Waiting for Godot to Leave

I love my Homeschool Connections students, who are generally bright, creative and engaged with the material I'm teaching. However, something disappointing occasionally happens when I ask for an essay from even the best of my students.  If I ask for a brief essay answer on a quiz, and ask for the student's reaction to what is most challenging or surprising or mysterious about the material we're reading, they frequently speak intelligently and from the heart.  But if I ask for an essay that's more formal, they gird up their loins, take a deep breath, and spew out BS. Sometimes it's halfway decent BS.  Sometimes the essays are well structured and written without glaring errors in grammar or punctuation.  But the more formal the essay, the more I get the Party Line.  And the Party Line for Devout Catholic Homeschoolers goes something like this ... What this course has taught me is the dangers of gay marriage and how we will all go astray unless we believe in God an...

John Henry Newman on a problem he noticed roughly 200 years ago ... It is very much the fashion at present to regard the Saviour of the world in an irreverent and unreal way—as a mere idea or vision ... [offering] vague statements about His love ... [and] while the thought of Christ is but a creation of our minds, it may gradually be changed or fade away. ... so this is not a new problem. Against this vagueness and blur, in opposition to the Unreality of Jesus the Nice Guy, Newman suggests something that most Catholics would consider novel.  He says to know this Person Jesus, you could simply read the Gospels. ... when we contemplate Christ as manifested in the Gospels, the Christ who exists therein, external to our own imaginings, and who is as really a living being, and sojourned on earth as truly as any of us, then we shall at length believe in Him with a conviction, a confidence, and an entireness, which can no more be annihilated than the belief in our senses. It is impossible...

I found this poem about the internet.  It's by  Hendrik Mans .    ... The web is ADVE RTISE MENT all of humankind’s knowledge at ADVE RTISE MENT your fingertips. THE 10 MOST HORRIFYING THINGS YOU CAN EAT