When homeschooling began to appear in the 1990s, families were usually keeping their children out of school for particular reasons: immunization, dress code issues, food allergies, and special needs — needs that were not always physical, but that the parents considered important. So the homeschool students of that time were often children who were rightly thought of as a little bit odd. They were kept out of school not because their parents intended to give them a superior education, not because their parents had loftier goals or some special ambition for their children’s studies, but because of issues they had to opt out of, and so they stayed out of school and studied at home.
Back then — even at the end of the 1990s and into the early 2000s — everybody went to school. It was simply expected, because all of the information was at school. All the books were in the libraries. The teachers were the ones who held the knowledge of the courses. SAT prep courses, test administrations, everything was done at the schools. It was considered almost necessary to go to school in order to get an education.
What changed around 2007
Where I think that began to change was around 2007 and 2008, because technology began to change and it directly affected education.
I can remember, as a teacher, moving away from the software we had been using. We ran programs on the intranet at our schools. There was a grading program where all the teachers entered their grades. There might be some curriculum mapping program in use, but it was hosted on the school server, at the school. That is how the software worked. All the classrooms were connected by cables back to the servers in the school computer rooms, which were staffed by IT personnel. That is how computers worked in schools in the early 2000s.
What changed things was the rapid development of wireless technology: cell phones, the iPhone, the iPad, and then Wi-Fi internet access, wireless routers, and so on. I can remember when the schools moved from cabled connections everywhere to wireless access, and what a radical idea it seemed, and how much it changed things. I remember being on campus as a graduate student and being able to go to the library with free access to university-quality wireless service. For those of us who lived through those years, the development was really amazing. We went from basic email and internet access at the college library in the 1990s to high-speed wireless access anywhere on campus. The technology developed so fast, and it was a fine thing to be part of that generation as I was getting into my teaching career.
Along with that came the hardware: the iPhone, the iPad, wireless laptops, and small machines like the netbook, which children could use to connect wirelessly for their studies. Technology was changing rapidly, and the traditional educational publishers were moving their content online.
What changed around 2007 and 2008 was that one now had access at home to almost everything that had been accessible in the schools. Information, educational materials, learning resources — these were no longer the exclusive property of the schools in our communities. All of that content became available at home.
The strange thing that happened next
I would say that is when homeschooling changed. All of a sudden, homeschooling went from a sort of little-house-on-the-prairie culture, where families used old books and printed materials and focused on old-fashioned things like cursive handwriting, to a situation where those same families had access to everything.
But something very strange happened. Remember that the majority of homeschooling families largely identify by a spirit of opposition, of withdrawal from modern society. They chose to oppose the technology. They chose to treat it as if it were a bad thing — and we see them doing the same today with the internet and with artificial intelligence. They argued that in order to learn you have to use printed books, that you have to use cursive handwriting, that all of these things are necessary for human development and learning. They had a whole homeschool philosophy of learning that kept them from embracing a technology that gave them an advantage — a technology that equalized the opportunities of homeschooling and schooling. They chose to reject it, and to become an even more bizarre, old-fashioned community that could no longer even explain why it was not achieving more than the modern schools. Their philosophy and principles actually hindered them from taking advantage of the opportunity that had opened.
Thankfully, not everyone took that approach. Many people, especially those who worked in education, could see the reality that so much was now available at home.
Where the Academy came from
I was one of those educators. I was looking at what we were doing in school, and this was around 2008. My oldest child was eight years old. My wife was talking about homeschooling, because we lived out in the country and there were hardly any schools where we lived.
I was averse to the idea, and I told my wife that the only way I would sign off on homeschooling was if we did something different. We were not going to become one of these homeschool families. We were not going to have that culture. We were not going to participate in that culture. We were going to give our children an excellent education. If we were going to teach the children at home, we were going to have to develop something ourselves — and that is where the Classical Liberal Arts Academy came from.
I developed it while I was still a private school teacher, because I was already using all of those online resources and tools in my own classroom, and I was thinking about how they could be used by mothers at home with their children. That is how the Academy developed.
