I lived the first twenty years of my life without having guacamole or tasting an avocado. I knew it was out there, and I had heard of it. It simply wasn鈥檛 in the circle of my experience, and I never would have thought it relevant to my life. Now I have avocado at least four times a week, whether in my breakfast smoothie, on a salad, or with tacos and chips. Similarly, I lived the first thirty years of my life without knowing any Latin, including all my years of formal education.

When confronted with the question of 鈥淲hy Latin?鈥� it strikes me as the same kind of question as 鈥淲hy avocados?鈥� though, to the latter, I can only answer with the shallow 鈥淭hey are delicious and delightful. They are good for me, and they have enriched my life.鈥� Latin is like that too, but more so.

In high school, my best friend tried (unsuccessfully) to persuade me to join him for a dual-credit accelerated Latin course at the University of Minnesota. I declined the invitation, and decades later I count that as one of my greatest regrets in life.

At the time, I had no way of knowing that Latin would have given me a huge assist towards areas that were soon to become many of my greatest personal and professional interests. I do not have space to tell the whole story, but I will try to take you along a few steps of a rather personal journey and showcase a few examples of 鈥淲hy Latin?鈥� I am a bit of an odd duck and a natural non-conformist, so I suspect few readers will fully resonate with all these anecdotes, but I offer them anyway.

In high school and college, I became a small-group Bible study junkie. The methods taught by InterVarsity Christian Fellowship not only let me dig into Scripture more deeply than anything I had done previously, they also sharpened my reading skills and led to many incredible and life-impacting conversations with friends. In the midst of this, it progressively dawned on me how essential knowing Greek and Hebrew were to understanding the Bible, which was written in those languages. I co-taught a Sunday school class with a graduate student in physics. It eventually dawned on me that trying to interpret the Bible on my own without knowledge of the original languages was like trying to do astronomy with high quality pictures alone, without ever looking at the night sky itself. I had the idea in my late-teenage mind that someday I would learn Hebrew and Greek. No one told me that the resources for learning Greek and Hebrew almost always drew analogies from Latin, and that Greek is so much easier to learn for the typical English speaker if one has learned Latin first.

My younger self鈥檚 dream job was to be a judge (or a supreme court justice), and my love of stories turned me into an English major. (The choice of major was also influenced by the fact that my English professors were better than my History, Philosophy, or Political Science professors.) Somehow, learning Old English鈥擜nglo Saxon鈥攖he language of Beowulf, wound up on my bucket list. I took a year of Old English in college, briefly surveying the grammar of the language, then reading Beowulf. It was my first experience with an inflected language, and I was completely lost. No one told me that Old English grammar makes so much more sense if one has studied Latin.

I took enough Spanish to fulfill my high school and college language requirements. People told me that it was the most 鈥渦seful鈥� language. It certainly came in handy when I was on summer mission trips to Mexico, but as a teenager, I never personally resonated with the language, its history, cultures, and literature enough to get sucked in. This year I am reading (and enjoying) an English translation of Don Quixote, one of the classics of Spanish literature, so I may yet be drawn in.

I found Greek naturally enticing, as I wanted to able to read the New Testament in Greek, as well as the Septuagint (the ancient translations of the Old Testament into Greek), the Church Fathers, Josephus, Homer, and others. Greek was hard, and I still do not consider myself to be a proficient reader of Greek, but many of the things that made no sense to me in Greek class I finally understood when I began learning Latin. Latin has far greater tools for the learner, a simpler verbal system, and far more words that are obviously related to English.

Once I acquired a basic Latin vocabulary, so many things in English started to make sense. The irregular verb 蹿别谤艒, which means 鈥渢o carry,鈥� shows up everywhere. A ferry carries people across water. To transfer is to 鈥渃arry forward,鈥� to refer is to 鈥渃arry back,鈥� to prefer is to 鈥渃arry forward,鈥� and value it ahead of another thing. The list could go on (infer, offer, etc.). The verb 蹿别谤艒 is highly irregular, so its stem shifts from 鈥渇er鈥� to 鈥渢ul鈥� or 鈥渓at鈥� in other tenses. This is why a word that transFERred from one language into another is transLATed. With the basic vocabulary skills, I also gained the ability to look up Latin words and realize that, despite the importance of books and ideas to freedom, 鈥渓iberty鈥� and 鈥渓ibrary鈥� derive from totally different words, having no linguistic connection, just as 鈥渋nfants鈥� have no business in the infantry (nor adults in adultery). I haven鈥檛 needed this knowledge any more than I have needed avocados, but both have sure been nice and have enriched my experience of life.

