Trinitas Blog

What parent wouldn’t want the best education for their child? To help make that decision, parents need information about the educational options available to them. If you aren’t comfortable with the status quo or want to give your children a better education than the one you received, maybe it’s time to consider a distinctly different kind of education.  

The government schools, and in many cases even the Christian schools, have been weighed and found wanting, and so we are all looking for something distinctly different for the education of our Christian children. Consider the three main ways a Trinitas education differs sharply from government schools and even other Christian schools and then explore the reasons why we should be different in these ways.

Is there anything a 19^th century Anglican Bishop can teach modern Christian parents about training their children? In short, absolutely! As Trinitas parents gather this week for the first Parent Traditio of the new year, they will be discussing a short essay written by J. C. Ryle entitled The Duties of Parents. In it, Bishop Ryle shares seventeen specific directives for Christian parenting that are gospel-centered and rooted in common sense while also practical and encouraging.

Yesterday, the Trinitas Board of Governors spent the entire day engaged in a continuous improvement discussion which resulted in an update to the school’s five-year strategic plan. Revisiting this process and document regularly helps the board ensure that the school is not only staying faithful to its founding mission and vision but is also thriving while improving in the execution of the same.

As valuable as that process is for organizations, it is equally important for parents to honestly assess where their family is in relation to the high calling placed upon Christian parents and to thoughtfully craft their own “strategic plan.”

We should read broadly. People love diversity, and that's good--so I suggest getting books from a wide diversity of authors. Often when people say, “I read diverse authors,” they meet sometimes mean “I read multi-colored authors.” That's not what I mean. I mean that you should read ideologically diverse authors. For example, take Voddie Baucham. He requires his children to read Mein Kampf, Origin of Species, Malcolm X, Langston Hughes, The Chronicles of Narnia, The Lord of the Rings, and Greek mythology. He's not afraid to do that. He himself spends nearly as much time reading books with which he disagrees as those which affirm his positions, and he is able to identify with and profit from both.

The topic of discussion for Parent Traditio this evening will be “Raising Readers: Cultivating a Love of Literature in the Home.” One facet of this conversation will be the importance of good literature in the forming of a child’s moral imagination. To illustrate this point, consider the scene from C.S. Lewis’s The Silver Chair (from the Chronicles of Narnia), where one of my favorite Narnian characters – a marshwiggle – bolding declares his commitment to the truth.

Trinitas has a long and tasty history with barbecue. You might even say it's an integral part of a Trinitas education! Back in the early days of the school, our founding headmaster, Ken Trotter’s father, Grandpa Trotter used his meat-smoking prowess to bring school families together for picnics and community-building events. Even Grandma Trotter pitched in with her famously delicious, but always secret sauce. Though the Trotter family has all passed on from our school, the tradition of sharing good barbecue with friends and family still remains - particularly in connection to the annual Trinitas Junior/Senior Aesthetics trip.

It's easy to assume that because classical Christian schools like Trinitas are not publicly-funded, government schools, they must be substantially the same as other private Christian schools of which there are many in our area. This understanding, however, is fundamentally flawed. Since its inception in 1999, Trinitas has maintained a commitment to a classical approach to Christian education which has resulted in the school being accredited by the Association of Classical Christian Schools (ACCS). To aid in understanding the differences between traditional Christian schools and classical Christ-centered schools like Trinitas, consider the following indicators of a classical approach to education. 

Routines help to define a people. A group of market traders begins combing the news even before the trading bell rings at 9:30 a.m., hungry to get an edge on making the right move at the right time. A covey of construction workers share donuts and coffee before hitting the site for the day’s labor. A pack of public school kids rise from their seats to recite the pledge of allegiance and hear the crackle of morning announcements over the intercom. Routines do not require much attention to the routine itself—routines become second nature, an involuntary way of being in the world. Because we know that routines have the power to shape our orientation to the world, Trinitas starts the day with our own routine to orient and shape our way of being for the day ahead.