But I made it very clear to my wife that we were not going to engage in what is understood as homeschool culture. If we were going to educate our children privately, I wanted us to break free from it and stay separate from it, because there is a great deal of negativity associated with it. I think the stereotype of the homeschooling family is, in most cases, accurate. It is a culture with a do-it-yourself attitude, and with something like an imaginary history of the world attached to it, in which homeschool publishers and advocates have invented a past where everyone used to be homeschooled in the old days, where they studied like this and did that, where this is how it was always done, this is how the saints studied, this is how the founding fathers studied. It is made-up fantasy. It is not true at all. I wanted nothing to do with that culture, nothing to do with that marketing, nothing to do with that whole industry.
So I told my wife that if we were going to educate our own children, we were simply going to educate our children and not play any games. We did not need homeschool co-ops. We did not have to go to play days and homeschool activities, or coordinate things with other families. There was no need for it. This is private study. We already study as a family. We already have an intellectual culture. We already have a social life. We already have community. We do not need the homeschool crowd to provide these things, because there are natural and real alternatives to that homeschool world — which is really an industry of its own — and those alternatives are more organic, more authentic, more real. That is where our time and attention should go.
So my wife and I have raised and educated all of our children at home, but we have never been homeschool parents. We have never managed things the way the homeschool community does. You can imagine, then, that when homeschooling families learn about the Classical Liberal Arts Academy and contact us, there is a wall of separation between us. We are moving in two different directions and communicating on two different frequencies. It is very difficult to make a connection with people who love that culture and identify with it, and we normally just tell them that this program is not going to be for them. It is very different.
So what I would like to do — and my wife asked me to talk about this, because she is the one who handles most of these conversations — is to explain what the alternative is. How can you educate your own children without participating in this artificial, modern, and somewhat odd homeschool culture? It is actually very simple, and, as I said, much more natural and real, because the counterfeits created in the homeschool community already exist in a natural and real form, and that is where our attention belongs.
The real community is the parish
Take community. There is no question that we need it. We do not want to isolate ourselves and become recluses. We want our children to meet other children, to take part in social activities, to serve the community.
But the natural community is the local parish. The parish is the normal community for our families. That is where most of our social activity should take place, and it should take place in a Catholic context, among people who share our faith and morals. That is the true community for the family. We do not need to create an artificial one.
And let me say plainly: much of the so-called homeschool culture that exists was invented by Protestants, who do need to invent their own community culture, because they have no real one. They have no parish. They are not part of a universal Church. For Catholic families, the parish is our local community, and we ought to be engaged in it as such — the hub where our religious and social activity takes place. That is what a parish is supposed to be, and you can see the wisdom of it: in union with every other Catholic parish and family, under the authority of the Pope and the bishops, in order and unity and peace with the Church throughout the whole world. That is true Catholic community. That is our life in the parish.
So we should start there. We should think of educating our children as members of an existing community, and integrate their education into the ordinary life of the parish. The Church observes the liturgical calendar; that should be our family calendar. The Church has activities all through the week, sacramental and social; we should take part in them, or help to develop the ones that are needed. We should focus our attention, our support and our activity on the local parish — either taking part in what already exists or helping to build what does not yet exist. That is the real community we sense a need for, and we need to contribute to it ourselves, not merely judge it and complain that it is not feeding us or serving us. We are part of the parish. We are supposed to be the ones helping to pay the bills and putting in the time and the energy to build things with other Catholic families, with our pastors, under the supervision of the bishop, within the order of the Catholic Church. That is our true community.
The homeschooling families I have seen succeed most are the families who have done exactly that. They are not the ones running around with all the artificial co-op activities. They are the ones integrated into the life of the parish, and that is the culture in which their educational work with their children takes place.
The wider community, and what it already provides
That is the first thing: there is a natural community, both religious and social, for the family to live and work in, and it is the parish.
Then, as the circle broadens, we have our local community — local government, local businesses, local activities. We have dance schools, music schools, sports. We have all of these resources and social opportunities close at hand. We do not need schools for social activity. All this talk about the need to send children to school because they need socializing is simply not true, especially in 2026. Our children do not need to enroll in a local school in order to play sports, learn music, dance, sing, or take part in whatever activities they like. Those things are available locally and privately. There is no need to enroll your children in a school so that they can take part in some social or extracurricular activity.
So as we think it through: we already have community. We have all kinds of social and extracurricular activity available locally. We have our own family life. We have extended family to consider. We already have everything we need in a real and natural environment.
What that leaves us with
What that leaves us with, as a family, is the actual content of education itself.
