I didn’t intend to make a se about homeschooling, but here we are.
In Part 1, I wrote about the Purpose of Homeschooling in the 21st century, which is to urgently create new forms of pro-family status.
In Part 2, I focused on Homeschooling For Boys, describing what I believe to be the core principles boys need from education.
Now here in this article, I’m bringing in the Hero’s Journey to elaborate on what boys need as well as to invite all who read this to homeschool.
Next week in Part 4, I’m planning to write on a large gap I see in homeschooling: how and why to organize apprenticeships for homeschooled kids.
The Hero’s Journey
I believe most people are familiar with the idea of The Hero’s Journey, but a quick summary for those who aren’t:
In 1949, a writer by the name of Joseph Campbell published “The Hero with A Thousand Faces”, arguing that all great mythological narratives have the same structure: the monomyth or the Hero’s Journey.
Campbell identified 17 steps in the monomyth but described it’s basic structure as “A hero ventures forth from the world of common day into a region of supernatural wonder: fabulous forces are there encountered and a decisive victory is won: the hero comes back from this mysterious adventure with the power to bestow boons on his fellow man.”
Everything from ancient or medieval stories of Gilgamesh, Odysseus, and King Arthur down to most popular media franchises of today all follow more or less the path of the hero’s journey outlined by Campbell 75 years ago.
The Hero’s Journey & Education
The Hero’s Journey isn’t just for the great stories, it also describes the narrative structure of our everyday lives - this is why we’re so drawn to them. Monomyths from our culture and family show us what it is to be heroic.
To men, completion of the Hero’s Journey signals some mixture of manhood, readiness, wisdom, vision, maturity and ability. It also signals that good things and the good life will go on and be protected.
In my mind, the hero’s journey is the heart of male education: yes a boy should learn his 3 R’s and what not, but what makes him a man is the transmission of truths and traits from the previous generation of men to the next - a continuation and a repetition of the hero’s virtuous cycle within his culture and his family. This requires more than a classroom experience. It requires life experience. As Ivan Illich1, the author of the 1971 book “De-schooling Society” said:
“Most learning is not the result of instruction. It is rather the result of unhampered participation in a meaningful setting. Most people learn best by being "with it," yet school makes them identify their personal, cognitive growth with elaborate planning and manipulation.”
Education is participation, education is being. A boy’s personal hero’s journey is an initiating experience: removing him for a time from the known, safe world so he could return a man, with greater vision and capability.
Take for example the story of Samwise the Brave from The Lord of the Rings: Sam is a simple gardener - no one of great power, even losing the arguments over local gossip at a bar. Yet, he heeded the call and for loyalty’s sake left the familiarity of his garden to face darkness and danger in the unknown world. And after defeating evil, he returns to the Shire to find that it too must be saved. Omitted2 from the films was Sam’s heroic role in reversing all the hurt that had been done, not only to his garden but to the entire garden of the Shire; made possible only because of his initiating experience in the unknown world.
Hijacking The Journey
Today, the Hero’s Journey is an under appreciated, if not totally ignored, part of educating young men. In the place of initiation into an unknown world, where a boy will develop traits and learn truths which will turn him into a man, the modern boy is asked to integrate himself fully into current year peer and pop culture - where he will develop traits and learn truths which will turn him into everyone else.
(This is totally normal and completely harmless, of course. All the experts know this.)
No longer does a boy seek transcendence and some boon to bless himself and his people. Instead, there’s just a lot of multiple choice tests. And if he does well enough on enough of those, he receives a diploma.
Congratulations, my boy! You’re a man now! Right? Maybe? If not a man, at least you’re “adulting”?
It’s quite possible, likely even, for a boy to “be educated”, get good grades, be fully integrated and yet still be overcome with anxiety, a lack confidence - not having learned what he needed to be a man.
This is the output of a system which thinks education is just school, that socialization is pop culture and that learning can be achieved through standardization.
In the not so distant past, we didn’t name generations like we do today: Greatest Generation, The Silents, Boomers, Gen X, etc. There was no need. But once the hero cycle was hijacked and integration prioritized over initiation, naming generations became necessary.
What we attempt to transmit to the next generation is now mainly each generation’s experience with pop culture. Since pop culture constantly changes our “truth and traits”, our effort to integrate, comes to nothing. But like death warmed over, we lurch along anyway; relying upon barely relevant experiences nostalgically recalled from an expired version of society.
In other words, we’re all destined to be “boomers” in the eyes of those who come after us. And likely worse: a copy of a copy of a copy, the further a generation’s experience is from a true, lived in Hero’s Journey, the worse it will get.
In mass society’s effort to fully throw down the monomyth, even the great stories are weaponized against us. They are commodified and franchised - their wise spirits tortured and gutted out of them, replaced with whatever is deemed relevant.
