Fragile - DO NOT SHAKE WHILE MOVING

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Returning to the Quad - What Science Ed Really Needs

I love it when disparate readings coalesce into something beautiful. I was just reading yesterday in James Taylor's Poetic Knowledge and then today saw this article in the NY Times. Taylor believes that to return to true scientific knowledge we will profit by "playing" with the attendant natural principles that a child learns, for instance, by working the lever of a see-saw. Meanwhile, the Times wants to see us throw money after bells and whistles in the science lab. If we just had more lab experience, we would have more scientists. The two readings come together at the level of poetic knowledge, but the Times is quite sure that all this will just happen, while Taylor and most of history is convinced that it "happens" by purpose. At the heart of these thoughts for me is the need to continue to recover the Mathematical Arts of the Quadrivium. I know a bunch of us are already pushing each other on this idea, but I don't want anything to subvert the conversation. We must be able to live fully in this world given to us by God to dwell in and to be stewards of. That means we must recover and develop the skills both of the word (Trivium) and the number (Quad) so that we can deal with all aspects of life on this planet. What are others reading in this regard? I will put my thoughts out there as they are brought to the light of day. Perhaps the money being spent on minor explosions in school labs would be better invested in reprinting some of the older unattainable works that delineate the use of the Quad for our schools?

Intellectus Conlectio V

On the final day, most of us grumping a little all week that there was so little on the praxis side of the teaching, we got our ears full of what this looks like in the classroom. The first need was to summarize where we had been. If… …teaching is a process that entails leading students from the Theatre of Glory to the Person of Christ and… …using all the modes of knowing is the most excellent way to lead the student to this high knowledge and… …recovering Poetic knowledge is a part of this excellent way and… …the Seven Liberal arts are to be the skills acquired by our student and… …joining mythos with logos to produce fully rounded thinkers is our goal… Then… … we must develop lessons that accomplish these things. … the vision of the school must be broken down into its constituents areas of concern (what are the skills, content, and concepts we are pursuing – see Adler’s Paiedia Program for these three pillars). … the Curr Committee must be working with the faculty to develop specific goals at several hierarchical levels so that when planning the individual lesson, the teacher is planting a tree that is part of the school’s forest. James D. showed us specific examples of what such lessons looked like in Kindergarten. It is up to each school to first flesh out their specific vision (using Logos, or Veritas, or Westminster stuff will not flesh out our school’s vision) before they can move to these specifics. JD is more than willing to share his school’s stuff as templates, but photocopying will not work out into reality. To summarize, I will use the same analogy I used at the Conlectio. Having watched Babbette’s Feast (a foreign movie) the night before, I was prepared by it for this picture. I engorged myself on a multi-course meal this past week, with appropriate fellowship and well-selected wines to go with it. I am overly full at the moment and need the time to digest it. We have formed up a yahoo group to keep the conversation going. I will be figuring out how much, how soon, and in what manner these discussions this week will become fleshed out in the life of CCS. What a great week!