So when we come to the question of educating our children, we ought to be at the point of asking: what should the children study? That should be the focus. And as I say it, I feel as though my head will explode — because why are we not focused on what the children should study? That is what the focus should be. But for most families, in the name of education, the talk is of social activities, extracurricular activities, making friends, building some artificial community. None of that has anything to do with education. We have allowed all of it to be thrown in and to distract us from the essential question, which is what we should be teaching our children. What is the content of a real Catholic education?
And we need to make sure we have what is needed to pursue it: the time, the financial resources, the experience to make sufficient progress. Otherwise we are wasting our time, running around like chickens with their heads cut off, doing a thousand things and making no actual progress in any direction, simply being busy. That is a common mentality in modern education — the notion that having a great deal on the transcript, a great deal on the resume, all kinds of activities, is somehow a virtue. There is nothing virtuous about being dissipated and busy in every direction. We need to be strategic. We need priorities. And we need to make sure that the things which are the true priorities are the things that actually get done in the education of our children.
So I do not want to talk about community or social activity any further than that, because there are natural and real opportunities for those things which have nothing to do with education.
When parents contact us, they usually begin with questions like these: Are there other families in our area who study in the Academy? Are there online classes? Are there ways for the children to make friends? And my response is: you need to get a life. Education is not about making friends, or finding things to do, or having social activities. Education needs to be about learning and study. It is not a source of artificial social life and relationships. You should already have relationships. You should already have social activities. You should already have things to do — and you should come to an educational program ready to talk about education: courses, subjects, lessons.
The modern schools have lumped all of these things together because it is how they sell their product. I worked at an expensive private school, and, as I have said, the curriculum was nothing to be impressed by. It was a normal public school curriculum with some odds and ends added in. But the school presented itself as the source of everything the children needed: social activities, sports, friends, on and on. That became the package you received for the cost of tuition. We have to be able to look at the schools and say: we are not here for social life. We do not need friends. We do not need you to provide us with social activity. We are looking for education.
This is the same mistake many modern parishes make. They try to be everything except the center of religious and community life for Catholic families. Our parish one year was collecting toys to donate to the county welfare service. That is not the mission of the Catholic Church. We need to stop reaching for these artificial, unnecessary functions and simply be what we are. Let the parish be a place where families come together to worship God, to pray, to live the sacramental life, and to share in our common Catholic life. That is what we see in the Acts of the Apostles. Look at chapter two or chapter four and you see the Catholic community: devoted to the apostles’ teaching, to prayer and to the breaking of bread, sharing with one another and helping one another. Not trying to become a political organization. Not trying to end world poverty. A community that takes care of its own. That is the purpose of the local parish.
So we should seek these things in the parish, and not from the marketing department of the local private school or the homeschool program, which is trying to sell all sorts of fringe benefits because its core product is of low quality and would not be attractive on its own.
In the Classical Liberal Arts Academy we do the opposite. If you are looking for a real classical Catholic education, that is what we offer. If you are looking for study materials, that is what we offer. If you are looking for assessments, records, reports and support in your studies, that is what we offer. If you are looking for friends, we have no interest in turning this into a children’s club. We are here for education. You need to find those other things in your local community, where they exist naturally.
“Come, follow me”
So what I would recommend to families who want to break away from the artificial homeschool culture is, first, what I have already described: invest in and integrate your family into the real sources of community and social life that already exist. And second, create an environment in your family and in your home where real classical Catholic study becomes the culture, becomes the norm.
And here is what I want you to realize: if mother and father do not commit to this culture, then trying to force it on the children is simply hypocrisy, and it will not work.
Classical Catholic education is not for the children. It is for Catholics. Real learning is for all Catholics. It is not for children in grades K through 12. That is the modern idea of education — that parents and adults do whatever they like, while the children have to go to school and study. It is like watching television and saying, “This is an adult show. The children cannot watch it, because it has foul language and immodesty.” That is crazy hypocrisy.
In the Classical Liberal Arts Academy there is no separation between adult culture and the culture of children. When Jesus came into the world, his message to his disciples was: come, follow me. He himself was living a life of obedience to God, and his message to his students was simply, do what I do, join me, live the life I am living. Come and follow me.
That is what this life should look like. That is what educating our children should look like. That is what our family and our home should look like. The children should look at their mother and father and see people doing what they are supposed to do. They should not need a mother reading books and using all sorts of gimmicks and gadgets to assemble a program that tells the children to do what she does not demonstrate or model herself.
