There are primal things which move us....Of these primal things, the least obvious but the most important is The Road. It does not strike the sense as do those others I have mentioned; we are slow to feel its influence. We take it so much for granted that its original meaning escapes us. Men, indeed, whose pleasure it is perpetually to explore even their own country on foot, and to whom its every phase of climate is delightful, receive, somewhat tardily, the spirit of The Road. They feel a meaning in it; it grows to suggest the towns upon it, it explains its own vagaries, and it gives a unity to all that has arisen along its way. But for the mass The Road is silent; it is the humblest and the most subtle, but, as I have said, the greatest and the most original of the spells which we inherit from the earliest pioneers of our race. It is older than building and than wells; before we were quite men we knew it, for the animals still have it to-day; they seek their food and their drinking-places, and, as I believe, their assemblies, by known tracks which they have made.
It is easy to re-create in oneself to-day a sense of what the Road means to living things on land: it is easy to do it even in this crowded country. Walk, for instance, on the neglected Pennines along the watershed of England, from Malham Tarn, say, to Ribblehead, or from Kirkby Stephen up along the crest to Crossfell and so to Alston, and you will learn at once what follows on an untouched soil from the absence of a track - of a guide. One ravine out of the many radiating from a summit will lead to the one valley you seek; take another stream and you are condemned at last to traverse mountains to repair the error. In a fog or at night, if one has not such a path, there is nothing to help one but the lay of the snow or the trend of the vegetation under the last gale. In climbing, the summit is nearly always hidden, and nothing but a track will save you from false journeys. In descent it alone will save you a precipice or an unfordable stream. It knows upon which side an obstacle can be passed, where there is firm land in a morass, and where there is the best going; sand or rock - dry soil. It will find what nothing but long experiment can find for an individual traveller, the precise point in a saddle or neck where approach is easiest from either side, and everywhere the Road, especially the very early Road, is wiser than it seems to be. It reminds one of those old farmers who do not read, and whom we think at first unreasoning in their curious and devious ways, but whom if we watch closely, we shall find doing all their work just in that way which infinite time has taught the country-side.
Showing posts with label Education. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Education. Show all posts
Wednesday, September 9, 2009
Belloc Wednesday - Wisdom in the Old Roads
From Hilaire Belloc's The Old Road (Philadelphia: J.B. Libbencott Company, 1905), p. 3.
Saturday, August 8, 2009
Daughters of Jerusalem, weep not for me, but weep for yourselves, and for your children
Our unlikeness from our ancestors calcifies yearly, as the egg-shell hardens in the womb of the bird. The grandeur of Europe is dead, in its place is a cynical establishment that celebrates a culture of the kitsch, the unmanly, the unfeminine, an abstractive, self-reflexive, self-parodic serpent, which will devour the world before it devours itself. Those uninitiated in this new Dionysian cultural cannibalism live in the entrails of the beast, grasping for dollars with which to buy unearned and dishonorable pleasure and power. In the periodic sufferings of the economic cycle, these acolytes are allowed to despair, perhaps commit suicide, shat into the void, thereby revealing themselves to be weak, and therefore unworthy of the secret knowledge, which is that the world is a Joke without a mouth or a face, that in reality (what is reality?) it is Nothing.
Who among us can walk through the halls of Blenheim, follow the silken melodies of Vaughan Williams, feel the intellectual passion of Rodin, pray in the pews of Notre Dame, ascend the steps to the halls of Congress, study the prudence of Madison, or, closer to our own day, read the grave optimism of T.H. White, and grieve at all for what is gone? We have not the power to feel, for we are cut off from attachment by a horrible bank of garbage, moral, theological, aesthetic. We may ascend the heights of our own side, and view what remains of Western culture with a pleasant detachment, but we lack a sense of belonging.
