The Summit Academy

After ten years of cultivating wisdom and virtue by nourishing the souls of students and families on truth, goodness, and beauty to the end that, in Jesus Christ, they were better able to know, serve and enjoy God, The Summit Academy is closing. At the end of the 2009-2010 school year, we are no longer in operation.

If you have need of contacting us, please do so at:

P.O. Box 163
Zionsville, IN 46077

You may also reach us at:

thesummitacademy@gmail.com

Please be aware that our former website will only be in existence for a short time longer. It currently directs all traffic to this blog.

An Evening With C.S. Lewis

Several years ago, a colleague of mine and I received a grant from the Washington Township Foundation to design an annual guest lecture series at North Central High School. Each year one scholar delivers a lecture in the applied epistemology of mathematics, art, natural science, human science, ethics, or history.

The series is called The Episteme Lectures, and the 2010 Episteme Lecturer is Dr. Kevin Radaker, Department Chair of English at Anderson University. This year's lecture will be rather different from that of past years, for it is not a lecture at all, but a re-creation of the life of C.S. Lewis. Dr. Radaker will present "A Visit from C.S. Lewis" at North Central High School on Wednesday, March 17 at 7:00 p.m. in the Performance Classroom. Admission is free.

In this, the sixth Episteme Lecture, we look forward to an engaging performance and insightful Q & A afterward. Light refreshments will also follow. We hope you will be able to join us for what will be a delightful and important evening.

For more information, please visit our website: http://www.epistemelecture.org/.

Homeschooling-The Default Position

Christopher O. Tollefsen, Professor of Philosophy at the University of South Carolina and a senior fellow of the Witherspoon Institute, has written a briliant piece entitled, "Are There Harms of Homeschooling?" It is a well argued piece that does not make an absolute claim for any model of schooling, whether homeschooling, state-sponsored, or private, but it does set forth in a lucid manner a persuasive argument for why, as Prof. Tollefson concludes, "the option of home-schooling should be the prima facie starting point for parental deliberations about their children’s education." It is truly worth reading and sharing with others.

Standing Together

My Latin II students were reading the poem "Horatius" by Thomas Babington Macaulay today, and I could not help but think of the Summit families. It is a classic of English poetry and is based on the event in Rome's history when, in 508 B.C., just after the expulsion of the last king, a hero named Horatius Cocles volunteered to hold a narrow pass at the end of a bridge against the enemy if only someone would stand alongside him. By all means, take time to read the whole poem, but consider these verses.

Then out spake brave Horatius,
The Captain of the gate:
‘To every man upon this earth
Death cometh soon or late.
And how can man die better
Than facing fearful odds,
For the ashes of his fathers,
And the temples of his Gods,

Hew down the bridge, Sir Consul,
With all the speed ye may;
I, with two more to help me,
Will hold the foe in play.
In yon strait path a thousand
May well be stopped by three.
Now who will stand on either hand,
And keep the bridge with me?’

Already our families have answered the call of Horatius Cocles and are working together for the good of the school with which God has blessed us. And why are these families doing so, families who, like everyone, face the economic struggles of a difficult time? Perhaps it is because they know so well the value of the education their students are receiving. Perhaps it is because they hope that their children will, if needed, find the kind of solace that one Benson A. Koenig, Battery A, 10th AART Battalion, U.S. Army, North Africa and Italy, 1942–1944, did as he lay dying.

Those last three days, reciting from memory
Cicero and Vergil, you could quote
Long passages of Latin poetry.
It left us stunned. The only antidote
To poison in your flesh was blessèd words.
No other good thing comforted you when
Pulsating life, just like a flock of birds,
Gathered its wings to fly. The deaths of men
Can be as silent as the moon’s eclipse,
Spectrally speechless as fields after battle,
Loud as the riven sky’s apocalypse
With thundering noise—or mindless as a rattle.
Benson, your answer to encroaching dark
Was lustrous language, flaring like a spark. Joseph S. Salemi

Why We Must Support Christian Schools

Some of you may know of a man named Keving Jennings, who is currently the Assistant Deputy Secretary for the Office of Safe and Drug-Free Schools at the U.S. Department of Education. He is also the founder of GLSEN, the Gay, Lesbian, Straight Education Network.

