{"id":41076,"date":"2013-08-07T08:22:20","date_gmt":"2013-08-07T13:22:20","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.austincnm.com\/?p=41076"},"modified":"2013-08-09T09:00:19","modified_gmt":"2013-08-09T14:00:19","slug":"on-the-education-of-children","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/atxcatholic.com\/index.php\/2013\/08\/on-the-education-of-children\/","title":{"rendered":"On the education of children"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"on<\/a><\/p>\n

Often I wonder if my writing isn\u2019t just redirected self-therapy. Journaling sent out into the digital cosmos. A way of expressing my emotions, reading them, and moving on.<\/p>\n

Sometimes I wonder, but today I am sure.<\/p>\n

Last week I completed the enrollment of all four of my children in our local public schools. I made the rounds, gathering the paperwork, making folders for each child. I went to each school office and filled out dozens upon dozens of multi-colored school documents for my little beloveds. And, as I sat in the intermediate school conference room, alone, listening to the school secretary on the phone outside the door – it was bright and clean and tidy. A tree shifted in the hot breeze outside a wide window. The secretary offered me a cup of water and brought me a pen. She smiled. It was pleasant. And all I could do, as I filled out each form, was stifle my tears. I was an emotional wreck. “This is absolutely insane,” I told myself. So, with each pen stroke, as my hand grew sore from the writing, I made each letter a mini-prayer for that child. Knowing that those prayers would sit in the school office all year, hidden away in a file cabinet, echoing my heart.<\/p>\n

You see, we\u2019ve tried this schooling business every which way. Catholic school, homeschooling, private school and public school. Neurotic, I know! I\u2019m a veritable expert on the many ways to stuff knowledge into the brain of a child. And yet here I am, almost as unsure today as I was the day my oldest walked into a kindergarten classroom. What\u2019s with me? Why do I become so extraordinarily emotional when it comes to school? Why are my expectations sky high and my worries enough to keep me up late into the night.<\/p>\n

How exactly do we figure this schooling thing out? How do we know if it is working, if our kids are doing well, if they are in the right place, at the right time, with the right people?<\/p>\n

Ug.<\/p>\n

As I have been wondering, I\u2019ve come to realize that maybe here is a case where we need to begin at the end.<\/p>\n

In a way, the ends DO justify the means.<\/p>\n

When I bog my mind down with curriculum and teaching strategy and instructional levels and standardized tests, I certainly become bewildered. Any parent would. But, when I consider it all with the END in mind, things smooth out, and I see a light at the end of the tunnel.<\/p>\n

What is the end, you ask?<\/p>\n

“What kind of person will you become?” I wonder.<\/p>\n

That’s the ‘end’. It might sound too lofty – an unattainable concept. But really, it simplifies – cuts out the riff-raff, the superfluous nonsense, the distraction illusions.<\/p>\n

Will they become the person God intends them to be, or not? Because that is what really matters. In the end.<\/p>\n

So I\u2019ve made a little list to help myself. And maybe it will help you, too.<\/p>\n

My child, I hope you will always:<\/strong><\/p>\n