I believe this is extremely dangerous. At this time we lack a traditional high culture. The whim may arise at any time in our cultural leadership to destroy what relics remain of the old. At those times, and until we regain a confident aesthetic based in a Christian faith, we will have no defense other than our grief to protect these things. Architecture and landscape are clearly the most obvious victims, for they require upkeep and they use valuable land, which is always in demand in this world. But the other high arts are just as much in danger, though for a more subtle, more basic cause. Critical knowledge is easily lost. Taste and judgment and appropriate enjoyment of the good, the true, and the beautiful are not developed by accident, but by purposeful education. The aim to develop such appreciation has largely disappeared from the modern university. If it disappears utterly, then Beethoven and de Tocqueville will be just as invisible as a bulldozed St. Paul's.
Daughters of Jerusalem, weep not for me, but weep for yourselves, and for your children. We must carry on grieving. Teach yourselves, find teachers, to cultivate your taste for Western culture. Steep yourself in it, make the painful sacrifice of emotion necessary to take your place as PART of it. Remember your home with longing and love, so that when they come to destroy it utterly, you may tuck a memory of it away with you. Preserve it in your personal library, share it with your children. Information in books is not enough. You must learn it by heart, and cherish it as your own. Some day the modern world may forget its hatred of the past, and the children of our descendants will be allowed to play in the ruins of the old world. The monastic orders may again become significant. Even then the learning must be preserved. When the renaissance finally comes (and who knows how long that will be?), this knowledge will be valuable, and the grain of wheat that fell to the ground and died will bear much fruit. This is your responsibility to your inheritance, thrown as it has been to the four winds. Gather what you can, add to it if you will from your own soul, and wait for a better day.
Piero di Cosimo - Perseus Frees Andromeda (1513)
Who among us can walk through the halls of Blenheim, follow the silken melodies of Vaughan Williams, feel the intellectual passion of Rodin, pray in the pews of Notre Dame, ascend the steps to the halls of Congress, study the prudence of Madison, or, closer to our own day, read the grave optimism of T.H. White, and grieve at all for what is gone? We have not the power to feel, for we are cut off from attachment by a horrible bank of garbage, moral, theological, aesthetic. We may ascend the heights of our own side, and view what remains of Western culture with a pleasant detachment, but we lack a sense of belonging.
I believe this is extremely dangerous. At this time we lack a traditional high culture. The whim may arise at any time in our cultural leadership to destroy what relics remain of the old. At those times, and until we regain a confident aesthetic based in a Christian faith, we will have no defense other than our grief to protect these things. Architecture and landscape are clearly the most obvious victims, for they require upkeep and they use valuable land, which is always in demand in this world. But the other high arts are just as much in danger, though for a more subtle, more basic cause. Critical knowledge is easily lost. Taste and judgment and appropriate enjoyment of the good, the true, and the beautiful are not developed by accident, but by purposeful education. The aim to develop such appreciation has largely disappeared from the modern university. If it disappears utterly, then Beethoven and de Tocqueville will be just as invisible as a bulldozed St. Paul's.
Daughters of Jerusalem, weep not for me, but weep for yourselves, and for your children. We must carry on grieving. Teach yourselves, find teachers, to cultivate your taste for Western culture. Steep yourself in it, make the painful sacrifice of emotion necessary to take your place as PART of it. Remember your home with longing and love, so that when they come to destroy it utterly, you may tuck a memory of it away with you. Preserve it in your personal library, share it with your children. Information in books is not enough. You must learn it by heart, and cherish it as your own. Some day the modern world may forget its hatred of the past, and the children of our descendants will be allowed to play in the ruins of the old world. The monastic orders may again become significant. Even then the learning must be preserved. When the renaissance finally comes (and who knows how long that will be?), this knowledge will be valuable, and the grain of wheat that fell to the ground and died will bear much fruit. This is your responsibility to your inheritance, thrown as it has been to the four winds. Gather what you can, add to it if you will from your own soul, and wait for a better day.
