Staying the Course

Helping Our Children to Be Seekers and Finders

Staying the Course: Helping Our Children To Be Seekers and Finders

A classical education seeks not to inform so much as to form. Everywhere, the classical tradition notes that by educating our children, we are seeking the formation of their souls and minds. We are seeking their character.

Character is from the Greek word that means an engraving tool or an engraving itself, like an  imprinted, minted coin. We can talk about letters as “characters” because they used to be stroked into clay or wax, or chiseled into stone. Figuratively, then, our character is that which is written on the tablet of our heart (Proverbs 2). Put another way, character is an engraving or the minted, imprint slowly pressed into the souls of our children.

The tradition says we are seeking wisdom, virtue, and eloquence. The well-educated person is wise, virtuous, and able to bring an apt and timely word to every occasion. When we pray for and seek to contribute to the formation of our children’s character, we are seeking their wisdom, virtue, and eloquence.

This process is a process. It is step-by-step. It is gradual. It is slow. It is not “accelerated.” It is not “advanced.” It is not “advanced placement.” It is rightly-placed. It is ordered to the nature of the student, to the human. It is “just right” when ordered for formation in wisdom, virtue, and eloquence. And it can vary according to the specific nature of your student—which means wise guidance and direction at the hands of a wise magister. It means tutoring—which is why the tutorial system is widely regarded as the most effective means of educating a human, and the most economically inefficient (meaning expensive).

In this article, I hope to convince you that a classical education is the rightly-ordered pursuit of a rightly-ordered soul in your children.  Ideally it is the harmonious pursuit of harmony. Like all really good things it takes time and comes with time. I hope to convince you to take your time and take the time needed to educate your children through the entire span that you are their custodians, their parents, their primary educators, and perhaps most importantly, their models.

There will be times when it seems easiest to stop educating your children for formation and instead “school” them for something less. For no longer does “school” always mean “education.
Educatio and the Greek Paideia did not mean “schooling.” It did not mean “job training” or “vocational training.” These words mean formation of soul, character. Educatio from educere means to lead out, or unfold. Paideia (related to pais, paidos, the Greek for “child”) means the full, 360 degree education of the child involving the family, teacher, and entire polis.

There will be times when you will be tempted to “school” your children for such things as: sports (opportunity for your child to go pro), reputation, better grades, shorter commute, money—and your children’s wishes and request (which begin usually, if they are to begin, at about age 13 or 14.). In the U.S., we don’t permit people to vote until they are 18. This is not an insult to those 17 and younger. It is a recognition of what is universal—wisdom comes with age.

Providing a classical education to your children in grades K-6 is fairly easy. At least it is easy in comparison to giving this education in grades 7-12. Why?

The pedagogy and curriculum of the early grades is simply simpler. We focus on teaching reading and math, and we introduce children to the magic of reading and story, and all of the virtue and wisdom that great stories contain. We teach them grammar and Latin at a time when they find it naturally fitted to who they are as budding readers and writers. We teach using songs and chants, demonstrations, nature study, lots of repetition and forms of direct instruction. We teach them the rudiments, the foundational elements of things. Gifted teachers can easily learn how to do this.

The pedagogy and curriculum of the later years is more difficult for us who have not received a classical education ourselves—we have to essentially learn along with our children. It becomes more difficult to help our children with their mathematics, hard science courses, more advanced Latin, logic (how many of us have studied logic?), and rhetoric (who has studied rhetoric??). And what of the inquisitive study of great books like Plato’s Republic, Virgil’s Aeneid, Augustine’s Confessions, Shakespeare’s plays, or Dante’s (gulp) The Divine Comedy?

The pedagogy is more challenging because we need teachers—ideally—who have mastered the upper school curriculum and have it integrated within their minds and persons. We also teach in an interdisciplinary way and often Socraticly as well. The reality is, that for many of us, we will have to learn along with our students. This is how we slowly get the classical education we missed ourselves. Of course, most of us will not do this alone as the sole teacher of our children. We will collaborate with either other teachers in classical homeschool co-op or classical Christian school.