So you have this whole artificial homeschool culture with its separation of adults and children, and it is all fake. In the Classical Liberal Arts Academy, adults need to study. We need to seek wisdom. We need to study theology. We need to study philosophy. We need to learn the classical liberal arts. We need to study the humanities. And we need to teach our children to join us in those studies.
And they have great advantages. We can say to them: I did not learn about this until I was thirty years old. I did not have this opportunity as a schoolchild. I was sent to a modern school, and we learned none of this. I did not come to know these resources or these opportunities until I was an adult, and now I am making use of them. And I am excited for you, my children, because you have the opportunity to begin at five years old where I began at thirty. You can soak in this learning and make progress through these studies just as the saints and wise men did through history. You have a privileged opportunity, and I am going to do everything I can to lead the way as we work through it together.
So the key is not in creating an artificial, goofy homeschool culture, where the mother pretends to be a kindergarten teacher and sets up a school at home, imitating public school teachers with all their manipulatives and their decorating, as though the house were some kind of school circus classroom. The mother should be modeling the Catholic life as a woman seeking wisdom. If you want a model to follow, look at the saints. Look at Teresa of Avila. Look at Catherine of Siena. Look at the great saints who lived and pursued a life of contemplation, study, prayer, and service to the community and the Church. Imitate the saints. Do not imitate some goofy image of a clownish schoolteacher dancing around with school supplies. That is not real education. That is the problem of modern schooling. Do not bring it home. Give your children access to real Catholic intellectual culture.
The integrated Catholic life
So that is the challenge for parents: to make these studies their own, and then to share those studies with their children, recognizing that the children have opportunities the parents almost certainly did not have. That should be the message. Not, “You go do this while I watch the football game.” Not, “You study this while I watch my show or scroll on my phone.” It should be: we are going to study Aesop’s fables. I am reading them myself. This fable is so interesting. I am going to use these fables when I teach the children through the week. And then, when the children study them, they are already familiar with them, because they know that Mother talks about these fables and Father talks about these fables. It becomes the intellectual culture of the family, and the parents pursue it and lead in it, because they should be seeking to be wise. And their message to their children is: do what we do. Come, follow us.
The Classical Liberal Arts Academy is designed to be that kind of program. Everyone is welcome to study, and you are welcome to study throughout your entire life, and your children should join you in those studies. The parents whose children succeed most are the parents who do this. I have fathers submitting assignments to me for grading, and I see their children doing excellent work in their own courses. I see mothers taking courses, taking quizzes, submitting assignments — and their children thriving, because they have a tutor living with them who knows exactly what is in their lessons and what they need to do, and they have a partner in their studies.
That is how real classical Catholic private learning works. It is not the hypocritical, silly modern culture of adults versus students. It is an integrated, authentic, organic culture in which people who are living the Catholic life are apprenticing their children in that life and in all its aspects: the sacramental life, worship, prayer, study, personal life, virtue. The parents are simply leading their children in all the duties of the Catholic life.
That is why we need to separate ourselves from the artificial homeschool culture — which takes the public schools for its guide, and lets the bar and the rule be set by secular influences that have nothing to do with Catholic life. We need to make that authentic Catholic apprenticeship the model for the education of our children and for our family lives.
And you can see how challenging that is. A man says: I go to work, I come home, it is six o’clock, I am tired. I would like to crack open a beer, put the game on, sit there for four hours, go to bed, and get up and go back to work. Well, you have to think about the effect of that life on your children. Most of us grew up in families where our parents did not study at all. Our parents lived a creature-comfort life, pursuing their own pleasures, always talking about days off, about vacation, about retirement — while yelling at us about the need to study and work and sacrifice. We saw through it, and our children will see through it too.
We want to give them a different message. We want to show them a different life. Yes, the father goes to work and puts in his nine to five, and perhaps longer hours, but that is to pay the bills; it is not the fulfillment of all his duties. There is far more that needs to be done. As a Catholic man, his work, his occupation and his daily activities should be integrated into a complete Catholic life. He should be working on his taxes and speaking about the need to render to Caesar what is Caesar’s, because Christians are just, and follow the law, and pay their taxes. He should be running his business in a way that practices the golden rule, and he can speak about that with his children. They can hear the stories: this client needed such a thing, and Father did this because he wanted to practice the golden rule and do good to his customers — and that is why his customers support his business, because he is honest and hardworking and generous.