Intellectus Conlectio IV

Today we began by hearing from a local pastor, Jim Holland. His two-fold purpose was to build a case from scripture against works righteousness and then apply it to the classroom. He used the Parable of the Prodigal Son, but presented it in a manner that I had not considered before as the Parable of the Two Sons. The Prodigal or Younger Son we are all familiar with, and was not the focus of his message. The older or Proud Son was the focus. He noted that Christ told this in the context of two groups of people, the sinners/publicans who were gathered about him (to which the Prodigal was appropriate) and the Pharisees (for whom the Proud Son was directed). He noted that the Older Son’s issue was that he had stayed at home, done what God directed, and therefore felt angry when the Prodigal was welcomed back as he was. Many evangelicals today stuggle with thinking that their superior works, theology, manner of education, whatever, shoud set them up for greater honor with God. But this is not so. All our works, good or evil, are to be repented of. When we grasp this, we can bring this to the classroom in at least four ways: 1) We can begin to see sin in the classroom as opportunity rather than someone messing up our classroom; 2) We will be struck by wonder in the classroom as we see teaching as sacramental – this is God’s image in this sinful student; 3) We will see ourselves as helpless sinners who have been charged with helping other sinners, or simply put, we will be more humble; 4) we will begin to accept the uniqueness of the student who has a soul that is alien to our own, so that we can encourage everyone in the classroom. After this very convicting study, Jim Holland left and James Daniels focused back upon the previous day’s discussions. Picking up with the notion of mythos, we needed to develop within this overarching theme some practical manner of getting our students to enter into mythological thought. The best means seems to be the ancient rubric of the progymnasmata. Rather than spending a great deal of time on the progym, it was briefly defined and we were steered toward the dozens of great helps that are out there online. After lunch we finished our formal discussions of the day with a lengthy look at how “subjects” fit into all these ideas. We began by discussing what a “subject” is, how it relates to the school, student, teacher, educational process. We determined that it was a form of category by which we address the various goals of the school’s vision. In hierarchial form it would appear as thus: Vision, Mission of the School I The Ideal Characteristics of a Graduate I The Over arching Goals of Content, Skills, and Concepts that will produce a graduate I The Subjects I Goals for each general subject I Goals for each grade in that subject We then discussed at length the manner in which these things are put into place. The Mission must determine everything else. The Board is probably best suited for this, perhaps with a group of committed parents and faculty who are like minded. The Ideal Graduate should be formed by the Curriculum Committee. Then we became a little more divided on exactly who should determine what below there. I still hold that the more the faculty determine (by study and investigation) what they should teach, and institutionalize it by writing it up formally and presenting it to the Admin/Curr Comm/Board, the more likely that it will be realized in the actual classrooms. The top down approach is necessary for the big overall picture, but the details should come from the one teaching. That much we could all agree upon. We have had wonderful fellowship, informal discussion of these ideas, and musing time this afternoon, and after dinner will watch “Babette’s Feast” together with attendant discussion and fellowship. Tomorrow morning we will wrap it all up.

Intellectus Conlectio Evening of Art & Beauty

This evening (Wed) we had the opportunity to hear a presentation on Art and Beauty from Mike Carter, the art teacher at Westminster Academy in Memphis, TN. I will try to hit the highlights of his talk before discussing some of the things he discussed after during our Q&A time. He began by extolling the powers of PowerPoint. Especially for what he does, it frees him to teach and leave the “notes” up to the screen. His presentation was first rate. His thesis was that “Great Art is a universal language.” He built his theme around the fact that if great art is a language, Christians should be able to converse in it if they are indeed classically trained in the use of that language. He presented a brief but provocative look at the “10 best” pieces of art according to a recent Art Review survey. I tried but could not come up with the survey online. As we looked at these pieces, some of them worthy, some very much not from our perspective, we then moved to the two aspects that make up art: presentation and technique. When either one is above the other, it is a mess. From his perspective presentation has totally overcome technique in our day. This could be seen by taking a quick history of art tour and seeing the committed line of early work give way to almost complete lack of such in modern work. His point was to say that of all men, Christians should be the best artists in the world. During our Q&A we discussed:

• Nude vs naked = he cited a gentleman who drew the distinction between the nude as a study in pre-fallen human form and nakedness which came from sin and should be covered; WA does not do any apology for studying art which includes nudes.
• Grading = this has always been uncomfortable for him. He currently assigns research and writing that becomes grades but does not actually grade the art.
• Number one key = patient, profuse, purposeful encouragement – don’t lie, but don’t discourage with brutal criticism
• Budget = parents pay art fee, about $10 / student, though differing grades do differing media, meaning differing costs
• The problem with once per week class is that a piece takes so long to complete that the student loses interest as he has “moved on.”
• Had to run after, but I wish to see our new art teacher get together with him at Circe. I will get it set up.

