Theology of the Body For Teens: Middle School Edition

The Catholic Company very kindly sent me a review set of the Theology of the Body for Teens: Middle School Edition bundle. Okay, so I begged for it.  They sent an e-mail out to all the reviewers (they are still accepting new reviewers) asking who wanted it, and I gave it my best me-me-me-meeeeee! and made the cut!  Yay!  And then I told my DRE, who explained how she was busy trying to finagle a copy on loan from another parish.  Because yes, it is that good.

What’s in the packet:

• A student book.  Eight chapters of substantial, readable lessons.  Upbeat format.  Rock solid teaching.  You will need one of these for each student.
• A teacher’s guide.  It’s the student book page-by-page, with helpful teaching notes.  Includes some lesson-planning ideas, answer keys of course, additional information about the Theology of the Body, and supplemental material on difficult topics.  If you are teaching this as a class, you need this book.
• The parent’s guide.  This is a small book (75 pages, pocket-size) that explains what students are learning.  It is more elevated, adult-level content, focused on how to parent middle-schoolers — it is not a re-hash of the student guide at all.
• The DVD collection.  There is a set of videos for each chapter of lesson, plus additional material on difficult topics, and a show-this-to-the-parents chapter that explains what the course is about.  The videos are fun, held the interest of my small test-audience of adults (me) and kids (mine), and add significantly to the content of the course.  You would want these if you were teaching this as a class.

What does the course cover?

Well, the focus is John Paul II’s Theology of the Body, but it comes down to: How do I live?  What will make me happy?  And what do I do with this body I’m growing into?

Most of this is not about sex.  It’s mostly about virtue, identity, and love.  How do I love and respect myself and others?  How do I build good relationships?  How do I know what God wants me to do?  It’s a serious, useful, substantial set of lessons that really teach how to be the kind of person God wants you to be.

–>I read the student workbook first.  I found it helpful for me, personally.  To the point that in my opinion, parishes would do well to offer the course to both teens and their parents.  As in: I myself, a grown-up, NFP-using, CCD-teaching, cave-dwelling bona fide catholic dweeb lady, found this to be a course that pushed me to grow in my Christian life.

What Age Student?

The books are targeted towards middle-schoolers — grades 6th to 8th.  I may be under-estimating his maturity, but I felt that my own 6th grade boy, who lives a fairly sheltered catholic-homeschool life, and is not one bit interested in girls, he was not ready to fully benefit from the program.  I held onto a copy of the student book for us to use at home, and when my parish offers it next year (please God), I will send him then.  But for girls (who mature earlier), and for boys and girls who are more fully immersed in our sex-saturated culture, this is about on target for as young as 6th grade.

Sex-related topics are taught in a wider context.  First students learn how we use our bodies to communicate, how we must make an effort to grow in virtue and purity, and how we should not use others for our own gratification, within the wider context of regular life.  It is only after these essentials are thoroughly explored, many weeks into the course, that students are shown how they apply specifically to sex.

Sexual topics are dealt with directly but modestly.  If you don’t know what porn is, all you’ll find out is that it is “the display of images for the purpose of arousing lust”.  (Lust is “a vice that causes people to view others as objects for sexual use”).   So this is a step more mature than earlier-grades catechesis, where the details of “impurity” are left entirely to the reader’s imagination.  If your student is not yet ready to learn about the existence of pornography, sexting, and fornication, hold off on this course for now.

Difficult topics are not presented directly to teens.  There are some video segments the instructor can choose to present depending on the maturity of the group, as well as supplemental teaching material in the teacher’s manual.  One teaching technique I found very helpful was a script where a teacher reads a scenario (young people gathering in the alley behind a movie theater), but the actual misbehavior is not specified.  The teacher then asks: What do you think was happening there?  It’s an opening for students to share the kinds of things they know are going on in their community, which the instructor can then address as appropriate.

I’m cheap.  Or poor.  Do I need to buy the whole nine yards?