The “updated” great stories become the perfect companion to our mass society: empty calories we consume rather than a journey we inhabit. Just wait until AI is writing all the stories! Only by the grace of God will we be spared from the artificially constructed “Batman Avengers Part 3: Frodo vs Zombies”, Starring John Wayne as The Joker.3
Christopher Tolkien, the son of JRR, spent a lifetime carefully preserving and curating his father’s work. No one understood better than him what had been lost when the monomyths found in his father’s work were turned into content. He said this in 2012:
“They eviscerated the book by making it an action movie for young people 15 to 25… Tolkien has become a monster, devoured by his own popularity and absorbed by the absurdity of our time… The chasm between the beauty and seriousness of the work, and what it has become, has gone too far for me. Such commercialization has reduced the aesthetic and philosophical impact of the creation to nothing.
There is only one solution for me: turning my head away.”
And to restore the Hero’s Journey, so should we.
A Summons
What on earth does all this have to do with homeschooling?
First, homeschooling will give you the space to create a hero’s journey for your boys. Public and private schools schedules take up so much time and are so disconnected from the adult world that working the “unknown world” into your boy’s education would be difficult. Not impossible, but certainly the odds are longer.
Secondly, but perhaps more importantly, as a parent, homeschooling your children is itself a vital part of your personal hero’s journey.
There are no guarantees in the unknown world. There is no validation, respect or acceptance from mass culture. There are no guardrails or safety nets. There are monsters and dragons, yes, but also great reward, power and transformation.
The Hero’s Journey is not conservative. Mass culture and “adulting” are the conservative, status quo position. For this reason, any parent today who cares about the society their children will live in does not have the luxury to be, think or act conservatively. As I wrote back in March:
“Instead, these parents will be risk-takers, experimenters, explorers, creatives, pioneers and innovators. They have the opportunity to create the things which will one day be conserved or considered tradition.”
In Campbell’s detailed explanation of the monomyth, he identifies one of the steps as “refusing the call”. Whether due to fear, insecurity, tradition, or whatever else, refusing the call is quite relatable and perfectly understandable.
Likewise, parents today say homeschooling is too hard, or I’m not good enough. Or I’m not a teacher. Or men will say I’m a dad so I don’t have the time nor do I have to be involved at all. Or I hate it, my kids won’t listen to me, other parents are more organized and can do it better than me… essentially: I can’t govern myself & I have no community.
These things may all be true to some degree. And yet, we’re in dire need of heroes.
When it comes to accepting the call, I’ll leave you with this passage from The Return of the King between Sam and Frodo:
“I don’t like anything here at all, said Frodo, step or stone, breath or bone. Earth, air and water all seem accursed. But so our path is laid.
Yes, that’s so, said Sam. And we shouldn’t be here at all, if we’d known more about it before we started. But I suppose it’s often that way. The brave things in the old tales and songs, Mr. Frodo: adventures, as I used to call them. I used to think that they were things the wonderful folk of the stories went out and looked for, because they wanted them, because they were exciting and life was a bit dull, a kind of a sport, as you might say. But that’s not the way of it with the tales that really mattered, or the ones that stay in the mind. Folk seem to have been just landed in them, usually – their paths were laid that way, as you put it. But I expect they had lots of chances, like us, of turning back, only they didn’t. And if they had, we shouldn’t know, because they’d have been forgotten. We hear about those as just went on – and not all to a good end, mind you; at least not to what folk inside a story and not outside it call a good end. You know, coming home, and finding things all right, though not quite the same – like old Mr. Bilbo.”
‘No, they never end as tales,’ said Frodo. ‘But the people in them come, and go when their part’s ended. Our part will end later – or sooner.”
The path is laid out. We didn’t choose these times, but they are here and so are we.
The part we play in this tale, to be a hero or to be forgotten, is up to us.
Do You Need Directions?
These are big ideas and the details need to be planned and tailored to your village and circumstances. Often I find it helpful to get the perspective of someone far removed from my circumstances to help me see what I can’t see.
To that end, I’m available to consult with you to help you succeed.
What’s Coming?
Throughout September & October, I plan on writing on the following topics:
Why & How To Create Apprenticeships in 2024
Publishing my first interview with a master village builder
The type of village building projects and initiatives that make the biggest difference and how I can help you.
How communication skills can help in your village
How to build villages in the office
Illich was a 20th century Catholic Priest and Philosopher. He wasn’t a big fan of modernity.
One of the most wholesome exchanges in the LOTR books also centers around Sam’s return. The hobbits return home to find the Shire taken over by thieves. They encounter Sam’s dad who knows nothing of what the ring and all they’ve done, but is very, very concerned with the simple matters of life:
Sam’s dad: “While you’ve been trespassing in foreign parts, chasing Black Men up mountains from what my Sam says, though what for he don’t make clear, they’ve been and dug up Bagshot Row and ruined my taters!”
Frodo: "I am very sorry, Mr Gamgee. But now I’ve come back and I’ll do my best to make amends."
Sam’s dad: “Well, you can’t say fairer than that. Mr. Frodo Baggins is a real gentlehobbit, I always have said. And I hope my Sam’s behaved hisself and given satisfaction?"
Frodo: "Perfect satisfaction, Mr. Gamgee. Indeed, if you will believe it, he’s now one of the most famous people in all the lands."
Sam’s dad: "It takes a lot o’ believing…”
Way too many of you are thinking “I’d watch that”