Children are natural-born storytellers. Embedded in their DNA is a desire to tell back stories with impressive accuracy to their parents, friends, teachers, or just about anyone willing to listen. If one were to ask one of my children about the excitement from the Edwards household this past weekend, they might hear a retelling of how their father courageously took on a sizable hornets nest. The retelling might go something like this, “Hey Ronnie, you won’t believe what happened at my house this weekend. There was a HUGE hornets nest in our backyard… I mean there must have been hundreds of hornets in this thing! My dad spent two hours trying to destroy the nest.” My child would provide vivid detail and in my imagination might even include words like brave, heroic, or valiant. The epic story would include the comical throwing of volleyballs, 2x4’s, and rakes towards the ferocious nest fifteen feet in the air. With remarkable detail, the child would certainly remember to tell about the frantic sprint of his father to escape the chasing hornets and his ultimate collision with a stubbornly immobile trampoline. Hopefully, he would conclude the story with the father’s well-deserved triumph over the unwelcome invaders. My sincerest apologies to Nature Studies teachers everywhere. Nineteenth century educator Charlotte Mason beautifully describes a child’s natural appetite for telling stories saying, “the child narrates, fluently, copiously, in ordered sequence, with fit and graphic details, with a just choice of words, without verbosity or tautology, so soon as he can speak with ease… He has seen everything, and he tells everything with splendid vigour in the true epic being.” For those able to join us at Cultivate last week, one of the central aims of Stonehaven’s classical approach is to teach with the grain of a child. With this goal in mind, our school is committed to refining and developing a child’s natural yearning to retell stories. A Charlotte Mason devotee and classical educator Karen Glass defines narration as the “art of telling… we tell because we want to relive an event or allow others to experience something with us.” In a school setting, we are taking a “very human activity” and formalizing it in the classroom so that we can develop a child’s ability to attend to a lesson and assimilate what they are learning. Assimilate is an important word in education and defined as “to take into the mind and thoroughly understand” or even better “to take in and utilize as nourishment.” Narration trains our children to take in their learning thereby providing intellectual nourishment for their souls.

One of the misconceptions about a truly effective education is that it must be complicated. Educational theorists might want to convince us that the best teaching methods require hours of training, the reading of thick books, and the pursuit of Phd degrees. They argue that only the highly educated and educational experts are equipped to teach well. However, implementing narration in the classroom or in the home is technically very easy and accessible to anyone. Three ingredients are required in the narration recipe. First, content like a fairy tale, book, or short story. As children become more adept in this art, the content can vary widely. The second ingredient is a reader. The third, a listener. The reader reads aloud a paragraph, a page, or an entire chapter to the child (the listener). After the reading, the child is asked, “please tell me in your own words what you heard.” Or maybe, “what was this story about?” Parents should be prepared for a wide variety of initial narrations from their children. Some children will astonish their parents with full, descriptive retellings of the story they heard. Other children will struggle to provide even a few solid sentences about what you have read. “It was a story about a guy and his dog… and.. Umm… some other things… it was kind of boring.” For children that struggle, lower the bar and try again. Find a story you are sure will hold their attention and shorten the reading. Gain some momentum with some easier stories and then lengthen the read alouds gradually as your child learns to attend better. Parents will need to adequately prepare the environment, remove distractions, and train their children to listen well. “Hey Vera and Miles, I am going to read a story and I expect you both to listen closely. Do you understand?” Parents should not be disheartened with some early “failures” and need to keep their eyes on the long-term goal.

There are many long-term goals with narration. I have already mentioned two of the central aims: attending and assimilating. Consistent practice in narration will nurture in our children a habit of attention. To reinforce the habit of attention, Mason insists that a single reading be done and that educators should avoid rereading the passage. Regarding the goal of assimilation, Mason argues that, “knowledge is not assimilated until it is reproduced.” Therefore, we want to see the child reproduce what they have heard so that it might be digested and thoroughly understood. A third goal is to build a firm foundation in our children for them to become excellent writers. In a future blog post, I will return to the topic of narration and how it is the kindling required for the development of good writing.

