When Alps on Alps Arise

 

So pleas'd at first, the tow'ring Alps we try,

Mount o'er the vales, and seem to tread the sky;

Th' eternal snows appear already past,

And the first clouds and mountains seem the last;

But those attain'd, we tremble to survey

The growing labours of the lenthen'd way,

Th' increasing prospect tires our wand'ring eyes,

Hills peep o'er hills, and Alps on Alps arise!

The blog post I wrote as I concluded a 30 year-career in public education took its title from a poem, so it seemed only fitting that this, my 200th post and the one reflecting on my first year in private education, should do the same.

I Had No Idea

In the 1997 film adaptation of Carl Sagan's novel Contact, Dr. Ellie Arroway (Jodie Foster) becomes the first human to travel through a wormhole to encounter extraterrestrial life.  Dr. Arroway is a scientist who only believes in facts and what can be proven through science.  Yet when she encounters the majesty of the far-flung heavens, she stammers, "I had no idea," as she realizes that perhaps a poet would have made a better first ambassador from earth.

This fairly accurately captures what I have felt throughout this school year.  I had no idea.  I had no idea education could be like this.  I had imagined something like it and had even been told by others that it existed, but until I experienced it for myself, I could not truly appreciate the wonders.

Any endeavor conducted apart from or even in opposition to Jesus Christ can seem good and nice.  Hamlet, however, well distinguished between what seems to be the case and what is.  As he famously railed against his mother in Act 1, Scene 2,

Seems, madam!  Nay, it is!  I know not 'seems.'

'Tis not alone my inky cloak, good mother,

Nor customary suits of solemn black,

Nor windy suspiration of forced breath,

No, nor the fruitful river in the eye,

Nor the dejected 'havior of the visage,

Together with all forms, moods, shows of grief,

That can denote me truly.  These indeed seem,

For they are actions that a man might play.

But I have that within which passes show.

These but the trappings and the suits of woe.

Indeed, with this first year at Guerin Catholic High School, I have experienced that which passes show, that which goes far beyond the trappings and the suits of academic achievement that amount to little more than new clothes for the emperor and that have brought about more woe than we would like to credit them.  I am talking about education rooted in the person of Jesus Christ and pursued for His glory.

Undoubtedly there are those who are having trouble reading at the moment, so enraged have they become by my comments casting aspersions on taxpayer-supported, government-run institutions of education.  Yet I will stand with Hamlet in preferring that something be rather than that it seem, a sentiment that goes back to Sallust and before him to Cicero and before him to Aeschylus*, and will state again and unequivocally that anything enacted apart from Jesus Christ can at best seem good.  Of course, I am far from the first to say this.  God inspired Solomon in Psalm 127:1 to proclaim, "Unless the LORD builds the house, those who build it labor in vain," and Jesus Himself put it more directly when He stated, "Apart from me you can do nothing."

One of the best and most recent articulations of the implications of this truth came from Dr. Helen Freeh in her article "Pursue Truth, Find Her, then Do Something."  In that piece, Dr. Freeh says what has needed to be said for some time.  We cannot continue to hope for a better outcome from our schools merely by re-arranging the pieces of a broken game.  We must rediscover the purpose of education, one that is rooted in objective and transcendent truth, and then not the disembodied concept of truth belonging to the philosophers, but the fully incarnated truth who is Jesus Christ.

Golden Streamers of Glory

Since the day I visited St. Theodore Guerin Catholic High School to interview for the position of Latin teacher, I knew that something was different about the place.  We use the phrase genius loci to describe the atmosphere, the feel, of a particular place, and it was clear even as I waited in the front office for the principal that the spirit here was none other than the Holy Spirit, the third person of the Trinity, for as I flipped through Impact, our school's biannual magazine I came across an article by a student who said that the highlight of his career at Guerin was the junior retreat during which he had grown closer to Jesus.  I was struck by the spiritual depth of the young man's comment, and that was but a foretaste of what I would come to experience.

The metaphor I have used most when trying to convey to friends what I have come to sense at Guerin is the image of golden streamers of glory.  It is difficult to put such experiences into words, but time and again I have perceived almost physical, golden streamers blowing through the hallways of our school.  I could point to the happy faces of the students, the genuine joy of the faculty, or the selfless support of our administration and parents as the reason, but then we would have to wonder about even the source of those.  After a moment's thought, the reason for all this is quite obvious.  What else should one expect in a school where Jesus Christ is glorified and the words of the Great Commission to teach all that He has commanded are taken seriously?

Inside the front door of our school

The Sound of Music

Alexander Pope (1688-1744) has been my favorite poet since I discovered him in our Brit Lit class my senior year of high school, and I chose the words from his Essay on Criticism at the beginning of this post to open my valedictory address to our senior class.  The context shows that when Pope describes hills peeping over hills and Alps arising on Alps, he is describing the daunting scene that often confronts us after we have begun an exciting journey, yet I take those lines now in a different way.  I think of Maria in The Sound of Music.  As I conclude my first year of teaching at a Christian school after retiring from public education, I see majestic hills yet to climb, hills filled with the sound of music, and I look forward with renewed vigor and enthusiasm to attempting their ascent with the wonderful students and faculty at St. Theodore Guerin Catholic High School as together we follow the One Who prepares the path before us.

*In Seven Against Thebes, line 592, by Aeschylus we read, "ou gar dokein aristos, all' einai thelei" "οὐ γὰρ δοκεῖν ἄριστος, ἀλλ᾽ εἶναι θέλει."  "For he wants not to seem but to be the bravest."

Cicero wrote in De Amicitia 98, "Virtute enim ipsa non tam multi praediti esse quam videri volunt."  "For there are not so many who wish to be endowed with virtue itself rather than to seem so." 

In Sallust's Bellum Catilinae 54 we find Cato the Younger being described as someone who "esse quam videri bonus malebat," or someone who "preferred to be good rather than to seem good."