What Kind of Person Are We Trying to Raise?

Before we decide what our children should learn, we should ask what kind of people we hope they will become.

It is easy to begin a homeschool year with a list.

Reading. Mathematics. History. Science. Writing. Latin. Art. Music. Religion. Perhaps a foreign language, nature study, poetry memorization, or some combination of all of the above. We choose books, arrange shelves, make schedules, and try to determine how much we can reasonably accomplish between breakfast and lunch.

These are worthwhile questions. Our children need an education, and education requires intentionality. We have limited time, and we have responsibilities to meet. We cannot simply hope that everything important will somehow happen.

But there is another question that can become surprisingly easy to lose beneath the practical ones.

What kind of person are we trying to raise?

It is a simple question, but it changes the way we look at nearly everything else.

The Child Is More Than a Student

Modern education often encourages us to think about children primarily as students. We talk about grade levels, academic strengths, reading levels, test scores, achievements, and future careers. Even when we reject the pressures of conventional schooling, it is remarkably easy to carry those assumptions into our homeschools.

We ask whether our child is ahead.

We wonder whether she is doing enough.

We compare his reading level with another child's.

We worry about whether the curriculum is rigorous enough or whether we are covering every subject we are supposed to cover.

None of these concerns is inherently wrong. Academic competence matters. Children deserve to be taught well, and we should not use lofty language about "the whole child" as an excuse for educational neglect.

But a child is not merely a student who will eventually become a worker.

He is a person already.

He has a particular temperament, particular strengths and weaknesses, particular responsibilities and relationships, particular gifts, and a particular vocation that we cannot yet fully see.

Our task is not to manufacture a particular outcome.

It is to help this particular person grow toward the good.

What Do We Want Our Children to Love?

One of the most revealing questions we can ask about education is not simply what we want our children to know, but what we want them to love.

We want them to love truth enough to pursue it even when it is inconvenient.

We want them to love goodness enough to choose it when no one is watching.

We want them to recognize beauty and allow it to enlarge their understanding of the world.

We want them to love other people enough to practice patience, generosity, forgiveness, and courage.

And for a Catholic family, we ultimately want our children to know and love God.

This does not mean that every lesson needs to become a religious lesson. A child can encounter truth through mathematics, beauty through music, courage through literature, wonder through science, and responsibility through ordinary household work. The world itself is full of opportunities to encounter what is true, good, and beautiful.

But our understanding of education changes when we believe that these things are not merely abstract qualities. They are ordered toward a life.

Education should help a person become capable of recognizing and responding to what is worthy of love.

Knowledge Still Matters

It is worth saying this plainly because discussions about character and virtue can sometimes become an excuse to neglect knowledge.

We should want our children to know things.

We should want them to read deeply and accurately, write clearly, understand mathematics, study history, encounter scientific ideas, appreciate art and music, and develop the intellectual tools necessary to participate meaningfully in the world around them.

A child cannot think deeply about history without knowing something about history.

She cannot reason well about science without learning science.

He cannot appreciate great literature without encountering great literature.

Knowledge gives the mind something to work with.

The question is not whether knowledge matters.

The question is what knowledge is for.

If education ends with information, we have stopped too soon.

We want our children to know enough about the world that they can begin to understand it, question it, appreciate it, and act within it wisely.

We Are Teaching Habits, Too

Much of formation happens through repetition.

A child learns to put away her belongings because she is expected to do it every day. He learns to finish a difficult task because we do not immediately rescue him from frustration. She learns to listen because the people around her listen to her. He learns to apologize because his parents apologize when they are wrong.

These habits may not appear on a report card, but they shape the person.

This is one reason the ordinary work of a homeschool matters so much. The way we respond when lessons go badly teaches something. The way we speak to one another during breakfast teaches something. The way we handle disagreement teaches something. The way we treat books, food, work, beauty, money, neighbors, and strangers teaches something.

Our children are always learning what we believe matters.

Sometimes they learn it from what we say.

More often, they learn it from what we repeatedly do.

Character Cannot Be Added at the End

It is tempting to think of academics as the real work of education and character as something that will be addressed along the way.

But character is being formed whether we intentionally attend to it or not.

A child who is constantly rescued from every difficulty is learning something about perseverance.

A child who is praised only for achievement is learning something about what makes him valuable.

A child who watches adults respond to mistakes with anger is learning something about failure.

A child who watches adults apologize and begin again is learning something else.

This does not mean parents have to model perfection. We cannot.

In fact, our failures can become some of the most meaningful moments of formation when our children see us acknowledge them honestly. A mother who says, "I was wrong. I spoke harshly, and I am sorry," is teaching something that no worksheet can teach.

The education of a child happens partly through instruction and partly through imitation.

That should make us humble.

The Home Is Part of the Curriculum

This is one of the reasons homeschooling is about more than bringing academic lessons into the house.

The home itself becomes part of the educational environment.

A child learns what a family considers worth talking about. She learns whether books are companions or obligations. She learns whether meals are merely fuel or occasions for gratitude and conversation. She learns whether work is something to avoid or something that contributes to the good of the household.

She learns whether beauty matters.

She learns whether prayer belongs only to certain moments or is woven into the life of the family.