This post simply serves to direct you to excerpts from recommended books by the GLSEN. WARNING! It would not matter whether these excerpts were describing homosexual or heterosexual activities. They do not belong in books recommended for children. Period. To see just a litle of what I am talking about, read some of the excerpts here.

Until our Lord returns or calls us home, we must enage these issues on two fronts. On one front, we must do all that we can in the public square. Whether or not our children attend public schools, our taxes fund them, and we have the right and responsibility to address what goes on there. On top of that, many families will send their children to these schools unaware of what is going on. Families who send their children to Christian schools must never adopt an attitude of "My family is fine, who cares about the rest?" These are our neighbors, our friends, and our family. We must work within the sphere of public education to see that what is taught is what is true, good, and beautiful.

The second front, of course, is Christian education. We must support it at every opportunity. Just as families in Christian schools must work for and within the public square, so Christian families whose children attend the government schools must share in the support of schools where truth, goodness, and beauty can be explicitly taught and lived out.

Renowned philosopher and popular author of After Virtue, Alasdair MacIntyre wrote,

What matters at this stage is the construction of local forms of community within which civility and the intellectual and moral life can be sustained through the new dark ages which are already upon us. Adn if the tradition of the virtues was able to survive the horrors of the last dark ages, we are not entirely without grounds for hope.

Suffering to Aid the Suffering

I ran across the following line today in Vergil's Aeneid.

Non ignara mali, miseris succurrere disco. (Aeneid, I.630)

Queen Dido of Carthage is welcoming Aeneas and men to her city after they have landed on her shores thanks to a storm stirred up by their implacable enemy Juno. She says to them, "Because I am not inexperienced with misfortune, I have learned to aid those who suffer."

What a wonderful statement! Increasingly I find that when I suffer, and let's face it, any sufferings I am apt to encounter in this society are minuscule compared with the sufferings of most the world, I am better able to understand the pains of others. God did not need to become human and suffer as we do to understand our sufferings. His omniscience precludes such an epistemic necessity. Yet He did become human and suffer as we do, and the result is that we know that He knows our sufferings. Christ's suffering produced an epistemic certainty for us.

And because we know that He knows our sufferings, we also know that He knows how to aid us. Our knowledge is not rooted in just in our belief in His omniscience and omnipotence. Our confidence and hope in Him is grounded in our epistemic certainty that we have obtained through His human suffering.

Jesus says in Matthew 5:11-12, "Blessed are you when people insult you, persecute you and falsely say all kinds of evil against you because of me. Rejoice and be glad, because great is your reward in heaven, for in the same way they persecuted the prophets who were before you." Not only do our sufferings produce solidarity with and identity with our Lord, but they enable to say with Dido, "Because I am not inexperienced with misfortune, I have learned to aid those who suffer." In this way we are better able to accomplish the work to which our Lord has called us.

On Golf

We had the opportunity to watch Jacob, a junior at Summit, in the final round of his golf tournament on Sunday. Jacob is our son's mentor and also coaches several of the younger Summit boys in golf. To walk 18 holes and watch this young man in a threesome of teens consistently strike sweet, pure shots across a course that was carved out of the local beauty, stretching forth beneath the crisp, azure October sky, was to experience poetry in motion.

I know that for many the idea of "performance art" conjures up images of people doing things on stage that no one else understands and then forcing all those confused people to call what they have seen "art," lest they be branded as rubes who do not appreciate the avant garde. What we observed today, however, was truly performative art. The Greeks are famous for having celebrated the human form in art, and not only were they right to do so, but no one did it any better than they did, and few have done it as well since. God created human beings in His own image. The human form, and especially the human form in motion, is a thing of beauty. The young men in Jacob's threesome gave ample testament to that today. They swung effortlessly and purely time after time after time, sending the ball soaring on a trajectory that, often as not, caused it to land a great distance straight in front of them.