Imagine a teacher presenting the following scenario to their 11th grade class; Your boyfriend or girlfriend has committed a felony, during which other people were badly harmed. Should you or should you not turn him or her into the police? After a fervent conversation, the class agrees that loyalty is the primary virtue and "snitching" would be the wrong thing to do. To his chagrin, public school teacher Paul Barnwell of Louisville, Kentucky, witnessed this exact scenario in his junior English class. The experience demonstrated that, "Engaging in this type of discourse, it seemed, was a mostly foreign concept for the kids... his students seemed to crave more meaningful discussions and instruction relating to character, morality, and ethics, it struck me how invisible these issues have become in many schools." A core doctrine of secular education is the belief that education can and should be morally neutral. Christian apologist, Greg Koukl, says in his article The Myth of Moral Neutrality that, "One of the most entrenched assumptions of relativism is that there is such a thing as morally neutral ground, a place of complete impartiality where no judgments nor any forcing or personal views are allowed." Moral relativism, a central tenet to the religion of modern education, argues that we must accept and support the viewpoints of all in our society. The truth is that each and every school, religious or secular, is promoting, teaching and indoctrinating our children to think, reason, and believe in a particular way. Any school worth its salt is devoted to helping their students wrestle with and answer the most fundamental questions of life; Who am I? Who is God? What is the purpose of human existence? How do we know what is good and what is evil? If we are truly a school seeking to cultivate truth, goodness, and beauty in our students, we are not only interested in exploring the many possible answers to these questions. Ultimately, we want to guide them towards embracing the answers to these questions. Therefore, what we should desire is a school that is committed to training our children to believe and think in accord with the truth of the Bible. Stonehaven is indoctrinating children in the truth. Stonehaven is teaching children to act justly, love mercy, and walk humbly with their God (Micah 6:8). This path of Godliness is rarely found by children when walking aimlessly through the marketplace of morality. If we ask our children to determine for themselves if justice, mercy, and humility are worthy of adherence, we should not be surprised to find some that don’t find it compatible with their own personal value system. As C.S. Lewis said, "We laugh at honor and are shocked to find traitors in our midst. We castrate and bid the geldings be fruitful."

“What hath Athens to do with Jerusalem?” wondered the early church father Tertullian. This is an important question for classical Christian schools. Tertullian posed this question in an effort to argue that Christianity ought to avoid the pagan influence of classical Greek culture. Classical schools have a curriculum and approach to learning that respects and imitates many elements of Greek philosophy. From reading Homer to the Socratic Method, the fingerprints of Greek thinking on our school movement are plentiful and conspicuous. Many classical schools will even incorporate Greek columns, outdoor amphitheaters, and other neoclassical architectural elements into their campus as if to say, “Look how classical we are!” Those that agree with Tertullian wonder why a faith committed to the revelation and authority of God is taking its cues from a culture devoted to the supremacy of human wisdom. Although classical educators respect Tertullian’s concern, we are more closely aligned with Augustine’s perspective on the value of the Greek tradition. “Moreover, if those who are called philosophers, and especially the Platonists, have said anything that is true and in harmony with our faith, we are not only not to shrink from it, but to claim it for our own use from those who have unlawful possession of it,” argued Augstine. “Now these are, so to speak, their gold and silver, which they did not create themselves, but dug out of the mines of God's providence.” In essence, Augustine says that the Christian is to be exploring the mines of truth regardless of their country of origin. As we read in Psalm 145:9, “The Lord is good to all, and his mercy is over all that he has made,” and Matthew 5:45, “For he makes his sun rise on the evil and on the good, and sends rain on the just and on the unjust.” In his sovereignty, God’s mercy was extended to ancient Greece. Their contribution to the way the world thinks, governs, and learns is undeniable and should be studied by our children. Classical educator Martin Cothran says, “The truths of classical learning were discovered by pagans, but they were still gold.” This is why we still know names like Aristotle, Plato, and Socrates. And yet, their ideas live on today because Christians like Augustine, Aquinas, and a bevy of Irish monks were committed to preserving the wisdom of their ideas. Stonehaven is committed to playing its part in this act of preservation.

