Spring Break and Recess Metaphors
One of the main points of life is Recess. God loves taking breaks, and he loves ordaining times of rest. God created us to work, but he also made us to work toward something, and that is the establishment of a New Heavens and a New Earth -- Christ's kingdom on earth. In other words, rest. Even in that new kingdom there will be work, but rest will be at its center.
Recess metaphors are pervasive in scripture. During the conquest of Canaan, Joshua and the Israelites rested in the 7th year from their battles (Josh. 11:23), God ordained rest for the land every 7th year (Lev. 25:4), we devote the first day of every week (originally the 7th day) for rest and worship, and during the creation week, God himself rested on the 7th day (Gen. 2:2).
As Spring Break 2015 comes to a close, may we fully enjoy our remaining time with our families, knowing that rest is a good and necessary gift from God. And as we do, may we be strengthened for an energetic and productive close to the school year. God continues to be good to us.
Grace and Peace, Nate Ahern
Classically Educated Cyborgs
At ACA, we're behind the times.
We make students memorize things. We require them to recite, chant, and argue. We make them use their brains.
What could we be thinking? Haven't we heard of Google? Of Siri, the cheerful, all-knowing informational guru, who can tell us in an instant how to get from our house to Mt. Everest base camp (useful), and who knows how to differentiate among definitions of free masonry, Rosicrucianism, and theosophy? Haven't we heard of smartphones, those delightful boxes-of-ten-thousand-servants that fit in your back pocket? And of the informational age, in which nearly every human being on the planet has access to near omniscience?
A friend recently shared with me how her children had been told that classical education, and specifically memorization, were "a waste of time." Our fast-paced, technological society is beyond all that stuff now.
If the purpose of education is to transform our children into machines, then ACA has got it all wrong. If "the mannishness of man" (as Francis Schaeffer put it) is an outmoded concept, or if the arts, culture, imagination, and morality are the antiquated projections of God-biased thinkers, then our students are just spinning their wheels every day in class. Poor things.
Of course, we hold robustly to the happy truth that this isn't the case. Our students aren't wasting their time. We affirm that there is a profound distinction between knowledge and wisdom, between information and understanding, and between facts and beauty. While we gladly affirm that knowledge, information, and facts are necessary and good, we also understand what they are not. Running a Google search doesn't mean you know something (though it's a handy tool), processing a peer-reviewed statistical set does not mean you understand the moral question at hand, and plotting the species distribution of organisms in an ecosystem does not mean you appreciate natural beauty or understand its greater significance.
Does this mean that numbers are bad and imagination is good? That we should discourage statistics majors in preference for budding artists? Not a bit of it.
What we should do is understand the right place for information and technology on the one hand, and the right place for wisdom and beauty on the other. Both categories are important, but they are vastly different. And we must understand that one of the fundamental purposes of true education is to develop an appreciation for, and an ability to reproduce, great ideas, great works of art, and great arguments. An educated human being thinks for himself, communicates with his own thoughts, and creates his own works. He is not a slave. He has made the world's knowledge his own; he has developed what is called copiousness. He feeds his brain just like he feeds his body, and then he digests it. He meditates on the knowledge he has gained. He turns it over, considers it, and makes it his own. He is a man, with plenty of "mannishness," and so he takes his knowledge-turned-wisdom and creates. Made in the image of creator-God, this is only natural.
But this overflow of rich, composted knowledge -- this copiousness -- is never achieved by smartphone thumb-tapping. Your pocket-sized ten thousand servants have their time and place, but they are your occasional dessert, never your entree. Homer, Sophocles, King David, Pericles, Caesar, King Alfred, da Vinci, Galen, Faraday, Washington, Curie, Einstein, Churchill, Chesterton, Schaeffer -- these were all great humans exercising their own minds.
To create -- or to be able to influence our culture for Christ -- our students must have something to say, and they must be able to say it winsomely themselves. Heartfelt apologies, Siri.