Intellectus Conlectio III

As before, today had a lot of ideas and discussion that may be very hard to simply write out in discursive sentences. But I will try. We began our day by noting that so far we had set into play a drama if you will, a set of motions within a script. We were seeking to bring our students to a place of knowing Christ in all His fullness, loving Him with all their heart, mind, and body by four modes of knowing, through the tools provided by the Seven Liberal Arts, and all of this through the lens of Truth, Goodness, and Beauty by contemplation and thought about God’s Theatre of Glory (His creation). And we were not content that such should stay lofty or disconnected from “real life” so we wanted to see this relationship with Christ as the Great Logos, as the arche of what we should be, to be brought back down into the Theatre of Glory and incarnated in us as it was in Him. To be truly Beautiful, Truthful, and Good as He was, we must be in the world with Him. We briefly added to this play the notions that there are two ways of thinking in the ancient school: ratio and intellectus. Ratio can be signified as discursive or moving thought (A---B) while intellectus is contemplative (a---A). Ratio moves forward propositionally while intellectus contemplates an idea for itself, never arriving at the end of the “word” but only growing in its knowledge of that idea. Both of these must be addressed in a school to truly say we are teaching students to think about God, Man, the World. But that is just the goal and it’s attending means. What is the actual stage for this type of education? In what environment would such a play be able to be brought forth (and I don’t wish my analogy to suggest that it is a “playing” at life, but rather that the play itself is life, but that we are prepared for life in school. So what must that Preparatory Theatre look like? And we discussed that its very name is indicative of its essence: school, coming from Latin, schola, meaning “leisure.” School is to be a place of leisure, a place for thinking about our life, if we are to every hope to reach our goals of living life rightly. This caused much discussion both about what ought and what could be done to promote such a place. We live in a society that has reduced life down into terms that are Marxist and utilitarian. We measure a man’s life by his work. We consider school as a means to that successful work. Thus school work becomes measured by its output, its quantity, its “business (busyness).” This gets in the way of all our previous notions of the modes of learning because it robs these modes of their goal and purpose, replacing it with a lower purpose that can be accomplished with much less effort and time. We live in very anxiety inducing circumstances. In the end it may be found that our stressful lifestyles do much more to kill us early than carbs and calories ever could. And schools promote this stress and anxiety by trying to keep kids busy. If it is a place of leisure, it must be a place of purpose and priority. The best and most important things should be done in a manner that puts the student in a place to become human, not to become a better “producer” or “worker bee.” As our whole culture is infused with this industrial notion, we are up against a deep paradigm that must change if our schools are recover any of the older forms of thought, understanding, wisdom, and virtue that once came from them. Two works were set forth as helping to understand the place of leisure: Eugene Peterson’s The Contemplative Pastor and Joseph Pieper’s Leisure: the Basis of Culture. This moved us to a further difficulty with modern schooling that explains some of the shifts in our way of learning. In the old “pre-Enlightenment” school much of the hard work of ratio and intellectus was accomplished by marrying propositional thought (Logos) with stories that brought meaning to those thoughts and ideas (Mythos). The “Enlightenment” turned the light of myth off for modern man and will allow him to pursue truth through the Logos, the word, the way of rational thought. In short, he is left with a series of facts, factoids, and globules of facts but no underlying story that connects them. Life has become disintegrated. Folks can believe that one is schizophrenic if he chooses to major in say, Bible, and minor in Biology (as I did). Without the “story of God” (the Christian mythos of Scripture) there really is little point in learning anything logically because there is no need for it other than to get a diploma so I can get into college, so I can get a good job, which will allow me to retire before I die so I can try and enjoy the last few years before I then die. This is not human. It is mechanistic and vile. This area of mythos or myth is something so unModern that we feel weird even talking about it. Are not myths things that are made up, old ways of superstition, silly stories to explain man’s lack of understanding of things really are? In fact, America may be the first society to lack any real mythology or story, and thus is historic for being without any purpose above that of material capitalism. It is a marvel that for all our desire to defeat Marxism, we swallowed its major tenet that our main purpose is to be a good drone for the hive. And Christian schooling seems dedicated to propagating such things with its focus upon busy-ness as taking the place of true rigorous learning. A great moment was the two forms of laziness we discussed. The first lazy man is the one who stays in bed in all day. The second lazy man gets up, goes to work/school, and stays busy all day with no purpose and thus does not get anything done for a purpose. Neither is actually accomplishing anything. We are on a break now, and I am full of thoughts about how to make school more a place that fits its name. This evening we are getting with an artist to discuss how beauty fits into education through art. I will blog on it separately.

