Now, as home educators, it is important to be aware of all of the kinds of order. The family will not run smoothly, and there will not be happy, home schooling days, if the order in the family is not observed. That seems to be obvious, but it is important to reflect on periodically. If things are not going well in one’s home, one should consider whether there is a right order of the members of the family to God, to each other, and to those around the family. But there is another kind of order that should be considered as well.

That is the order in education. As educators, we are concerned with two primary goals to which everything else is directed. The first end of education is to bring someone from ignorance to knowledge. This knowledge, at first, is not very profound. So, secondly, one must also be able to think well about what he knows. Having facts is one thing, but one needs the intellectual tools that allow a deeper penetration of the facts. There is an extension of this second goal, which is that one must be able to make good judgments about what he knows. A man needs to think well, and that includes on one side the use of the tools of thinking, but it also includes applying his knowledge correctly to new situations.

Thus, we are concerned with the content of education (particular knowledge), the tools of education (thinking well) and application of education (good judgment).

With regard to the first end, the highest content or knowledge to which the human person is directed is knowledge of God, which we call sacred or natural theology, depending on whether one is talking about the supernatural or the natural. This end requires others, which are subordinated to it.

In this way, education involves the seven liberal arts, which are ordered to the philosophic disciplines, and which have an order among themselves. The whole of this education is intended to bring one to an understanding of theology. This process is how one perfects the intellect in terms of content.

The seven liberal arts are divided into the Trivium, grammar, logic and rhetoric, and the Quadrivium, arithmetic, geometry, music and astronomy, and I will return to a somewhat fuller consideration of them later.

Theology, then, is the end or goal of education, and is sometimes called the queen of the sciences, while the other sciences are called her handmaidens. The other sciences serve theology. One way that is accomplished is when the arguments from a lower science are used in a higher science. For example, St. Thomas uses the arguments of Aristotle from the Physics in his proofs for the existence of God. If any of you have used Catholic Apologetics by Fr. Laux you have an acquaintance with those arguments, for it is those arguments that Fr. Laux uses in his proofs for God’s existence. Also, St. Thomas uses propositions from Euclid’s geometry as illustrations in his discussion of the nature of the Trinity. In each of these cases, the material reasoned to is pressed into the service of the faith, and one’s understanding of the faith is strengthened by it.

The second end of education I mentioned earlier is a good use of the tools of thinking. All men think, but thinking can be done well or badly, and one can be taught to do it well. In large measure, the role of the teacher of grade school children is this: teaching children to think well.

To do that, however, one must be familiar with how thinking takes place in the human person. The exposition I am about to give as to how one thinks comes from the De Anima of Aristotle, and it comes from a remarkably complex series of considerations. I am summarizing the conclusions of that involved argument, and therefore, necessarily, won’t do justice to the whole. Nonetheless, as I think every teacher should have at least a general understanding of this process, I am going to give the summary, defective as it may be.

First, one receives the form of external objects by means of his five senses. He sees, hears, smells, tastes or touches the objects around him. That information is received by the proper sense and passed on to what Aristotle calls the common sense. He reasons to the existence of this faculty because he sees that though the eyes can tell, for example, that the object on the table is white, and the tongue can tell that it is sweet, the eyes can’t tell that it is sweet, and the tongue can’t tell that it is white. Yet the person knows that it is the same object that is both white and sweet and distinguishes between them. Therefore, there must be some place in one where this information is integrated, and Aristotle calls that place the common sense.

Then, this integrated object is passed on (via nerves, I suppose) to what Aristotle calls the ‘vis cogitativa’, or ‘thinking power’. The function of this power is to sort the objects into like kinds. It doesn’t require universal knowledge, but only deals with the particulars in front of it, simply sorting them. An analogy that occurs to me is the way the baby uses that sorting toy that has holes on the top in the shape of a triangle, a rectangle, and a circle. He picks up the block in the shape of a triangle and sees that it fits with the triangle shaped whole, so he puts the block in there. Similarly, he sees that the circle shaped cylinder fits in the circle shaped whole, and puts it in. He doesn’t
need to make some general consideration of ‘triangularity’ or ‘circleness’ to do that, he just sees a likeness in two particular things.

The ‘vis cogitativa’ works something like that. (By the way, I was once on a plane and in the flight magazine there was a fascinating article about how the electrical impulses originating in the proper senses moved along to the brain and were sorted in that process so that when the impulses actually went to the brain they didn’t all go to the same place. Some went to the front right lobe of the brain, some to the left, and so on. That physical description of what happens seems to fit very well with Aristotle’s philosophic judgment regarding the
vis cogitativa.)