Where do we find the imprint of ancient Greece in the Stonehaven curriculum and classroom? The first thing that comes to mind is the plethora of Greek literature in our reading lists including Homer, Plato, Aristotle, Socrates, and Greek mythology. These stories are rich in the exploration of virtue, wisdom, and beauty. Second, significant aspects of the mathematics we teach in our schools can trace its lineage back to Euclid, Pythagoras, and their near worship of the harmony of numbers. As I like to make sure everyone knows, the most influential textbook ever written is certainly Euclid’s thorough treatise of Geometry called Elements. This brilliant book has stood the test of time like few other academic books of history. Third, the Greek focus on logic, best embodied in Aristotle, is the foundation of how we reason and argue today. Students at Stonehaven will take two years of logic in our Upper School where they will be challenged to reason well in their pursuit of valid arguments. Fourth, the Socratic method is employed by our teachers as an effective method of asking good questions to stimulate critical thinking. Socrates said, “Let the questions be the curriculum.” Fifth, we teach the extent to which Greek democracy impacted the governments of future civilizations. Many complain about the weaknesses of democracy but I would argue that Winston Churchill was right when he said, “democracy is the worst form of government except for all others.” Sixth, we believe the art and architecture of Greek culture is worthy of contemplation and study by our children. Both in art class and history, we look at the far-reaching effects of Greek art and architecture.

Honestly, I don’t need the Greek columns on our campus to feel committed to a classical education. But I do agree with Augustine that the ancient Greeks have treasures for us to plunder. The tendency of our culture is to dismiss most wisdom from the ancient world as irrelevant to our modern issues. C.S. Lewis called this chronological snobbery: " the uncritical acceptance of the intellectual climate common to our own age and the assumption that whatever has gone out of date is on that account discredited." From the philosophy of the Greeks to the cultural impact of the Renaissance, we want to nurture a habit in our children to vigorously pursue truth, beauty, and goodness of all ages.

The greatest five-word opener in all of literature comes from God's holy word, "In the beginning, God created" (Genesis 1:1). Every year we choose a book of the Bible to focus on for our chapel talks. In our return to the Old Testament, we have decided that "the beginning," the book of Genesis, is the most appropriate theme for this year. The beginning of our journey at our new Lower School campus, the beginning for many new teachers, the beginning for twenty-seven new families, and the beginning of our tenth grade Rhetoric School. The doctrine of Creation, the fact that the eternal God created the world "ex nihilo," demands that God is the source and sustainer of all things. Creation is so important that theologian Herman Bavinck called it, "the starting point of true religion." Theologian Philip Sherrard argued that, "Creation is nothing less than the manifestation of God’s hidden Being." Whether the subject is mathematics or art, the Stonehaven classroom is designed to be an environment where our children explore God's creation and consequently learn more about God's "hidden Being." From the very beginning of a child's journey at Stonehaven, we will teach them that "God created." The ultimate goal of a Stonehaven education is to prepare a child to follow God and imitate his character: to see our children become creators themselves. As children leave Stonehaven after the 12th grade, we will have prepared them to be creators. Our vision is that they will become faithful creators of families, creators of businesses, creators of ideas, creators of churches, creators of ministries, and creators of culture. Our goal since 2004 has been to build a school that partners with Christian families by creating an educational institution that brings, "them up in the discipline and instruction of the Lord" (Ephesians 6:4). We have never ceased to consider how our school can grow, enhance, and build programs that can better achieve our Christ-centered classical vision. We are excited to invite our many new families to partner with us in these efforts as we labor to build his kingdom in our community. The below are three significant "creations" for this coming school year:

