Obedience is the first virtue to attain. I am sure this is not news to you, and those of you who have heard me before have heard me say this before. If it is true and central, however, it is worth saying more than once. I live in a homeschooling community, and I homeschooled my own children for about 23 years. I have seen over and over again that those who are successful at homeschooling are those whose children are obedient, and who are themselves disciplined. I say this without claiming to be the best role model in this area myself, but it is nonetheless true that obedience is a key in homeschooling.
Though this is not news, I think it is very interesting in that obedience is not the cardinal virtue for an adult. (I am talking about the natural order here, as in the supernatural order, even adults have that relationship to those in spiritual authority over them.) Aristotle, in the Nicomachean Ethics, teaches that prudence is the cardinal virtue. It is prudence that makes it possible to do the right thing in the right place at the right time. An action that is courageous in one instance may be rash or foolish in another, because the time and place are not right. Prudence puts the actions in the right order.
Well, children are not capable of prudence. Of the virtues, prudence most of all requires experience. Children don’t have experience. But their parents do. For children obedience takes the place of prudence and that is why it is so central to their training. By obedience children participate in the prudence of their parents.
One area of obedience, one area whereby children can participate in the prudence of their parents, one area where children can learn the moral virtues, is the area of what they study. The child who learns to turn his mind to the task at hand, because it is the task at hand, reaps great benefits, both moral and intellectual. Morally he learns obedience, so he is on the road to true freedom, he participates in his parents’ prudence, developing his intellectual skills in the right order to attain the goals of education that he can’t yet see. There is an added, and I think very interesting, intellectual aspect to this. Often one finds that the thing he didn’t want to do becomes something he loves. In high school I really didn’t like mathematics. I didn’t do well in my math courses, and my goal for college was to avoid as much mathematical study as possible. Then I heard about Thomas Aquinas College. If I went there I would study the liberal arts, the sciences to which they are directed, and both natural and supernatural theology. I would read the great doctors of the Church, and consciously work on putting my mind on the highest and most noble objects. I would learn about the central mysteries of the Catholic Church: the Holy Trinity and the Hypostatic Union. All of this would be done in small class discussions. It sounded great, until I realized it involved four years of mathematics and four years of science.
When I asked about why I couldn’t just do the “fun” classes, I was told that the program was integrated, that all the courses worked together to illuminate the highest objects, that if I couldn’t do Euclid’s Geometry, I would both be missing out on one beautiful aspect of God’s creation, and, further, I wouldn’t understand the Trinity as well.
Well, though I didn’t want to do math, or science, I did want the rest of the package, and, besides, I thought they seemed to know what they were talking about. So I went, in spite of the mathematics requirements. I am so glad. I loved Euclid’s Elements, Ptolemy’s Almagest, Newton’s Principia, and even Descartes’ Geometry. That was a whole area of reality I would never have known about if I had done what I “felt” like doing.
I had a similar experience with one of my sons. One of my children had gotten to the Hardy Boys stage, and seemed to be stuck. I suggested several times that if he liked Hardy Boys, he would like Sherlock Holmes, but he looked at my very large book, with very small print, and said, “No, thanks, Mom.” Finally, I decided that Sherlock Holmes was going to be part of his directed reading time. So, that night after dinner, I handed him the book and told him he could read it for an hour. Every ten minutes of that hour, he asked me if his time was up. At the end of the hour I asked if he had liked the book. He said, “No,” and I said, “That’s too bad, because you’re going to be reading it for awhile.” The following night, after dinner I handed my son the same book, and he sat down to read it. This time, however, he didn’t ask me every ten minutes if his time was up. In fact, when I told him his hour was up, he said, “Thanks, Mom,” and kept reading. He kept reading until bedtime, and when I got up in the morning, he was up before me, reading Sherlock Holmes.
It was good for me that I went to a school that required subjects I thought I couldn’t do, and knew I didn’t like, and it was good for my son that I insisted he read a book he didn’t want to read. In both cases we were wrong about what we enjoyed. Aristotle says that people enjoy doing what they are good at. Often students resist a subject because they either aren’t good at it, or they think they aren’t good at it. But the intellectual virtues, like the moral virtues, are perfected by repeated action, and once acquired and perfected are easy and thus enjoyable for the student. Children who don’t like to read are often not fluent readers. If you have them read daily, at an appropriate level, they will develop fluency and thus enjoyment.
This illustrates why parents should direct the education of their children. They know their children. When you are planning school for the year, you can take into account what the student likes, and what he is like.
Parent directed education doesn’t mean unintelligent education. Parents know their children and know whether the best kind of reading comprehension exercise is going to be reading classic novels or historical fiction or doing a workbook. Parents know whether a student is going to do best with a more conversational chemistry text or one that is all business. That kind of prudential consideration belongs in curriculum planning. The truth in the child directed schooling movement is that not all children are the same, and that differences in interests should be taken into account. That’s true.
But the parent, who knows the whole goal for the student, is the one to take those considerations into account. So, I can hear you say, “That all sounds great. But how do you get them to do it when they don’t want to?” There are many things I could say, and have said in other talks and articles. But there are four things that stand out to me. You have to have a reasonable structure in your homeschool. You have to be willing to teach what needs to be taught. You have to give them reasons for what you ask them to do, especially as they get older. But the bottom line is, you have to gain their hearts.
1. Structure
Structure in your home schooling is very important. Children, especially teens, need to know what is expected of them, and to do that they need to do the same things every day. If math is done every day, if history is done every day, if there is a consistent schedule, then the student is not wondering if this is a day when mom is going to make him do math, or history, or school itself. The student who has a regular structure can develop the habit of doing schoolwork. And that makes the schoolwork much easier. If you want your student to work, consistently and cheerfully, resist the temptation to call him away from school every time some other opportunity or need arises. Show how important you think what he is doing is by making sure that he has the time to do it.