The only way most of us will have the power to stay the course through graduation will be if we travel in community with other kindred spirits. Don’t try this at home and alone.

Many parents quit, however, in the upper school years, and often at the first sign of the complaints and dissatisfaction by their children. But we should note that students will usually complain at one time or another in their teenage years about any form of education.

A chief reason students complain—and often rightfully complain—about classical education is simply that they are over-burdened. In our enthusiasm for teaching them much of the true, good, and beautiful, we try to teach them far too much of the true, good, and beautiful, far more than they can digest and understand, and we crush them with goodness. There is such a thing as too much of a good thing. Don’t crush children. One reason they don’t like school—any school--is that we ask them to study too many things at a time. Sadly this is sometimes the case at our classical schools and co-ops.

But let me return to the expected complaints of our teenage children and their requests for a new school:

• Would you have your teenagers choose their diet, what they will eat?

• Would you have your teenagers choose their schedule—when they should sleep and rise?

• Would you have them choose what to watch (and when) on Netflix, Youtube, or the Internet generally?

• Would you have them choose when and where….to drive?

• Would you have them choose their school and education? Why sure.

• Would you have them choose what books to read, what subjects to study?  Well…

• What teenager on his own would be able to choose Plato, Shakespeare, Augustine, or Dante? Some of us, because of our own poor education, are not even sure what we should choose to read!

Many American parents seem to assume that they have authority over their children until the time at which their children grow as tall as we, and push back and complain. Then we cave. After all they are big as we are.

It can be challenging at times to stay the course of a classical education in the upper school years. But it need not be truly and persistently painful. In fact, these are the years when the fruit begins to appear in larger quantities on the tree—often in 11^th and 12^th grade when students are completing their study of rhetoric and the mathematical studies, and are starting to show accumulating wisdom from reading and discussing many great books. It is a sad thing to see a family pull the cake out of the oven shortly before it begins to rise—often in 8^th or 9^th grade.

Fruit of a Classical School Survey

A classical education has historically shown and is showing substantial fruit in students. A few years ago the Association of Classical Christian Schools received the results of a substantial survey (The Good Soil Report) conducted by the sociology department at the University of Notre Dame. The results are astoundingly positive. The survey tracked and compared the results of students who graduated from public, private secular schools, Protestant schools, Catholic schools and classical Christian schools. They surveyed graduates from age 24 to 42 years of age. In virtually every category that matters classical students excelled: they had higher SAT scores, they were the most likely to trust the Bible as well as respect science, the most likely to care for the environment, the most likely to have LGBT friends while also being the least likely to support LGBT lifestyle. And here is the kicker: while 70-80% Christians abandon the church and the faith in their 20s (an unappreciated crisis ), classically-educated people retain their faith and commitment to the church at a rate of 80%.

Do you want your teenager to keep the Christian faith? You might not know much about classical Christian education at present—but please know that classically educated students keep the faith, when vast numbers of other Christian students do not.

Now, I love teenagers, and love teaching them, knowing them, and befriending them. But the world ought not to be run by teenagers, as inspiring as they are. There is an old Star Trek episode called the Grups—short for grown-ups—in which Kirk and Spock visit a planet in which everyone over the age of 18 has mysteriously died of disease. The planet was entirely run by teenagers who ruled over children. There were no grown-ups—Grups—in the world. It did not go too well for Kirk and Spock. Teenagers can inspire and lead us in various ways—and their opinions should be considered. But they are not yet mature, or grown-up and their capricious and changing wishes and desires should not determine their education.

