Our question today is brought to you from a homeschooling mom: “What do you do with unmotivated kids, who try to beg and plead their way out of doing school work?” Share your motivation and discipline secrets!

My two previous columns (available in the online newsletter archive) gave a brief history of the rise, and sadly the partial decline, of Catholic education in the United States. To accomplish the goal of a Catholic education for their children, parents are increasingly turning to homeschooling, but we homeschoolers have many lessons we can learn from the Catholic educators who came before us. For Catholic homeschooling to succeed and thrive in educating future generations, it must remain authentically Catholic, unapologetically rigorous, and marked by a commitment to diligence and order.