RC Academies: combining the advantages of home-education with schools

Last Saturday over two dozen families gathered in Bedford to hear about a new opportunity for their children’s education. For parents who are worried about the corruption in mainstream education but who are not prepared for full-time home-schooling, Regina Caeli offers “classical hybrid education in the Catholic tradition”. This system involves children following a solidly Catholic curriculum by gathering at an academy on Mondays and Thursdays while home-schooling for the other days. The benefits of this approach include:

• Regina Caeli’s excellent curriculum, media policy and modesty policy
• Avoiding destructive agendas of atheism / materialism / gender which are corrupting even Catholic schools
• Socialisation: human beings complete their development in a society much wider than their own family, so it is an inestimable good for children to meet regularly at an academy with their peers, with older and younger children and with trusted adults. Moreover there are few goods as high as friendships, and naturally the hybrid system offers more opportunities for these to develop than pure home-schooling.

If you are interested in such an educational system for your children, and wish to be put in touch with like-minded families in the Bedfordshire area, contact us here and we will pass your details on to them. Annual fees are being calculated, and will depend partly on the scale of interest.

The presentations given by Regina Caeli’s Executive Director Kari Beckman and Director of Education Erika Ahern on Saturday were well received. Besides the goods one would hope for from any educational system (religious formation, academic learning, sports, drama etc), there are advantages which set Regina Cael above what are widely counted as the best schools in England. For example, it was exciting to note how the realism of Aristotle and St Thomas Aquinas thoroughly inform the practical running of Regina Caeli. Specifically:

• Man is made for God. Beyond serving temporal goals (like qualifications to secure a good job), education should serve our ultimate end which is to reach Heaven.
• Developing the whole person: man is composed of body & soul.
  • the intellect is fulfilled by knowing the true; the will is fulfilled in desiring the beautiful and enacting the good. An education which serves our human nature in these ways is literally life-giving.
  • media policy: all electronic devices such as phones and computers are prohibited from the campus (except for administrators). This protects children from the psychological devastation of pornography.
  • modesty policy: uniforms for students and faculty uphold the dignity of the person.

And everyone learns Latin!

Sancta Maria, Regina Caeli, ora pro nobis.

by Fr JM