Secondary and Primary Things

Now all of these things I have mentioned (sports reputation, better grades, shorter commute, money—and your children’s wishes) are legitimate concerns that must be wisely judged. There is nothing at all wrong with a student (or a parent) wanting a child to have the opportunity to play soccer well, or even at the highest level he is capable. There is nothing wrong with wanting your child to receive good grades, or for you to shorten your commute by choosing a nearby school or save money and manage your budget (perhaps by choosing a public school). Nor is it wrong for your children to express their wishes, desires, and opinions about their own education. But, are you convinced that an education is formation in virtue and of the highest value? If so, how do these other concerns compare with this highest concern? Can they truly be harmonized? I think they are the relation of the secondary things to the primary things—to what has been first things. For a harmonized, ordered life, we must keep first things first.

CS Lewis puts it this way: When we put the secondary things first, we not only lose the first things but we lose the second things as well.

In Proverbs 2, we find a tutor speaking to a student—a tutor of the best kind, a parent. In Proverbs 2 a father addresses his son. The advice he gives, is the high-level advice we all need in order to understand the overarching aim and goal of education: Wisdom

Wisdom is that supreme virtue that we no longer understand or can define. Wisdom is the great goal of a classical, liberal-liberating, education—but what is it? Wisdom is seeking after and coming to know the divine mind and the way all things are ordered by the divine mind. Christ is the “big W” Wisdom to which all “small W” wisdom leads. Hugh of St. Victor (in Paris) describes it this way:

Wisdom is the “Living mind, primordial mind, the first order and pattern of all things”

As we return to the source of the river, the fountainhead, we begin to understand God, ourselves, and creation. We begin to hear the celestial harmonies and “music of the spheres.”

This is how John Henry Newman put it when describes the results of a classical education:

That perfection of the Intellect which is the result of education, and its beau ideal, to be imparted in their respective measures, is the clear, calm, accurate vision and comprehension of all things, as far as the fine mind can embrace them, each in its place, and with its own characteristics upon it.

It is almost prophetic from its knowledge of history; it is almost heart-searching from its knowledge of human nature; it has almost supernatural charity from its freedom from littleness and prejudice; it has almost the repose of faith, because nothing can startle it; it has almost the beauty and harmony of heavenly contemplation, so intimate is it with the eternal order of things and the music of the spheres.

This is the end we seek, another way of saying WISDOM.

I have noted that we cannot allow children or teenagers to be the final arbiters of their education. And yet in Proverbs 2 we see that children and their yearnings are crucial to education. If students are not filled with studium—zeal and affection for truth, goodness, and beauty—then they are not truly students at all. The passage in Proverbs 2 makes it clear that students must themselves seek and find; we cannot seek and find for them.

My son, if you receive my words and treasure up my commandments with you, making your ear attentive to wisdom and inclining your heart to understanding; yes, if you call out for insight and raise your voice for understanding, if you seek it like silver and search for it as for hidden treasures, then you will understand the fear of the LORD and find the knowledge of God. For the LORD gives wisdom; from his mouth come knowledge and understanding. (Pr. 2:1-6)

Yes, we pray for our children to become wise. But do we call on them to call on God? Note the “if-then” construction of this passage as a hypothetical syllogism: IF you call out for insight, IF you raise your voice for understanding, IF you seek it like silver and search for it as hidden treasure, THEN you will understand and find…. It is not enough that we pray for our children; they must pray for themselves. If they won’t seek, they won’t find. So students ought not to choose the path of wisdom—their education—but they very much should cry out for it and seek it with all of their little hearts.

This is a profound educational insight: The insight is that students must seek insight; The wisdom is that students must seek wisdom to get it.

Reason and Intellect: Ratio and Intellectus

In the classical tradition, there are two main categories of mind and thus two ways we grow and are formed in wisdom. The medieval regarded our mind to consist of RATIO and INTELLECTUS. Ratio is the discursive, “running” part of our minds that collects, categorizes, and reasons logically. It is akin to scientific thinking. It is related to our word rational and rationality or reason.

Intellectus is that part of our mind that gazes, contemplates, and “thinks deeply.” The Latin word intellectus did not mean “high-IQ,” brainy, or of above-average intelligence. It referred to that capacity that very human has to penetrate and understand reality by contemplation. Contemplation itself comes from contemplare which means to gather in the temple—that place where (in the Roman, pagan context) the will of the gods was discerned. We see the word used in the way in the biblical tradition as in Ps. 27:

One thing have I desired of the LORD

To dwell in the temple of the LORD

To gaze upon the beauty of the LORD

All the days of my life.