1. Morning Meeting - Our school has always met as a student body for chapel on Wednesday mornings. In addition to chapel this year, on Monday, Tuesday, Thursday, and Friday mornings, all of our students will be gathering together as a corporate body to sing, read Scripture, and pray. The primary goals for morning meeting include our aim to begin every school day well with a spiritual focus, nurturing in our children a habit of prayer and Bible reading, and cultivating a strong unified culture in our student body.
2. Narration - Our Lower School teachers are focused on creating and defining a more formal commitment to the art of narration. Narration is simply “telling” back a story in one’s own words. Charlotte Mason, a 19th century British educator, promoted and formalized narration as an effective pedagogical tool to be used in our schools. Narration will help our children focus intently, understand more fully their lessons, and develop the ability to communicate well.
3. Rhetoric Program - For those familiar with the three developmental phases of the Trivium, you will know that this year is significant as we launch our 10th grade program. The Rhetoric phase of a classical education, often aligned with 10th through 12th grade, has a particular emphasis on teaching our children the art of oral and written expression. Winsome, persuasive, charisma, articulate, and eloquence are attributes we will nurture in our rhetoric program. Our Upper School teachers will be dedicated to exhibiting these characteristics in their classes as a model to be followed.

I often tell the story of the three masons as a way to distinguish the heavenly purpose of classical education. For those unfamiliar, let me provide the more concise version. Many moons ago, three masons were laboring alongside one another to build a church. A person walking by the three men asked each of the masons what they were doing. Without even looking up, the first grumbled, “I’m laying bricks.” The second turned and looked at the passerby to say, “I am building a wall.” However, the third paused, looked to the sky with a gleam in his eye and said with a smile, “I’m building a cathedral.” What one person considered to be a boring and monotonous, the other viewed as a glorious calling. This summer and every summer, parents are challenged to step up their parenting game. Many of us will hear the dreaded “Mom, I’m bored!” complaint from our children. One of the temptations we face is to believe that one of our job requirements as a parent is to be a director of entertainment. Every year as we enter the summer, I refer to our parents a great article written by the leaders from the now-closed The Heiskell School. This article challenges parents to “really focus on the two “R’s”” over the summer. What are the two R’s? The first “R” is to require obedience and the second “R” is to refuse to entertain. The Heiskell School staff found that, “When you refuse to entertain your child, you encourage resourcefulness, creativity, and imagination, all wonderful traits that will serve him well at school and later in life.” This will require some patient parenting as children fervently complain about the scarcity of fun in their world, “No mom, I’m serious, there is literally nothing for me to do.” It might feel easier to simply pull out an Ipad or put on a movie but this removes a great opportunity. An opportunity to struggle through the boredom and create their own adventure. Is it not a beautiful thing to watch a person capable of entertaining themselves? In the whimsical book Where’d you go Bernadette by Maria Semple, a mother admonishes her daughter saying, “You are bored. And I’m going to let you in on a little secret about life. You think it’s boring now? Well, it only gets more boring. The sooner you learn it’s on you to make life interesting, the better off you’ll be.” I imagine that the mason building the cathedral was the child encouraged to find wonder in the mundane and ordinary.