The materials are made to be used together.  For a knowledgeable parent wanting to teach at home for the minimal investment, purchasing just the student book would provide a substantial lesson for the least cash outlay.  Note however: The other items do add to the overall content of the course. This isn’t a case of the videos just repeating what the book says, or the parent book being a miniature version of the student book.  Each element contributes new and useful material.  If I were teaching this in the classroom, I would want the whole collection, no question about it.  As a parent, I would want my children to view the videos.

Is it Protestant-friendly?

It’s a very Catholic program.  (Don’t let the “Pope John Paul II” thing fool you.)  You’ll hear references to saints, to the sacraments, the Catholic faith.  BUT, keep in mind, this is all just normal healthy human life.  Love, virtue, modesty, chastity — these are for the whole human race.  The message is right on target with what any Christian youth program would want to teach.  So if you are comfortable with Catholic-trappings,  you could work with the whole course as-is, and just explain to your audience that it was made by Catholics.  If not, you may want to get the materials for yourself, and use them to train yourself how to teach these topics to your teens.

Summary:  I give it a ‘buy’ recommend, if you are responsible for teaching a young person how to act like a human being.  Thanks again to our sponsor The Catholic Company, who in no way requires that I like the review items they send, but would like me to remind you that they are a fine source for a Catechism of the Catholic Church or a Catholic Bible.

Emperor of North America – in my hand!

Yay!  My autographed copy of Emperor of North America has arrived.  I waved it in front of my eldest, who snatched wildly.  I told him he could have first dibs on it if he finished his homework.  Presto-chango, he turns into The Boy Who Cares About Fractions.  Would that Mr. McNichol could write a book a week.

 

Are we all middle class?

The Economist seems doubtful about the 91% of Americans who identify themselves as “middle class”.  Not strictly middle-middle-class.  The 91% number is the sum of people who consider themselves either lower-, plain old middle, or upper-middle class.  Can this be so?

I’ll argue yes.  Here’s why:

1. We really are that rich.  As a nation.  The trappings of wealth — quality electronics, barely-worn clothing, cute little decorative accents — can be had for little or no cost,  just for the luck of being nearby when some richer person decides to upgrade.  Thrift stores ship old clothing by the bale off to some other place to be dealt with, because no one in the US needs bother learn how to mend or make-over some outdated or worn garment. There comes a time when your nation is wealthy enough that bottom percentile brackets do not necessarily indicate poverty.

2. We really are that educated.  Class is in part about education.   I have to go back four generations to find an ancestor who has less than a high-school diploma.  Unless you are fresh off the boat, these days everyone goes to high school.  And if you don’t graduate your first go-through, you can go back and get a GED later.   The Economist says that a college degree was the mark of middle class cultural identity.  I disagree.  Both sets of my grandparents were high-school-only, WWII-era young adults.  A high school education alone, combined with job success, firmly launched them all from working-class to middle-class.

3.  Income is different from class.  I knew this when I was a kid: If you were a teacher, even though you didn’t make any money, you were definitely middle-class.  It was your education and your line of work that made you qualify.  I think teachers earn more now than they did then.  But now I know an awful lot of people with college and graduate degrees who live at the poverty line, income-wise.  If you choose a lousy-paying career-field, have a stay-at-home-parent, and enough kids, guess what?  You get to be poor.  Financially.  But you’re still educated, well-spoken, able to navigate the world of the middle-class (often: upper-middle class) comfortably.  In a survey about class (not income), you’d pick middle.

4.  Income isn’t nothing.  So say your formal education isn’t impressive, and  your line of work is not so white-collar.  If you make enough money to afford a comfortable home, put your kids through school, never have to worry about clothes or food, or medical care, and on top of all that you can buy yourself any number of little luxuries . . . how is that not middle?  You aren’t poor, for sure.  Maybe your origins and even your tastes run “working class” (though my experience is that once income is removed as a factor, tastes in food and drink vary independently of family of origin).  But sooner or later you get too rich not be middle class.

