Hello, families. Today, I give you a hodgepodge of some of my recent sources of encouragement.
When it comes to visionary clarification, there has been plenty of goodness to go around lately. Tuesday’s Information Night served as a great refresher and even provided some new categories that I’ll return to in the future. (The video is posted on Vimeo if you’d like to check it out or send it to a friend).
Particularly helpful was Sean Higgins’ argument that we ought to be very concerned with what our students most need, and what they most need is the right wants. His talk included this:
“What do your children need most? Knowledge? Character? Diligence? Persistence? Imagination? Sure. But what they need most is for you to WANT them to learn to want the best wants, the blessed wants, to have driving desire for the true and good and beautiful. A good school is a factory for good wants. A good education exposes students (and their families) to desirable things, challenges them not to be satisfied with lesser things, and supports the process until all our wants are the best ones.“
Wants. Loves. Appetites. Where will a student grow the loves that will serve him well when his training is complete? We think it is in the right life context. While there are a host of situations our students find themselves in on the regular, the most deliberate training happens at home, in church, and at school. This is the core of their paideia.
Grant Weinberg has been on a blogging roll of late, writing first for his own order of thought, but also to help others. I commend them all to you, but from an entire article on the matter of paideia, he talked about some important worldview training elements that are featured in Omnibus and Apologetics, in particular. Here’s a taste for you:
“The best way to make a hypocrite or an apostate would be to teach someone Christianity and not allow them to question it. We question everything. In doing so, we find that the only belief that hold water is Christianity. Scripture, History, Science, Math, Logic, Latin, it all points to God because it stems from Him. The skeptics are considered. Existentialism is taught. Evolution is examined. We look at every major system of thought and put it on trial. Our students know that if these systems are accepted, then life is meaningless and irrational. Morality is out the window and there is no reason to go on existing. Life is way too beautiful to even consider these things. Our education causes one to look at the world and turn to Christ. He is the only reason.“
That’s really good. I’m glad my kids are getting this rough worldview handling by teachers who love God and who love them. When allowed to speak for themselves, alternative life systems to Christianity are unmasked as the hollow counterfeits they are. Christ is the only reason.
And while there have been a few others, I’ll share one more source of fresh encouragement: our Uniform Policy. I’ve had a few conversations lately that have caused me to consider again the point of our Uniform Policy. As with so many things, the particulars are unique, but the principles are overarching. The principles of our policy extend to many other aspects of our school.
One of the principles on which the policy is built is that of close-knit unity:
“We may not be seeking the same uniformity of the military, but we are in a fight, and there are a lot of arrows being whittled around here. Good education equips students to be winsome, deep-souled worshippers of the triune God. This is squire-academy for valiant fighters-in-training. We are part of the same squad – this is the training ground for future battle, and as such, we come dressed for the occasion. It is to remind the students that this is their people – this is their fight, and they are all in it. Little or big, fast or slow, older or younger, a uniform presents a physical, instant recognition of inclusion and solidarity.” —ECS Uniform Policy
This is a helpful reminder. The term “conformity” is often associated with mindlessness and the removal of individuality. But isn’t conformity to a good standard a good thing? We can love conformity to the Uniform Policy as a means of promoting harmony. Raggants are part of the same team, playing their part, working together, and are associated with one another. There is individuality in character and conformity in association. If a standard (or a policy) is a good one, it’s worth conforming to without fear of losing individuality. If a standard is a bad one, we should either correct the standard or else we should not associate with its other adherents.
But really, it comes back to what Sean was scratching at in the talk referenced above. What do they need? The right wants. And where do they get the right wants? From, as Grant suggested, their paideia, their enculturation. A feature of their enculturation is Christian association, and our common uniform is supposed to be a help in this.
I want to associate with our people, I want my family to do the same, and I want to have good standards before asking anyone to conform to them…whether curricular standards, cultural standards, or even uniform standards.
Risus est bellum!
Jonathan