It was the ease of their swings...energy and power expressed in fluid grace...displayed in a natural amphitheatre of God's creation that made the experience one of glory. Glory for the young men who played or glory for the course architect who so artfully crafted a course that so little violated nature it seemed as if it had existed as it was since time immemorial? No. Sharing an afternoon with Jacob while he did what God has gifted him to do, spending time with a young man who is such a wonderful influence in the life of our own son, was to turn our hearts with gratitude toward God. He it was who created this young man with such a sweet swing. He it was who gave him the kind of heart that makes him an ideal mentor and coach for other young men. He it was who set the stage for it all when He spoke creation into existence.

This was indeed a day well spent.

Faithfulness in Exile

In Philippians 3:20, NIV, Paul writes, "But our citizenship is in heaven." Our life on earth is one of exile, and there are different ways we can live out our life while on the journey home. In his book American Babylon, Richard John Neuhaus describes several, concluding with one that made me think of all the families involved in Classical Christian education.

"Some choose accomodation -- up to a point, praying they will recognize that point when it comes. Some strive to engage and transform the world where they are, hoping to make it less strange, knowing it will always fall pitifully short of the city to which they are called. For yet others, fidelity in exile is the course of subversion and even insurrection. Witness the liberation theologies of our time and all times. Then there are those who deliberately, and often at great sacrifice, choose to create enclaves of fidelity, outposts of the promised Kingdom, islands of Christendom in the absence of Christendom. Thus a dynamic that is at the core of the monastic tradition. Thus a growing number of Christian parents today who, through home schooling and other exertions, strive to make the family a haven from a heartless world. Faithfulness in exile takes many forms."

Christian Atheist Citizens

In his last book before his death earlier this year, American Babylon, former-Lutheran-pastor-turned-Catholic-priest Richard John Neuhaus, who was once named by Time as one of the "25 Most Influential Evangelicals in America, wrote a chapter titled, "Can An Atheist Be a Good Citizen?" Early in the chapter he mentions that the first Christians were considered atheists by the polytheists of the Roman Empire, for they were "without the gods" and adamantly opposed to them.

Eventually he includes a piece from George Washington's farewell address, delivered at the end of his second term of office. Our first President, who aptly received the title pater patriae, said this:

And let us with caution indulge the supposition that morality can be maintained without religion. Whatever may be conceded to the influence of refined education on minds of peculiar structure, reason and experience both forbid us to expect that national morality can prevail in exclusion of religious principle. (American Babylon, 114)

Neuhaus himself then goes on to say:

"In such a nation, an atheist can be a citizen, but he cannot be a good citizen. A good citizen does more than abide by the laws. A good citizen is able to give an account, a morally compelling account, of the regime of which he is part -- and to do so in continuity with the constituting moment and subsequent history of that regime. He is able to justify its defense against its enemies, and to convincingly recommend its virtues to citizens of the next generation so that they, in turn, can transmit the order of government to citizens yet unborn. This regime of liberal democracy, of republican self-governance, is not self-evidently good and just. Reasons must be given. They must be reasons that draw authority from that which is higher than ourselves, from that which transcends us, fromthat to which we are precedently, ultimately obliged." (American Babylon, 116, emphasis mine)

"Those who adhere to the God of Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, and Jesus turn out to be the best citizens. Those who were once called "atheists" are now the most persuasive defenders not of the gods but of the good reasons for this regime of ordered liberty. They are that not despite the fact that their loyalty to this polis is qualified by a higher loyalty, but because of it. The ultimate allegiance of the faithful is not to the regime or to its constituting texts, but to the City of God and the sacred texts that guide our path toward that destination. We are dual citizens in a regime that, as Madison and others underscored, was designed for such duality. When the political order forgets itself and reestablishes the gods of the polis, even if it does so in the name of liberal democracy, these citizens have not choice but to run the risk of once again being called 'atheists.'" (American Babylon, 117)