5. The top is so very high.  There’s this point on the salary scale where you just aren’t middle, income-wise.  I’d hazard it’s somewhere around the $200k/year, thereabouts, less or more depending on your perspective and your life situation — though if you want to put the figure higher or lower, go ahead.  It doesn’t matter.  It’s this point, whatever it might be, where people (both writers at The Economist, and also the people who really are in the financial middle of the income distribution), start to laugh at you when you say you are merely “upper middle class”.  And you are wondering why they are laughing.  Because here’s what: You who are now rich know that a) you really aren’t that rich compared to the super-rich people, b) at any time your paycheck could dry up and you’d go back to being a normal person, c) you don’t have any of the trappings of upbringing and connection that rich people have, because you are, um, middle class.  Your cultural identity sticks.  You’re a son of the middle class who happens to have a lot of money right now.  It is the exact same thing as the PhD living below the poverty line, only at the other end of the income spread.  (He’s probably your brother.  Literally.)

Anyway that’s my take.   The Economist says you can’t talk about about class in America.  I think it’s more like, there’s not a lot to say.  We’re a vast middle.  I would assume that 91% of us feel that way anyhow — that we belong to this giant cultural lump, bonded by the real hope of three-bedroom homes, shoe clutter, and free public high school education.

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And in light of my perfect contentment living here deep amongst the middling-types, has anyone read Fr. Thomas Dubay’s Happy are the Poor?  If yes, I’m keen to hear your thoughts.

Kolbe update, week 5

We just started week 5, thought I’d give a little report on how things are going.  Re-cap: This is our first year using Kolbe.  6th and 4th grader are enrolled, and mostly following the plan with a couple substitutions.  2nd grader and kindergartener continue to do the home-grown, relaxed-schooling thing.

Overall Impression: Very happy with the decision.  On a day like today (evil dictator felled by an evil-er cold), wow it is SO MUCH BETTER having the plans ready-to-go.  Oh I know, it is so easy to make your own course plans.  Oh, I know, it only takes a few minutes to type them up each week.  But wow, being able to growl at a child and say, “Where are you in your homework?” is even easier.

–> Without ready-made, day-by-day plans, two big kids would definitely still be on the relaxed-schooling plan, which I really love for the little guys, but is not the ideal choice for our older kids.  Way too many disruptions in the school year so far (exhibit A: evil dictator with evil cold), no way I could have held together a formal curriculum if it relied 100% on my willpower alone.

Some comments on specific subjects:

Latin: Mr. Boy is doing the first year of New Missal Latin.  I like it pretty well.  Like the kolbe-published supplemental resources.  Will say this: In my opinion, the teaching parent needs to either have a smattering of Latin under the belt, or be ready to learn-along.  Having already done the intro to classical Latin in previous years, these first few weeks have been largely review for Boy & myself, and yes that is very nice.  Now is not my time to be learning a new language.  No really.  Sometimes it is not that time.

(Remind me also I have some other comments on this particular Latin program and the pro’s and con’s.  For a post another day.)

Grammar:  No shock here, I’m one of ten people in the known universe who actually likes Voyages in English.  So far, no difficulties.  Definitely if you haven’t diagrammed sentences before, you want the intro to diagramming booklet as a supplement.

Composition: I failed to observe that there is a separate composition book for 6th grade in addition to the vocabulary and grammar books.  Kolbe plans call for one assignment a week from that book.  I’d already maxed out the book budget.  So I typed up 36 composition assignments for the Boy, and stuck those in his plan book.  Conveniently, 6th graders do not use the composition portion of VOE, so I borrowed from there.