The Christian life can and should be manifested in our work. It should not be a set of separate departments, where the father goes to work and no one has any idea what he does, and it seems to have nothing to do with his Catholic life, and there are no principles connecting what he does during the work week with what he does at home, or what he tells the children to do, or what he does when he goes to church. That is not a Catholic life, and you can see how the opportunity to disciple our children and apprentice them in virtue is lost, because we are living a modern, disconnected life rather than an integrated one.
The same is true for the mother. She wants to raise devout young men and devout young women, and yet she can be running around like Martha — busy, but neglecting the one thing necessary. So as we look at a mother and father and the life they are living, with all their busyness and running about, the question our Lord asks comes into view: what will it profit you to gain the whole world and lose your own soul?
What is the life you are living actually teaching your children? If we get that right, and build our life from the core outward — from the one thing necessary out to all the concentric circles of activity — then our children will look at our lives and see the Catholic life on full display, and everything will make sense. Why do we need to study? Why do we need to learn theology? Why do we need moral philosophy, logic, rhetoric? They should see very clearly, in the lives of their mothers and fathers, why these studies are necessary and why their parents pursue them.
That is the Catholic life. That is how Catholic education works. So we need to create that environment of learning, not the fake homeschool culture. It is not something you buy out of a catalog. You do not need more supplies. You do not need different books. What is needed is a real, authentic Catholic life in the family. When that family life is in place, classical Catholic education will make sense to your children.
A word of testimony
Let me say something quickly by way of personal testimony. I am the only Catholic in my family. My wife is the only Catholic in hers. On both sides, we have no Catholics around us.
So when our oldest children were being raised, they looked at my wife and me as though we were crazy people. No one around us lived the way we lived. They saw their grandparents retired, sitting around watching television, traveling, going on cruises — and then they looked at us living a completely different life, and they naturally thought that their grandparents’ way of life was more desirable. We had to work very hard to teach our older children and to explain the difference: why we were living this way, why we were not doing this or that. It was very difficult to communicate, because to them we were the strange ones and modern culture was the way everyone else lived.
But as our older children became adults, they began to see how the things we did as a family gave them advantages. As they moved into college and career decisions, they began to see the benefits of the life we lived, and the complaining and pushing back stopped. It began to make sense to them. They came to realize that the things they had thought were stupid or annoying were actually benefits they had received, which they could not understand until they were adults.
Our younger children grew up in the opposite situation. They grew up knowing that their older brothers and sisters were educated at home, studied in the Classical Liberal Arts Academy, went to the gym, served at the altar. What was strange to the older children was simply normal to the younger ones — and they watched their older siblings grow up, move away and establish successful adult lives. So our younger children have the opposite attitude. They do not question any of it. They consider all of it normal, because the culture was established. My wife and I are doing today what we were doing twenty years ago, and all our children see that. Even our adult children, now in their mid-twenties, getting married, moving into careers and professions and having all sorts of success — they look back at the life we live and understand more of it every day, because we established a family culture, allowed that culture to do most of the talking, and were patient enough to let it have its effect and let the results speak for themselves.
We have had ten children. Our younger ones are growing up in a culture where they do not think twice about studying at home, or going to the gym, or going to the parish in the middle of the week. To them that is normal life, and they know it will help them as adults, because they have seen and heard from their older brothers and sisters the results of the education and the culture they received.
So that needs to be the focus of this life: developing that culture. Mother and father seeking to be perfect as Catholics, seeking to model the Catholic life, seeking to imitate the saints, seeking their own salvation, seeking to fulfill the duties of Catholic parents. If they will focus on being faithful Catholic adults, most of the problems of educating children will take care of themselves.
Saint Catherine of Siena said that if you simply are what you are supposed to be, you will set the world on fire. That is what I tell my wife all the time. Just focus on being a faithful Catholic, and that will take care of most of the problems. It may not take care of them immediately — everyone has his own opinion, his own reaction, his own free will — but they will also have the testimony of experience. If you live the Catholic life faithfully over time, everyone will learn and see that what the Catholic faith teaches is true, and that what it advises is right, and that if they had listened and obeyed and trusted, they would have been better off. And when we learn that lesson, it is what makes us more and more faithful. We learn to trust and no longer to doubt; no longer to lean on our own understanding; no longer to think we know better; no longer to look outside the Church and imitate outsiders. We learn more and more to trust the Church, to listen to her and to follow her. That is the mark of true Catholic culture.