I finally understood why Beatrix Potter calls a baby-buggy a 鈥減erambulator鈥� and what Agatha Christie means by those descriptions of 鈥渁vuncular鈥� gentlemen with 鈥渁quiline鈥� noses and 鈥減uerile鈥� behavior. Dracula has a lot of Latin thrown in, as does Moby Dick, Isaac Asimov鈥檚 pioneering science fiction novels, and all the magic in Harry Potter (with one unforgivable exception). Numerous things in my daily life that I had taken for granted made sense in unexpected ways, and countless times I felt like I was finally getting a joke to which I had been oblivious. I get the 鈥渞ise鈥� in 鈥渞esurrection鈥� and 鈥渋nsurrection,鈥� why spring begins with the 鈥渧ernal equinox,鈥� and why 鈥減ound鈥� is abbreviated 鈥渓b.鈥� Ditto for a.m. and p.m., post-mortem, post-partum, habeas corpus, non sequitur, ambidextrous, antebellum, or the LN button on the calculator. I noticed the 鈥渢hrowing鈥� into, under, back, and against of subjection, injection, rejection, dejection, projection, and retrojection. The last eight years have been an endless series of discoveries that I never suspected lay latent all around me. In any field of knowledge, it is common to suddenly begin noticing a new concept one has just learned everywhere鈥攖his is called the Baader-Meinhof Phenomenon (and naturally, since learning about it, I have begun to encounter the phrase 鈥淏aader-Meinhof Phenomenon鈥� seemingly at every turn). Once students have learned about vanishing points in artwork or question marks at the end of sentences or fractions used in daily life, they suddenly begin to notice these elements all around them. This has been my experience with Latin, but to an especially surprising extent.

Being in the world of classical Christian education, I may come across more works written in Latin than one might in other contexts, as between 25-30% of our 7^th-12^th grade omnibus curriculum is made up of works originally composed in Latin. We teach Vergil鈥檚 Aeneid, Augustine鈥檚 Confessions and City of God, Eusebius鈥� and Bede鈥檚 histories, Aquinas鈥� Summa Theologica, and Boethius鈥� Consolation of Philosophy, among many others. Our choir teacher explains to students that 蝉辞濒蹿猫驳别 (i.e., 鈥淒o Re Mi鈥�) originally comes from a Latin hymn, Ut qeant laxis, which Guido de Arezz used in the 11^th century to identify notes, the names deriving from which syllables fell on which notes of the octave.

Students gain historical perspective as they learn when, where, and how ideas were discovered and developed, even if only for simpler facts. For example, only in the 13^th century did Europeans adopt the Arabic numerals we use today (e.g., 1, 2, 3, 4, 5) after the publication of Fibonacci鈥檚 Liber Abaci explained their usefulness to merchants, providing place value and the possibility of easily checking calculations. My geekier side wishes that our students learned the laws of motion from Newton鈥檚 Principia Mathematica or Kepler鈥檚 Astronomia Nova, or the history of astronomy from Copernicus鈥� De revolutionibus orbium coelestium libri VI, or infinitesimal calculus from Euler鈥檚 Institutiones calculi differentialis, though that is beyond the realm of our current possibilities.

At a basic level, Latin sheds enormous light on the more obtuse and obscure English words, and at a greater level of competence gives the power for the interested party to delve into the history of music, math, science, and theology, gaining an understanding of whence ideas come and the relationship of knowledge to history. The categories, labels, or nomenclature of most subjects use Latin-based terms whose usage preceded the English language, varying from 鈥済enus,鈥� 鈥渞edemption,鈥� 鈥渟ubject,鈥� 鈥渘octurnal,鈥� 鈥渟ubterranean,鈥� 鈥渆xpiation,鈥� 鈥渟edimentary,鈥� or 鈥減reposition.鈥� Human language is conventional, though it enables us to talk about real things, and I find great value in understanding the history and reasons behind the words, concepts, and categories that we use.

