
• note-taking (drawing out the most important things)
• discussion (articulating thoughts, making connections, etc.)
• diagramming (dissecting complex thought)
• writing
• reading comprehension
• math

College Notes:

• Stay informed and ask questions – especially during admissions process.
• Let your children take responsibility.
• The college they attend should be a place they can thrive.
• Graduation requirements don’t always meet admissions requirements.
• SAT or ACT tend to be much more important than transcripts.

Further Reading, Websites and Resources: Catholic: A Catholic Homeschool Companion edited by Maureen Wittmann & Rachel Mackson Catholic Education: Homeward Bound by Kimberly Hahn and Mary Hasson High School of Your Dreams by Nancy Nicholson Catholic Authors: Crown Edition: Grades 11-12 (Neumann Press) Another Sort of Learning by Fr. James Schall Young and Catholic by Tim Drake Declaration on Christian Education (Vatican II) Catechism of the Catholic Church and Compendium Catechism of the Catholic Church Cardinal Newman Society Fellowship of Catholic University Students Saint Anthony Padua Institute Intercollegiate Studies Institute College Guide (not entirely Catholic, but very Catholic-friendly and many Catholics on staff) Other: Home School, High School, and Beyond: A Guide for Teens and Their Parents by Beverly Adams-Gordon Homeschooling High School: Planning Ahead for College Admission by Jeanne Gowen Dennis Homeschoolers’ College Admissions Handbook: Preparing 12 to 18 Year Olds for Success in the College of Their Choice by Cafi Cohen College Planning for Dummies by Pat Ordovensky Links: College Board Info on Homeschool College Admissions Stanford University Article on Homeschool Admissions Learn in Freedom: Colleges That Admit Homeschoolers College for Special Needs Students (not necessarily homeschooled)

The Homeschool Legal Defense Association (HSLDA) has put together a nice guide for those considering homeschooling. Note that this is a general guide that is not specifically Catholic.

https://hslda.org/get-started

 

 

This page is still under construction. :)