In our efforts for academic excellence we must be careful to put our children in what writer and columnist Nathan Heller calls “terrariums of excellence.” These educational “terrariums” discourage children from taking risks because such failures could taint their aspirations for a spotless academic record. In a critique of the elite education at Ivy League schools, author William Deresiewicz lamented that “the system manufactures students who are smart and talented and driven, yes, but also anxious, timid, and lost, with little intellectual curiosity and a stunted sense of purpose… great at what they’re doing but with no idea why they’re doing it.” This is when I am encouraged to be a part of the classical Christian school movement. A movement that is desperately committed to helping children understand the deeper “why” for school. If the end goal is a particular GPA or acceptance to certain colleges, the pressure for achievement will certainly cause our children to avoid failure at all costs. With an emphasis on a love of learning, we encourage our children at Stonehaven to make academic leaps even when failure is a potential outcome. How can our children thrive in their future if they have not learned to navigate failure? Providing an academic environment where our children can fail with grace and love is an important part of Stonehaven’s culture. Heller says, “Learning is supposed to be about falling down and getting up again until you do it right.” We seek to graduate children whose intellectual curiosity for learning trumps their fear of failure. This does not diminish our desire and expectation for children to complete their assignments with accuracy and excellence. Rather, it elevates a culture that encourages risk taking so that we can nurture virtues like courage and persistence. Winston Churchill says, “Success is not final, failure is not fatal: it is the courage to continue that counts.”

“The question is not, -- how much does the youth know? when he has finished his education -- but how much does he care?” This quote comes from the classically revered educator Charlotte Mason. It’s short, simple, and so true. During my years at Georgia Tech, it was not rare that at the beginning of each semester my group of friends would sit down at the cafeteria table and ask, “Hey, anyone seen Charlie this semester?” A week later, someone would learn that our buddy Charlie had flunked out of Georgia Tech. We had lost another friend to the dungeon of academic apathy. Visions of the prison cafeteria in Shawshank Redemption should come to mind! Sunken heads, looking into our food quietly as we remembered the many fun times we had with Charlie (usually memories that didn’t include studying). For most of the students that couldn’t hack it academically at Georgia Tech, it was not a result of their lack of knowledge. Their SAT scores were certainly better than average and they often possessed strong cognitive abilities. What was lacking was how much they cared for learning. As our children take standardized tests this week, we have a good opportunity to consider the value of this objective measurement tool. The results do tell us something. But they don’t tell us everything. We believe such tests are fundamentally unable to tell the whole story of a child’s intellectual abilities. Therefore, it is important that we don’t place too much emphasis on standardized testing that would cause our children (or their parents) to disproportionately measure their academic success by the results. For in the end, our success as parents and as a school cannot be measured by an academic test. As Albert Einstein said, “Not everything that can be counted counts, and not everything that counts can be counted.”

In an episode of The Twilight Zone called The Fever , Franklin Gibbs and his wife win a vacation to Las Vegas. Through a series of unfortunate events, Franklin betrays his moral aversion to gambling and quickly succumbs to an obsessive addiction to playing slot machines. In true Twilight Zone fashion, it does not end well for Mr. Gibbs. It is hard to believe that slot machines make more money in the United States than baseball, movies, and theme parks combined. What is so addictive about slot machines? Psychologists have found that the human mind is uniquely attracted to what are termed intermittent variable rewards. When the reward for a particular action is randomized, like it is with slot machines, our attraction to the action is significantly increased. This certainly explains my enjoyment of the game of golf. Random is the perfect adjective describing my golf game; once every fifty swings I am rewarded with a great shot. Not knowing when that next shot will come keeps me swinging. In an article by technology ethicist Tristan Harris called How Technology is Hijacking Your Mind , he connects the addictive elements of slot machines to cell phones and social media: “But here’s the unfortunate truth — several billion people have a slot machine in their pocket: When we pull our phone out of our pocket, we’re playing a slot machine to see what notifications we got. When we pull to refresh our email, we’re playing a slot machine to see what new email we got. When we swipe down our finger to scroll the Instagram feed, we’re playing a slot machine to see what photo comes next.” It is essential that we are aware that the designers of our cell phones and “slot machine” apps (Google, Facebook, Instagram, TikTok, LinkedIn, YouTube, etc.) are intentionally sprinkling intermittent variable rewards throughout their products to exploit our psychological weaknesses and those of your children as well. It has been said that, “It’s easier to fool people than to convince them that they’ve been fooled.” For us as Christian parents and teachers, it is crucial that we are teaching our children how technology is constantly seeking to distract them. These are not harmless distractions, these are distractions keeping us and our children from living faithful lives in service of God and our neighbor. I am convinced that if C.S. Lewis wrote The Screwtape Letters today, he would’ve included a long chapter where Screwtape provided his nephew Wormwood with thorough instructions for how social media and technology can be used for the destruction of the Christian’s soul.

