The Education to Virtue

By the Dominican Teaching Sisters of Post Falls. This is the last part of the conference at the parents meeting which took place in December 2000, in Saint Dominic School, Post Falls, Idaho.

4. Necessity of training the intellect.

“We have been endowed with understanding, that we may know truth... God provided us with a twofold light, that of reason and that of faith. In our present state, we cannot come to the fullness of truth, without the joint help of these two lights. To scorn either of them is to blindfold our eyes. The discipline of the intellect is all the more important, since it is the intellect that enlightens the will and enables it to direct its course towards good. It is the intellect which, under the name of conscience, is the guide of our moral and supernatural life. That it may rightly fulfill its office, its defects must be corrected. The chief of these are ignorance, curiosity, hastiness, pride and obstinacy.”         

a)  Ignorance is overcome by a constant and systematic application to study.           

b)  Curiosity is a disease of the mind,  which leads us to seek too eagerly the knowledge of things that delight us rather than of things that are profitable to us, and thus to lose precious time.           

c)  Pride is to be avoided, that pride of intellect which is more dangerous and more difficult to overcome than the pride of will. “This is the pride that renders faith and obedience to superiors difficult. One wants to be self-sufficient. . . the more confidence one has in one's own judgment the more reluctantly does one accept that others teach him, that others are consulted,  especially superiors... Hence, regrettable mistakes occur. Hence comes also obstinacy of judgment, resulting in the final and sweeping condemnation of such opinions as differ from our own.” (R.F. Tanquerey)

5.  Necessity of developing intellectual virtues.

Intellectual virtues are habits of knowledge.

a)  Of all the virtues that enrich our minds, understanding is the most basic. It lies at the bottom of all our thinking. We come into possession of it at the very dawn of reason. It is the prompt and easy use of those elements of thought on which every movement of the mind is grounded. For example: that which is, is; that which is not, is not. Which elements of thought we call "first principles." The development of the mind rests on the truth and the recognition of those first principles. Someone who cannot grasp these "first Principles", these evident truths, is insane.

* Artificiality (TV, computers, video-games, laser tag) tends to destroy understanding,  in having the mind grasp things which do not exist. It is tragic. For understanding is at the foundation of the acquisition of knowledge, "at the bottom of all our thinking." Now if the foundation is vitiated (twisted), the whole edifice (of knowledge) will also be vitiated.

* Also our understanding is meant to become deeper and sharper as we make progress in knowledge. Someone can grasp the truth or error of something in his field of knowledge more and more rapidly as he grows in this knowledge. This knowledge becomes his second nature from which spontaneously flows a deep and quick understanding of what pertains to that specific order of knowledge.

* Hence the necessity of being very vigilant about the foundation upon which we build up our knowledge (it has to be reality, not virtual reality) and also the necessity of learning, of studying, in order to improve our understanding, to deepen it, to sharpen it.

* It is a matter of truth,  of nature,  not of personal opinion; we cannot endanger our nature only for the sake of "having fun" with those artificial games.

* Artificiality dehumanizes man, tends to destroy his nature. Now this entails drastic consequences in the order of grace. For grace is meant to build upon nature. It is nature which is the recipient of grace. If nature is de-natured,  grace has nothing to be engrafted upon,  and grace is wasted. This is serious.

b)  Science is the second intellectual virtue. It is the understanding of conclusions which are logically demonstrated in one order of knowledge or another (for example, philosophy, history, math...). It is a body of sure and evident knowledge, brought into being by means of proof or demonstration. One must remember that "science is always a systematic body of knowledge, and not a hit-and-miss affair. It has a definite plan to it, is well rounded, and hangs together by virtue of certain fundamental laws or principles on which it is grounded". (You have laws in music, in the playing of an instrument, in natural sciences, history, geography, etc.) Therefore it can come into existence only through perseverant study. It cannot be a quick process..

c)  "But the human mind reaches the peak of perfection only when it is informed with wisdom, which is a knowledge of things in their supreme or highest causes." Wisdom is the habit of judging synthetically everything, in relation to first causes, and ultimately to the First Cause: God.

