why does education matter?
What is your most important task as parents?
For most Christian parents, the answer to this question is really clear. To help our children get to heaven. To desire heaven. It is the job of Holy Mother Church to get us to heaven, and it is the task of parents to bring salvation into family life.
If formation in the faith is our primary goal, why does education matter? An academic education. Forming our children spiritually and morally takes a fair bit of time and energy, both of which are seriously limited commodities! So why is so much of their day, and ours, spent on an academic education?
Why don’t we spend all of our time on the spiritual and moral formation?
Why do we bother with academics.
I think it’s a point worth pondering, for sure. In my own pondering, I have come to believe that academics is a path to holiness, just like any of us have a way we have to spend our day, mothers and fathers, lawyers, waiters, athletes, teacher, bakers…case in point…a student, must find holiness in that which is before them.
But I don’t think that path is the main reason we educate our children.
We want them to have a good job, to be able to support a family, to be a functional member of society. Good reasons to educate, but still not the main reason. I think these things are, to some degree, the by product of a good education, the accidents, if you will.
We are raising witnesses. We are raising children to be leaven in the world and the salt of the earth. Pope Paul VI wrote an Apostolic Exhortation named “Evangelii Nuntiandi”
(Evangelization in the Modern World). In this document, he says:
“Evangelizing all people is a task and mission which the vast and profound changes of present day society make all the more urgent.”
“Evangelizing is, in fact, the grace and vocation proper to the Church, Her deepest identity. She exists in order to evangelize.”
Her deepest identity. She exists in order to evangelize.
WE are the Church!
Therefore WE exist in order to evangelize!
And the family, being the primary cell of society, must have a very special role in evangelization.
Pope John Paul II calls us to a new evangelization. He said that our witness will require a new ardour. Ardour is defined as a warmth of feeling, a fervour or passion, an intense devotion. But, Latin in origin, from the word “ardere” it means…to burn. To burn with passion, to carry that into the world and share it with others is our mission. Including our children…they will absorb this from us.
The broader base of knowledge we have, or more to the point, the desire to learn and know will ultimately make us better evangelists. Better witnesses. An understanding of the world affords us a better reference point to engage the culture.
What is a good education? One could probably define a good academic education as a “a broad understanding of many things.” According to the Greek and Roman traditions, the liberal arts were considered the knowledge of a set of subjects or skills with the aim of forming people to be virtuous, knowledgable and articulate. As Christian families, we need to add to that goal of education. To form children who are virtuous, knowledgable, articulate AND who will share his or her deep faith with the world.
For the classical education, Liberal Arts (liberal meaning the freeing of the mind through knowledge) is divided into formal stages of formation and development. But I think as parents, the thinking skills can be pursued in a natural and simple manner just by the way we interact with our children.
One of the reasons that homeschooled kids are often performing well at the post secondary level of schooling is simply because in an environment of love, parents spend time discussing important things with them. We follow our heart to prepare them for the world, and end up by giving them a good education.
Knowledge is important, but not on its own, it is the key to witnessing. What we have, including what is in our brains (or our children’s brains) needs to be used for the purpose of sharing our faith, where ever our life takes us. The deeper we go into knowledge and understanding of any given subject, the greater our appreciation of the beauty of it. Beauty is a reflection of God and brings us into deeper understanding of Him.
The closer we live to God, the better witnesses we become.
A real education involves a lot of questions. From the time children are very small, they bombard us with questions, why why why why why why why why??!!
Why, indeed. Because they need to know. Because we are the conduit to the answers. If we don’t stop to answer their myriad questions, at any age…they will stop asking. Answer them with joy and excitement. Know that wanting to know why the sky is blue, will one day be the questions that lead them into a sharp mind that answers someone else’s questions…maybe an opportunity to evangelize. Maybe about what they can do to make a difference in the world.
If we stop answering their questions, we don’t have time, we don’t know the answer, we stall, we brush them off…they will stop asking. Even if we have to answer with a “let’s find out together” they will learn how to answer their own questions eventually through example.
Give them passion and fill their minds with good things. Your car can’t run on Tang, and neither can their brains. Own a set of encyclopedias. When your children want to know things, about the natural world, about other countries, about other cultures, about how the world works…find these things out with them. A great resource for questions about the faith is of course the Catechism, but Father John Hardon’s Pocket Catholic Dictionary will provide the “short, go to answer” for some immediate information. Show them how to learn and where to learn.
Teach them how to communicate well. There are basically two modes of verbal communication, writing and speaking. Both required a little skill. A lot of passion, and a little skill. The skills can be easily learned in many ways. Naturally some people will take those skills further, or will have a natural propensity towards them. But anyone can learn to write or speak with some level of efficacy or eloquence. The passion, however, is what will draw in the audience, the ardour is what will make great witness, and these things will come from parents.
Ardour is compelling, passion is persuasive, and these things are “caught” not taught.
I think an analogy could be made with knowledge and witness to faith and works.
We must use what we have been given. Knowledge is to be fostered, in love, in the family, like faith. Witness is the works made fuller by knowledge.
Through the grace of the sacrament of marriage, we can do all this and more. Pray for you marriages, pray for the grace that the Father promised you in the covenant He made with spouses in the sacrament. We can do all this. And more.
We can lay the foundation for our children to get to heaven. It is our vocation.