Grace and Peace, Nate Ahern
Getting it Done
One of the great historical problems of humanity is the gulf between what's "true" in theory and what's done in practice. It has made the philosopher's pen run dry, the pastor's heart ache, and the parent's resolve waver and crack. We believe and proclaim -- and then we act in an entirely different way.
Sometimes, this is because we've been silly and run the numbers wrong. For example, many a long-haired, grass-smoking philosophy major has revolutionary ideas about how moral absolutes are antiquated -- but then he never seems to be able to take someone's wallet without spending the night in jail. At other times, the gulf between belief and practice is due to our laziness as fallen man. As the old Book of Common Prayer puts it, "We have done those things which we ought not to have done, and we have left undone those things which we ought to have done." We just don't have the resolve to stay in the trenches day after day. Doing the right thing is hard.
Transfer this idea into the sphere of classical education. At ACA, we have high standards for educational method and curriculum content. We believe that students should work hard, that teachers should be exacting (and of course loving), and that our curriculum should be devoid of drivel, rich in the high mountain air of Western ideas.
But unless those ideas become flesh, everything ACA stands for is worthless. Unless teachers consistently give bad grades when needed (in addition to the good ones) and are strict with their students (in addition to being loving), there will be no progress. Unless parents sit down with their children every day for a time of reading, quality discussion, or Bible study, the best classical Christian education possible will fail to get through.
As parents and teachers, we need an every-day faith. An every-single-day faith for the tough journey we're taking with our children. The vision of classical and Christian education is glorious, yes. But getting it done is all about grit, determination, and no-breaks-allowed commitment.
Funny thing is, that's just how our Christian walk should be -- and just how God likes to reward us with lasting joy.
Grace and Peace, Nate Ahern
If It Ain't Broke . . .
When God builds something, he always has a distinct game-plan: he breaks stuff apart first. When he "built" the first man and woman, he broke Adam in two (the removed rib on the one hand, sleeping Adam on the other). The rib became a woman, and then he put the two parts back together: Adam and Eve became "one flesh" (Gen. 2:24). When God breaks, he's always up to something glorious.
This breaking-while-building method is all over the place in Scripture. God broke Jacob's hip right before he blessed him with land in Canaan (Gen. 32:25); God "breaks" the children of Israel with slavery in Egypt while he simultaneously builds them into a nation of 600,000+ (Exod. 12:37); God "breaks" David by allowing Saul to chase him without cause, all to build him up into a faithful king (1 Sam. 19 - 2 Sam. 5); the nation of Israel is "broken" through sin and exile so that God can bring them back to Canaan and build them up again for his glory (1 Kings 25:21, Ezra 2:1); and of course, Christ's body was broken for us on the cross so that we could be resurrected -- rebuilt -- into new life with Christ.
The key point is this: stories with hardship in them, where people and things get broken, are the rule, not the exception. They're God's way, not God's mistake.
Right now, ACA is doing a lot of building. We're "building" lives (metaphorically) in the classroom, and we're building classrooms (actually) over at Vietnamese Central Baptist Church. What does this mean? That there are still road-blocks and fender-benders ahead. There will be lactic acid buildup and sore muscles, and probably some band-aids needed.
But this is how glory works. It stoops, it scrapes its knee, and it gets its hands dirty -- like Christ did. The way up is down. We delight ourselves in the Lord -- the humble, unexpected ways of the Lord -- and he will give us the desires of our hearts.
Grace and Peace, Nate Ahern
Like Spitting into the Wind
As our school grows and time passes, more of our students are moving into the Logic Phase of the Trivium. In light of current relativistic cultural trends which see man's personal desires as autonomous, and truth as a shape-shifting thespian, we have a key job as educators and parents to give our kids the tools they need to apply universal moral standards to today's ideas. We have to show them how to judge between right and wrong. If a new, controversial law is passed, will they be able to point effectively to a fixed standard of truth that is applicable? Or will they wave their hands despairingly, get shrill, and have nothing much to say?