Wisdom alone puts order in knowledge. The learned man must be wise, otherwise he will lose sight of the relativity of his science. He may believe in it as if it were the supreme knowledge which can give the answers to the supreme questions about life, destiny, morals... Only Wisdom can bring order and unity in life... Only wisdom can correct intellectual pride, for wisdom, being the habit to judge everything in relation to God, is inseparable from humility.

And this is the goal we strive to reach through our curricula, as we mentioned to you before: "the culture that the Sisters must promote is not the cluttering of the mind with extensive knowledge, a pleasure as refined as it is sterile, nor a shiny varnish: it is wisdom"... which "is a vital and profound adaptation of the mind to the values of truth, beauty, morality"...which "puts light and order in our thoughts."

See the depth of the work to be accomplished in the training of your children's intellects... See the height of the goal to be achieved... See how it requires that the family and the school first be aware of this depth and height,  secondly combine their efforts in order to truly "educate" their children, that is to "lead them out" of their ignorance, pettiness, errors, up to the heights of natural and supernatural wisdom, which will overflow, and which alone can overflow into a sound virtue of prudence, the virtue that lights up and guides all our moral conduct.

Let us realize the major importance of training the minds of our children to these intellectual virtues; of training them to make logical connections among facts, among things they know, among concepts, in order to draw new and sound conclusions from previous knowledge, which is the way, the only way by which we grow in knowledge and in wisdom. Let us oblige our children to become more and more rational as they grow, to deepen  their  understanding  of  things,  of  life,  of  natural  and supernatural values, as they grow, in order for them to acquire strong convictions which have become theirs. Let us oblige our children to think, to reflect upon valuable things. Let us correct and fight against any kind of intellectual laziness and inertia, and at home, first, all day long, and every day! You, the parents, are the first responsible for this awakening of their intelligence. Teach them good habits of thinking, of reflecting, of logical reasoning, of increasing desire to know; foster in them an eagerness to penetrate through the surface of things in order to better understand their nature, their "laws", the way they relate to other things, their purpose, etc . . .

Among many other points we could bring up here, let us mention the primary importance of teaching a good vocabulary to our children; for to develop the habit of learning and using the appropriate words for everything, is a source of precise knowledge which takes away confusion and ignorance. Many times what wearies the intelligence of our children is the imprecise and vague notions they have, which creates a confusion where nothing is clear, nothing makes complete sense, nothing is truly grasped, everything is somewhat like this or that.

How is it that at school we have so many children with apparently dead minds, children apparently incapable of making logical conclusions? Let us take an example: they know what a subject is. They know that, in Latin, the subject is in the nominative case. They know their cases. They know that this specific word is a subject. But they are incapable of connecting all these facts. They need a scolding, a yelling, or at least a pushing to go forward from one step to the next. They do not do it on their own. How can we ever go forward? Without the active, willing and personal cooperation of the child, we stay at step No. l! This is our daily struggle with many a child, dear parents. Something has to be done. . . No teacher can do the learning for your children. Please undertake great efforts at home to awaken the mind, the intellectual life of your children. For it is a life. There must be a movement, a motion forward, a constant progress. Please forego frequent movies. Become aware of how deadly the influence is with respect to the life of your children's minds, giving them the illusion that they know much, because they have watched, they have seen and heard much. But once again, this is NOT knowledge. They cannot demonstrate anything. They become used to repeating things they have heard, without being concerned with their truth or not, with their conformity to reality or not! Movies cause this intellectual inertia, this total passivity, this refusal of any intellectual efforts, which, once again are deadly for your children, because they go against their most noble and important faculty, their intelligence.

