Learning Together

Ten months ago, Veritas Classical Academy seemed little more than the name of my new employer. Arriving in June, my family and I made a few acquaintances during the hottest summer on record, but it wasn’t until August – when we began to meet and get to know our families – that I began to understand how God had already been very much at work in the midst of our community.

This, of course, should have come as no surprise, for God has always educated his children:

• Think of Adam and Eve in the Garden with their sons, Cain and Abel – the first family of homeschoolers (and you think you’ve got angst on home days).

• Then there’s God’s Patriarchal class – Abraham and Sarah, Isaac and Rebekah, Jacob and Rachel (and Leah), Joseph and his brothers (how much of a dysfunctional co-op that must have been).

• Consider Moses and the Israelites in the desert and the self-inflicted unschooling experience, with God shepherding his chosen people despite their disobedient choices to finally arrive in the promised land.

• Think of how God educated his children Daniel, Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego in the public school hallways of Babylon High (and got all kinds of grief for doing so from the Israelites who remained in Jerusalem).

• Don’t forget God’s instruction of the dispersed and captive nation of Israel by way of the prophets and the first-of-its-kind distance-learning program.

• Finally, consider how God the Father personally tutored God the Son, for Luke 2:52 mind-bogglingly records that, “Jesus grew in wisdom and stature and in favor with God and man.”

What is the Master Teacher teaching us at Veritas? It seems the curriculum is similar to the one Paul lays out for the Corinthians: faith, hope, love – faith in Aristotle’s unmoved Mover, hope in Aquinas’ Cause of effect, and love for each other and the One the Reformers insisted first loved us.

Are we learning? I think so, but as any serious student knows, there’s much to learn. By God’s grace and our parents' partnership, I’m glad we – with our children – get to do it together.