Originally Published in 2009*

The title of my article is “Does Homeschooling Need a Road Map?” Now, that’s a rhetorical question. It’s designed to get you, the reader, to think about the matter, and, honestly, to give a direction to that thought. St. Thomas Aquinas says that it’s important to let your audience know, right from the beginning, where you are going.

So, I used the picture of a road map in my question because we all know that road maps are good and useful. I do think that homeschooling needs a road map. The advantage of a road map for travel is that a clear picture of the goal, and the various ways to get there, allows one to make good decisions about the most direct path, which way to turn when necessary, and what detour will help when a road block is encountered. A driver needs to know exactly where he is relative to his goal, or he is apt to make mistakes. (I know that concretely, having made my share of driving mistakes.)

It is my view that in education, too, one needs to have a road map. He needs to know where he is going, and what the best way is to get there. He also needs to know if it is the only way, or if there are other roads that might get one to the same place. That road map is best provided by someone who knows the goal, has traveled the road, has investigated the options, and, most importantly, knows the car and the occupants of the car. In homeschooling the optimum source for that educational road map is the parent.

The parent is driver of the car, and he has the experience of all the facets of the trip. He knows how important the goal is, and when it should be achieved, and what the sequence of the trip has to be. Since he knows his family, he also knows what the frequency of the stops is going to be and how much time to allow for that. No one else has the knowledge of the individual family members, or the goal that is appropriate for them in the same way the parent does.

Certainly the children do not know, yet, what the goal is, or what actions are necessary to reach it. They don’t even know themselves very well. Parents provide, in their educational choices for their children, the same things they do in their moral choices for their children, or in their religious choices. They provide judgment born of experience.

Parents need to have confidence in their judgment, and recognize the importance of their experience of life and their knowledge of the goals they want their children to achieve. When someone talks to me about child directed education, or child centered education, or even just says, “Well, I think my child should
decide for himself,” I always stop him and say, “Wait a minute, let’s think about this a bit more, and let’s make some distinctions.” I say, “There is a difference between 'directed to’ and ‘directed by’. It’s the difference between the end and the agent. Further, there is a difference between giving your child a choice between emptying the dishwasher now or later, or emptying it or not.” That’s what I want to talk about today.

The road map analogy is a good one, for the reasons I gave. It’s clear from common experience that one who does not know the goal cannot direct the movement toward the goal. If you don’t know where you are going, you don’t know what roads to take to get there. In every human endeavor, from crossing the room to making a cake to choosing a marriage partner, if one doesn’t know where he is going, or what cake is supposed to be made, or what fortitude marriage is going require, he can’t make the choices necessary to achieve the goal.

Small children don’t know in either theoretical or practical terms what the goal of education is. They don’t know that the goal of education is to educate the man as a man, to exercise all the powers of his soul, to make perfect, on a natural level, the image of God in him. They don’t know that. They also don’t know what courses are required by colleges, and what the first educational pre-requisites to those courses are. But you, the parents, do. That is one reason why you rightly insist that your children do math when they don’t want to, or read Sherlock Holmes when they are stuck on the Hardy Boys, or tackle that more difficult paper topic rather than the easier one. It has always seemed to me an injustice to the child’s future to let him decide what he wants to do in school, and, especially, what he doesn’t want to do. He doesn’t know what he needs to achieve the goals that will be important to him in the future. He only knows his present desires.

Obviously, as he grows up he is better able to participate in the decision-making process, and he should. But you will also know when the time for that occurs. Just as there is an age of reason, when the child is sufficiently able to control his actions to conform with his reason, so there is a time when the student gives evidence that he understands the goals of education. When my oldest children were young I thought, “What is this “age of reason” stuff? My three year old is reasoning.” But as they got older I began to see what the Church meant by the “age of reason”; it wasn’t just that the child had the ability to reason, but that he could live by reason. He was capable of sinning because he was capable of consciously choosing to order his actions according to right reason, and in fact he usually did so.

Similarly, a student is ready to participate in the decision making process regarding “what he studies when”, once he has demonstrated that he bases his decisions not on how he feels, or what is easiest, but on how he understands that this course of study is going to better prepare him for the next level of study, or for college, or for, most importantly, life. The student who can say (and I know that it happens, at least occasionally, though it didn’t happen often in my own house), “Mom, I think I should do Jacob’s Geometry, instead of this easier program, because it will be more of a challenge,” or “I want to keep doing Latin, even though I don’t need to for my language requirement, because it makes me work intellectually,” should be listened to as you prepare his course of studies for the year. Even that child, however, needs your direction.