We have been studying the book of Acts during chapel this year with our students. A significant theme in Acts is the remarkable growth of the early church. We are told that "the word of God continued to increase, and the number of the disciples multiplied greatly in Jerusalem" (Acts 6:7), "and walking in the fear of the Lord and in the comfort of the Holy Spirit, it multiplied" (9:31), "the word of God increased and multiplied" (12:24), "they increased in numbers daily" (16:5), and "the word of the Lord continued to increase and prevail mightily" (19:20). Why did the early church expand so rapidly? In an article considering the cultural decline of Christianity, theologian Russell Moore argues convincingly that the growth of the early church was grounded in its countercultural nature. He says, "The Book of Acts, like the Gospels before it, shows us that the Christianity thrives when it is, as Kierkegaard put it, a sign of contradiction. Only a strange gospel can differentiate itself from the worlds we construct. But the strange, freakish, foolish old gospel is what God uses to save people and to resurrect churches (1 Cor. 1:20-22)." The miraculous news of the gospel is the very reason why Christianity thrived in the first century. A Christian gospel stripped of these essential doctrines (the virgin birth, the resurrection, etc.) is no gospel at all. In its efforts to be relevant and respected by the world, the liberal church rejects the heart and source of its glorious purpose. Moore notes that, "People who don't want Christianity, don't want almost-Christianity. Almost-Christianity looks in the mainline like something from Nelson Rockefeller to Che Guevara at prayer. Almost Christianity, in the Bible Belt, looks like a God-and-Country civil religion that prizes cultural conservatism more than theological fidelity. Either way, a Christianity that reflects its culture, whether that culture is Smith College or NASCAR, only lasts as long as it is useful to its host. That's because it's, at root, idolatry, and people turn from their idols when they stop sending rain." The lie confronted by every generation of Christians is the same as the one asked by the serpent in the garden, "Did God actually say?" (Genesis 3:1). We are training our children in our homes, at church, and at school to respond boldy, "Yes, He did actually say."

When our children look back on their childhood, what family traditions, rituals, and celebrations will they remember their parents taking seriously? Will they remember the annual Super Bowl party or the majestic Easter feast? The extravagant birthday parties or the awe-inspiring Christmas candlelight vigil? All are good but should we not be placing more of our heart and soul into traditions centered on the hope of the gospel? We have entered the week preceding Easter and God is giving us another opportunity to celebrate well with our church, family, and friends. In Paul's letter to the church in Corinth he says, "And if Christ has not been raised, then our preaching is in vain and your faith is in vain." The resurrection is absolutely central to the Christian's hope. One historian of Christian theology, Jaroslav Pelikan, eloquently says, "If Christ has not risen...nothing else matters. If Christ has risen...nothing else matters." Our faith is grounded in the resurrection of Christ; this is the perspective of Easter we want to impart to our children. The way we do this is by praying and celebrating in a manner that makes an impression on the hearts and souls of our children. We find a great example for how to celebrate in 2 Chronicles 30:21, "And the people of Israel who were present at Jerusalem kept the Feast of Unleavened Bread seven days with great gladness, and the Levites and the priests praised the Lord day by day, singing with all their might to the Lord." Seven days, great gladness, praising the Lord, day by day, and singing demonstrate that God's people highly revered holy days. The celebration was all consuming. N.T. Wright clarifies the importance of the coming week saying, "Easter is what it is because, together with Jesus' crucifixion, it is the central event of world history, the moment towards which everything was rushing and from which everything emerges new." If we believe this is the central event of world history, then we ought to be busy making it a central focus in our lives and the lives of our children.