Susan Wise Bauer is the co-author of The Well-Trained Mind: A Guide to Classical Education at Home. She is a homeschool graduate, a member of the faculty at the College of William and Mary and the homeschool mother of three sons and a daughter. In a telephone interview she and I shared one cool, autumn morning, Susan shed light on life as a homeschooler in the olden days, and offered her thoughts on Christian education and the freedom homeschooling offers. Welcome, Susan!

TOS: You were homeschooled before it was a popular movement. Tell us about your experience.

SWB: My mother has said that what she did was push us to do a lot of academics. She was so afraid that when we got tested, we would be below where we were supposed to be, and then she was going to be in trouble. She says that she was operating out of fear much of the time because she had no one to compare us with and no one saying, "This is okay!"

We were very structured, at least in the beginning. By the time we were in late middle school and early high school, though, we were very flexible. We got up early and worked hard all morning and then all of us had projects and hobbies that we were involved in. It mutated from being very rigid like a classroom toward being something which fit our family's lifestyle much more freely.

There is a new kind of pressure to be like other homeschoolers. Because we didn't know anyone else who was homeschooling, we were free from those kinds of pressures. The disadvantage, though, was operating out of a fear of the authorities because the law was very vague in Virginia.

TOS: What do you appreciate most about your mother?

SWB: My mother never criticizes me! Now that I am a parent myself, I am sure it is something for which she makes a conscious effort. I always took it for granted. Now, we live on the farm, and we live in houses that are connected with a laundry room. We cooperate in keeping the farm running, and Mom helps me with the homeschooling. This is why, when people ask, "How do you do everything that you do?" I always say, "I don't. I live with three other adults who do most of it!" She has taught all of my kids to read because she loves doing that. It is her passion.

Living with another family takes adjustments. Everybody has to yield and give and make a conscious effort not to be touchy. But, it is so worth it. It is such a support to me to know that if I just can't cope, I can go across to the other house and say, "I CAN'T DO THIS ANYMORE!" I am not all alone.

I think a lot of what I appreciate about my mother is that she is there; she is not in Florida on a golf course. She is in her house doing my laundry, and every time my kids run down the stairs she says, "I am so glad to see you!" In her house, she has this box of strips that she was going to braid into a rug when all the children left home. Well, she has never done it because we have never left! Every once in awhile, I will ask her about that, and she will say, "There are other things that are more important." She put an immense amount of energy into our education. I think the researching of curricula and putting them together for us was a fantastic challenge for her, and one that she really enjoyed.

TOS: Who influences your thinking?

SWB: I read books about classical education when I can find them. David Hicks' book, Norms and Nobility, is one of my favorites. But, I tend to read books by cultural theorists, people like Wendell Berry, Kirkpatrick Sale, John Taylor Gatto. What all of those books say to me is, that as a parent, my job is to resist culture, not to become part of it. More than any tips on education, that is what I need to hear. "Yes, it is okay that we are creating a pattern of life that is different." The intellectual, the sheer knowledge part of it, is relatively simple compared with what it is that I am I trying to guide my children toward.

TOS: You share homeschooling duties with your husband. Talk about how that works in your family and why?

SWB: I could not do what I do without my husband. We see homeschooling as an extension of our obligation to keep control over our lives rather than to have them run by some outside force, which does not have our best interest at heart. My husband and I share the burden of educating, and the burden of earning money. That works for us. From the outside, it may look idyllic. From the inside, it has disadvantages, just like any lifestyle. But, the disadvantages are ones that we are willing to put up with. We are not willing to put up with having our lives shaped by the company that my husband works for. Whatever lifestyle you choose, you have to count the cost.

TOS: Classical Christian education has been criticized as being a contradiction in terms. What are your thoughts on this subject?

SWB: Christian Education means that you are a Christian, and you are teaching your child, not only through your curriculum but also in every choice that you make and every thing you say to them. You can be a Christian unschooler; you can be a Christian unit study person. The education itself is not the center of your teaching them to follow in your faith. There is again this fear with homeschoolers that my child is not going to follow in my faith. And, what parents do in this fear, is the same thing that parents that are academically uncertain do. If you are academically uncertain, you are going to go get a curriculum-in-a-box and you are going to follow slavishly everything it says because it gives you some certainty. If you are a Christian, and you are worried about your child's faith, you do the same thing. You lock yourself into sombody's pattern of "Here is what a Christian education is," and you slavishly follow it, and that gives you certainty. The problem is, it is an illusion. The child does not take in Christianity with his grammar, or even with his reading. It is not unrelated to the child's learning. If we are living one way, and everything you gave the child to read said, "Oh, Christianity is a farce," that would be entirely different. But, the point of classical education is not that you read all of these pagan authors to find out what they believed. The point is that you read these pagan authors because what they believed influenced the rest of the western world.

Children are people. They are not little machines into which you plug all the right components, and out pops a Christian on the other end. I think with homeschooling, you are going to have the opportunity to treat your child as a person and not as a machine. You live out what you believe in front of them; you talk to them about it, and then you pray a lot. You don't rely on your curriculum to do it for you. I want my children to follow me in my faith. They are involved in church, and more than that, they are involved with us. We talk about our faith, and why we do the things that we do, all the time. But, we don't tend to talk about it when we are doing grammar, and we don't tend to talk about it when we do mathematics. We do talk about it a lot when we are doing history and literature. Classical education is a pattern, not certain material, and as a pattern, it is fairly neutral. You use the pattern, and you fill it with meaning.

TOS: You have begun your own publishing company, Peace Hill Press, and have some upcoming releases. Can you tell us about those, and about your new book from Norton Publishing on self-education?

SWB: My mom's book, First Language Lessons, is a beginning grammar, writing, language curriculum for first and second grade. It aims in those first two years to teach children the parts of speech, the definitions and how they work, and to get them started on copying and dictation. There is poetry memorization and poetry review built into it. Every lesson is scripted, and that is to give parents some confidence in those first two years. We are hoping that it will not serve just as a grammar text but as a pattern for how you do a back and forth teaching dialogue with your child.

We are working on getting The Story of the World II out. It has been delayed by everything under the sun. But we are hoping to get it out by Christmas. Volumes III and IV are more on schedule. My new book, The Well-Educated Mind: a Guide to the Classical Education You Never Had, is due out from Norton Publishers in August. Over the last two years, I have constantly been asked, "When are you going to write a book for grownups?" This is it. The Well-Educated Mind is written for readers who are sincerely interested in improving their own minds, but who also feel seriously unprepared.

TOS: Thanks Susan, so much, for our conversation this morning. Our magazine has been delighting in getting to know you better, and we look forward to talking with you further in issues to come!

Susan is the co-author of The Well-Trained Mind and the author of the new world history series The Story of the World (Peace Hill Press). Her new book, The Well-Educated Mind: A Guide to the Classical Education You Never Had, will be out in 2003. Susan was taught at home through high school; she was a National Merit finalist, and earned a B.A. in English, a Master of Divinity (from Westminster Theological Seminary), and an M.A. in English (from the College of William and Mary). She currently teaches at William and Mary, where she is a Ph.D. candidate. Susan and her husband Peter now live in Virginia, where Peter is the minister of a nondenominational church. They educate their four children at home. www.WellTrainedMind.com

Diane Wheeler is the Senior Staff Writer for The Old Schoolhouse Magazine. She lives in Placerville, California with her husband John and their five children. She and John home educate their children, drink a lot of coffee, and love reading good books.