Trinitas Blog

A quality that is disappearing from the world is the ability to see and understand what lies beneath the surface of an issue. People seem increasingly content to swallow headlines hook, line, and sinker as if the story could be no deeper than the tallest letters in bold print. This sort of naivety is the very thing that makes a people easily manipulated or even oppressed.

G.K. Chesterton is responsible for one of my favorite quotes about education. He wrote,

“Education is not a subject and does not deal in subjects. It is instead a transfer of a way of life.” What we are trying to do at Trinitas is transfer a way of life to our students, a paideia, a way of being distinctly Christian in a world that seems increasingly hostile to that."

(This essay was written by Trinitas senior Claire McNeill and published recently in Classis: The Journal of Classical Christian Education.) 

What do we picture when we think of a wise man? The image we typically conjure up is a man who is reputable, well-respected in his community, and sought by all for his sagacity. He is a man of considerable rank and influence. In most of our imaginings, he is surrounded by wealth, like Solomon or the Magi. In contrast, what do we picture when we think of a fool? One who is laughed at, scorned; when he is not ignored, he is either despised or held as ridiculous. These associations are firmly fixed in the minds of men; folly and wisdom are the difference between a child and a man, a jester and a king.

We are living during an age in the West, perhaps in the whole world, wherein the prevailing view of all things could best be described as utilitarian. Modern Americans, in particular, have a way of reducing most everything down to its usefulness, its efficiency, and of course, its cost. Jobs go to the lowest bidder. We buy where we get the best deal. Our books are paperback no matter the genre, dime store romance or classic. Our buildings are metal, whether serving as an auto body shop or a church. After a few years of this kind of thinking, everything begins to look the same.

“Is not the great defect of our education today … that although we often succeed in teaching our pupils ‘subjects,’ we fail lamentably on the whole in teaching them how to think: they learn everything except the art of learning.” –Dorothy Sayers

Upon going to school, children are expected to take up certain “subjects,” to apply themselves to these subjects, and to eventually become masters of them. We as parents and teachers are not wrong to push our children and students to master those subjects; however, one of the drawbacks of focusing on mastering subjects is that we can develop tunnel vision in the process; we run the risk of focusing on the subjects and mastering what to think at the expense of learning how to think. We—and I mean everyone involved in the education of a child: parents, teachers, administrators, and the child—run the risk of just wanting to know what is going to be on the test.

On November 18, 2021, Trinitas Christian School and its parents celebrated three new inductees into The National Honors Society (NHS). While being inducted into NHS is no simple academic feat, remember that NHS and many other academically prestigious awards are not exclusively Christian by any means. As a matter of fact, in many educational settings, when students pursue the type of academic success that qualifies them for the NHS, merit scholarships, and the like, their pursuits are often carried out in fierce competition with their classmates, producing academic pride, and result in an exaltation of self. However, in a Christ-centered education like that which is offered at Trinitas Christian School, we endeavor to pursue academic excellence in the following ways:

On Thursday, October the 20^th at 7 pm, Trinitas will be screening selections from the documentary “The Miseducation of America”  at The REX theatre. Free tickets for the evening are available here. The highlight of the evening will be a special guest appearance of David Goodwin, president of the Association of Classical and Christian Schools. Along with Pete Hegseth of FOX News, David coauthored The Battle for the American Mind, the book which led to the creation of the documentary.

Something new and exciting debuted at Trinitas this fall. All logic and rhetoric school (grades 7th-12th) students and faculty members gather together during first hour on Fridays to learn, discuss, and pursue wisdom together across a broad range of topics. Even parents are welcome to participate in what we are calling Schola Seminar.

In his book Norms and Nobility, David Hicks advocates for a return to a dialectical approach to education. Especially effective in the context of teachers and students learning together, dialectical education requires learners to commit to certain positions in order to test those commitments against experience, established wisdom, and ultimately, the truths of Scripture. Often utilizing primary sources and Socratic questioning, this approach to learning fosters moral and intellectual growth in participants.