The intellectual life in the classical tradition, therefore, may not be what you were thinking it was. The intellectual life is a life of seeing, gazing, and slowly coming to know the deep reality of things by a receptive, attentive engagement—or contemplation. What has happened to contemplative learning or the contemplative life generally? It has been largely swallowed up by what Josef Pieper calls the total world of work.

It is this kind of contemplative learning that is at the heart of loving the things that are lovely—the way that Augustine would define education—teaching children to love the things that are lovely. Children who learn to love the lovely, to order their loves wisely,--they tend to love such an education, such a school, are not very likely to complain and itch for something else.

The intellectual life can be compared to what we see of Mary, the sister or Martha, in Luke 10.. Jesus is visiting the home of Mary and Martha (sisters of Lazarus). Martha is busy working in the kitchen preparing or cleaning up after a meal. Mary is sitting with Jesus, rapt in conversation. Martha approaches not Mary but Jesus and says to him, “Tell my sister to help me!” Christ responds. “Martha, Martha you are busy about many things. Only one thing is necessary. Mary has chosen what is best and it won’t be taken from her.” There is much here about the nature of education, the lordship of Christ in education, about harmony in education, and about staying the course in education.

The Nature of Education

Christian education is led by Christ the Teacher. In fact, we can argue that all education is led by Christ whether one realizes it or not. To learn anything that is true or good is already to be in contact with him who is the source of all that is true, good, and beautiful—a topic for another time.

Jesus makes it clear that “one thing is necessary.” Thus there is a hierarchy in education—some things are more important than others, some things are absolutely necessary, some things are good and desirable, but not necessary. Let me return to your educational choices: playing on a high-level soccer team is good; it is not necessary. Saving some money is good but not the highest good when it comes to the formation of your child’s soul and character.

What is the best thing that is necessary? Hearing from Christ. Conversing with Christ. This leads us to his lordship.

The Lordship of Christ

Christ is sitting with Mary in conversation. The gospel passage describes Mary as sitting at Jesus’s feet, “listening to his teaching.” He leads, he speaks with authority, he is the Rabbi, the Teacher. Martha, listening to Jesus teaching, hearkens and takes us back to Proverbs 2. Is she not attentive to wisdom and inclining her heart to understanding?

Mary is seeking, she attending… to wisdom and this case to “big W” Wisdom. Proverbs 2 also goes on to read:

Then you will understand righteousness and justice and equity, every good path; for wisdom will come into your heart and knowledge will be pleasant to your soul. (Pr. 2:9-10)

Can anyone doubt that Mary sat at Jesus' feet listening to his teaching that wisdom was coming into her heart and that it was pleasant to her soul? Perhaps it was this very thing that irritated Martha. There is Mary, gazing, contemplating, filling up with pleasant wisdom, while she took care of all the dinner duties! And of course, yes, we have duties, even many duties in education (lesson plans, preparation, assessment, correcting papers, etc.), but is everything directed by Christ the Teacher such that we find ample time to “sit at his feet?” Will this happen or be supported well at the local public school?

Harmony in education

This passage also reminds us that education must be harmonized. It should be a harmony of active and contemplative learning. In the classical, Christian tradition, both Marth and Mary are regarded as saints. What Mary was doing—preparing and serving—was not bad, not bad at all. It was simply not the right thing to do at that time, it was not the best option or part. We all must serve and prepare—and we all should serve Christ! But there is also a time to sit contemplatively, passively, at Christ’s feet. This is true of all education. There is active learning and contemplative, restful learning. The problem: We are all actively learning, almost all of the time. We are Martha educators and have forgotten how to learn as Mary does.