But today, "right" and "wrong" are strange words. What can they really mean? And who's to say? Surely you aren't telling me that I must conform to your personal beliefs? You're free to believe what you like -- you have a right to your outmoded religious convictions -- but keep them out of the public square. Keep them away from my personal choices.
So this is a tricky business. The Logic Phase should not teach the lofty art of ramming dogma down disagreeing throats. As an obvious but crucial caveat, unless we teach our children to generously sprinkle their arguments with love, mix them with a few handfuls of minced pride, and bake them with bellies full of laughter, all the perfect syllogisms and proofs they can muster will fly back into their faces, like spitting into the wind. As someone once said, "There is a deeper right than being right."
So we are beginning to give our children tools of argument and debate. But as any good carpenter knows, sharp tools in unskilled hands just lead to a bloody mess.
Grace and Peace, Nate Ahern
Not by Steering a Nifty Joystic
When I was growing up, I remember hearing about how some acquaintances of ours had decided to do "unschooling." Replete with the wisdom of modern educational philosophies, they let their kids choose their own curriculum start to finish, which turned out to involve things like horseback riding between 12:00PM - 2:00PM -- and then not much else.
My 12-year-old self was agape. Flummoxed. Nonplussed. (And probably a little envious.)
When there are no fixed standards in play for education, you can get a whole lot of interesting results, all of them (of course!) equally valid. Biff is a math whiz and publishes a paper on neutrino detection by the time he is nine years old (nice job, Biff), whereas Tuppy likes to get up at 10AM, play video games till four, and then kick around some blocks till dinner ("I love how hands-on Tuppy is!" says his mother). Some kids like to go to class and work hard, others prefer SnapChat Mondays. It's all a beautiful matter of personal choice. Our precious children are learning about what they love.
One of the crucial things for us to understand as parents and educators is that this kind of relativistic educational philosophy is no surprise at all if we don't have anywhere to hang our hat. If we can't point to a universal standard that says, "Here, not there; this, not that," then why shouldn't our kids do what they want? We can say that they'll have a miserable life if they don't work hard -- but what about (says Tuppy) the miserable life I'm having right now by doing all this dumb homework? What about the students' feelings? Who died and crowned my daddy's educational views king?
This may seem far-fetched, but given current educational trends and philosophies, it isn't far off. And even the best-raised kids like to intellectually gripe, and someday they will be asking questions about why all this rigor is really necessary? When they do, will they have a standard of excellence and a standard of beauty to point to in answer to their questions?
The Bible has many principles and few methods, and so we shouldn't thwack our kiddies on the mazzard with it and tell them to get to work. But we should always teach our children, gently and joyfully, that Scripture shows us rich, gospel life in full color -- and that kind of life is replete with hard work, sacrifice, stamina, and eyes trained to see God's grace and beauty. Not a life you can get to by steering a nifty joystick.
Grace and Peace, Nate Ahern
Fighting Blindness
Little kids bring us back to basics. My wife and I knew this was coming before we had children, and we haven't been disappointed. Our Clyde and Haley love stuff. They can't enough of it. Every morning when they wake up, their over-sized grins (and body convulsions) shout one thing: let me see more stuff! Except for them, it's not "stuff."
It's magic.
Toys, Mom's eyes, Dad's grab-able nose, a new book, sun making checkered patterns on the floor, fluttering pages, mallards on the frozen pond -- dreams come true. And we've discovered that they are right. Those things are magic, and we had only begun to slowly stop noticing them. We had grown up.
In Orthodoxy, Chesterton (who loved kids) said this:
The only words that ever satisfied me as describing Nature are the terms used in the fairy books, "charm," "spell," "enchantment." They express the arbitrariness of the fact and its mystery. A tree grows fruit because it is a magic tree. Water runs downhill because it is bewitched. The sun shines because it is bewitched.
