The Right Map

From Classical Me, Classical Thee: Squander Not Thine Education by Rebekah Merkle

Let's say that you are in Chicago, and you're about to start a road trip to New York City. You know that's where you want to end up, although you're not super clear about which direction it is from your hotel. But you've expertly loaded up your car, and you're driving toward the Chicago city limits, after which point you figure you'll just drive down the road and eventually fetch up in New York. You had a friend who drove to New York and arrived successfully, so you know it can be done, and why wouldn't it work in your case as well? In one way, getting to the Big Apple from the Windy City truly is as simple as driving down the road -- but in another sense there are thousands of ways to do it wrong. You could head south and find yourself in Mexico, you could head west and wash up in LA, you could veer to the southeast and end up in Florida. Your master plan of "driving down the road" will work, but obviously that's only the case if you have managed to pick the right road. The happy news, though, is that there are such things as maps in the world. You don't have to flip a coin every time you come to an intersection. You can actually follow the map.

In the same way that not every road leads to New York City, not every educational path leads to the same end product of faithful, clear-thinking, creative, persuasive leaders. Millions and millions of American teenagers are being given mandatory educations, and, to put it mildly, not all of them are turning out to be clear-thinking leaders. But you're in the school you're in because someone, somewhere, wants you to be that different kind of person -- articulate, creative, clear-thinking, and persuasive -- and they think classical Christian education is the most effective road to get you there. They've looked at the map, they've charted the route, and they've put you on this road.

Why do they think that? If the desired result is for you to be a strong, persuasive, independent shaper of culture, what is it about your school that makes it the best road towards that objective? What is it about the classical method that produces leaders? Aren't leaders just people who happen to have been born with strong personalities? Well, no, actually. Your natural personality is a hugely important part of who you will become, but it is your personality as much as your intellect that is being shaped through your education. A naturally bubbly, extroverted girl can be made, by her education, to be insecure, embarrassed, and ill-equipped for life, just as a naturally shy girl can be made, by her education, much more confident and sure of herself. In both cases her natural personality has been molded by her education.

[L]et's look at some of the goals of your education and then compare them with the means by which everyone thinks you can get there.

First of all, we all hope that, at the end of this educational process, you will be able to think clearly. Presumably, you wish that too. Thinking clearly seems obvious enough, but you would be amazed at how atypical a skill it actually is. The ability to work through an issue clearly, logically, and precisely is an exceptionally rare gift that you are being given.

Something similar goes on in sports, but for some reason it's much easier for people to see the principle there than in the classroom. Everyone recognizes that when a coach makes his basketball team run suicides or do box jumps, he is training them for something else. When he makes the team do shooting drills, it is so that once they are in a game, they will possess the necessary skills needed to win the game. No one thinks that the dribbling drills are the end goal of the basketball season, or that you need to do box jumps because sometimes in the middle of the game there is a box-jumping competition you'll have to win. Practices are all about deconstructing the necessary skills for a basketball game, isolating them, and then working on them individually . . . but always with a larger goal in mind. 

Each basketball game is different from the last one you played. That's true even if you're playing against the same team. Every time you dribble down the court, you are faced with a unique set of challenges. You have never seen this exact situation before, but the skills your coach spent all that time drilling into you turn out to have been useful after all, which you will appreciate when you find yourself able to instinctively drive past the other team's defense for a layup.

For some reason, people don't realize that the same thing is true in the classroom. The facts you are being taught are not the end goal of learning any more than the wall sit is the end goal of basketball. You are spending your days in the classroom doing drills in much the same way that you do in basketball practice. They are all designed to equip you, to strengthen you, to make you into a person who can step out of the classroom and into the world and successfully negotiate situations you have never encountered before.

Let's say there is a hypothetical member of your basketball team who has set himself up as a skeptic. When the team is doing weight training, he points out that he's never seen anyone in the whole history of basketball have to bench-press during a game. Nor has he seen anyone do a sit-up. Or run a suicide. He therefore declines to do any of those things in practice. I think we can all predict what kind of basketball player that boy will be. In the same way, it is entirely possible to sit through a classical education but come out the other side with precisely none of the skills which it was designed to impart. And if that's the way you approach your education, then you are basically making the decision now that you would like to be the person who, throughout the rest of his life, sits on the bench and watches the actual players.

Hopefully your basketball coach would be able to answer your questions if you said, "Hey -- how do suicides help our performance in games?" In the same way, your educators hopefully know the answers to how your classroom work is supposed to help you in life . . . [because] you're in a time of huge potential right now [where] the concrete isn't set yet. You're in the fabulous position of still being right at the front-end of your life with loads of possibilities in front of you. So take a good look around you and really look at what God has given you to invest -- and then roll up your sleeves and determine to make the absolute most of it. Good luck!