It was the first day of school, and five pairs of eyes looked expectantly at me. I returned their gaze, trying my best to look confident and joyful. This was the first day of our family’s new experiment—our first day of homeschooling.

My three older children had previously attended our local Catholic school. Their experience at the school was excellent. Our children had good friends as well as loving and competent teachers, which made the decision to homeschool all the more difficult.

The decision to educate our children at home was not the result of a concern with their school, nor was it rooted in an ideological belief that education in their school was corrupt. Rather, through prayer and discernment, my husband and I had heard God inviting us to momentarily step off the accelerating treadmill of life, to pause, slow down and build relationship with one another.

Because my background was not in education, I spent a year preparing for the adventure. After attending numerous conferences and receiving intensive training in instructional practices, I purchased the necessary curricular materials, I notified the school that our children would not re-enroll for the following year, and I prayed.

Deciding which subjects to teach and which pedagogical approaches were best for each child demanded ongoing learning. I tried desperately to stay a few paces ahead of my children as I considered how best to meet their academic, spiritual, social and physical needs. With the completion of each year, and while I set goals for the upcoming year, a weighty question loomed in my consciousness.

In addition to establishing goals for the acquisition of knowledge and skills, the formation of social relationships, their physical well-being and spiritual growth, I found myself wrestling with this unsettled question. It is one that philosophers, theologians, educators, politicians and parents have grappled with for thousands of years. The question, seemingly so simple yet practically so profound, is this: What is education for?

A perusal through the history of education from the Grecian idea of paideia through the secularization of education in service of the state yields numerous perspectives on the question. Despite countless years of educating children, and although different educational systems have articulated their own unique overall missions, the ultimate telos of education still does not have a globally accepted definition. It also remains a continued topic of discussion, as shown by the conference at Harvard University in September 2025 titled “Emerging School Models: Scaling for Success.” It is notable that of the 17 different workshops and speaker sessions, multiple sessions addressed this issue, including one that used the question as its title: “What are we educating for?”

The panelists at the Harvard conference offered interesting responses to the question. Their answers included the “unlocking of potential,” the building of knowledge and skills that make a person “useful,” and, as Dr. Kelisha Graves proposed, the development of “better human beings” who can create a “beloved community.”

I found an element of truth in each of the responses, but each answer seemed incomplete. It is within the Catholic mission of education that, I believe, we discover education’s fullest and most significant goals. According to the “Declaration on Christian Education” (“Gravissimum Educationis”), promulgated by the Second Vatican Council, the mission of Catholic education is to form the whole person while leading that person to Christ. It also states that parents are the primary educators of their children, with whom the church and the school partner.

This goal of forming the whole of the person requires a commitment to teach children knowledge and skills; it obliges us to instruct children on the human person and on how to form healthy human relationships (a task that is becoming more challenging in a transhumanist, virtual world); and it calls for instruction in faith and virtues, guiding students into an intimate relationship with Christ while helping them develop the habit of living their faith each and every day.

The challenge, then, is how do we measure success?

The assessment of student performance in reading, math, science and other curricular subjects can be achieved in multiple ways. One of those measures is through standardized testing. But while academics are important, they are only one aspect of the overall educational program. When considering the other areas of the Catholic mission, it becomes more difficult to measure success. For example, how does one measure virtue? How can one test a student’s love for the Lord? Is there a way to measure a student’s overall flourishing as a human person?

Standardized tests fail to measure these important elements that Catholic schools and many Catholic home educators take seriously. In a world with increasing levels of anxiety, depression, violence, division, addiction and loneliness, many desire to know if they are succeeding in the formation of the whole person because doing so can help alleviate many of these cultural ills.

How can we know if our efforts at forming the whole person while leading them to Christ are succeeding? What assessment do we use? I will admit my desire to answer this question is motivated by the very personal question of whether I can know whether our family homeschooling experiment succeeded or failed in this mission.

This is something I have often wondered about over the years. It has been more than 20 years since we sat around the table that September morning to begin educating our children at home. My children are now grown and starting families of their own. When our homeschooling years ended, I continued with my own education, earning additional degrees and certificates so that I could enter the world of formal education to teach others.

In the ensuing years, I taught in a Catholic school and at the university undergraduate and graduate levels. Yet I continue to wonder: Have I succeeded? Have I helped to form the whole of each student I have taught while leading them to Christ?

We can engage in intentional practices of virtue, prayer, sacraments, catechesis and evangelization, and recognize signposts to indicate certain measures of gain, but true human flourishing, and true growth in wholeness and holiness, is a lifelong journey. Did I succeed in my efforts? I honestly don’t know. And part of my own education has been learning to sit with that uncertainty. As I get older, I am beginning to recognize that it takes a lifetime of effort, prayer, faith, help from others, continual learning and grace to attain the ultimate goal of education and of life.

What I do know is that I, like countless educators, have given my very best—and I have routinely prayed for each of my students by name.

While some sectors of the educational arena are experiencing upheaval, and others appear to be growing, many continue to ask the question: What is education for? I believe that the Catholic Church has answered this question in its fullness, not limited to just the temporal but also looking toward the eternal. The ultimate goal of wholeness and holiness cannot be determined by an exam, because the ultimate goal is not a number on a test. It is a person, and that person is Jesus Christ.

This article appears in February 2026.

Pamela Patnode is a Benedictine oblate, author, international speaker and educator who holds a doctorate in educational leadership from Bethel University. She is the former director of the Catholic School Leadership graduate program at the Saint Paul Seminary in Minnesota.