Piero di Cosimo - Perseus Frees Andromeda (1513)
Monday, August 3, 2009
The Future of U.S. Politics - An Irresponsible Prediction
The greatest political danger the United States republic will face in the coming decades is an alliance of libertarian economic and ethical logic (a means) with a progressive utopian vision of pleasure for all (an ends). The crowds loved President Obama's rhetoric - he talked about peace and harmony and well-being - but now they see what that costs, they don't like him. If the Democrats are smart, they'll scrap state socialism just like Tony Blair scrapped state collectivism. Who really cares about the poor, after all? Well, the poor care about the poor, and they have a vote in hand. So to keep their vote, what will be offered them in compensation for inequality of wealth and success? Equality of pleasure. Make pleasure the new dollar. Since the poor can produce sex just as well as the rich, give them sexual unrestraint, and everyone will be wealthy. The middle-class will have their money, and the rich will have their orgies. Everyone will be happy. High-five to J.S. Mill.
To this end, watch for signs in public education that children are being taught more and more about fulfilling their desire for pleasure, especially for sexual pleasure, and especially at the expense of the desire for public honor in the role of citizen or statesman. They will be taught to trade their rights as a citizen for their rights as a hormone factory.
Also watch for euthanasia defended on slighter and slighter grounds, so that a man who is merely chronically angry or depressed is given the option to kill himself. That will have the excellent effect, among other excellent effects, of staving off political dissent.
How should a virtuous person respond to all this? Invest in morphine production. You'll make a killing.
To this end, watch for signs in public education that children are being taught more and more about fulfilling their desire for pleasure, especially for sexual pleasure, and especially at the expense of the desire for public honor in the role of citizen or statesman. They will be taught to trade their rights as a citizen for their rights as a hormone factory.
Also watch for euthanasia defended on slighter and slighter grounds, so that a man who is merely chronically angry or depressed is given the option to kill himself. That will have the excellent effect, among other excellent effects, of staving off political dissent.
How should a virtuous person respond to all this? Invest in morphine production. You'll make a killing.
Wednesday, March 18, 2009
Universal Literacy
Since the earliest times, literacy was the mark of education; it was the prized possession of jurists, legislators, priests, and generals, no doubt for its enormous practical value, but also, surely for its intrinsic beauty and power. For what other reason do hieroglyphics in their thousands graffiti the walls of the Egyptian palaces? As wealth increases, so education envelops a larger proportion of the population, so alphabets develop partly to simplify the problems of teaching language, so that around the Mediterranean, noun-pictures become syllabic pictures, and finally abstract letters, whereas in China the Mandarin alphabet has been horribly complex up until very recently, when a concerted effort is being made to simplify it. A body of higher knowledge preserves civilization, but literacy is at the root, and taught from the earliest age.
In the last three centuries we have reached the logical conclusion of this historical process (and be quiet, I'm not a Whig), where everyone can read and most can write. Now obviously not everyone can, but this is a fault of inefficiencies and philosophical stupidities in the present pedagogical system rather than inherent limitations in the possibility of universal literacy.
Now the democratic system of government depends upon universal literacy. Over the course of the 19th century the Liberal and Tory parties of England debated the wisdom of extending the franchise. It was a chief complaint of the Tories that Englishman without an education couldn't be expected to participate in government, and it was a chief effort of the Liberal party to give everyone that education, precisely as a rebuttal to the Tory objection, so that in 1866 Gladstone could accuse Parliament of foolishness and senselessness to withhold political power from the working classes, as since 1832, they had increasingly become fit for the exercise of it. Likewise the American founders held universal education to be a necessary defence of sensible government. The early frontier schools didn't teach much, but they taught as much as was needed to read the papers and consider the merits of an argument. The middle class, especially, was trained to read very deeply. Almost every independent household before the revolution had at least a Bible and either a work of history or law written by an Englishman.