So that is what we need to focus on as parents, and it gives us enough to be concerned about.
The content of the curriculum
Now, as for the content of the curriculum, I want to say something about this, because it is important.
Almost all of us grew up receiving a modern K-12 education influenced almost entirely by the public school system — and by the public school system I mean the system of government-directed, government-funded, compulsory education. Most of us were in public schools; and even those in private schools received an education that comes out of that system. Even those who were homeschooled were likely taught at home under its influence.
What that system consists of is a division of the years of our studies from kindergarten through the twelfth grade, with a set of artificial minimum requirements — minimums set by compulsory education laws. And our society has gone so far as to think that those minimum legal requirements are actually the bar for educational achievement. Over time we have confused minimum legal requirements — in other words, the state saying, “If your children do not learn this, you are breaking the law; you are neglecting your children” — with the goal of education itself.
So in the modern homeschool community you will hear people say, “We get all our homeschool work done in just two hours.” What does that even mean? These homeschool parents — and I am speaking of Christian people — have taken the state minimum requirements and deluded themselves into thinking that these are the standards of Christian education. They complete the first grade reading lesson for the day and say, “We are done with our studies. It only took fifteen minutes. Look how smart we are. Look how easy education is. Look how great homeschooling is.”
You can see how crazy that is. The minimum legal requirements of compulsory state education are spoken of by Christian parents and schools today as though they were the marks of Christian education. And it is common. Homeschool programs literally sell boxes of books — cheesy workbooks — telling families that if they go through them and complete them, they will satisfy all the requirements for their children’s grade level. Yes: the minimum legal requirements.
And Catholic families, with saints in our history like Augustine and Catherine of Siena and Teresa of Avila and Thomas Aquinas, have accepted this as the standard for Catholic education. We are actually saying, “We start our homeschool day at ten in the morning and we are finished by noon. We have finished our studies, and now we are free for the day.” This is the homeschool culture we need to have nothing to do with.
The first question most parents ask when they contact us is, “What does a normal day look like for students in the Academy? How many hours a day does it take to get everything done?” They have completely lost any sense of the history and standards of Catholic learning, largely through ignorance. I am aware of that — but it is a willful and inexcusable ignorance. There is no way anyone can think that Thomas Aquinas or Augustine or Teresa of Avila would advise them to study for two hours and then call it a day. We can look back into history. We all have phones. We can all search. What was school like in the Middle Ages? What was school like in ancient Athens? What was school like in the Jesuit schools of the 1800s? There is no excuse for Catholics not knowing this, and, as I have said, it is all explained in Understanding Classical Catholic Education. But the questions families ask reveal the brainwashing that has taken place, and for us, step one is simply introducing Catholic families to the history and standards of Catholic education, because it has all been lost. Even the awareness of the standards has been lost.
So once we understand the culture that is needed, and once we can separate ourselves from this homeschool culture — which is really just public school intellectual culture brought into the home — and understand what authentic Catholic culture for our families ought to look like, then we can turn to the content of that education. And there we have the classical liberal arts curriculum. We have classical philosophy. We have scholastic theology. We have the classical humanities. We also have the modern secular school standards, which do have to be satisfied — but in the most efficient way possible, because we have more noble things to pursue. Getting through grade-level language arts or mathematics or science needs to be done efficiently, because we have real studies to get to. Checking the boxes of the minimum state requirements is not the goal of Catholic education. That is only getting started. We have to do that so that we can then get to work and begin our studies in real Catholic learning.
Fortunately, all of this is arranged and provided for in the Classical Liberal Arts Academy.
Parents first
We encourage parents to begin studying themselves. When new families contact us and ask where they should begin, they expect us to say, “You should get your children signed up for this.” No. We say that the first thing you should do is sign yourself up for a course and begin studying. Then you will see how everything works. You will see what the children need to do and what they need to study, and you will even work out how to succeed in the course. Then you can tell your children from experience what they need to do, and you can be an excellent tutor for them. So we advise parents to begin first, and then bring the children along, and make it the intellectual culture of the family.
This is not a strange or crazy idea. Let me give an example from my own life. In the life of a lay Dominican — and I am speaking of the laity, not of friars or priests — the four pillars are prayer, study, preaching and community. Study is what Catholic adults are supposed to be doing. If you are concerned about the education of your children, if you think education is important — and everyone loves to say how important they think education is — then you should be studying.
