Image Credit: Carnegie Library of Reims, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons
Ambrose was homeschooled all the way up, doing classes through Memoria Academy and Angelicum Academy, with some tutoring from uni students. From the four-year Great Books program he completed, he received university credits and started his BA at Campion College in second-year. During the BA, Ambrose has been on the Dean’s Merit List every semester. Ambrose says, “I am very grateful for being homeschooled and I do think I have benefited very much from the education I received.”
Ambrose liked “how traditional and solid their [memoria academy] education is,” and how the Latin courses developed the memory. He mentions a Josephite nun who taught him to memorize things when he was very little. Memorization is such an important skill that is increasingly lost in modern education. Ambrose talked about how “reading and learning in the context of the family…really helped me in my homeschooling years” and how homeschooling “definitely laid the groundwork for me” to excel at university – studying humanities as a child prepared him to study them further as an adult.
Learning through great books was like learning from, and having a conversation with, great intellectuals like Socrates. At Campion, Ambrose liked the classroom setting, but also the great conversations outside of the classroom. He says, “It’s one thing to sign up to a degree but it’s another thing to really engage with the material and it’s outside of class where you do a lot of learning as well.”
Studying great books inspired Ambrose to complete the diploma of classical languages. Many great works of literature were not written in English, and there’s “so much deeper meaning when you understand one line in a text in its original language, it’s very powerful.” Furthermore, “as a Christian…many of our central texts are in Greek and Latin, like the Church Fathers and scriptures.” Ambrose mentioned St Bernard of Clairvaux, “one of…the greatest writers of his time, he wrote all in Latin…to one day be able to read that would be amazing.”
Ambrose talks about Faith formation in homeschooling; “I do think that when it comes to formation in the Faith, it always has to start in the home…it’s in the context of your family life that you are able to grow in virtue and be schooled in the truths of the Faith.” Parents are there to be models and teachers in the home, and the father has a unique role as the priest of the family. Ambrose says, “I’ve a lot to be grateful for to my family” and mentions reading aloud with his family about the Lives of the Saints, and family prayer.
After completing his BA in mid-2025, Ambrose plans to visit some Benedictine monasteries in America. He says his “desire to search out monastic life…was really made possible by the parish and the family that I’ve been formed by and the great…Catholic and classical education I’ve received.”
When asked for study tips, Ambrose said, “if you wanna get your education done, you gotta obey your parents.” He also mentioned the temptation of using Facebook or the internet to procrastinate instead of writing an essay, and says “if there’s something to be done, just get it done. There’s no point in putting it off, ‘cause otherwise you just regret all the time you’ve wasted…You have to have a lot of self-discipline as a homeschooler, and if you don’t learn it when you’re young it’s a lot harder to pull it out when you’re older.” he recommends setting goals, like studying for an hour before taking a break; “it’s a virtue you have to grow in, but self-discipline is very important if you want to succeed as a homeschooler and then as a uni student.”