Whatever else we teach our children about being good citizens, and we must teach them to be good citizens, we must teach them that their primary allegiance is to the God under Whom exists the nation to which they pledge a secondary allegiance. Ours is a nation in which anyone and anything can become a god. Yet whether such a state of affairs is good or bad can only be articulated in any coherent and meaningful way by those who have come to know the Truth, not the desiccated propositional truth of the philosophers and scientists, although even such lower-case truths have their foundation of their existence in the upper-case Truth, but the Truth Who was and is and is to come, the Truth Who became incarnate in the person of Jesus Christ. With such an understanding of ethics informed by this personal Truth, this Truth Who is a person, the Christian citizen can articulate what true justice is, why it matters, and provide sound arguments for how it can be achieved.

Oddly, it was part of the initial design of the free public school system in America to produce just such good citizens. Yet by refusing the God Who is Truth and substituting for Him an atheistic pantheon of disembodied beliefs, such schools are incapable of producing the kind of citizens who can, as Neuhaus urges "convincingly recommend its virtiues to citizens of the next generation so that they, in turn, can transmit the order of government to citizens yet unborn."

To the degree that the Christian school has not lost its mandate and become a prep school for the elite with a nominal chapel time thrown in for good measure, it alone in this present age is capable of producing what our nation needs, good citizens capable of working for the good of their country.

On Libraries

I imagine that Zenodotus must be spinning in his grave. Don't remember who Zenodotus was? Let me give you a hint: had he married a modern girl, her name very likely would have been Marian.* Still don't know? Zenodotus was the first head of the great library at Alexandria. He was also the first to employ alphabetical order as a means of organizing materials.

According to this CNN article, the future of libraries as we know them is changing, and fast. The article describes moves by some libraries to become digital centers of information exchange. Books not required.

I am getting tired of making the same statements everywhere I go, but here I am saying the same ol' same ol'. I am not a luddite. I use the Internet, word processing, spreadsheets, blogs, Twitter, the whole nine yards. But I agree with Maryanne Wolf in her book Proust and the Squid: The Story and Science of the Reading Brain, that something different happens neuronally, cognitively, and emotionally when we read a book than when we read the same text digitized. There is a depth of processing that tends to occur in the former method that does not take place in the latter. Mark Bauerlein in his amply researched and annotated book The Dumbest Generation: How the Digital Age Stupefies Young Americans and Jeopardizes Our Future concurs.

Of course, in an age and culture that recognizes not the value of the specific and the particular, assuming as they do that content in one format is the same in another, could not possibly appreciate the aesthetic value of holding a book in one's hand, inhaling the fragrance of the newly printed page or the page grown musty with age, annotating in the margins. Then again, neither our present age nor our culture seem capable of acknowledging such a thing as aesthetic value to begin with.

A friend recently gave me a beautiful leather-bound volume of Pope's translation of the Iliad. It sits proudly beside its companion volume, the Odyssey. I would prefer to read my favorite poet's version of one of my favorite stories from those volumes than from any of the innumerable websites on which they exist. I can only hope that they will remain on more bookshelves than just my own.



*For those who did not get the clue, this is a reference to the song "Marian the Librarian" from the musical Music Man.

The Worth of a Book

As I commented in another post, I recently read the play The Laramie Project so I could be more prepared for the local high school that is performing it this fall. As that post indicates I was not impressed with the play as a whole. As a result, I returned it to the local bookstore where I had purchased it. When the clerk asked if I would like to do an exchange, I went to look for another book I wanted. As it turned out, the new book cost less than the one I was returning, so I got a $2.61 credit.

So what was the other book that cost less than The Laramie Project? It was Anthony Esolen's translation of Dante's Inferno. Yes, that's right. Dante. As T.S. Eliot said, there is Shakespeare and Dante. They divide the world between them, and there is no one else. Dante, who, according to George Steiner, is the only true critic of Vergil. How could such a book be of less monetary value than a contemporary experimental play that, unlike Dante's work, will undoubtedly not even be remembered seven hundred years from now?

