I focus a lot on Gloom, Despair, and Agony On Us (hat tip: Hee-Haw), so it’s a pleasure to post this e-mail from a reader:
I don’t know if I’ve told you about our parish school that has rebooted itself much in the model of St. Jerome’s. Anthony Esolen wrote about it here:
http://www.crisismagazine.com/2015/a-parish-school-turns-failure-into-success
I think it would be worth sharing it with your readers. (I am biased but also want people to know about it.)
My son went to Montessori preschool there last year and we moved all my school age kids there this year. It has been AWESOME! We had been sending our kids to the local public schools because the other Catholics schools in the area didn’t inspire much. They seemed like glorified public schools with a dollop of religion. (Indeed, they seem to run after what the public schools are doing. I almost drove off the road when I heard a Catholic high school talk about the bold move it had made by bringing new technology into the classroom for every single student. This was what he thought boldness in Catholic education was.)
In many ways the local public schools match up with our desires to live in a walkable community. My sixth grader would have had a two-block walk to school. My third grader would have been in the same school he and his sister were in last year which is about 10 minute walk. But there are no ideal situations in this world.
The straw that broke the camel’s back was my daughter being about to move to the middle school. It is the same school I went to and like most middle schools it has a Lord of the Flies atmosphere. But that wasn’t the deal breaker. Rather, it was the “optional” use of Chromebooks by all the students. And we are talking about the liberal sort of option that is basically mandatory because all the classes teach to the laptops and the classrooms have ONE set of textbooks per class that a student can check out.
We knew the classical model was better, but we also had some big sacrifices to make. Besides, there is something Catholic to being rooted in place. We tried to sell our house but were not successful, and so we have a 15-minute drive every morning — which is minimal compared to some other families; our friends in DC roll their eyes at because they’d die for such a short school commute.
We are six months in and we are so incredibly happy. To have teachers pulling in the same direction, to have your kids start each day with the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass, to be able to sit with them at daily Mass when I can, has been awesome. And the things they are learning are the things I am still trying to catch up on! My kids were sledding with their uncle (my brother-in-law) and he asked my sixth grader what she was reading. She proceeded to tell him about the allegory of the cave from Plato’s Republic which they had been reading and discussing. I didn’t read any of that–probably didn’t even know about it–until college. They are learning Latin and being challenged in their religion. For instance, the wonderful religion teacher that my daughter has challenged them to make the case for Christ’s divinity but then had them flip around and prosecute the other side and make the arguments for why he wasn’t divine. He wants them to think these things through, not simply to recite some lines from the Catechism.
One of the keys is the smallness of the place. Another key has been our pastor’s willingness to reach out to homeschoolers. So often parish schools are antagonistic towards homeschoolers. Our school has something called the Classical Enrichment Curriculum (CEC) that allows homeschoolers to take classes a la carte on Tuesdays and Thursdays. Some homeschoolers have ended up switching to full time but others continue to come twice a week.
The headmaster is a not someone from the educational bureaucracy; he’s a Air Force colonel and a lawyer and so he thinks outside the box.
I am blabbering but I really have been blown away by what is going on in this school. My sixth grader also isn’t fighting a constant battle each day in school. She’s not being made fun of because she doesn’t have the latest iPhone. She is able to be sheltered in a good way.
The liturgical life is so rich too. Our kids had Mass on the Ephiphany in the Extraordinary Form. Yesterday, they had a beautiful Candlemas celebration. They have Adoration every Tuesday and the kids spend time there as classes. They have regular confessions.
Here’s the website about the school: http://sacredheartacademygr.org/
Here are some youtube videos about the academy and the parish:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2ySy7iuu1NM
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bwsTzGBbmss
Pictures from Candelmas: https://www.facebook.com/DanielBennettPage/posts/10153380872151699
Pictures from a Rorate Mass in December (scroll down): http://www.newliturgicalmovement.org/2015/12/advent-photopost-rorate-masses.html#.VrJFT9IrKM8
Again, I am going on and on, but it gives me so much joy to have this place and to see it growing. There are families moving to be closer. There are families driving an hour to bring their kids here. There is something special happening. I’d love it if you could share some of this!
With pleasure. Reading this, I am reminded of how Cardinal Newman described the work of the early Benedictines:
St Benedict found the world, physical and social, in ruins, and his mission was to restore it in the way not of science, but of nature, not as if setting about to do it [the caveat], not professing to do it by any set time, or by any rare specific, or by any series of strokes, but so quietly, patiently, gradually, that often till the work was done, it was not known to be doing. It was a restoration rather than a visitation, correction or conversion. The new work which he helped to create was a growth rather than a structure. Silent men were observed about the country, or discovered in the forest, digging, clearing and building; and other silent men, not seen, were sitting in the cold cloister, tiring their eyes and keeping their attention on the stretch, while they painfully copied and recopied the manuscripts which they had saved. There was no one who contended or cried out, or drew attention to what was going on, but by degrees the woody swamp became a hermitage, a religious house, a farm, an abbey, a village, a seminary, a school of learning and a city.
If you know who John Senior was, it will not surprise you to learn that this school, Sacred Heart Academy, is, in a way, the fruit of his labor. The Sacred Heart provost was mentored by Hillsdale College’s David Whalen, who in this lecture talks about his experience with the legendary Kansas professor — a proto-Benedict Option-er if ever there was one.