Bewitched by the loving, adventurous hand of God. Our children will grow and mature. They will move from arithmetic to calculus and from dependence to independence. But they must never lose their sense of wonder and observation that they first had as little children. They will observe more somberly, more deeply -- but always with open eyes for God's countless gifts.
In the midst of grades, registration deadlines, homework, and extracurricular events, this is a fundamental mark of true education: fighting blindness. Keeping eyes of wonder open.
Grace and Peace, Nate Ahern
The Trivium for Life
Life is full of phases. We enter them, we pass through them, and then we're done. Just how it's supposed to be. But as we come out the other side of a phase, we always carry something permanent away.
This is one of the beauties of the Trivium, both for us and our children. Here's why:
1. In the Grammar Stage, students learn by repetition and singing in class because . . . they love repetition and singing at home ("Mommy? Mommy? Mommy?" or three-hour loops of a single chorus from Frozen). It's a phase. But even though they leave the Grammar Phase in 6th Grade, we want them to carry its basic outlook into adulthood -- like God. As Chesterton said, "It is possible that God says every morning, 'Do it again' to the sun; and every evening, 'Do it again' to the moon . . . [He] has never got tired of making them. It may be that He has the eternal appetite of infancy; for we have sinned and grown old, and our Father is younger than we.”
2. In the Logic Stage, students learn how to think neatly in all their classes. Why not theistic Evolution? Why did Rome fall? Why is this story in your history text and not that one? Why are you right and they wrong? Who says? Kids like being argumentative just because at this age. It's a phase. But we want them to carry Logic's basic outlook permanently -- like God. "Come, let us reason together, says the Lord" (Is. 1:18), and "In the beginning was the Word" (John 1:1).
3. In the Rhetoric Stage, students learn how to make their knowledge persuasive and beautiful. They're interested in making people believe them (especially college admissions officers). It's a phase. But we want them to carry Rhetoric's basic outlook permanently -- like God. "The words of the Lord are pure words: as silver tried in a furnace of earth, purified seven times" (Ps. 12:6).
What we put into our kids doesn't easily come out -- and when it comes to the Trivium, that's a very good thing.
Grace and Peace, Nate Ahern
Running Toward Challenges
As you probably know, I've been emphasizing hero-and-dragon themes in Chapel this year. This is not because I want to reduce Scripture to Andersen's Fairy Tales, or make knights-errant out of our little boys (and girls), but because this kind of story-metaphor is so central to both education and Christianity. Knights and dragon-killers lay down their lives by definition. Christ was a warrior, but he beat his enemies by laying down his life. Christ (like David) was a giant-killer, but he beat that giant (Death) by submitting to the will of the Father. Then the Father gave him a seat at his right hand. That's the heart of the gospel: spectacular joys and victories by means of suffering and death.
It's the heart of Christian education, too. Suffering, then reward. Struggle, then success. Grunting and hair-tugging over math problems at the dining table, then the light bulb. As the writer of Hebrews might have said, "For the moment, all studying and homework seem painful rather than pleasant, but later they yield the peaceful fruit of righteousness to those who have been trained by them" (Heb. 12:11).
Is this a trivialization of Scripture? Not a bit. One of the Bible's great commands is that we must educate our children according to high gospel standards (Deut. 6:6-9), and if we do this well, we are teaching our children to be giant-killers. As David "ran out to meet" Goliath (1 Sam. 17:48), we're teaching our children to run toward every challenge. As Christ did not run away from the cross (Luke 22:42), we're teaching our children not to run away from difficulty and pain in the classroom. We are teaching them to grow.
God's stories always end well. Man is born to trouble as the sparks fly upward (Job 5:7), often tragic trouble, but God's purposes for us and our children are always good. These are great, biblical truths for all of life that we want to get into our students' bones now. Work is hard, and they will sometimes fail, but that is not the end of the story.
Grace and Peace, Nate Ahern
What's Your Line?