Spelling / Vocabulary:  The kids hate this.  Lot of work.  I keep reminding them that a good PSAT / SAT score is worth cold hard cash.    They get that.  We’ve used Spelling Power in the past, and have good results with using that study method for studying the words missed on the pre-test.   The whole amount of Kolbe-assigned words is a lot, though.  And we’ve had a couple weeks with enough disruptions that I couldn’t keep up my end on this one through the whole week.  We just move on to the next week, rather than piling up.

Word Study:  Oh, yeah, and word study.  Gee these children get a LOT of language arts.  They tell me this one is easy (MCP Plaid).  It is also good for them.  Happy there.  Decided this was one workbook the kids could write their answers in, would be a royal pain to have to do the assignments on a separate page.

Geography:  Lovin’ the geography books.  Short, easy assignments, genuinely useful map skills.  Makes me happy.

Religion: Of course I like it (Faith & Life), I was already using it anyway.  This is the other activity book I let the kids write in.  Pretty happy with the addition of the St. J’s Balt. Catechisms as well, serious retro power going on there.  My DRE also likes the program.    She’s experimenting with one section of F&L for 8th grade CCD this year.  (Rest of us are using our same Loyola Press books from previous years.  Which are fine.  But I’d still make my kids do F&L at home.)

Science:  Not a demanding program, which works for me.  We skip the Monday “investigation” every week, so far there hasn’t been one worth the hassle.  Also, I have the workbooks but the course plans don’t call for them, and both kids have decided we are happier not doing them.  I’m good with having them do just the textbook reading and review questions, and they can unschool any other science they desire. I like that balance.  [Recall: Two real microscopes in my living room.  Engineer at the dinner table every night.  Unschooling science is a viable option.]

Literature:  Um, where are the study questions? Apparently they are in some other place than the course plans.  I guess a Kolbe booklet I was supposed to buy?   For the uninitiated: You acquire the book you are studying — White Fang and Misty of Chincoteague to start, for us — and then the course plans give you chapter reading assignments and a weekly short essay to write, book report at the end.  And those plans also mention these “study questions” and “vocabulary” and stuff.  But they aren’t in the plans.    And no, I can’t be bothered to go look back at the Kolbe catalog, nor to post a question on the Kolbe forums.  Because, um, my magic pen of you-don’t-have-to-do-this works great!  I just cross out assignments!  We love it!

–> As a result: I let the girl take her final exam open-book and open-dictionary (Misty only takes 5 weeks), since it would be requiring her to have memorized study questions she’d never seen.  Flipped around the final week course plans to have her do the exam first and write the book report second.

Math: Not using Saxon.  Nothing against it.  We’re just still happy with Math-U-See, didn’t see a reason to switch when that was already working. 

History: Recall everyone’s doing Rome this year, which would ordinarily be the 5th grade course.  Very happy both with using the program as written for Mr. Boy, and subbing in History Pockets for the first two quarters for the girl.  Not much else to say.  The Kolbe-recommended course is very good.  And one of my children really needed to meet Ancient Rome in a perkier manner.

[But yes, I had to pick up a library book on the Aztecs, because HP fails to mention the, er, human sacrifice, those amazing wonderful ancient Aztecs were practicing during the European renaissance.  Yeah, I’m a western culture snob.  Facts are facts.  I vote for the no-live-beating-human-hearts-in-the-hands-of-the-priest every time.  Give me self-flagellating, slightly sore-backed penitents over flayed-alive sacrificial victims any day.]

Funny story though: We’re planning to go see our local Roman legion when they gather not so far from us in November.  Except the girls only want to go if they get to dress up.  So a certain growing 4th grader is going to be let loose with some discount linen between now and then.  Luckily the rest of us already own passable garb that still fits.

Bleg: Catholic Dad Blogs?

A reader asks for recommendations on Catholic Dad blogs.  I read lots of blogs written by catholic guys with children, but nothing that’s specifically a Dad Blog.  Any suggestions?

