How it works...

My daughter attends a Catholic school with which I am occasionally pleased. Her science teacher seems to be really excellent - a woman who is passionate for science and clearly communicates that passion to her young charges. Beyond that, I will take a temporary vow of silence.

Sometimes it bothers me - that she's not attending some really hard core prep school - and sometimes it doesn't, although the high school decision, a year away, is already giving me hives. Get me into the study to work on the novel. Get me a decent contract for it, and get us out of here, where the choices are better.

But I digress. As I was saying, it does and doesn't bother me. What contributes most to it not bothering me is that I come from teaching stock. On my father's side, both my grandparents were educators. My grandmother was an elementary school teacher. My grandfather, I think, started in the same way, but moved on, eventually teaching in junior college, all the while ever-so-slowly working on his Ph.D, which I think he finally got when he was in his 50's. Here's his dissertation. (all of this happened in Texas). My dad is a retired university professor. (This is one of his books. This is what he's been doing since retirement) My mother was an English teacher and librarian.

In short, we've been to school.

And growing up in such an environment teaches you one thing: You can't depend on school for your education.

So that's why I don't get too bent out of shape about my children's schools. I wish they were better and I will certainly not pay good money for wasted time or worse, but I also know that school is only the beginning. Every moment is a teachable moment.

This all crosses my mind as I ponder the little conversations Katie and I have had over the past 24 hours. Last night, I realized her feastday is on Friday, and we talked about that a little. She joked, "Do I get a cake?" I said sure - if you read something different about St. Catherine of Siena, and tell me several new things about her that you didn't know before. So she pulled the Classics of Western Spirituality edition of the Dialogues off the shelf and took it upstairs.

This afternoon in the car, she asked me a rather complicated question about if someone had sex before they were married and had a baby, and were glad they had the baby, would they have still have committed a sin? Ah, teasing out issues of conscience, responsibility and redemption there on South Calhoun. Which later, by happenstance, fit well, as she came downstairs with her religion book,  asking a question about the Joseph story. I answered it, and then opened the Bible to Genesis 50:20, which we read, then reflected back to that earlier question.

Then we continued what we started last night - reading over the Pope's homily from Sunday together - I just thought it was such a rich, relatively easy-to-understand catechesis, with such wonderful passages - she's plenty old enough to understand it. We got through the pallium part. She mentioned she had to study for social studies. Central Africa. Well, I recalled one of Jonah Goldberg's time wasters today, and that came in very handy.

Not every day is like that. Not at all. But teachable moments are everywhere, if I just look, and listen - to her. Sometimes I feel bad for not homeschooling her, but then I remember the realities about our temperments - separately and together, and I doubt that any such experiment would end well. And I think of the science teacher - I couldn't do what she's done. All I can do - is what I can do.