This isn't the place to assess the reasons for the link between universal education and democracy, and the most basic reasons should be obvious to the educated person. What I want to consider, briefly, is the danger to democracy when universal literacy begins to decay, as it is doing today: when the system is in place, but repeated attempts to reform it fail; when a growing percentage of citizens no longer claim to be able to read and write; and when those who can make abominably poor use of it. Consider the rise of the paperback bestseller. An elderly fellow who works at the funeral home, a '63 graduate of Hillsdale, used to be an English highschool teacher. He told me today that when he gets Imprimis he immediately throws it into the trashcan, not because he thinks its rubbish (and there's something of an argument there), but because he just doesn't read that stuff. He went by the library today to pick up several volumes of mysteries to entertain himself during the hours he works here, and because recently, apparently, T.V. isn't so good. Many people I know and you know do the same thing.
Here is the problem, as an deductive argument.
Major premise: Democracy depends, and has always depended, among other things, on universal education.
Minor premise: Schools have always taught, and continue to teach, literacy.
Minor premise: Literacy used to stand for, but longer stands for, an education.
Conclusion: Our country is no longer a stable democracy.
"The glories of the past are destroyed, they are no longer understood, and language is forgotten. Letters, you have gone down in a cataract from depth of folly to further depth, from obscenity to obscenity, until you have reached the inane. For whom should any man now write? What ears remain to hear?"
Hilaire Belloc - The New Keepsake (1931)
In the last three centuries we have reached the logical conclusion of this historical process (and be quiet, I'm not a Whig), where everyone can read and most can write. Now obviously not everyone can, but this is a fault of inefficiencies and philosophical stupidities in the present pedagogical system rather than inherent limitations in the possibility of universal literacy.
Now the democratic system of government depends upon universal literacy. Over the course of the 19th century the Liberal and Tory parties of England debated the wisdom of extending the franchise. It was a chief complaint of the Tories that Englishman without an education couldn't be expected to participate in government, and it was a chief effort of the Liberal party to give everyone that education, precisely as a rebuttal to the Tory objection, so that in 1866 Gladstone could accuse Parliament of foolishness and senselessness to withhold political power from the working classes, as since 1832, they had increasingly become fit for the exercise of it. Likewise the American founders held universal education to be a necessary defence of sensible government. The early frontier schools didn't teach much, but they taught as much as was needed to read the papers and consider the merits of an argument. The middle class, especially, was trained to read very deeply. Almost every independent household before the revolution had at least a Bible and either a work of history or law written by an Englishman.
This isn't the place to assess the reasons for the link between universal education and democracy, and the most basic reasons should be obvious to the educated person. What I want to consider, briefly, is the danger to democracy when universal literacy begins to decay, as it is doing today: when the system is in place, but repeated attempts to reform it fail; when a growing percentage of citizens no longer claim to be able to read and write; and when those who can make abominably poor use of it. Consider the rise of the paperback bestseller. An elderly fellow who works at the funeral home, a '63 graduate of Hillsdale, used to be an English highschool teacher. He told me today that when he gets Imprimis he immediately throws it into the trashcan, not because he thinks its rubbish (and there's something of an argument there), but because he just doesn't read that stuff. He went by the library today to pick up several volumes of mysteries to entertain himself during the hours he works here, and because recently, apparently, T.V. isn't so good. Many people I know and you know do the same thing.
Here is the problem, as an deductive argument.
Major premise: Democracy depends, and has always depended, among other things, on universal education.
Minor premise: Schools have always taught, and continue to teach, literacy.
Minor premise: Literacy used to stand for, but longer stands for, an education.
Conclusion: Our country is no longer a stable democracy.
"The glories of the past are destroyed, they are no longer understood, and language is forgotten. Letters, you have gone down in a cataract from depth of folly to further depth, from obscenity to obscenity, until you have reached the inane. For whom should any man now write? What ears remain to hear?"