Also, have a consistent starting time. It is often hard for children to get up and get going in the morning. This is often because they are truly tired; their bodies are changing, and they need sleep. But the answer is not to “sleep in” in the mornings. If they do that they won’t get school done, and they will feel bad about their lack of accomplishment. Unhappy children are more resistant. Instead, get them up in the morning and they’ll be tired at night, so they will go to bed. (I know from my own experience that this is best accomplished by going ahead and getting them up for a few days in a row. If you wait until they have gone to bed early enough the day before, they will never get up.)
With a consistent structure a student knows just what is expected of him and he is free to be creative within that framework. A framework always encourages freedom, by releasing one from doubt and indecision.
2. Parent Teaching
Another point is the importance of teaching. In my school, Mother of Divine Grace School, I have noticed trends. Sometimes, moms seem to be looking for alternatives to teaching their children. A program is pleasing to them simply because it promises the mom that she won’t have to teach it. Plug the child in to the computer, or the headset, and move on to something else.
Now, I agree that independent learning is important. We want our children to be self learners, ready and able to put their minds actively to a matter presented in a text. But when they need teaching, they need teaching. Sometimes nothing will work other than sitting down and working through the math problems with your children, or reading the same book the student is reading so that you can help him understand it . This is where the parents’ prudence comes in. You need to determine which subjects require one-on-one teaching. Of course you can’t teach every subject to every child. You don’t have time. Do, nevertheless, plan to spend some time with each child each day. One of the reasons we homeschool is so that we will have time with our children.
Remember that God has a plan. That this child needs you now, for this subject, is part of His plan. It may well be that this particular child is getting lost in the crowd and he needs attention. Once one of my children was really dragging his heels through math, and I finally realized that he needed more from me than simply encouragement. He needed my presence. We moved math to the evening, when I had uninterrupted free time, and we sat down together to do it. We had the book between us, and we each did the lesson, one problem at a time. We raced, to see who could get each answer first. Then we would compare answers. If they were the same, we would go on to the next problem. If they were different, we would go over the problem together. We really had fun, and I sure improved my math skills.
My son improved in every way. He was more cheerful in every area, his math improved greatly, he learned better how to stay on task, and he developed habits, in all of those areas, that stayed with him, even after we stopped doing the lessons together. It worked so well for us that for several years I would just plan to spend two or so weeks doing the math with him at the beginning of the year, and then in February, which is always a hard month. This time together was important educationally, but it was also important in other ways. He learned that something hard could be mastered, if you worked at it. He learned that putting your mind on a subject could be great fun. Most significantly, I think, he learned that his school was very important to me, and that he was very important. That difficulty, that demand on my time, was a gift from God. Never underestimate God’s Providence.
3. Giving your children the reasons for what you ask of them
The third item I mentioned above is that you should give your children reasons for what you ask them to do. This is especially true for children who have reached the analytic stage of formation, usually around 12 years old. They want to know the reasons for things. They are interested in knowing not just the facts, but the reasons for the facts. You want to encourage that. Once one realizes that the 12 year old who is all of a sudden arguing is doing something natural, something necessary to achieve the mature human being, one’s attitude toward the argument changes. The student needs to learn how to argue, when and with whom to argue, and even about what to argue, but he will learn those things if you approach the matter the right way. Don’t feel that he has all of a sudden decided to challenge your authority. Recognize that he just naturally wants to practice argument and he is looking for the matter to do it with. He is also interested in the why of things, and that is an intellectual step forward.
I heard Dr. Ray Guarendi talk. He gave a great talk, and reminded us that as parents we have a right to expect and, in fact, demand, good behavior from our
children. We shouldn’t put up with rolling eyes and rude remarks. It’s true, and to get good behavior we have to expect and insist on good behavior. But good external behavior is not enough. Obedience is central to the virtuous life, but the bottom line is obedience is no good unless it is in the children’s hearts. You may have to work from the outside in, so that you insist on the right behavior before they have the right internal formation. But that’s where you want to
go.
4. Gaining their hearts
We want our children to be formed internally, in their hearts. The very best way I know to gain the heart of your children is to talk to them, to enjoy being with them, to make an effort to spend time with them that is mutually pleasant. Develop an interest in their interests. If they love Lord of the Rings, make sure you know enough about it to talk about it with interest. If they love baseball, make an effort to go with them to their games.
This will lead to increased cooperation in your schooling, and it will lead to a lifetime of wonderful relationships in your family.
In conclusion, we must never underestimate the importance of our job. We have the most significant work in the world. We are raising up souls for eternal life.
The Church has always taught that parents are the primary educators of their own children. She says, “‘The role of parents in education is of such importance that it is almost impossible to provide an adequate substitute.’ The right and the duty of parents to educate their children (is) primordial and inalienable...
Showing themselves obedient to the will of the Father in heaven, (parents) educate their children to fulfill God’s law.”
Our duty as parents, as it is laid out in the encyclical “On the Christian Education of Youth” by Pius the XI, “consists essentially in preparing man for what he must be and for what he must do here below, in order to attain the sublime end for which he was created. It is clear that there can be no true education which is not wholly directed to man’s last end, and that in the present order of Providence, since God has revealed Himself to us in the Person of His only Begotten Son, who alone is ‘the Way, the Truth and the Life,’ there can be no ideally perfect education which is not Christian education.”
Our Lord wants us all to be the leaven in the dough of society. Our job as parents is to prepare our children to be ready for the service to which God will call them. We have been called to an exacting and important role, and we can have confidence that God, who loves us and our children more than we can even imagine, will provide us with every grace we need.