Oh, it must have been a cheap edition you say, a hack translation perhaps. Hardly. Dr. Esolen's translation is wonderful. He eschews rhyme, something many Dante lovers may scream at, but he rightly notes that rhyme, at least in English, forces too many contortions of meaning. He employs instead regular blank verse, a form wielded to great effect by no less than Milton. And the edition itself contains the Italian on facing pages, to say nothing of more useful appendices than I have ever run across in an edition aimed at the popular market. There is an appendix with ample citations from Vergil, one with citations from Aquinas, and a host of other notes and materials that make it an excellent edition for pleasure and for study.

While not displeased to have received my $2.61 credit, I remarked to the clerk that if we were measuring genuine worth, my second purchase should have been five times the cost of the first.

Lone Founts
by Herman Melville (1819-1891)

Though fast youth's glorious fable flies,
View not the world with worlding's eyes;
Nor turn with weather of the time.
Foreclose the coming of surprise:
Stand where Posterity shall stand;
Stand where the Ancients stood before,
And, dipping in lone founts thy hand,
Drink of the never-varying lore:
Wise once, and wise thence evermore.

Cursive

It is sad to report that at least one suburban public school district has chosen to replace time spent teaching cursive writing with time spent teaching children how to operate a computer keyboard. Do most in our society use the keyboard? Yes. Do more use the keyboard than a fine fountain pen? Without question. Do those who do put pen to paper print rather than use cursive? Almost without exception.

And to this I ask, so what? A school district only takes its curricular mandates from the shrill voice of the moment when it has given its soul in sycophantic subservience to the jackbooted tyranny of the pragmatic.

Yet when a school or school district dares, when a group of educators dares, when parents dare to pursue true education, the kind suggested in Plato's famous "Allegory of the Cave" in which a mind is led forth from darkness to light and not merely equipped to do a job, then children are educated in truth, goodness, and beauty. The last in the list is by no means the least, and every effort is made to instill in them not only an appreciation for all that is good and true in the graphic, musical, and performative arts, but also the ability for them to take their place beside other artists by developing their own artistic gifts.

Is cursive necessary to fill out a form or to post on a blog? Not at all. But does it add immeasurably to a poem or letter from a lover to a beloved, does it grace the note of thanks or sympathy, does it bring a touch of elegance amidst the quotidian pressures and stresses of life that erode the humane senses? It certainly can. Unfortunately, such simple grace will no longer be available to the children of this school district.

Aristotle and Contemporary Theatre

I just finished reading the play The Laramie Project by Moises Kaufman. Before continuing, let me say that I could not recommend it for its moral content, for its content is absolutely amoral from a Christian perspective. Not only does it portray the Christian faith in a false and negative way, it presents as absolutely normal a sinful lifestyle. I read it in order to be informed about the play because it will be performed this fall at an area high school.

That said, the play contains what Kaufman calls a series of "moments," an idea he derived from a Brecht essay in which Brecht describes "an eyewitness demonstrating to a collection of people how a traffic accident took place." There is no traditional plot in Kaufman's play, no traditional character development. There is a series of actors who come on stage to portray various characters. Occasionally the characters interact, but the play is in long stretches a concatenation of monologues. To be honest, I did find the technique interesting.

Musing then about dramaturgy in general, I took a look at Aristotle's Poetics and found the following.

"The tragedies of most of the moderns are characterless -- a defect common among poets of all kinds.... [O]ne may string together a series of characteristic speeches of the utmost finish as regards Diction and Thought, and yet fail to produce a true tragic effect; but one will have much better success with a tragedy which, however inferior in these respects, has a Plot, a combination of incidents, in it." (Poetics 1450a)

Clearly Aristotle would not approve of Kaufman's work nor, I would imagine, of much else in modern theatre.