Hilaire Belloc - The New Keepsake (1931)
Saturday, March 7, 2009
Tests, Tests, Tests
If you are a highschool or college student, when was the last time you took an academic test? Probably last week. And what are you doing now? Probably reviewing for a test. If you are a highschool or college professor, what are you doing now? Probably preparing or marking a test. I will tell you outright, I think this near-ubiquitous pedagogic crutch a feeble procedure and a misuse of time.
What is it that a highschool aims to teach? It is no revolutionary thing to say that it aims to train up strong, active minds which take delight in truth and beauty, and in the process introduce them to some of the most important ideas, names, languages, and literature that nourish our cultural discourse. Young minds may be brilliant or may be dumb, but nearly all of them are capable of forming some attachment, some love, to a science, to a period of history, or to an author. This sort of intellectual desire ought to be encouraged wherever it is found, and allowed to flourish. Some day it may become a real academic excellence; perhaps it may lead to related studies; more than likely the pure experience of intellectual love will prepare the student to throw the weight of his mature mind into an honourable and serious labour, political or academic (and I mean political in the largest sense of the word).
How does the well-meaning test assist this purpose? Generally speaking, it forces a student to review the material he has copied down from the lectures and his textbook; in college, it even forces him to think independently on the meaning and significance of the material. Without a test, without the incentive of a good grade and the embarrassment of a bad one, most students wouldn't give a second thought to the material. Even the best of them must be led gently but firmly towards knowledge.
Yet precisely what command of knowledge does a test demand? To be specific, memorized facts and regurgitated analysis. Now there is absolutely nothing wrong with regurgitated material. Were it not for regurgitated food, in fact, the worldwide bird population would have died off shortly after the fifth day of creation, for lack of means to feed the chicks. However, it is an essential point of regurgitation that the food doesn't stay in the belly of the parent, but is cast into the gullet of the chick, or in our case, the pages of the bluebook. Regurgitated information does not nourish the mind. Information from one science does not shape the information of another. All is kept tightly preserved in boxes of the memory labeled 'upcoming exam'.
The existence of mid-terms in college is hard enough. At the Academy, the highschool history students take an exam almost once every two weeks. These are usually preceded by a review day, where the professor quizzes the students and fields their questions. The year is split into three terms, such that in each term, the children take several miniature tests and a comprehensive exam at the end. The effect on most of these students I conceive to be a tendency to forget what was learned in all previous terms but the present, and I observe the same in college, that very few remember what they studied so hard for in previous semesters. The best of them perhaps remember in the spring what they learned in the fall.
Now, this is not in itself problematic. Isn't the aim of education not a memory for facts (and here I included regurgitated analysis in my definition of 'fact'), but appreciation of principles, and a delight in knowledge? Yes indeed, but facts are a means to that knowledge. Constant testing constantly empties out those facts and restarts the new term with new facts, so that no comprehensive idea is built up. Any enlargement of the mind is accidental and infrequent.
I suggest we learn a lesson from England, and administrate highschool tests far less often, perhaps once a year, for several reasons:
1) The difficulty of holding in the memory such a vast volume of facts forces the student to develop a facility for ordering his acquired facts according to principles, for using parts of other studies to reinforce his memory of this one, and in general to cultivate precisely what we wish for.
2) The allegiance to GPA as a measure of intellectual success, and consequent cutting of corners and the habit of studying to the exam, diminishes, as does the opposite tendency to become inoculated against its authority. Believe me, the frightful difficulty of a once-yearly exam creates near awe about it.
3) It frees up immense amounts of time both in class and out for both teacher and student, to get on with the business of learning. It doesn't at all preclude the potential to review past material from time to time, and even to take informal tests. In fact, a wise teacher will do so. But the mood of the review changes, from being servile to being liberal. I think this is the real meaning behind the contemporary concern that kids become 'stressed' and 'over-worried' at having to take so many exams.