Weekend Reading

Courtesy of The Catholic Company Reviewer Program, I’m curling up this weekend with The Theology of the Body for Teens – Middle School Edition.  So far so good.  I’m halfway through the student and parent books, have not yet viewed the DVD’s.  I’ll post my own review in the next week or so, and then will be passing on the bundle-o-curriculum to my DRE.  Might be able to get some opinions from her and our youth minister to share with you as well.

–>  Our parish elementary and middle/high school religious ed programs are on separate nights. Which means many family members of middle schoolers are loitering around the education building on a night when the middle school kids do not have class.  This course looks like one that would make a great stand-alone program to offer during that time.  We’ll see.

Saturday Linkfest

I’ve got another episode from the Homeschool Photo Contest to post, but am waiting for just the right time.  Ha.  Meanwhile, here’s how you should goof on instead:

1.  Read this article from the Apparent Project on Why You Should Not Mail Peanut Butter to Haiti.  No, really, take it out of the bubble-wrapped package and eat it yourself.  Haiti thanks you.  Because it turns out that shipping bunches of free stuff to impoverished countries undermines local businesses.  That make peanut butter.  Or would, if only Haitians weren’t getting boxes of the stuff from other countries.  Go read.

2. A longtime friend, engineer, amateur gunsmith, and EMT, sent us this YouTube video on Gun Safety.  PG WARNING: If your head is screwed on straight, there’s at least one scene that is objectionable even for comedy noir. It also means you aren’t the target audience.  [Hint: If you have given up watching action-adventure shows because all the egregious gun safety violations– by law enforcement good guy characters no less!!– have caused you to throw your tv out the window, you aren’t actually the target audience for this clip.]  But it is funny. With proper parental guidance as required.

3.  Look, Sarah Reinhard one of my favorite writing friends, has a new book out:

She let me look at one of the later drafts, and it is a really nice little book.  If you are looking for a family-friendly Advent Book, I’d give it a recommend.  From what I recall, it is protestant-friendly.  But just e-mail her and ask if you have any questions or concerns, she is one of those extroverted writers who likes to talk to readers. Or leave a comment in her blog combox.  She’s totally chatty.  Super Nice Person.  Happy to talk about her books any day.

4.  And is just me, or does it look like the new John McNichol book is now out on Amazon?

Serious coolness.

Not for people who don’t read genre fiction.  But highly recommended if you are looking for fun, readable Catholic GKC Sci-Fi Alternate History goodness in a package your boy will enjoy.  Do you know of a different book that will cause an 11-year-old boy to beg to read Huck Finn?  Maybe you do.  Or maybe you think that no day is complete without the threat of an alien attack.  In which case, McNichol is your man.

Wolves, Economists

I saw this post from Darwin in my feed reader, but I didn’t read it for the longest time, because the title made it sound too smart for me.  But look at this:

As soon as people starting thinking of the economy as some great machine with levers just waiting to be pulled (whether it’s liberals convinced that if only we could put through a couple more trillion dollars worth of stimulus everything would be fine or conservatives convinced that we can always raise tax revenues by lowing tax rates) they set themselves up to cause more harm than good.

Yes.  Yes yes yes.

***

In White Fang  news . . .

I finished the book.  It got so much better after it started to be about a dog and not about some whiny guy being chased by wolves.*  Here’s what I’ve concluded is necessary in order to enjoy White Fang:

1) A dog of your own.  Because it’s a novel about the psychological development of a dog.

2) A good sturdy head cold.  Because, well, it’s a novel about the psychological development of a dog.

Once I had both of those conditions in place, I totally enjoyed the book.  And all the doggy procreation is firmly offstage, so now I don’t feel so nervous about having sent our other copy to camp with my 6th grader.  I was nervous there for a few minutes.

 

 

* I myself would be very whiny if wolves were trying to eat me.  For your own sakes, hope I never get to write any autobiography about such things.

Simmering.

