The Skillful Surgeon: Wielding Classical Education for Healing and Hope
In many ways, I think an education - particularly a Classical Education - is like a scalpel. When wielded with wisdom, understanding born of toil and time, with the intent to heal and restore, it leads us to living what is true, good, and beautiful - walking humbly with the Lord our God.
However, a scalpel in the hands of a clumsy, arrogant, or unpracticed surgeon can lead to great harm and devastating consequences.
The difference between the two is not the knife itself, it is the person holding it - it is the lessons lodged in the psyche garnered by suffering, complexity, and time. (I’m married to a doctor, so maybe this is why the analogy of the scalpel resonated so deeply with me.)
I, too, was raised in a Christian home that prioritized Classical education. For much of my adult life, I have been grappling with what I was taught to do with the “scalpel” that was handed to me. So often, the desire behind my learning of great literature or complicated theology was a subtle superiority and a desire for certainty and “being right.” The scalpel I was handed gave me a tool to damage relationships by both pride and callousness. My posture was not one of humble inquiry and graciousness.
But… it also gave me a hunger for Truth, for learning, and a love for things that “make sense”. As I am teaching your 5th-8th-grade kiddos, this tension is always in my mind. Getting to have a practice run at parenting with a Kindergartener this year has pushed me to analyze what sort of motive and framework I might want to give to her… and, by nature of my current profession as a teacher and school coordinator, what I hope to build within our school.
As parents and as teachers, I think sitting with this tension can be a useful guide for us.
However your school year has gone up to this point, I want us to pause for a moment today, remind ourselves that we are here by the grace of God, together, to love these students and press towards Wisdom, healing, restoration, and to rejoice that God “remembers our sins and lawless deeds no more.”
Here is my list of what I prayerfully imagine for our students and pray is a reality for them:
We will lead them in the essential work of caring deeply about what is right and wrong, truth and falsehood, fairness and injustice, helpful and harmful, selfish and unselfish. But we will also remind them that even if people do wrong, they are still worthy of love as bearers of the Imago Dei.
We will lead them in understanding the values of excellence, the pride of doing one’s best, (in a carefully curated sense) the value of competition and winning. We will simultaneously warn them of the dangers of pride and superiority, and of the dangerously addictive power of winning, and we will teach them about the precious lessons that often come through loss, defeat, and failure.
We will teach the value of study and learning as an expression of our love for God, for others, and for ourselves - developing our minds and other capacities to their highest potential for the glory of God and service of His Church.
We will help our children develop critical thinking, honest questioning, and the ability to challenge and critique. We will help them critique and challenge without hate or disrespect, driven instead by love for the truth and for the common good. Love for God and love for others requires this kind of critical thinking.
We will guide them as they turn their eyes inward and face their own hypocrisies, their own shadows, their own blind spots, not to foster self-hatred or self-condemnation, but as a way of remembering that “He has perfected for all time those who are being sanctified.” In this way, our children can learn to critique both others and themselves with the same graciousness and loving gentleness as Christ. “I will put my laws on their hearts and write them on their minds...and I will remember their lawless deeds no more.”
For thought and discussion:
Reflect on the analogy of Classical Education as a scalpel. How do you desire your child’s education to “heal and restore”?
What would you add to the list of things you pray for your children’s/students’ education?
How do I want ____ subject to shape my children/students?
What are some areas the students collectively excelling at that subject right now? In what ways can they collectively improve?