In the meantime, kids can be tested in far more fruitful ways. There should be frequent competitions for prose and poetry memorization, for written essays, for artistic creativity, just as there already are in sports. Achievement shouldn't be mechanized and economized into a number or a letter. It should be honoured as a particular and glorious production of a thriving mind, just as it truly is in the adult world. There is very little competition in exams, because they are by nature private. But competitions of production are by nature public. And kids - especially the boys - are far more inspired by public honour than they are by private self-respect.
There are several counter-arguments that I haven't the time or space to recite or refute. I would also like to stress that nothing is further from my mind than lampooning the wisdom and the deliberate thoughtfulness of schools and professors who do administrate frequent exams. However, I state the general case as seems to me to complement a complete pedagogy, and I'd like you, my sweet reader, to comment on this and debate with me and the other readers. I know much of what I blog is obscure, but I've no doubt you have at least briefly thought about this particular issue before, it being so near to your heart, as it were.
What is it that a highschool aims to teach? It is no revolutionary thing to say that it aims to train up strong, active minds which take delight in truth and beauty, and in the process introduce them to some of the most important ideas, names, languages, and literature that nourish our cultural discourse. Young minds may be brilliant or may be dumb, but nearly all of them are capable of forming some attachment, some love, to a science, to a period of history, or to an author. This sort of intellectual desire ought to be encouraged wherever it is found, and allowed to flourish. Some day it may become a real academic excellence; perhaps it may lead to related studies; more than likely the pure experience of intellectual love will prepare the student to throw the weight of his mature mind into an honourable and serious labour, political or academic (and I mean political in the largest sense of the word).
How does the well-meaning test assist this purpose? Generally speaking, it forces a student to review the material he has copied down from the lectures and his textbook; in college, it even forces him to think independently on the meaning and significance of the material. Without a test, without the incentive of a good grade and the embarrassment of a bad one, most students wouldn't give a second thought to the material. Even the best of them must be led gently but firmly towards knowledge.
Yet precisely what command of knowledge does a test demand? To be specific, memorized facts and regurgitated analysis. Now there is absolutely nothing wrong with regurgitated material. Were it not for regurgitated food, in fact, the worldwide bird population would have died off shortly after the fifth day of creation, for lack of means to feed the chicks. However, it is an essential point of regurgitation that the food doesn't stay in the belly of the parent, but is cast into the gullet of the chick, or in our case, the pages of the bluebook. Regurgitated information does not nourish the mind. Information from one science does not shape the information of another. All is kept tightly preserved in boxes of the memory labeled 'upcoming exam'.
The existence of mid-terms in college is hard enough. At the Academy, the highschool history students take an exam almost once every two weeks. These are usually preceded by a review day, where the professor quizzes the students and fields their questions. The year is split into three terms, such that in each term, the children take several miniature tests and a comprehensive exam at the end. The effect on most of these students I conceive to be a tendency to forget what was learned in all previous terms but the present, and I observe the same in college, that very few remember what they studied so hard for in previous semesters. The best of them perhaps remember in the spring what they learned in the fall.
Now, this is not in itself problematic. Isn't the aim of education not a memory for facts (and here I included regurgitated analysis in my definition of 'fact'), but appreciation of principles, and a delight in knowledge? Yes indeed, but facts are a means to that knowledge. Constant testing constantly empties out those facts and restarts the new term with new facts, so that no comprehensive idea is built up. Any enlargement of the mind is accidental and infrequent.
I suggest we learn a lesson from England, and administrate highschool tests far less often, perhaps once a year, for several reasons:
1) The difficulty of holding in the memory such a vast volume of facts forces the student to develop a facility for ordering his acquired facts according to principles, for using parts of other studies to reinforce his memory of this one, and in general to cultivate precisely what we wish for.
2) The allegiance to GPA as a measure of intellectual success, and consequent cutting of corners and the habit of studying to the exam, diminishes, as does the opposite tendency to become inoculated against its authority. Believe me, the frightful difficulty of a once-yearly exam creates near awe about it.