She learns whether other people are interruptions or gifts.

None of this requires a special curriculum.

It requires a culture.

And culture is built slowly, through thousands of ordinary choices.

We Cannot Plan the Whole Person

There is a danger in taking this idea too far.

Once we begin thinking seriously about formation, it can become tempting to design our children's lives so carefully that nothing is left to chance. We can begin treating every book, activity, conversation, friendship, and experience as another opportunity to produce the person we want.

But our children are not projects.

They are not blank slates onto which we can write our preferred personalities.

They are persons with their own freedom, gifts, limitations, and mysteries. We have enormous influence over them, but we do not control them. We can provide an environment, teach, model, encourage, correct, pray, and love.

We cannot guarantee the outcome.

That is particularly important for Christian parents.

We are called to be faithful, not omnipotent.

There is a certain freedom in recognizing that.

What Will Matter at Eighteen?

Imagine your child at eighteen.

Not his transcript. Not her test scores. Not the number of extracurricular activities completed.

Imagine the person.

Can he carry responsibility without needing someone to manage every detail of his life? Can she recognize when something is true even when it is unpopular? Can he work diligently without needing constant praise? Can she admit that she is wrong? Can he treat another person with dignity when there is nothing to gain from doing so?

Does she know how to read deeply enough to encounter an unfamiliar idea without immediately dismissing it? Can he disagree without despising the person with whom he disagrees? Can she recognize beauty? Can he be still long enough to think?

And, for a Catholic family, has he learned to turn toward God?

These are not questions we can answer with a curriculum catalog.

But they are questions worth keeping in front of us as we choose one.

This Changes the Way We Plan

Once we have a clearer picture of the person we hope to raise, our practical decisions become easier to evaluate.

We can ask whether a particular curriculum is helping us pursue those goals. We can decide whether a schedule leaves enough room for reading, conversation, prayer, work, play, and rest. We can recognize that a child who needs more time with a difficult concept may benefit from slowing down rather than racing to stay on schedule.

We can also become more comfortable saying no.

No to an activity that consumes every afternoon.

No to a curriculum that adds complexity without adding much value.

No to the pressure to make every childhood experience educational.

No to the assumption that a full calendar is necessarily a rich childhood.

A good education should make room for a good life.

That does not mean an easy life. Children need challenge, discipline, responsibility, and opportunities to do difficult things.

It means that education should ultimately serve human flourishing rather than becoming an end in itself.

We Are Raising Adults We Cannot Yet See

There is something both sobering and beautiful about homeschooling because the child sitting at our kitchen table will not always be there.

The toddler will grow.

The little boy learning to read will eventually read books without us.

The child who asks a hundred questions at breakfast will someday begin finding answers beyond the walls of our home.

Eventually, the person we are educating will make decisions without us standing nearby.

That is why the question of what kind of person we are raising matters so much.

We are not simply trying to get our children through the next grade.

We are preparing them, little by little, to live.

And perhaps the best education is one that gradually makes itself less necessary because the child has learned how to seek truth, recognize goodness, appreciate beauty, love God, serve others, and continue learning long after the formal lessons have ended.

At the Hearth

There will always be more to teach.

There will always be another book worth reading, another historical period to explore, another mathematical concept to master, another language to learn. There will always be another curriculum promising to help us do it all.

But our children will not remember every worksheet.

They will carry something else with them.

They will carry the habits we helped them form, the books that opened their minds, the conversations that taught them to think, the beauty they learned to notice, the responsibilities they learned to accept, and the faith they saw lived in the ordinary life of their home.

This is why the question "Are we doing enough?" can become so exhausting. There will always be more.

Perhaps a better question is: Are we doing what matters?

If we keep that question in front of us, we may discover that a good homeschool is not the one that accomplishes the most.

It is the one that keeps the most important things in their proper order.

Further Reflection

St. John Paul II, Letter to Families — John Paul II's writing on the family provides a rich Catholic vision of the home as the place where persons learn how to love, give themselves, and live in relationship with others.

St. John Henry Newman, The Idea of a University — Newman provides a vision of education concerned with the cultivation of an integrated intellect rather than the accumulation of disconnected information.

Charlotte Mason — Mason's insistence that children are persons, together with her emphasis on habit, attention, ideas, and living books, offers a helpful framework for thinking about education as formation rather than information delivery.

Dorothy Sayers, “The Lost Tools of Learning” — Sayers' essay asks us to consider whether education should teach children not merely what to think about, but how to think.

The Catholic vision of education — Catholic education understands the human person as possessing inherent dignity and as ultimately ordered toward truth, goodness, love, and union with God. Education therefore cannot be reduced to preparation for employment or academic achievement.

Questions for Reflection

When you imagine your child as an adult, what qualities matter most to you?

Which of those qualities are you intentionally cultivating in your homeschool?

What does your family culture teach your children about work, beauty, truth, responsibility, and love?

Are there areas where academic achievement has begun to overshadow formation?

What might you remove from your homeschool if doing so created more room for the things you believe matter most?

And if you could give your child only one thing through his education—not one subject, but one enduring disposition of mind or heart—what would you want it to be?

That answer may tell you more about the education you want to provide than any curriculum catalog ever could.