Intellectual inertia can also be caused by a multiplicity of activities, a multiplication of goals given to the child to achieve. Too many goals result in a loss of focus, and therefore a loss of strength. Our capacities are limited. We cannot concentrate all our energy on many goals at once; if we begin everything, we will end up stopping half way and never achieving anything. This seems to be the problem with many children. Their attention is solicited by too many things which are exterior to what should be their major focus: their studies.

Entertainments are not a goal in themselves. They must be referred to the rebuilding, re-creation, of physical and intellectual strength. The goal is intellectual and spiritual growth. These principles should guide the decisions you make about the weekends. The weekends should allow the children to recuperate through sleep, and physical exercise, in order to begin a new week with fresh strength and energy. What happens in reality? Monday mornings are rather frightening. Many children literally sleep on their desks and display extreme fatigue, on both the physical and the intellectual levels. And they have forgotten all the previous teaching, or at least a good 80% of it. It takes us two full days to have them back in working order, back to health, to their real presence in class. What happens during the weekends? Are the entertainments and other activities truly directed towards the re-creation of your children? It is obvious that there have been late nights, movies for many a girl, a multiplicity of activities which "distract" them from their major duties. They are "drawn away" from the goal on which they should remain focused. Some distraction is necessary to relieve the tension and to refresh the strength of the intellect, but distraction of a proper kind, and not too much. A good hike, a bike ride, outdoor work or gardening every weekend is certainly a necessity for students. If everything needs to be re-explained every Monday, as if it were after a three-month absence, we do not, we cannot advance; besides, the children become bored; and how will they ever build up those deep-seated convictions that are at once a guide and a stimulus to the will? These convictions alone can guide the will in the choice of what is in conformity with the will of God. Now convictions follow knowledge,  and only a sound knowledge, a broad knowledge of natural and supernatural truths. See what is at stake when it is time to deal with school, schoolwork, homework, conversations around the table, goals in life, schedule, leisure, etc... This leads us to say a few words about three major virtues in the education of children. It will be my last point, but it is necessary that we cover it. I want to speak briefly of prudence, fortitude and temperance.

C. A few words about the major role played by three virtues in the education of children.

1.  Prudence

"Prudence is concerned with the practical affairs of life. It is the virtue, we said, that lights up and guides all our moral conduct. It is the most precious of all the intellectual virtues. It has much the same position in the field of practice as wisdom has in the field of theory. In fact it is sometimes called practical wisdom. Prudence is at pains to look for the best means that will bring us to the goal of all our conduct. It is the right reason about the things to be done. If our minds have the right  kind of  knowledge, and if we are obedient to this knowledge in our moral behavior, then we are prudent. The task of prudence is to judge what ought to be done and what ought not to be done in any given situation. To be prudent is to be wise in our resolutions and in the measures we take to carry out these resolutions. Therefore, as St. Thomas tells us, the habit of prudence involves a whole host of other habits, such as memory of the past, understanding of the present, vision of the future. It tries to look in all directions, in order to get data for its judgments. But if it casts its glance up and down the avenues of time, surveying events that are behind, speculating on those that are yet to come, it does so with the idea of gauging properly what to do here and now. Its main concern is to deal with the concrete good or the concrete evil which is facing us at the moment."¹

Practical consequences:

*Education is mostly a training to prudence, a teaching the child to choose the good here and now, and to put his resolutions into practice.

*Prudence requires a broad knowledge, in many a field, in order to light up and guide our conduct, to provide us with the necessary knowledge to see and choose the good.

2.  Temperance and Fortitude

"Now if the intellectual virtues rectify our reason, it remains true that our human will may be hindered in two ways from following the rectitude of reason. First, through being drawn by some object of pleasure to something other than what the rectitude of reason requires; and this obstacle is removed by the virtue of temperance. Secondly through the will being disinclined to follow that which is in accordance with reason, on account of some difficulty which presents itself. In order to remove this obstacle, fortitude of the mind is requisite, whereby to resist the aforesaid difficulty." ¹

a)  Temperance

"Because of the perpetual battle that is going on between passion and reason, a strict control has to be exercised over our lower appetites. Otherwise they will get out of hand and hamper all our efforts to be good. Hence, the need of habits to keep order in the household of our moral lives. Temperance is a habit that moderates the pleasures that are from food, drink, flesh. Our conduct, in such matters, must be in harmony with right reason."