As we continue the slow, wonderful task of teaching our children the love of learning, we have to be aware that at some point they might call our bluff. "I'm supposed to love learning? Just like you don't, Pops?" If we never crack a book, or if our kids see our recreation time as little more than Facebook surfing (and they're always watching us), the game will be up sooner or later. If we want our kids to love learning, we've got to love learning, too. And that means knowing a wise thing or two about basic fields of study.
Recently, I mentioned a few fundamentals on the importance of Science, particularly as related to typical classical-Christian-school pitfalls. History is another core subject -- and even more foundational -- that we must have some love of, or respect for, if we want our children to engage the culture and redeem the time.
But frankly, this is tough. History, for today's generation, is a cultural weirdo. Uncool. Irrelevant, unless you're into that sort of thing. Sequestered. History is now over there for those people. (You like History, and I like my fries with cheese.) And those people either (at best) "read biographies" as a hobby, or (at worst), if they're an academic heavyweight, swing History around like a sledgehammer for the sake of pet political agendas.
But that's false history.
History is more than events and more than a subject in school. Studying it is more than just reading a novel that actually happened. Getting history into your bones is a lot like getting wisdom into your bones -- a task the Bible is constantly setting us to. "See him, son? Don't do that. See wisdom over there? Be like her." In short, history is a life-long study of wisdom for the wise. Here's why:
History tells great stories. There are few things more compelling than a good yarn or tale. But when those tales are actually real, their force is huge. It may be that truth is sometimes stranger than fiction, but truth is always a better story. Fiction has appeal and vitality, but a story that’s true has the unstoppable power of reality. “Did that really happen? How is that possible? I can’t imagine doing that myself. I want to be like them.” History excites questions about real things. History inspires action. And that's the kind of inspiration we want for our students.
History involves real people. Poorly written textbooks that are strong on dates, controversies, and propaganda are pretty good at making historical figures look like figures and not people, but a true history, in all its romping, story-telling glory shows them as men. It shows them as women. They lived as we live. They thought the thoughts we think. They struggled with the same temptations. They ate, slept, went to the bathroom, and dressed. They had quirks and personalities. Of course they were great. Of course they were noble. Of course they were evil. This is why they are in books. But we forget that they were human as we are human, in every particular, and this should give us perspective, respect, wisdom, and inspiration. God died for them, too.
We are history’s actors. The present is now the past. History is not just about those people over there: it is also about us. Just as the men and the women of the past shaped events to bring us to now, so we are shaping now to make the future. This is our sobering and fantastic responsibility. We are called. We have roles to fulfill. And our children are watching us.
History is thankfulness, because it gives us an ability to honor our forbears. We owe everything to those who went before us. Our primary attitude should be, “How is it possible that we have so much?” and never “Why do we have so little?” Why should any of life be even remotely pleasant? Why are we free? Why can we choose our religion? Why can we have any beliefs we wish? Why financial well-being? Why any finances at all? Why are we educated? Unless we are content to forget origins and assume all these things are rights, history gives us reason to be thankful in everything. Those who went before us gave all of themselves to us.
History is thankfulness, because it gives us an ability to condemn our forbears and avoid their paths. History is full of not-so-good people. History is full of vice personified. Knowing history allows us to discriminate and condemn, which (done the right way) furthers the goal of humanity.
History is teleological, not cyclical. History has an end. It has a goal. It’s true that history repeats itself because of the changelessness of human nature, but this is not the overall character of history. History is driving toward something. It is intentional. From the dawn of time, through the rise and fall of many civilizations and religions, there has been progression. Knowledge has grown steadily. The stories of law, politics, philosophy, medicine, and religion have developed and matured. We're headed somewhere -- and that somewhere is that real (historical) future date when "the earth will be full of the knowledge of the glory of the Lord as the waters cover the sea." (Hab. 2:14)
So act. We're in a Story. What's our line? Do we know our cues? How will we respond to the romping, unpredictable, gritty adventure of it all?
Love the Story you're in. Walk up and say hello to the great men and women who have gone before you. They're all a big part of why you're here now.
Grace and Peace, Nate Ahern