Purpose Driven Education

Dear Families,

Thank you to all of the families who have already signed enrollment contracts for next year. As you likely figured out, we are trying to improve our practices to both simplify and make the process more effective. We do value reconsidering current practices in all facets of our mission- even if considered best practices - to make sure we do not miss an opportunity to improve.There are tools available now that were not before, but perhaps due to my own obsessive focus on the reasons behind all things, I began to wonder why the world seems to be moving in the direction of better and better tools. Do all new tools really help build the human person? Do all emerging social tools even improve relationships in the home, the workplace, the civic order, and of course, our school?

This got me thinking about our mission, and as I recently stumbled across a newer study released on classical education, it was there that I found some answers. Classical Education: The Movement Sweeping America offers historical context and contemporary analysis on education in America. The inspiration of a classical education comes from the "conviction that the human being is a creature of timeless significance. The Christian goes so far as to see him as the Image of God, the lord-steward of the creation on whose virtue the well-being of the earth and its inhabitants depends." And now back to the tools, "The power to see truth is the ability to see the nature of particular things and to see each of them in their relations to each other. The tools of learning enable a learner to identify the nature of a thing and to relate that thing in a manner suited to its nature." In short, the greatest tool a classical education imparts is to detect the purposes of things,and then live in a purpose-driven manner.

These purposes can be self-evident but also learned through experience. A part of me forever wants to acknowledge that we don't have all the answers, so at least I know my place and the source of all this good we learn about. But then a part of me always wants to relate all that we encounter or do back to a higher purpose, one that is clearly defined even if it is not yet fully known.I think herein lies the paradox of learning: we need to direct students towards knowledge that is unmistakably and always good (one that doesn't come from us), but also give students the opportunity to grow towards living a purpose-driven life. Sometimes this is not as clean as we would like it to be,but a classical education never wavers in its pursuit of truth, goodness, and beauty.

I am thinking most of us see this, and that is what holds this school's mission together. As it currently stands, we have the same amount of students registered for next year, and our current predictions based on the level of expressed interest from prospective families indicates that 210 or more students will be walking this campus. This has long been an institutional goal, but for me personally, there is only one reason I want students here: I want them to know they are loved by a God who is better than me, and made for a purpose that He alone can satisfy.  

Yours Truly In Christ,

Derek Tremblay, Headmaster