As a lay Dominican, I am used to sitting with Catholic adults who spend their lives studying. I see men and women doing it, I know what it looks like, and I know it is normal for adults to do it. I am talking about busy, accomplished professionals who have been to fine colleges and universities, who have had military and professional careers, who are still active in their professions — and yet in the time they have, when they are not at work, they are studying the Scriptures, the teaching of the Church, the writings of Saint Thomas, our formation materials. They are praying the Divine Office. They are praying the Rosary. They are living an integrated, complete Catholic life. That is an ideal that any of us concerned with educating Catholic children ought to have in view. The way to raise children who study is to study ourselves, and to lead by example.
Avoid the causes
Having said all of that, I think it is clear what is needed, and why I believe it is important to separate ourselves from a homeschool culture that is really just a public school mentality brought home. We have to embrace higher standards than the public or private schools, and there is no better way to do it than by the commitment of the whole family — integrated into the local community, integrated into the local parish, integrated into the fullness of the Catholic faith.
If you can hold that vision of life in view, and your place in it, and your children being raised in it, you can see how many of the problems of modern society simply disappear, because their causes have been eliminated. If we eliminate the causes, which is relatively easy, we avoid the effects, which are very difficult to escape.
The right way to build Catholic culture, academic culture, family culture, is to avoid the causes of the trouble, and by avoiding the causes, to eliminate their effects. What we see most Catholic families do is immerse themselves in everything modern society does — all the causes of the trouble — and then spend their time talking and complaining about how to deal with the effects. That is foolishness. The right approach to family life, and to Catholic life, whether spiritual, intellectual or professional, is to avoid the causes of evil, and by avoiding the causes, to avoid the effects. It is much easier. An ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure. It is much easier to avoid the cause than to try to escape the effect.
That should be the principle in home education, and it should direct the family culture. We are not looking for artificial homeschool community, because we have a real community that deserves our focus. We are not looking for artificial social activities, when we have real relationships and responsibilities, which are the true social activities. We are not looking for friends, because we already have relationships within the family, and true friendships will develop within the context of a faithful Catholic life. That is what I always tell my children: focus on doing what is right, focus on living your own life responsibly, and you will meet people on that path who will become real friends, and possibly even spouses. That is how our children should be raised. We should not be looking to artificial, external sources for these things, which are counterfeits of what we truly need.
So I would encourage families to distance themselves from what is known as homeschool culture. There is really nothing in it for Catholic families. That is why it is not encouraged or promoted in most places by bishops and priests. They do not promote it because they do not see it as representing true Catholic culture; and if you were to draw out their reasons, they would name these same concerns. It is not oriented toward the parish. It is not really oriented toward Catholic faith and morals. It is not focused on our true social responsibilities and relationships. It is a kind of artificial parachurch organization that does not address the real needs.
So I would advise families to separate themselves from homeschool culture and to think of this entirely differently — to think of it as simply pursuing a complete, authentic Catholic life from the top down in the family. No compartments. No separation of worldly activities from Christian ones. Everything united, everything aligned, everything focused. If a mother and father can live that life — and they should — you will find that teaching your children to live it is very easy, because you simply say to them: come and follow me. Do what I do. Do what you see your mother doing. Do what you see your father doing.
I should not say easy. It is very simple. It is very difficult to live; it requires a sacrificial and disciplined life. But it is very simple to understand. And if we are serious about the undertaking of raising our children, of fulfilling our duties as Catholic parents, of educating our children according to the counsel and example of the wise men and saints of history, there is no alternative. We need to take up this cross, accept the challenge, and work together to live it. The Classical Liberal Arts Academy can serve one part of that life: the academic content and the academic services your family will need in order to pursue these studies.
I hope that helps to clarify what we are thinking about in the Academy, and what we expect families to be doing outside of the Academy — and why, if you are coming to us from a modern school or from the homeschool community, you are going to feel that things do not line up. They do not. We want you to understand why, and we want to challenge you to build this kind of life. Especially those of you who do not yet have children, or whose children are still young: you have a great opportunity to build on a real foundation and to give your children something hardly any children have access to today, which is an authentic Catholic family life together with a true classical Catholic education.
So let us break free from homeschool culture and establish an authentic and complete Catholic culture, with real classical Catholic studies.
I hope that is helpful. God bless.
Mr. William C. Michael, OP
Classical Liberal Arts Academy