3) It frees up immense amounts of time both in class and out for both teacher and student, to get on with the business of learning. It doesn't at all preclude the potential to review past material from time to time, and even to take informal tests. In fact, a wise teacher will do so. But the mood of the review changes, from being servile to being liberal. I think this is the real meaning behind the contemporary concern that kids become 'stressed' and 'over-worried' at having to take so many exams.
In the meantime, kids can be tested in far more fruitful ways. There should be frequent competitions for prose and poetry memorization, for written essays, for artistic creativity, just as there already are in sports. Achievement shouldn't be mechanized and economized into a number or a letter. It should be honoured as a particular and glorious production of a thriving mind, just as it truly is in the adult world. There is very little competition in exams, because they are by nature private. But competitions of production are by nature public. And kids - especially the boys - are far more inspired by public honour than they are by private self-respect.
There are several counter-arguments that I haven't the time or space to recite or refute. I would also like to stress that nothing is further from my mind than lampooning the wisdom and the deliberate thoughtfulness of schools and professors who do administrate frequent exams. However, I state the general case as seems to me to complement a complete pedagogy, and I'd like you, my sweet reader, to comment on this and debate with me and the other readers. I know much of what I blog is obscure, but I've no doubt you have at least briefly thought about this particular issue before, it being so near to your heart, as it were.
Tuesday, February 10, 2009
Praise Song for Hillsdale Academy
This morning I attended the opening ceremony for Hillsdale Academy lower school, where I am apprenticing this term. The order is as follows:
Pledge of Allegiance
Singing of "Simple Gifts"
Welcome by the Headmaster
Poetry recitation by a student
Announcement of sporting achievements (if any)
Other announcements. Today the headmaster (Dr. Calvert), along with his head-of-years, handed out certificates to all those students who had perfect attendance for their first 100 days at the Academy.
Headmaster's exhortation and dismissal.
I was forcefully struck by the power of this daily rite, and especially by the constant inspirational public acknowledgment of student success. In England there is next to NO celebration of success. In (equivalent of) 8th grade, I wrote a poem which my English teacher very much liked, and considered entering into an upcoming anthology of student poetry. However, it was decided that my poem wouldn't be entered, since no other students in MY year had suitable work. My sixth form (last two years of high-school) didn't even have a graduation ceremony. The students at the Academy, for this reason among others, are unusually excellent as I have seen personally.
I would merely criticize the constant grading and exams. I wish rather that we would copy the grammar-school custom of holding competitions and offering prizes and glory throughout the school year, in all sorts of subjects. This generally encourages hard work even in that most difficult demographic, the bored boys - study the youth of Winston Churchill.
Pledge of Allegiance
Singing of "Simple Gifts"
Welcome by the Headmaster
Poetry recitation by a student
Announcement of sporting achievements (if any)
Other announcements. Today the headmaster (Dr. Calvert), along with his head-of-years, handed out certificates to all those students who had perfect attendance for their first 100 days at the Academy.
Headmaster's exhortation and dismissal.
I was forcefully struck by the power of this daily rite, and especially by the constant inspirational public acknowledgment of student success. In England there is next to NO celebration of success. In (equivalent of) 8th grade, I wrote a poem which my English teacher very much liked, and considered entering into an upcoming anthology of student poetry. However, it was decided that my poem wouldn't be entered, since no other students in MY year had suitable work. My sixth form (last two years of high-school) didn't even have a graduation ceremony. The students at the Academy, for this reason among others, are unusually excellent as I have seen personally.
I would merely criticize the constant grading and exams. I wish rather that we would copy the grammar-school custom of holding competitions and offering prizes and glory throughout the school year, in all sorts of subjects. This generally encourages hard work even in that most difficult demographic, the bored boys - study the youth of Winston Churchill.
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