The following are Mr. Higgins notes from the 2025 Fundraising Feast.
What makes ECS the best school in the world? If that question seems too ridiculous, what makes ECS the best school in Snohomish County? Could we be the best private school? The best private Christian school? The best private Christian classical school?
Some of this depends on the definition of “best.” Maybe we are not The Best, and even if we were, are Christians allowed to talk that way? Wouldn’t Christ-like humility be an important part of a Christ-honoring institution? Yeah, we probably can’t say ECS is the best.com.
But are we just trying to do what everyone else is doing? Are we just one of many options? Other than the names of our people and the address of our location, do we have anything unique? Are we just like all the other Flamboyant-Natural Kibbe body-type schools?
This question and conversation have been taking place for at least a few months. We’ve actually not done all that we could to clarify and communicate our value, which, I’m here to tell you, is a only-one-of-its-kind value.
A lot of our school’s tangibles are similar to other schools. We have classrooms and teachers, we read books and write papers and take tests. Our teaching model, following the Trivium, is not only something we do; there are other ACCS sister schools in Western WA training their students through Grammar and Logic and Rhetoric. It’s not our playground that makes us unique, though, also, that we keep using the parking lot as our soccer, foursquare, tetherball, tag, jump rope, and kickball “field” is, I suppose, different.
We are trying to nail the tangibles. We never stop trying to make the most of our campus and curriculum. Our academic culture is excellent, and getting sharper year by year. If you walked around for five minutes on a typical school day you’d say, “this looks like a school.”
Our mission is to commend the works of the Lord to another generation so that they will carry and advance Christ-honoring culture. Lots of Christians could say that, but what does it mean? What ingredients go into that culture?
We don’t want the ingredients to be secret, though they can’t be seen tangibly. They are like the aroma of baking bread: you can’t touch it, but it’s the place where you want to be.
Let’s call these the ECS Enculturation Trifecta for Unfavorable Conditions. I just get a kick out of the word trifecta. It’s more than just another way to say three, it means the three winners. Hitting the trifecta at the race track means putting your money down on the first, second, and third place winners in order. Solomon said that two are better than one, and that a threefold cord is not quickly broken (Ecclesiastes 4:9). This trifecta is the intangible but invaluable ethos of our Christ-honoring culture. We already have this kind of culture, and we are trying to advance this culture, for families who see that we live in unfavorable conditions.
Masculine Nerve
It’s been said that cultures are built by men who have families to feed. Our school culture is built by men who have families to feed, men who have children to feed with truth, goodness, and beauty so that they can carry and advance Christ-honoring culture.
We currently have as many male teachers as we do female teachers, which means we have double the men on our campus by percentage than the average private school. The number itself is unique, but the men themselves have nerve. That is, they have a sense of purpose and a spine in unfavorable conditions. Have you ever heard someone say, “Can you believe the nerve of that guy?” We want to say, “Yeah, we hire those guys.”
It takes us a month of morning Matins to get through all the men who are available to pray.
Which does not frustrate the ladies. Our women don’t have to be first in battle, even as they beautify and help make things better. We’ve got guys with guns, actually (following a strict internal policy). Now, we’ve also got women with guns, that’s good, but it should be that they’d never have to pull first.
This translates to the students. I recently read about a homeschool prom organized by a mom who watched the night go by and no young man asked any young lady to dance. The young men were Christian guys, the kind who workout and read their assignments, who do some good things. But they weren’t willing to take a risk of rejection or failure. ECS has guys who ask girls to dance.
We’ve got men with backbone leading the charge and women with backbone making it glorious. When conditions are unfavorable, you want men with chests, men with ordered loves and convictions and vision and enterprise. ECS has, and advances, masculine nerve.
Tactical Laughter
Maybe the easiest thing to do in the world is see problems. Education tends to make it worse because the educated know more of what it could be, should be, might have been. It is just not hard at all to complain; first semester Kindergartners can do it. Highly educated people complaining in multiple syllables may sound more intellectual but it doesn’t fix much.
Our school motto is risus est bellum, “laughter is war.” It’s a real battle, to learn stuff, to see so many broken things, and also not to take oneself so seriously. We’re not laughing because nothing is wrong, we’re trying to deal with what’s wrong with a good attitude. Let men their laughs employ.
Loud Laughter (and its cousin, Strong Singing) is the audible aroma of faith, joy, and hope. There’s a sense in which laughter is our goal, yes, but it’s a tactic, it’s a tool we use to get to the goal. We don’t wait until the end of the day to laugh, we laugh as we work toward the end of the day.
Unlike the world, we’re not teaching our students how to score higher on the victim scale, how to be more easily offended or identify as oppressed. This takes discipline, humility, and faith.
The current conditions make it seem that the self-confident are succeeding, but “the righteous shall see and fear and laugh” (Psalm 52:8). The three steps are not see and fear and freak out. Fearing the Lord leads to laughing at the time to come (Proverbs 31:25). There are really uncertain things, hard things, tough assignments, weeks full of events, challenges in the world. ECS has, and advances, tactical laughter.
Radical Company
Have you ever felt like you’re a lone charcoal brick trying to provide heat for the entire grill? At ECS you don’t have to be alone.
Company is a great word. I noticed it in That Hideous Strength (talk about unfavorable conditions), and “the company at St. Anne’s.” A company is a group of companions, derived from the Latin words for “with” (com) and “bread” (panis). A company are bread-breakers, sharing a table, sharing a feast.
Pursuing this type of fellowship is radical, not just because it’s extreme, but because fellowship is rooted in the gospel, the evangel in ECS. Sin disrupts, and the gospel enables forgiveness and then fruitfulness.
ECS is absolutely committed to dealing with sin, for when “your brother sins against you,” just as Jesus taught in Matthew 18. Students learn how to ask for forgiveness and then learn what reconciliation and full restoration looks and feels like. We’re in this together. Just yesterday a teacher asked the whole school for forgiveness. Recently a senior asked a seventh grader for forgiveness for being annoyed. It’s accountability to keeping short accounts that enables way more fun and fruitfulness. ECS has, and advances, radical company.
The Threefold Cord
Wrapping these three strands together it’s no wonder that this night every year is perhaps the culmination of our culture. Not the fundraising (though we need that to support the work) but the feasting. This is like being around Beowulf’s table in Heorot. Who doesn’t want a man with glad gravity at the head of the table that fills the room with a delightful aroma?
Sort of interesting: Men with chests is from The Abolition of Man. King Lune is the embodied tactical laughter from The Horse and His Boy. Company comes from THS. And even “unfavourable conditions” is from an address called “Learning in Wartime.” All these are C.S. Lewis stuff.
Maybe ECS stands for: Educating (like) Clive Staples. Or, stated another way, ECS is the place Lewis would send his kids across the pond for school.
There’s no other place like ECS. We’re seeking to nail the tangibles that build a school, and then to bake the trifecta of intangibles that advance a culture. Our men don’t take the backseat; they’ve got skin in the game. Laughter isn’t a joke; our gladness has gravity. Retreat isn’t an option; we’re not building a bunker or even a bubble, we’re a powerful company. It’s worth it.
The enculturation trifecta for unfavorable conditions:
- Masculine Nerve
- Tactical Laughter
- Radical Company
What would you give to have this, for your kids, grandkids, for your community, for Snohomish County, for the honor of Christ in the world?