For millennia, education has been about passing on a heritage, a culture, and a way of life to the youth. Education is not solely about reading, writing, and arithmetic for its own sake but learning these subjects for a greater purpose. The concept of paideia, rooted in Ancient Greece, was one where education served to rear the ideal member of the polis or the city. That education, incidentally, made the child a wise individual as well. Extended to the Christian church, education was about raising and maintaining Christian men and women, who navigate both the City of God and the City of Man. It was about teaching the children to carry on the faith. A common verse that encourages faith building says, “You shall teach them to your children, talking of them when you are sitting in your house, and when you are walking by the way, and when you lie down, and when you rise.” (Deut. 6:7).

Education is also the transformation of a human being. In the classical conception (from Plato’s The Republic), to be educated is to be led out of the cave and into the light. This is literally the definition of the Latin term educere, one of our words for education.

I’ll let you in on a secret. Right now, school-aged children are really good at being kids. Does that surprise you ? Of course not; a child is what they’ve been their whole lives. As the title of one book hints, we want to (and do) love the little years of our children and grandchildren. Still, the goal is to see your grandchildren become adults that lead (themselves and others) in the world. Lament as we will that the days are long but the years fast, I trust that if asked, none of us would say that our hope for our children is perpetual adolescence, a modern day Peter Pan, one who never grows up.

As you all know, childhood exists on a continuum, and the five year old is more “child” than the fifteen year old… hopefully! At varying stages of childhood, your grandchildren are learning and growing exponentially everyday. It can be challenging to see that growth in the short run, but as one example, children’s brains grow significantly in their early years. They have the potential to learn vast amounts of information and skills, including second and third languages, and to begin to form complex ideas. When children are exposed to substantive language, their vocabulary expands, along with their imaginations. It is a true delight to witness this process unfolding as we try to harness their capacities.

It is often true that lessons stick far better when the imagination is engaged rather than being directly told. Jesus frequently spoke in parables, which incorporated the imagination. This, incidentally, is one hallmark of our school: developing a moral imagination.

You may know a scene in children’s literature that illustrates the pain of transformation vividly. In C.S. Lewis’ The Voyage of the Dawn Treader, Eustace Scrubb – that immature and annoying character – allowed his greed to get the better of him. In other words, vice supplanted virtue. Because of this, Eustace was physically and spiritually changed in a most unwelcome way. He describes his transformation from a dragon back to a boy. Aslan, the Lion and god figure in Narnia books has to tear the dragon skin off. Eustace says:

The very first tear he made was so deep that I thought it had gone right into my heart. And when he began pulling the skin off, it hurt worse than anything I’ve ever felt. The only thing that made me able to bear it was just the pleasure of feeling the stuff peel off. You know — if you’ve ever picked the scab of a sore place. It hurts but it is such fun to see it coming away.

Well, he peeled the beastly stuff right off – just as I thought I’d done it myself the other three times, only they hadn’t hurt – and there it was lying on the grass, only ever so much thicker, and darker, and more knobbly-looking than the others had been. And there was I smooth and soft as a peeled switch and smaller than I had been. Then he caught hold of me – I didn’t like that much for I was very tender underneath now that I’d no skin on — and threw me into the water. It smarted like anything but only for a moment. After that it became perfectly delicious and as soon as I started swimming and splashing I found that all the pain had gone from my arm. And then I saw why. I’d turned into a boy again. . . .

Though education itself does not save souls, education does till the soil. Your grandchildren are being liberally educated, which means to be liberated from the cave and to live with joy before the face of God. This is a process and not an easy one at that. Our portrait of a graduate provides specifics of what that end looks like. Here are three goals for our graduates:

Possess a masterful command of language and the rhetorical skills.
Reason critically and independently, with a view toward loving God and loving others.
Not be easily swayed by fads.

Now in conclusion, I will note something that will seem to counter all the words I’ve already penned. Jesus warns that unless we turn and become like children, we will never enter the kingdom of heaven. How can adults simultaneously be like children? I think the answer is simply to maintain joy and wonder. There is no greater wonder than the Lord of the Universe! In knowing and trusting Him, eyes may be kept from evil, and your grandchildren will not be so easily ensnared by the shiny objects of the world, which pale by comparison. And the joy for you, Grandparent? You get to walk alongside your grandchildren in this!

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