He goes on,

"[T]he poet's function is to describe, not the thing that has happened, but a kind of thing that might happen, i.e. what is possible as being probable or necessary. The distinction between historian and poet is not in the one writing prose and the other verse...; it consists really in this, that the one describes the thing that has been, and the other a kind of thing that might be. Hence poetry is something more philosophic and of graver import than history, since its statements are of the nature rather of universals, whereas those of history are singulars." (Poetics, 1451b)

And now we get to the heart of it. When Aristotle talks of poets and poetry, he is talking of drama, for all drama was written in poetic meter. Today, music, theatre, movies, and television, are obsessed with the singulars rather than the universals. Rather than transcend the historical moment in which it is produced, dramatic and musical art seems focused on becoming ever more accurate in what it portrays. In fact, verisimilitude seems to be the prime, if not the sole, criterion for measuring success in drama and lyrical music. The more the rap artist uses language like what is found on the streets, the more the police drama can use real-life scenarios and procedures, the better.

What, then, takes us beyond the suffocatingly immanent? Obsessed with the here-and-now, we find ourselves looking only and ever more inward. What can lift our eyes to where, as Pope once observed, "hills peep o'er hills, and Alps on Alps arise?" Alas, it is not The Laramie Project, however interesting or novel its dramaturgy. Aeschylus' trilogy Oresteia or Sophocles' Oedipus cycle, perhaps Euripides' Alcestis, to say nothing of Shakespeare or even the more recent A Man for All Seasons by Robert Bolt...these fulfill Aristotle's vision, for indeed they are pieces of graver import than anything else to be found today.

Why Our School Exists

I ran across the following article and found it to be an insightful and incisive argument for why The Summit Academy exists. It is not long and is well worth your time to read.

http://merecomments.typepad.com/merecomments/2009/08/what-do-you-want-an-engraved-dismissal.html

In addition, there is this on the recent New Hampshire court ruling, forcing a young girl to attend the local public school because it found she was too much like her mother, who homeschooled her, when it came to the issue of her Christian faith. No, I am not making this up!

We Have a Location!

We have a location!

Union Chapel Church met for the last time to allow a final opportunity for Q&A, open debate as part of the Administrative Council procedure and then to approve the lease agreement.

Just to explain the atmosphere and the congregation’s mood, I haven’t seen that many smiles in one room in a long, long time. The vote was 32-0, a unanimous decision to openly welcome us onto their property. There was genuine excitement throughout the conversation and after the meeting was over, discussion of all the new possibilities, ways to make rooms work better, cleaning up and getting organized was so fun to watch. Faces I saw to be hesitant just days or weeks ago were bright and enthusiastic, full of joy. That went on for nearly an hour after the meeting was over. These folks are truly excited for us and for the ministry opportunities that are sure to flow out as we come to know each other a bit better. In the two Sundays I’ve spent with them as a congregation and in meetings with their Board of Trustees, I have found them to be incredibly kind and full of a love for the Lord. I pray that you will take time to get to know these people as they want to get to know all of you.

God has truly blessed both parties with this opportunity for the coming year and I pray that we will bless them with the same level of loving commitment that we have for The Summit Academy.

Thursday, July 23rd is your first opportunity to do just that as we hold our informational meeting for families, Union Chapel members and prospective families. The fun starts at 6pm for Summit Families and I’m sure there will be members excited to meet you there so please come! Join in a time of celebrating God’s love for us all and this school. Can you actually say no to ice cream? We didn’t think so! Come and give thanks.

Thank you for your patience and so many prayers,

Mickey Justice
Board President
The Summit Academy

Our New Home for 2009-2010

A lot has been happening this summer, and we want to share with you some of the changes that are taking place as we look toward the new school year. After many long, prayerful meetings and exploration of many possible locations for our school, we are excited to announce that The Summit Academy will meet for the 2009-2010 school year at Union Chapel United Methodist Church. Union Chapel is located at 2720 East 86th Street, Indianapolis, IN, 46240.