Intellectus Conlectio II

I am going to do my best to relate these things as I can, but I must confess my mind, though obtaining more clarity on CCE than it has ever had before, is finding it tougher to relate these to other people, because of the ideas are so new to me. But let me try… We began our second morning by seeking to discuss the relationship of “knowing” to “learning.” How do we know things? We discussed four modes of learning: induction (drawing out general ideas from specific things); deduction (learning through propositions, if---then); rhetoric – being persuaded through the emotions; and poetic – intuitive knowledge, knowledge of the whole as a whole This last mode seemed the most neglected, so we in particular wished to develop it further so as to recover its use in education. We basically made a chart that I cannot reproduce effectively through blogger, so I will do my best: We noted that the ultimate goal of our education was to bring a student to a deeper (life long pursuit of) relationship with Christ as Incarnate Truth. Every student already has begun from birth learning poetically, by experience and observation, with his imagination and intuition, a conceptualization of Who God Is. Our task is to use the poetic mode better by training it to see God as He is revealed in His Theater of Glory, His creation. It is cyclical, because it is not enough to simply see Christ, but to then live in the Theater according to that knowledge, that vision. The Person of God: bringing the student to know Truth in the Person of Christ (through the lens of Truth, Goodness, Beauty) The Pre-verbal Knowledge of a Student: His experiences, senses, imagination, etc. The Theater of Glory: the revealed glory of God in His creation Of course all this theory from the first day and a half had us all asking, “So what does this look like in the classroom? What does this imply about my teaching?” That is where we ended our day by discussing dozens of implications for our teaching, some of which include… …a more active student, who is able to touch, see, feel, smell, in short sense the truths we are trying to teach. …a great deal of contemplative preparation on the part of the teacher to determine what topics, ideas, forms, etc. are necessary to the lesson being taught. …time to think in the classroom. The less we fall prey to the common error of the “classroom as factory” mentality, where we are pressuring our students daily toward retirement (you have to get an “A” so you can get into a great college, get a great job, and thus afford to retire and enjoy a few years before you die) the more we will see that we need time to think about ideas and knowledge and God enough to become who we ought to be, rather than simply being able to pass a test and move on. …a change in our paradigm and thinking so as to first, as teachers, to think in a more poetic form (not dismissing the other modes, but recovering this lost one), before we are able to embody it in our students. …there is not a formula for this, it is a mindset, a way of thinking, that is transferred from teacher to student. Now don’t think for a moment that I have done more than teased you with all the great discussion. How I long to see this embodied in not just CCS (our school) but in all schools worthy of the name. That is the challenge – to bring this to fruition, off the table of theory and onto the floor of real life.