Sacred Congregation of the Holy Office Lamentabili Sane The Syllabus of Errors (Condemning the Errors of the Modernists) July 3, 1907 WITH TRULY LAMENTABLE RESULTS, our age, casting aside all restraint in its search for the ultimate causes of things, frequently pursues novelties so ardently that it rejects the legacy of the human race. Thus it falls into very serious errors, which are even more serious when they concern sacred authority, the interpretation of Sacred Scripture, and the principal mysteries of Faith. The fact that many Catholic writers also go beyond the limits determined by the Fathers and the Church herself is extremely regrettable. In the name of higher knowledge and historical research, (they say), they are looking for that progress of dogmas which is, in reality, nothing but the corruption of dogmas. These errors are being daily spread among the faithful. Lest they captivate the faithful's minds and corrupt the purity of their faith, His Holiness, Pius X, by Divine Providence, Pope, has decided that the chief errors should be noted and condemned by the Office of this Holy Roman and Universal Congregation. Therefore, after a very diligent investigation and consultation with the Reverend Consultors, the Most Eminent and Reverend Lord Cardinals, the General Inquisitors in matters of faith and morals have judged the following proposals to be condemned and proscribed. in fact, by this current decree, they are condemned and proscribed. 1.The ecclesiastical law which prescribes that books concerning the Divine Scriptures are subject to previous examination does not apply to critical scholars and students of scientific exegesis of the Old and New Testament. 2.The Church's interpretation of the Sacred Books is by no means to be rejected; nevertheless, it is subject to the more accurate judgment and correction of the exegetes. 3.From the ecclesiastical judgments and censures passed against free and more scientific exegesis, one can conclude that the Faith the Church proposes contradicts history and that Catholic teaching cannot really be reconciled with the true origins of the Christian religion. 4.Even by dogmatic definitions the Church's magisterium cannot determine the genuine sense of the Sacred Scriptures. 5.Since the Deposit of Faith contains only revealed truths, the Church has no right to pass judgment on the assertions of the human sciences. 6.The "Church learning" and the "Church teaching" collaborate in such a way in defining truths that it only remains for the "Church teaching" to sanction the opinions of the "Church learning." 7.In proscribing errors, the Church cannot demand any internal assent from the faithful by which the judgments she issues are to be embraced. 8.They are free from all blame who treat lightly the condemnations passed by the Sacred Congregation of the Index or by the Roman Congregations. 9.They display excessive simplicity or ignorance who believe that God is really the author of the Sacred Scriptures. 10.The inspiration of the books of the Old Testament consists in this: The Israelite writers handed down religious doctrines under a peculiar aspect which was either little or not at all known to the Gentiles. 11.Divine inspiration does not extend to all of Sacred Scriptures so that it renders its parts, each and every one, free from every error. 12.If he wishes to apply himself usefully to Biblical studies, the exegete must first put aside all preconceived opinions about the supernatural origins of Sacred Scripture and interpret it the same as any other merely human document. 13.The Evangelists themselves, as well as the Christians of the second and third generations, artificially arranged the evangelical parables. In such a way they explained the scanty fruit of the preaching of Christ among the Jews. 14.In many narrations the Evangelists recorded, not so much things that are true, as things which, even though false, they judged to be more profitable for their readers. 15.Until the time the canon was defined and constituted, the Gospels were increased by additions and corrections. Therefore there remained in them only a faint and uncertain trace of the doctrine of Christ. 16.The narrations of John are not properly history, but a mystical contemplation of the Gospel. The discourses contained in his Gospel are theological meditations, lacking historical truth concerning the mystery of salvation. 17.The fourth Gospel exaggerated miracles not only in order that the extraordinary might stand out but also in order that it might become more suitable for showing forth the work and glory of the Word Incarnate. 18.John claims for himself the quality of witness concerning Christ. In reality, however, he is only a distinguished witness of the Christian life, or the life of Christ in the Church at the close of the First Century. 19.Heterodox exegetes have expressed the true sense of the Scriptures more faithfully than Catholic exegetes. 20.Revelation could be nothing else than the consciousness man acquired of his revelation to God. 21.Revelation, constituting the object of the Catholic faith, was not completed with the Apostles. 22.The dogmas the Church holds out as revealed are not truths which have fallen from heaven. They are an interpretation of religious facts which the human mind has acquired by laborious effort. 23.Opposition may, and actually does, exist between the facts narrated in Sacred Scripture and the Church's dogmas which rest on them. Thus the critic may reject as false facts the Church holds as most certain. 24.The exegete who constructs premises from which it follows that dogmas are historically false or doubtful is not to be reproved as long as he does not directly deny the dogmas themselves. 25.The assent of faith ultimately rests on a mass of probabilities. 26.The dogmas of the Faith are to be held only according to their practical sense; that is to say, as perceptive norms of conduct and not as norms of believing. 27.The divinity of Jesus Christ is not proved from the Gospels. it is a dogma which the Christian conscience has derived from the notion of the Messias. 28.While He was exercising His ministry, Jesus did not speak with the object of teaching He was the Messias, nor did His miracles tend to prove it. 29.It is permissible to grant that the Christ of history is far inferior to the Christ Who is the object of faith. 30.In all the evangelical texts the name "Son of God" is equivalent only to that of "Messias." It does not in the least way signify that Christ is the true and natural Son of God. 31.The doctrine concerning Christ taught by Paul, John and the Councils of Nicea, Ephesus and Chalcedon is not that which Jesus taught but that which the Christian conscience conceived concerning Jesus. 32.It is impossible to reconcile the natural sense of the Gospel texts with the sense taught by our theologians concerning the conscience and the infallible knowledge of Jesus Christ. 