A final comparison that I have used with students in the past is music. At a music conservatory, or in pretty much any college music department, undergraduates majoring in music must learn piano. It matters not whether their emphasis is voice, trombone, cello, or general music education. They all have a basic piano requirement. I have asked musicians why this is, and they tell me that piano develops and requires a greater understanding of music theory than most instruments, enables the musician to play any part of the harmony or melody, and can accompany anything else. In this way, it serves as a multipurpose tool and a general foundation.

In our curriculum, Latin is similar to the piano. Being a fully inflected language, every noun, pronoun, adjective, and verb changes its ending according to its task in the sentence. Latin word order is almost irrelevant (unlike, for example, English, Spanish, Japanese, or French). This requires that students fully understand the major categories of how language works. They also must get their minds around the subjunctive mood, four different participles, six infinitives, and a variety of types of clauses. The level of grammatical complexity of Latin is more than English, Spanish, or French, though not quite to the level of Russian or ancient Greek. Any of these languages could accomplish many of our goals, to a greater or lesser extent, though my experience has been that studying Latin first makes all of them easier. As a classical school emphasizing knowledge of the growth and development of the church, Christian thought, and the philosophical and political ideas that shaped the west from Athens and Rome to the founding of the United States, Latin is a valid choice, if not a sine qua non, for our students. From the decades before the time of Christ until the scientific revolution, there are simply more central texts of history, theology, philosophy, and science in Latin than in any other language. Latin is the best curricular fit for our school, Q.E.D.

At many a house, the question 鈥淲hy do we have to eat guacamole?鈥� might be answered simply by 鈥渂ecause it鈥檚 Tuesday.鈥� The question of 鈥淲hy do we have to learn Latin?鈥濃�攁t least at our school鈥攎ay have an only slightly better answer. We study Latin, versus another world language, because it develops more analytical skills than most languages, is highly relevant to understanding English and its higher-level vocabulary, and gives access to many foundational texts of over 1,500 years of the Western tradition. And of course, once you have the taste for it, it鈥檚 delicious.

鈥旿ohn F. Quant, PhD

A Little Frustration Never Hurt Anybody
reposted with permission

Should I do what I can to make my child happy? It seems like a simple question, yet it is one that I often hear from parents. It’s almost like we are trained to have this “parental responsibility of happiness” mindset from the time of our child’s birth. When a baby cries, we are told that they are either hot/cold, hungry, or sleepy.

We immediately go into the “need-meeting” mode of parenting. As soon as we meet the need, they calm down and all is well. At this point, it is easy to confuse the notion of meeting needs and keeping our child happy. Meeting needs is one thing, eliminating frustration in our child’s lives is quite another.
In the first few years of life, there are very few needs that parents do not meet鈥ext, come the wants. Children, and many adults, have difficulty distinguishing needs from wants and have very similar emotional reactions to both. We, as parents, are not always successful at deciphering the cause of our child’s emotional discord and assume that if we are calming them down and keeping them happy, then we are meeting their needs.

Yes, this means that those who are over the top with spoiling their children may actually believe that they are doing the right thing. In fact, most of the parents that I have worked with over the last three decades with this issue, want the best for their kids and have a hard time coming to grips with the reality that what they have been doing is counterproductive. By eliminating our children’s frustrations whenever they occur, we are making it more difficult for our children to function in the teenage and adult world.

When we take on the responsibility of making our children happy, several negative messages begin growing in our children’s minds. The first is that there is something wrong with being upset or having negative emotions. This mindset can cause great confusion and frustration in a child. Children will have negative emotions; this will never stop.

When a child believes that these experiences are bad, yet continue to have them, they may begin to question themselves鈥� even asking “What is wrong with me?” Another, even more, problematic thought, is that emotions are more important than they really are and that being happy is necessary for life. Children, who are never allowed to suffer, have difficulty understanding that a person’s life can be just fine although they are not happy or satisfied at the moment.

