Trinitas Blog

Like many in the Trinitas community, lately, I have been reading Joshua Gibbs’s first book How to be Unlucky: Reflections on the Pursuit of Virtue. (Actually, I have been listening to it, which isn’t quite the same thing as reading it, but that is a discussion for another day.) Gibbs uses The Consolation of Philosophy and his years in the classroom (several of them at Trinitas) to approach the subject of pursuing virtue through classical education. Pursuing virtue is an educational activity we allude to from time to time, a catchphrase we hold up as an important goal of classical education, even a claim with which we sprinkle our marketing brochures, but really, what does it mean to pursue virtue? And why only pursue it? Do any of our students ever actually catch up with it?

As the school year winds down, we enter the season for reflection. For students, now is time for final performances, academic awards, and the accumulation of all kinds of accolades for the year. I am always a little in awe of Trinitas students as I look back over their accomplishments and realize all they have done, and done well, in a single year. Surely this euphoria upon reflection holds true for any hardworking student in any school—it is not reserved for Trinitas students. I am, however, always amazed at the number of Trinitas students who do so very well over the year in such a wide variety of activities. What I have found is that classical education exposes students to a broad range of experiences and then provides opportunities for students to learn, perform and compete in activities as different as baseball and drama. By encouraging students to drink deeply from many fountains of knowledge rather than specializing in one, classical education creates Renaissance men and women. 

An early look in Newsweek at a report that is to be published in full this June shows that Christians are the most persecuted group of people in all the world. The report, compiled by the Bishop of Truro, claims that the persecution of Christians in many areas is very close to meeting the United Nations’ definition for genocide. Why do we hear so little about this persecution in US media outlets? One reason may be that Christians in the US have largely escaped the kind of violent persecution upon which the report focused. In this country Christians have worshiped in relative comfort—even luxury at times—for more than two centuries. Make no mistake, though, Christianity is under attack here too.

At other times I have written here about the importance of the home, church, and school being in agreement, and it is a message that bears repeating. Those three entities have the most influence over a child’s formation. If the home, church, and school have different messages about who God is or who His people are or how they are called to live, a child’s mind will be divided on issues that are foundational to her existence. For a child to flourish spiritually and emotionally, hearing a consistent message from home, church, and school is necessary. By that same standard, a classical education cannot take root and flourish in the life of a child if it isn’t being supported at home.

In case you haven’t noticed, children do things adults don’t; for example, children run.  They just run to run, not to go anywhere or for any reason, but just for the sheer pleasure of running. They will also pretend-play with just about any item they find.  A stick becomes a Greek sword, a jacket is shaped to make a baby’s blanket, and sofa cushions become a fort.

We’ve just packed away the tents and doused the fire on the annual Trinitas Father & Son Camping Trip. From beginning to end it was an opportunity for men to spend time with their sons and other men in a setting that disarms. The wilderness is no respecter of persons—a night sleeping on the ground feels the same for carpenters and bankers alike. Thus we were freed from the stations we occupy Monday through Friday and got to know one another better because of it.

I used to think our little house in the country was ideal for raising children, but eventually our children got old enough to leave the comfort of that little country house and go to school. Then I realized that the fifty minutes we spent commuting back and forth to school each day added up to 8,500 minutes (almost 142 hours!) of time spent in an enclosed space with children in the course of just one school year. That realization along with the other stresses of commuting caused me despair…until I learned how to use all that time for the benefit of both children and parents! What follows are three blessings we’ve received from using our school commute wisely.

In last week’s post, I discussed the hallmarks of a child ready for kindergarten. If your child isn’t ready, relax, August is still several months away. Or maybe you have a two year old, and you wonder how to begin preparing him so he will be ready for kindergarten. One of you has more time than the other but otherwise the path is the same.