Practical points:

- Schedule the meals. 

- No food between meals.

- Repress the gluttony of children. 

- Have them eat what you serve them, not only what they like.

- Moderate the sweets, candy, cookies... excessively sugary food, which is very bad for the health and which increases the concupiscence.

- Mortify at times the preferences of children in regards to food.

- But also see how movies tend to increase this sensuality, not necessarily by being bad, but by appealing so much to the senses.

- Foster a strong and radiant purity in your children.

Indeed many children tend to be very "mushy", weak, sluggish. They have no firmness in their deportment. Gluttony is quite certainly one of their faults. They often lack physical and moral energy. You may want to deepen your understanding of the role of the virtue of temperance towards their moral strength.

b)  Fortitude

"The life of man on earth is constant warfare, as Job tells us. Because we are so apt to lose our courage and to give in to feelings of hopelessness, it is vital that we have a habit of resisting such states of depression. Fortitude is the virtue which makes us firm and steadfast in bearing the trials and dangers to the good life. To be brave is really nothing more than acting, like a man. In all things we have to follow right reason, even if it means suffering and death, otherwise, we should not be behaving as human beings ought to behave. Obstacles have to be overcome, pains and discomforts have to be endured, pleasures often have to be set aside. Fortitude steels us to accept such things in view of the accomplishment of what is right. Fortitude helps us to be brave in the battle and to turn our fighting impulses toward a nobler goal than mere animal conflict, enabling us to use the splendid energies that flow from the level of instinct in order to increase our moral perfection." ¹

Practical points:

Let us ask ourselves: Do our children show fortitude? Do they "resist their states of depression"? Are they determined to "overcome obstacles", to "endure the pains and discomforts" which go along with their duties of state, and "to set aside the pleasures" which divert them from these duties?

Do not dare to answer. So often and so many of them show no will power, no real determination to do good, at the cost of real and consistent efforts. They expect learning to be easy, to go by itself, without their real work, their real efforts, their real attention, their real study. And they waste their time and their talents...

Indeed these two virtues of temperance and fortitude have the deepest influence on the intellectual and spiritual growth of the children, by way of freeing them from two major obstacles to this growth, which are the attraction of the pleasures of the flesh and the weakness of the will. It is very easy to understand that most of the time, what deprives children of using their intellectual capacities, is their intemperance and their weakness. They are overcome by these passions, and their intelligence remains as it were imprisoned by these passions which are overpowering. We see too many children handed over to the anarchy of their passions, therefore scatter-brained, incapable of focusing their energy on one major goal to which they would refer the others, running in all directions, following the impulses of their flesh, their likes and dislikes, having no energy, no goal, having not even a concern about what direction to follow, except the "law of the least effort"... It is very serious. These children do have the intellectual capacity of learning well, but they are made incapable of using it, because of the overwhelming attraction of their unbridled passions.