Thank you to Bearing for linking to this free pdf booklet by Fr. Longenecker on St. Benedict for Busy Parents.  I have been so desperate for something to read . . . desperate enough to crack the pages of White Fang, which does not interest me in the least, but it’s on my shelves for certain schoolchildren, and what else was I going to read?  Now I’ve got 25 pages of reprieve from that monster.

–> The library is right out, because I absolutely cannot keep track of one more thing right now, and the library means about twenty more things, all hidden under mattresses and stuck behind dressers by the time the third renewal comes around.  Sometimes, being a person who is simply not interested in television is maybe not all it’s cracked up to be.  Even if actually Eric Sammons is right.  (He is.)

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In other news, if you had were one of the people (contacted privately) praying for the best dog in the world in her recent illness, she is home and looking  a little better.  Looks like a case of thyroid gone AWOL, guess that happens to middle-aged ladies of many species.  Venison and rice and a big bone boiling on the stove for her now, the rest of us I think are having frozen pizza.

The Rite by Matt Baglio

The Rite: The Making of a Modern Exorcist, by Matt Baglio, Doubleday, 2009

I recommend this book, on the condition that you read the whole thing.  Otherwise, skip.  Just not healthy any other way.  –>> And no I have not seen the film, [which Father L. reviewed here, and has even more to say on the whole topic here]  and no I’m not planning to see the film, because I am too impatient to watch things when I could be reading instead.  Also I see on the author’s page that the paperback has updated material in it — my comments here are based on the edition above.

Anyhow, back to the book.  Here’s what it is, per the author:

The purpose of this book is not to promote any one faith over another, but to offer a detailed account of one priest’s journey from a rational skeptic to a practicing exorcist. I didn’t set out to write with any preconceived bias and as such the book is written in a straightforward journalistic style, which means that I give respect to the beliefs and testimonies on all sides, including medical science.

And that’s what it is.  We follow Fr. Gary Thomas (a real guy) as he heads to Rome on sabbatical in 2005, after being freshly appointed diocesan exorcist.  His travails are, wow, amazingly normal.  If you spend any amount of time in the Catholic Church, you will totally recognize the place.   You couldn’t write fiction like this.  Fr. Thomas does finally manage to secure an apprenticeship with a practicing exorcist, and the book version does clearly show the humdrum, hard, dull work that goes with the territory.

[Interestingly — the reports of boring catholic exorcisms match very closely to what I have heard described by evangelical protestants who have experience with boring exorcisms of their own.  Different details as far as the methods of the exorcists, but identical phenomenon on the recipients’ end.]

The author sticks to the straightforward, journalistic style all the way through.  It is not a “catholic” book in the sense of trying to evangelize or prove a point of the faith.  The reporting could come straight out of the Herald Tribune.  But it is a firmly catholic book in the sense that any book which earnestly reports the truth is necessarily catholic.

In addition to following Fr. Thomas’s personal story, the book explains catholic teaching on the supernatural in very clear terms.  There is also an examination of how demon possession relates to psychological disorders, including interviews with secular researchers who reject supernatural explanations.  [One of the first jobs of the exorcist is to find a qualified psychiatrist to rule out natural causes.]   One of the reasons I think it is important to stick with the book through to the end, is that it is not at all clear how things are going to turn out, or whether the book will ultimately end up affirming the catholic faith.  [It does.  It can’t help it.  Tell a true story, that’s what you end up with.]

The book follows Fr. Thomas through to his first “for real”, no-doubts-about-it exorcism, in 2007, after he is back home in the states and settled in to his parish assignment.  And here’s the conclusion, so you can rest easy, since if you are smart you will naturally be quite wary of picking up books on these sorts of topics:

These prayers do have power, he thought.  It was a visceral reminder that the age-old conflict between good and evil, sin and salvation, was far from over.  Not only did this validate his calling as a priest, and his choice to become an exorcist, but it was a powerful confirmation of one of the deepest mysteries of his faith.  Even though evil existed in the world, there was a way to defeat it.