Here are the notes from Mr. Higgins convocation address to start the 2025-26 school year.
Have you noticed that there are no Feather Lifting classes? I know there is such a thing as a “featherweight class” in boxing, but featherweight in that case is an adjective. I’m talking about a class that has different sizes and shapes and colors of feathers, with instruction on different lifts you could learn to do.
One reason why there are no feather lifting classes is because most people can already lift most feathers without any problems. You don’t need much muscle or flexibility, you don’t have to think too long or too hard. You don’t need an expert to model it, and you won’t find trophies for winners at feather lifting competitions because it’s easy.
Is there anything wrong with doing easy things? Well, no. Breathing is usually so easy that you don’t realize you’re doing it, but if you stopped breathing there would be something seriously wrong. Some sins are easy to commit, but it’s the sin part that makes sin wrong, not the easy part. Easy isn’t necessarily bad, but it also isn’t usually impressive.
For that matter, just because you can do a hard thing doesn’t make you awesome. You could drink nine gallons of chocolate milk in a day, which would be difficult, but it wouldn’t get you much more than a lot of trips to the bathroom. And yet, God made the world—which was easy for Him—in such a way that image-bearers would learn to be more stout by learning to lift heavy things for their glory.
I bring this up on the first day of school because we really are tempted to believe that life, and learning, should be easy. But we not only want you to learn more than how to lift feathers, we want you to learn to love the good hard parts of learning so that you’ll keep learning good and doing good hard things for the rest of your life.
In a lot of ways, school is what could be called a “kind” learning environment. You are told what problems are going to be on the test or what the assignment requires, someone else gives you instruction and resources to prepare to handle those problems, and then you get fairly quick feedback (also known as grading) to know how you did and what you could fix for next time.
A “wicked” learning environment is when the problems are not so defined, when you have to figure out what you need/want and then try to get it. You might not know if you succeeded until long after the work is done. Lots of “assignments” and jobs and projects that are worth something are harder than lifting feathers. Part of what we’re doing here together is training you to want and to work in unfavorable conditions, and do all those things without complaining or arguing.
Remember in The Horse and His Boy about Shasta:
“He had not yet learned that if you do one good deed your reward usually is to be set to do another and harder and better one.”
So make sure that you don’t believe lies. The work is hard enough without adding the heavy load of false expectations. What I mean is, it takes more than a couple weeks to get an education. A good school knows that there are stages of development and how to keep stretching students at each stage. Lord willing, you will finish this grade, but that doesn’t mean you’ll be finished being awesome.
There are some things that others just can’t do for you. Good teachers learn not to do anything for their students that students can do for themselves, and part of the lesson is teaching students what they can do.
Why memorize anything when you could just look it up? Why write anything by hand when you could just have your phone transcribe your talking? Why read a book when you could just have robot summarize it for you?
Sure, and why would married people kiss each other when they could just put a lips sticker on their Stanley water bottle? Why eat steak or pizza when you could just watch a YouTube video about it?
Summaries are good. They are even better when they are your own summaries. Bullet points are beneficial, but there’s a reason parrots aren’t the boss of very much. The story of Moby Dick wouldn’t be the same on a 3×5 card. The scouring of the Shire matters more because of the 60 chapters that came before it. The Bible has something good for you to read every day, but you cannot get it all in just a day. Salvation and sanctification and eternal life are God’s gifts, and our day-to-day challenges are also given to us by God as He is “preparing us for an eternal weight of glory beyond all comparison” (2 Corinthians 4:17).
Constraints increase value, especially the constraint of time. God made night and day, God made you need to sleep, God made it so that things are due, maybe even tomorrow. Yes, you’ll be learning to decide what to cut, what to prioritize and what to postpone, and when to go to bed.
If the brain is a muscle, then you’ve got to exercise it for it to be stronger. You can’t skip the line to know what/who and how to love. You don’t win a wrestling match without getting a little sweaty. You can’t order the courage of a raggant off of Amazon. But you can learn to care and you can learn to care more.
This is the problem with cheating, and I don’t mean just lying about whether it is your own work or not. Don’t cheat by not doing your own work. Because it isn’t just the right answer that we’re after, we want you to be smart and have self-control and steadfastness.
Education is not difficult like trying to reverse stuff toothpaste into your tube from the hole, it’s difficult like trying to dig and dung enough around your tree so that it grows more by the time we check it next year.
- Do something. “In all toil there is profit, but mere talk tends only to poverty” (Proverbs 14:23) Get started. “It’s the job that’s never started as takes longest to finish.” —Samwise Gamgee
- Do your own work. “Whatever your hand finds to do, do it with your might” (Ecclesiastes 9:10)
- Don’t complain. “Whatever you do, in word or deed, do everything in the name of the Lord Jesus, giving thanks to God the Father” (Colossians 3:17)
- Finish what you start. “A lazy person does not roast his prey, but the precious possession of a person is diligence.” (Proverbs 12:27 NASB)
If we want to carry and advance Christ-honoring culture, then we’re going to need bigger imaginations and stronger muscles. You don’t get those things from lifting feathers.