It is clear that we need to be both Martha and Mary at various times. Maybe we should be Martha most of the time, perhaps 6 days a week. But one day we should rest, and learn restfully. Mary should remind us to employ a sabbatical pattern in education, and education that is at least 1/7 restful and contemplative—for this is the “best part” and it should not be taken from us.

So I think I can safely predict that like the rest of us, you are “busy about many things.” Like Martha, are you anxious about many things? It is good and right that you serve, that you are dutiful—this is what Augustine called active, benevolent love of neighbor. It is good and right to be busy and serve. But it is not best.

Staying the Course

If you are going to stay the course, you cannot be merely Martha, only Martha. You will tire and exhaust yourself. You will grow irritated. You will give in quickly when your teenager offers her first complaint and insists that she would be “oh so happy” at Smith High School where she could join the huge theater program, or girl’s soccer, or the swim team, or….

If you live only as Martha, you will not enjoy and be revivified by those refreshing times at Jesus' feet. To stay the course, you too, must restfully learn, read, contemplate, and enjoy conversation with others. You may need a mom’s group that meets once a month to discuss a great book in a lovely setting. You will need some scholé—the Greek word that means undistracted time to study the things most worthwhile, usually with good friends, usually in a lovely place and with a good drink.

Your inner Mary?

So may I ask you, where is your inner Mary? She left the dishes to listen to Christ the Teacher. She set aside the time to converse and contemplate.

David too, made time. Now David was a busy executive, a king. He knew that he could not possibly dwell in the temple of the Lord all the days of his life—but he wanted to. It is David who wrote most of the psalms that we have in the Book of Psalms. Imagine our President writing, poetry, psalms, or prayers. King David did. Can you?

Desire and Modeling

David had a strong desire to gaze upon the beauty of the Lord in his temple. Mary had such a compelling desire to be with Jesus that she broke the social norms of dinner preparation and serving (forgetting her sister for the moment) to be with Jesus. Imagine a server at a restaurant becoming so engrossed with the conversation at your table that she pulls up a chair, joins your discussion, and forgets about bringing you your coffee and dessert.

The 20^th century writer Simon Weil noted that all real study must be led by desire. The word desire comes from de and sederis, essentially meaning that which is born of the stars, for sederis means a constellation of stars. Desire, therefore is a version of “twinkle, twinkle, little star, how I wonder what you are.”

Here is how Simon Weil puts it:

Contrary to the usual belief, [will power] has practically no place in study. The intelligence can only be led by desire. For there to be desire, there must be pleasure and joy in the work. The intelligence only grows and bears fruit in joy. The joy of learning is as indispensable in study as breathing is in running. Where it is lacking there are no real students, but only poor caricatures of apprentices who, at the end of their apprenticeship, will not even have a trade.

It is the part played by joy in our studies that makes of them a preparation for spiritual life, for desire directed towards God is the only power capable of raising the soul. Or rather, it is God alone who comes down and possesses the soul, but desire alone draws God down. He only comes to those who ask him to come; and he cannot refuse to come to those who implore him long, often and ardently.

Now we are back, if you haven’t noticed, to Proverbs 2. Solomon says that we should call out loud for insight and raise our voice for understanding, and seek it like silver, and search for it as hidden treasure. Simon Weil says we should implore the Lord long, often, and ardently.

We can conclude then: we must lead our children as the principal educators modeling our own seeking and finding of wisdom, our own holy and ardent desire.

We must model for them the seeking after wisdom, for we never stop growing in wisdom do we? Our children must see us crying out and searching, seeking and finding wisdom. How can we ask them to call out for wisdom, when we don’t do it ourselves? We as teachers and parents, then, must continue to be students—full of studium.

A teacher is just a more mature student; a student is just an immature teacher.

If we wish our students to stay the course and complete a classical education—and be formed as Christians–we must stay the course and be ever-growing, ever-learning, ever-seeking and finding. We must be fully alive to our own ongoing love-affair with wisdom and Christ the Logos in whom all things consist and cohere—Christ the Power and Wisdom of God.