Intellectus Conlectio I

After spending some time settling in and getting to know one another (there are 16 of us from 6 different schools – a joy to see one of my old teachers from Baton Rouge, Carrie King), we launched into our conversations with the simple but compelling question: “What is Classical Education?” To answer this, we first divided up into four groups and discussed, before coming back together. My group seemed focus on the notion that it involved the Seven Liberal Arts. We then got right to where CCS is currently talking, what is the relationship of the Quadrivium to a primary and secondary school. Once we reconvened as a full group, we then first discussed the content of our breakouts, seeing up on the white board the vast amount of topics that were brought up just trying to define classical education. This left me feeling comforted that I have always struggled to sum up classical education adequately, as we all had that trouble. At the end of this lengthy and stimulating discussion, James helped us round up the loose ends into the following general statement: whatever else it might be, classical education is a particular manner (classical) of leading students along a process of learning (education). Having established this very vague and general notion, we are now ready to start adding the particulars, breaking this down over the next four days and stating what we mean by such a thing. The conversation has been full, invigorating, and challenging. I am convinced that our faculty needs to do this type of thing regularly (weekly) and that I need (must) engage our parent body in the same regularly (quarterly at a minimum).

Intellectus Conlectio Intro

I am attending this week an experiment in conversation. James Daniels (Westminster Academy in Memphis) had this brain child for several years before starting the experiment last year. He brings together no more than 20 people for a Monday to Friday conversation at a nice quiet Spiritual Retreat center. The topic is Classical Christian Education. The format is wonderful. He poses a series of questions and we (the people) go with those questions where we may. I will try to report some of the highlights on this blog as we go through each day (but I may get behind if we stay up too late continuing the conversation).

Home for the Summer

So we come around to the end of another year in school and I am looking out at my students and I am asking myself the same questions I have this time every year, especially for those “moving on” or who I will not be teaching the next year.

1. Do each of these students know how much I love them? How? What have I said or done to relate that decision I made to love them even before any of them (these days) were born?
2. Have I given each of these students hope? I am a tough and demanding teacher. Do they sense that even if they barely squeaked by or made even a failing grade, that in Christ there is hope? Have I strengthened or weakened their faith?
3. What single trait in each student has been most encouraging to me?

As I ask these questions, I then have to challenge myself to end the year well, even if I am not pleased at the moment with some of these answers. I often wind up the last few days with one of those class hours which has no formal “plan.” It is during these times that I try to listen. To hear what they have to say about themselves, myself, the school, life, their dreams and goals. Sometimes it has come back to me that though most of the year had been difficult and trying, these last few minutes of the year had “saved” it all for them. In many cases they were able to see that the “hardness” of my class was in fact the expression of my love for them and my desire to see them rise higher than they ever thought possible. I think that makes it all worth it. Something I have done in the past and seen others do very well, without falling into any smarmy “everyone is special” type of traps has been to end the year with fun but poignant “awards” or merits for their classes. One of the most coveted of these for my students has been the “You Ask Great Questions” award or the “You Make Me Laugh” medal, both of which still sit on some kid’s shelves. This got me to thinking about what kind of such awards could I award in my current state of teaching mind:

• The Great Inquisitor – for the student who regularly teaches me the most with their questions
• Rhetoric Cop – catches the teacher using poor grammar or communication skills
• Who Needs Spell Check – for the student who most consistently spells well on anything other than a spelling test.
• Extreme North of the Compass – for the student who actually can find the country we are discussing on the map regularly
• Calvin Inclined – for that student who takes great delight in giving the teacher fashion and wardrobe input
• Einstein Ability of Relativity – to that student who can bring any subject in the world or especially our current lesson and make it apply in some way to their favorite subject. Ex: “Mr. Elliott, did you know that the Dallas Cowboy’s were using the 14th amendment to the Constitution when they signed Terrell Davis to their team?”
• An Award About Nothing – to the young Seinfeld who always seems able to fill out our class with pithy observations about nothing in life. The Minion of Minutia might be a better title.
• Johnny on the Clock – to the student who every day tells you its time for class to end
• Sick Elephant Award – for the student best able to bring up some favorite topic of the teachers every day so as to get us to Johnny on the Clock that much faster. In my class, this would the student who finds a way to reference U2 everyday.

Of course the list grows and changes. If one can find a humorous way to highlight the strengths of their students, it often can be great. I would love to hear other ideas and thoughts on the subject of sending your students home well for the summer.