Conclusion

It is time to conclude. "From our rising in the morning till we go to bed at night, our days are filled with actions that we do out of pure habit." ¹ We cannot help it. The question which arises therefore is the following: "are they good or bad habits?" By the way we live, the decisions we make, we necessarily develop habits, we necessarily have our children develop habits according to our demands or our negligence. If we do not have them develop good habits, they necessarily develop the bad habits which our negligence, the misuse of our authority foster in them. Our children will necessarily develop virtues or vices according to our demanding authority or permissive laxity, and first and foremost according to their parents' demanding authority or permissive laxity. Whatever we do, demand, encourage or allow, has repercussions on our children's souls. It leads them to life or to death, to progress or to regression, to growth in virtue or increase in vice. We will make our children strong inasmuch as we are demanding with them, inasmuch as we require that they do their duties, and do them in a virtuous way, to the best of their abilities, until they reach perseverance and constancy in the fulfillment of their duties. Remember that there is a virtue for everything we do in life, since everything must be accomplished according to right reason in order to be truly human. We must not live animalistic lives, at the level of our likes and dislikes, of our instincts like animals. We must live rational lives. We must teach our children to live "rational lives", reasonable lives. And this is a conquest: a conquest of right reason over passions, a conquest of self through progress in virtue which puts to death the opposite vices, the "old man", the "man of sin", whom every one of us bears in himself and who must die in order to leave place for Our Lord Jesus Christ. Let us not deceive ourselves: we are Christ's, Christ-like, Catholics worthy of the name, only inasmuch as, through virtue, real virtue, Christ is living in us. The touchstone of our life in Christ is virtue. Outside of it we are hypocrites. Grace is meant to transform our very lives, the way we think, the way we act, but also the way we eat, the way we dress, the way we consider and organize our time, work, leisure, everything.

Dear parents, your responsibility is immense in this awakening and training of your children to virtue, a virtuous life. Nobody can replace you. And it is such a beautiful task, such an honour entrusted to you by God,  that you are willing to achieve this goal to the best of your abilities. But in this world, it is not easy: indeed it is heroic. For in a world which tends to destroy natural and supernatural values, beginning with human intelligence, in a world which is more and more fundamentally opposed to natural and supernatural values, and which almost succeeds in killing man's intelligence, whatever good step you want to take, and which should be simply "normal," becomes heroic, for it is altogether "against the current." We beseech you not to lose heart, but to keep in mind the high standards of truly Catholic education, so as to foster those standards in your children's minds and wills. We do acknowledge and appreciate the trust you place in the school, therefore in the Church, since Catholic schools are mere instruments of Holy Mother Church. We thank you wholeheartedly for all the efforts you make to support our task. When we see better, we can fight better against the difficulties which arise daily. We do encourage you to keep teaching your children to attach themselves to the good, to pursue the good, whatever the cost. And when it is needed, and in different ways according to the age of the child, discipline and punish, thus to keep teaching the child about how necessary it is to attach oneself to the good, therefore to reject evil, mediocrity, as everything opposed to the good. And remember: the earlier you begin this training to virtue, the easier it will be. The sooner you begin to direct and subdue your children's passions, the sooner they begin to act according to right reason, the more natural it will be for them to strive for virtue in an ever more conscious way. I will leave you with five practical points you may want to remember in this training:

"- First, we must be firm and decisive about the business of building up a new habit.

"- Second, we must launch ourselves into the task with a strong will to accomplish what we set out to do.

"- Third, we must place ourselves in circumstances that are favorable to the growth of the habit.

"- Fourth, we must not allow ourselves any exceptions to what may be called the "rules of the game" - not, at any rate, until the habit has struck deep roots.

"- Finally, every chance should be taken to exercise the habit. For the habit arises from repeated action. Hence, the more often we use it, the more robust it becomes. One act does not generate a habit. But once we have gathered momentum, our efforts become easier. And when we are done, we are the possessors of a treasure that can make our work on earth not only more prompt and easy, more replete with joy, but also more conducive to our eternal salvation." ¹ It is a matter of intellectual and spiritual growth, which alone leads to true maturity, the formation of a good strong character, of a great personality. We are born with a temperament,  but we build up our character,  our personality. Quite obviously, education plays a major role in this achievement, and this is why it is so necessary that the family and the school combine their efforts towards this goal. This is the reason why we hold meetings such as tonight's, once in a while, to improve our aiming together at the same target. Thank you for your cooperation.

1. R.F. Brennan, 0.P.

2. R.F. White, 0.P.