33.Everyone who is not led by preconceived opinions can readily see that either Jesus professed an error concerning the immediate Messianic coming or the greater part of His doctrine as contained in the Gospels is destitute of authenticity. 34.The critics can ascribe to Christ a knowledge without limits only on a hypothesis which cannot be historically conceived and which is repugnant to the moral sense. That hypothesis is that Christ as man possessed the knowledge of God and yet was unwilling to communicate the knowledge of a great many things to His disciples and posterity. 35.Christ did not always possess the consciousness of His Messianic dignity. 36.The Resurrection of the Savior is not properly a fact of the historical order. It is a fact of merely the supernatural order (neither demonstrated nor demonstrable) which the Christian conscience gradually derived from other facts. 37.In the beginning, faith in the Resurrection of Christ was not so much in the fact itself of the Resurrection, as in the immortal life of Christ with God. 38.The doctrine of the expiatory death of Christ is Pauline and not evangelical. 39.The opinions concerning the origin of the Sacraments which the Fathers of Trent held and which certainly influenced their dogmatic canons are very different from those which now rightly exist among historians who examine Christianity. 40.The Sacraments had their origin in the fact that the Apostles and their successors, swayed and moved by circumstances and events, interpreted some idea and intention of Christ. 41.The Sacraments are intended merely to recall to man's mind the ever-beneficent presence of the Creator. 42.The Christian community imposed the necessity of Baptism, adopted it as a necessary rite, and added to it the obligation of the Christian profession. 43.The practice of administering Baptism to infants was a disciplinary evolution, which became one of the causes why the Sacrament was divided into two, namely, Baptism and Penance. 44.There is nothing to prove that the rite of the Sacrament of Confirmation was employed by the Apostles. The formal distinction of the two Sacraments of Baptism and Confirmation does not pertain to the history of primitive Christianity. 45.Not everything which Paul narrates concerning the institution of the Eucharist (1 Corinthians 11:23-35) is to be taken historically. 46.In the primitive Church the concept of the Christian sinner reconciled by the authority of the Church did not exist. Only very slowly did the Church accustom herself to this concept. As a matter of fact, even after Penance was recognized as an institution of the Church, it was not called a Sacrament since it would be held as a disgraceful Sacrament. 47.The words of the Lord, "Receive the Holy Spirit; whose sins you shall forgive, they are forgiven them; and whose sins you shall retain, they are retained" (John 20:22-23), in no way refer to the Sacrament of Penance, in spite of what it pleased the Fathers of Trent to say. 48.In his Epistle (Chapter 5:14-15) James did not intent to promulgate a Sacrament of Christ but only commend a pious custom. If in this custom he happens to distinguish a means of grace, it is not in that rigorous manner in which it was taken by the theologians who laid down the notion and number of the sacraments. 49.When the Christian supper gradually assumed the nature of a liturgical action those who customarily presided over the supper acquired the sacerdotal character. 50.The elders who fulfilled the office of watching over the gatherings of the faithful were instituted by the Apostles as priests or bishops to provide the necessary ordering of the increasing communities and not properly for the perpetuation of the Apostolic mission and power. 51.It is impossible that Matrimony could have become a Sacrament of the new law until later in the Church since it was necessary that a full theological explication of the doctrine of grace and the Sacraments should first take place before Matrimony should be held as a Sacrament. 52.It was far from the mind of Christ to found a Church as a society which would continue on earth for a long course of centuries. On the contrary, in the mind of Christ the kingdom of heaven together with the end of the world was about to come immediately. 53.The organic constitution of the Church is not immutable. Like human society, Christian society is subject to a perpetual evolution. 54.Dogmas, Sacraments and hierarchy, both their notion and reality, are only interpretations and evolutions of the Christian intelligence which have increased and perfected by an external series of additions the little germ latent in the Gospel. 55.Simon Peter never even suspected that Christ entrusted the primacy in the Church to him. 56.The Roman Church became the head of all the churches, not through the ordinance of Divine Providence, but merely through political conditions. 57.The Church has shown that she is hostile to the progress of the natural and theological sciences. 58.Truth is no more immutable than man himself, since it evolved with him, in him, and through him. 59.Christ did not teach a determined body of doctrine applicable to all times and all men, but rather inaugurated a religious movement adapted or to be adapted to different times and places. 60.Christian Doctrine was originally Judaic. Through successive evolutions it became first Pauline, then Joannine, finally Hellenic and universal. 61.It may be said without paradox that there is no chapter of Scripture, from the first of Genesis to the last of the Apocalypse, which contains a doctrine absolutely identical with that which the Church teaches on the same matter. For the same reason, therefore, no chapter of Scripture has the same sense for the critic and the theologian. 62.The chief articles of the Apostles' Creed did not have the same sense for the Christians of the first age as they have for the Christians of our time. 63.The Church shows that she is incapable of effectively maintaining evangelical ethics since she obstinately clings to immutable doctrines which cannot be reconciled with modern progress. 64.Scientific progress demands that the concepts of Christian doctrine concerning God, creation, revelation, the Person of the Incarnate Word, and Redemption be re-adjusted. 65.Modern Catholicism can be reconciled with true science only if it is transformed into a non-dogmatic Christianity; that is to say, into a broad and liberal Protestantism. The following Thursday, the fourth day of the same month and year, all these matters were accurately reported to our Most Holy Lord, Pope Pius X. His Holiness approved and confirmed the decree of the Most Eminent Fathers and ordered that each and every one of the above-listed propositions be held by all as condemned and proscribed. Peter Palombelli Notary, Congregation for the Propagation of the Faith