Please understand that I am not a mean mom. (My children are actually all grown now, my baby is a senior in college.) I think all six of my children will tell you that I was a nice mom (nicer as I got older, I have to confess, but still, a nice mom). What I am suggesting here is not a military regime. I am suggesting a parent child regime. Parents need to consciously work on gaining the hearts of their children. I have said that many times, in many talks. It’s one of the most important ingredients in successful homeschooling. But hearts are not won without leadership. Parents need to be parents, not peers. They need to show their love for their children by giving the children what they most need. That is, they need to teach their children how to live well (which includes the right kind of excellent education).

So, in terms of a kind of common sense approach, I think it is clear that to achieve educational goals the course of study needs to be determined by one who knows the goal. There are other ways to think about the same topic that are even more illuminating.

For example, there is a sense in which living well is an art. It may be an extended sense of art, but we do speak that way: we talk about the art of living. Arts need to be taught. They are acquired through instruction, and become perfect through practice. As St. Albert says, “nature makes possible, art makes
easy, and practice makes powerful.” This becomes clear from the definition of art. An art is a habit of making. A habit is a firm disposition whereby one acts consistently in a certain way. Habits can be good or bad. A virtue is a good habit, a habit by which one acts well. Now, virtues are qualities of the rational
soul, either of the reason itself (intellectual virtues), or of those powers that can participate in reason, such as the will and the appetites (moral virtues). So, art is a virtue of the reason that rightly directs the activity of making. The art of living, then, is a virtue of the reason that rightly directs the activity of living.

All arts result in a product, something made. In the mechanical arts, which involve making in the strictest sense, the product is something outside the maker. For example, carpentry produces chairs and tables. In cookery, the art produces great steak. Even in the fine arts such as architecture, painting and the like,
the making occurs outside the maker. But in some arts the product is realized in the maker, specifically in his mind and imagination. These are the liberal arts, which I have frequently talked about. The sense in which there is an art of living is an extended sense of art, as the product is not a thing or an object, but a
right kind of “doing”. Though extended, this is a real sense of art, for virtuous habit ordered to an activity is required to produce the end, which is a right way of doing.

As I mentioned before, there are two kinds of virtuous habits, intellectual and moral. Moral habits are acquired by repeated action, and intellectual habits are acquired by instruction and perfected by practice. The intellectual virtues depend in a very real way on the moral virtues. If one isn’t disciplined enough to study when he needs to, or to go to bed early enough so that he can get up in the morning, or to eat foods that are good for him so that he feels well,
then he isn’t going to be able to learn. Further, he isn’t going to be a free man.

When I first read the Gorgias by Plato, I was struck by the argument that when one is a vicious man, that is, a man of bad character, one is lead by the passions. Such a person is not in control of his life; he does not determine his actions in the light of the goals he wishes to achieve. “I do whatever I feel like doing” is really the cry of someone who does not rule or direct his life, but rather follows his ‘passing fancy’. He is subject to the inclinations of his passions, and is thus a slave. This is important; the man who does whatever he feels like doing is really a slave to his passions.

I think this is very important in our discussion today. If students do only what they ‘feel’ like doing, they are not only not going to learn all the intellectual disciplines, so that they won’t be developing all the powers of their souls, but they are also going to be developing habits that will make them slaves to their
feelings. They won’t be able to do what they don’t feel like doing. Think about your own life. How many times in the last week did you have to do something that you didn’t really “feel” like doing? We do not want to handicap our children by teaching them that how they feel about a school subject should determine whether they do it or not.

A person who does only what he wants is not happy, not finally. He is not a free man, capable of directing his own life or the life of others. I learned that in college as a theoretical proposition, and I did have enough experience even at that point to have a sense that it was the truth, but as an adult watching numerous families with many children, I see really clearly that happy children (of whom I know many), and indeed, happy people (of whom I also know many), are those who live by the rule of reason informed by grace. They are not subject to their passions; rather they control the passions, so that their feelings become a help to the virtuous life, rather than a hindrance. Thus the truly virtuous person, someone like Mother Teresa, is doing what she feels like doing, but what she feels like doing is her daily duty. That is what we want for our children.

In my experience the first virtue to attain, the central underpinning of all further formation, both moral and intellectual, is obedience. I will talk about that more in the next article.

Stay tuned for part 2 next week*