The people of Union Chapel have shown great enthusiasm in welcoming us into their facility, and we are eager for all Summit families to see the space that will be our home for the next year. We hope you will be able to join us for an informational meeting on Thursday, July 23 at the church. Current Summit families will meet from 6:00-7:00 p.m. to see the facility, with a general informational meeting following from 7:00-8:00 for all current and prospective Summit families as well as our new friends at Union Chapel, who are very much looking forward to this evening. It will be a great opportunity not only to tour the church, but also to begin building relationships with our new hosts. Popcorn, hotdogs, and ice cream will be on hand, and children are invited to check out the playground equipment and basketball courts.

Paul wrote the Philippians, “In all my prayers for all of you, I always pray with joy because of your partnership in the gospel from the first day until now, being confident of this, that he who began a good work in you will carry it on to completion until the day of Christ Jesus.” (Philippians 1:4-6, NIV) The Summit board is likewise filled with joy because of the partnership of all our families in an adventure in education that is rooted in the gospel. Like Paul, we, too, are confident that our Lord will carry to completion the good work that He has begun at Summit.

We hope you will be able to join us on Thursday, July 23, at Union Chapel for a time of fellowship, catching up on the events of the summer, and sharing in our vision for the future. It is an exciting time in the life The Summit Academy, and we look forward to where God is leading us.

Latin Grammar and Chemistry

I spoke today with a Latin II student at the public high school where I teach. She informed me that she could not take Latin next year because she was enrolling in a veterinary science class that would occupy three class periods. I asked her what she would take if she were not taking the veterinary class, and she replied that she would be taking a second math and a second science class in addition to the math and science she will already be taking, along with Latin.

Her choice, then, was between taking a schedule with two math and two science classes along with Latin III, or one with only one math, one science, and the veterinary class.

I was immediately put in mind of the following account, which I shared with her.

In the early 20th century, the great German chemist, Bauer, was asked by one of his colleagues whether his best students came from the Real-Schulen (a modern school where chemistry was taught as a subject) or from the Gymnasien (a traditional liberal arts school where Latin grammar was stressed). His colleague's assumption was that the best science students would come from the Real-Schulen.

"Not at all," [Bauer] replied; "all my best students come from the Gymnasien. The students from the Real-Schulen do best at first; but after three months work here, they are, as a rule, left behind by those coming from the Gymnasien." The colleague wondered at this because the Real-Schulen students had been especially instructed in chemistry. "Yes," he replied; "but the students from the Gymnasien have the best trained minds. Give me a student who has been taught his Latin grammar, and I will answer for his chemistry." (Kelsey, Latin and Greek in American Education, New York, NY: Macmillan, 1911, p. 24)

I asked my student who had advised her on this choice of curriculum. Her guidance advisor at school and, to my surprise, someone at the university she wishes to attend...North Carolina.

She and her mother thought that the veterinary class would give her a leg up when it came to such studies in college. I tried to help her see that the better preparation would be more classes in math, more in science, and more in Latin, precisely for the reasons that Bauer cited, but when I ran up against the university itself saying the opposite, I ceased trying to persuade her.

This is but one more example of an educational system and a social culture within our country that fails to recognize what true education is.

Special Facilities Update

The Facilities Committee and the Board are excited to say that our search is nearly over! We have narrowed the options to two final properties, one in the west 86th Street area and one near 131st and Meridian. We are waiting for a little more information on one of them, but the board has committed to making a decision for our 2009-2010 location that we can share with everyone the Tuesday we return from Spring Break. Please take this time...whether you are at the beach, in the mountains, or staying home for Spring Break...to pray diligently each day for us to hear clearly God's voice. We are excited about our options and want to make a faithful decision.

How Democracies Become Tyrannies

An article from American Thinker titled "How Democracies Become Tyrannies" not only puts forward an insightful view of the times through the lens of Book VIII of Plato's Republic, but also presents an excellent example of the application of Classical learning in the modern world.

We read ancient works that have proven their worth by standing the test of time so that we may better understand and live in our own times.

This article is must-reading, especially for our rhetoric students.