By our South Campus Principal, Grant Bickell
Thomas Cahill, in his book How the Irish Saved Civilization, says, “If there are no books. There is no civilization.” Let that sink in for a minute. As we live in and engage with a culture that is ever moving towards a 1 to 1 technology ratio and a desire for only what “matters”, and in the fewest number of words possible, we ask your students to read, and to read a lot. At The Academy, we want them to have the history of western civilization imprinted on their mind as they learn to lens all of life through Scripture. We want them to read and discuss authors that we ourselves may not have read. We want them to graduate as men and women who are faithfully grounded in God’s truth, capable of living out a Christ-centered motivation for life, all the while loving God and their neighbor.
Friends, this vision is not something that can happen in one year. It cannot happen if the education is truncated at 5th or 8th grade. We are here to educate your students with our philosophy of education being formed by something called the trivium. Martin Cothran fleshes out the idea of the trivium in a post helping us to understand classical education more than just a method.
The classical trivium—grammar, logic, and rhetoric—was a taxonomy of intellectual skills, proceeding from the simple and most basic language skills to the more complex and sophisticated. Grammar taught students how language was structured, logic how to use language in the construction of valid arguments, and rhetoric how language could be used for the purpose of persuasion.
Rather than just being another methodology, classical education is a very way of life. An, “inculcation of wisdom and virtue through a facility with the liberal arts.” As we look ahead to our third week of school, let me challenge you. Pick up one of your student’s books and read it. Look for clues and pancakes with Nate The Great, interact with the Babylonian creation myth Enuma Elish, and mourn with Milton over the fall of man in Paradise Lost. This endeavor will not only be worth your time, but it will help preserve civilization for generations to come.
Next Week:
Next Month:
Chapel – Next week is our first Tuesday chapel. ALL students need to come in formal uniform.
Temperature – Help us stay in school! If your child has a temp. over 100.4°, they must stay home.