At any rate, then the integrated, sorted object is passed on to the imagination. It is received in the imagination (or brain), as Aristotle says, like a seal is received in wax. The imagination (brain) is like a wax slate. The image, received from the senses (sight, hearing, smelling, touching, tasting), is like a wax seal, which is pressed into the wax slate. Sometimes the wax is too hard and the seal has to be pressed over and over in order to make the image. Sometimes the wax is too soft and the seal makes an impression the first time, but the wax mushes and the image is gone. Sometimes the wax is just the right consistency and then the image is nice and clear, sharp around the edges, a faithful image of the original.

Now, there is more to the process of thinking. This image is used by what Aristotle calls “the agent intellect”, the active power of the mind, which, so to speak, shines a light on that image in the imagination. In virtue of this light, the universal form of the object is received into “the possible intellect”. In that reception, understanding takes place. Given this process, clearly, the condition of the image is of great importance in the effectiveness of the understanding.

So, as educators we must be concerned about perfecting whatever we can of every part of the process of thinking. There is not much one can do about the way the commonsense works, or how the form is initially received, (though it is those things that the special education teacher largely concerns himself with), but the formation of the imagination is something that one can and should address.

Lastly, with regard to making good judgments, one must have an accurate understanding of reality. His knowledge must be rooted in the real world and his imagination must present the proper forms to the intelligence. This requires several qualities, among them prudence, which requires experience, and that is something children don’t have. But they can acquire vicarious experience by reading good literature, and can profit from that experience by anticipating what they will come to experience in their own lives.

This is going to require comparison, which requires a developed imagination. To compare two things, one must be able to have both of them in front of him, at the same time, in some way. To compare two pieces of music, for example, one can hear one piece with his ears, but he has to hear the piece he is comparing it to in his imagination. He can’t hear them both, simultaneously, with his ears, but he needs to hear them both, simultaneously, in some way to make the comparison. This is true for every comparison. Somehow the two items must be simultaneously present to the person making the consideration. That is going to require the imagination, and the memory.

Notice that all these ends of education require the imagination.

First of all, there is the area of knowledge. As I mentioned before, knowing is directed most of all to theology, or knowing God, and the other arts and sciences are subordinated to that end. Now, there is an order among them. The liberal arts come before the sciences. They do so, at least in part, because they are proportioned to the young mind. Not much experience is required to do them well. Also, they prepare the mind to consider the more difficult matters of the sciences. These arts are divided into the two categories I mentioned earlier: the Trivium and the Quadrivium. The Trivium consists of the arts of grammar, logic and rhetoric. It is worth noting that all of these have to do with speech in some way or another. Grammar concerns the mode of speaking, logic is about the meaning of speech, and the consequences of that for defining and reasoning, and rhetoric is ordered to persuasive speech. Speech itself is something made by man.

The Quadrivium is the name given to the arts of arithmetic, geometry, music and astronomy. Though we discover number in things, in arithmetic we study number abstractly, without reference to physical things. Thus, in our demonstrations, we make the numbers in our imagination and consider their properties without reference to the physical things in which we discovered them. In geometry, likewise, we construct figures, which we then study the properties of. Usually, we write the figure on a board or a piece of paper, but the figures properly exist in us. In music we make notes, first in our heads, then on paper, and in astronomy, we again construct figures that help us understand and predict the movements of the heavenly bodies.

In all of these arts, you will notice, there is something made. That is what art means: a habit directed to making that involves a true course of reasoning. In the practical arts such as architecture, painting and the like, the making occurs outside the maker. In the liberal arts the making occurs in the maker, specifically in the mind and the imagination.

This is different from the strictly philosophical or theological sciences, which are not arts because they don’t involve a making. These sciences do not make, even in the imagination, the objects which they study.

These sciences are divided into philosophy and theology. Between these two there is also an order. Philosophy, as I mentioned earlier, is ordered to an understanding of sacred theology. Sacred theology, which is based upon divine revelation, is the summit of education. Following this order in education leads one to a true understanding of sacred theology, an understanding not only of the conclusions of the science, but of the (logical) arguments that give rise to those conclusions.

Now, this order started with the liberal arts, which depend on the ability of the imagination to make the object of the art. Clearly then, the functioning of the imagination is important in acquiring the liberal arts. So as educators, the training of the imagination is something we must make an important part of early education.

In the exposition I gave earlier of the way one thinks, the importance of the imagination is obvious. Additionally, making judgments, which require experience, and comparisons, both use the memory and therefore the imagination. Thus, achievement of the ends of education requires training the imagination, and that requires the right order among the parts of the training.

As home educators, then, and as faithful Catholics, we see that understanding the order in an area of life is essential to understanding the area. To be better teachers, we need to understand the order of the parts of knowledge and the order of the mechanics of learning. In working on this we are working as faithful disciples of Christ, who calls us to do as well as we can the tasks He has given us.