When a person believes this, yet has a period of prolonged negative emotion, it can be devastating. It is interesting that with the thousands of suicidal teenagers I have known over the years, I can count on one hand the number that truly wanted to kill themselves. The majority wanted to kill how they were feeling. They did not know how to function in a state of emotional discord and they misinterpreted their negative emotions to mean that their lives were no good or not worth living. They had given too much importance to their emotions and had not learned how to effectively solve problems.

In response to these children, the work is to help them understand that their emotions are not always accurate indicators of either who they are or the quality of their life. This is then followed with helping to equip them to handle difficult emotions, a lesson that needs to be taught earlier in life.

It is vital that we allow our children to suffer, not always get what they want, hear NO, be upset, cry, etc. Our goal is not to keep them happy, but to equip them to handle all of their emotions. A big part of that is realizing that a sturdy child is more of the target than a happy child. Peace and contentment is more important than feeling happy.

It is not surprising that the book of James relates that we should be joyful when we struggle because this builds perseverance, which leads to maturity and wisdom. It is the act of learning to struggle well, that is truly the engine to growth and maturity in the lives of our children. The challenge is to ask ourselves, are we truly equipping our children to deal with their emotions or are we just trying to keep them happy? In my experience, an equipped child will find more happiness.

“If there is no struggle, there is no progress. Those who profess to favor freedom, and yet depreciate agitation, are men who want crops without plowing up the ground. They want rain without thunder and lightning. They want the ocean without the awful roar of its many waters. This struggle may be a moral one; or it may be a physical one; or it may be both moral and physical; but it must be a struggle” (Frederick Douglass).

鈥� Keith McCurdy

In More Than Dates & Dead People: Recovering a Christian View of History, a wonderful little book our students read in 7^th grade, Stephen Mansfield defines religion as 鈥渦ltimate concern.鈥� He explains that if you can put your finger on a people鈥檚 ultimate concern, what is most important to them, you have identified their religion. He goes on to define other important terms in light of this:

• Culture is religion externalized
• Art is religion symbolized
• Law is religion codified
• Education is religion transferred

Education, then, can be thought of as our ultimate concerns handed on to the next generation. Similarly, GK Chesterton defined education in this way: 鈥淓ducation is not a subject, and it does not deal in subjects. It is instead a transfer of a way of life.鈥� Thinking of education in this way differs greatly from a more modern view of education that focuses on job skills and test scores.

That education is much more than data transfer and information download has always been at the heart of classical Christian education. 91原创 isn鈥檛 a factory, and our students are not just numbers in seats or faces in a crowd. Instead, they are eternal souls made in the image of God who live in His created world and have purpose and meaning. From these basic facts stems our mission statement:

91原创 exists to serve families by providing a distinctly classical and decidedly Christian education that equips students to lead lives of virtue, display mature character, love learning, and serve the Triune God.

This mission statement deliberately points to virtue, maturity, and character as the aims of education, rather than merely academic achievement or career-based skills. And if education is the transfer of a way of life to the next generation, then virtue, maturity, and character are of far more importance to cultural preservation than mere information download. In fact, it means the field of education is one of the most important, front-line battle fields in our day.

I pondered all of this during a couple of recent field trips, first, with our 6^th grade class to Washington DC, and second, with our senior class to London and Paris. I had never been to DC nor overseas, and while I expected it to be an enjoyable time, I did not anticipate how much it would stir in me a sense of wonder, gratitude, and perspective. During these trips, I witnessed various representations of our heritage, our story, something we鈥檝e been given. I stood over some of our founding documents. I visited Arlington National Cemetery and various war memorials honoring the lives of those who鈥檝e fought and died to secure the freedoms and liberties that our nation has enjoyed. I walked through cathedrals, viewed the Magna Carta, and stood in places where our ancestors once stood hundreds of years before. Some of them fought against tyranny, others preached the gospel, and some helped establish a structure of government outlining God-given rights, freedoms, and limits of power.

But our heritage seems to be in jeopardy. While we live in a time and place with more freedoms, opportunities, and comforts than just about anyone else in all of history has ever known, at the same time we are witnessing a squandering of that inheritance. We live in a day where many rights, freedoms, and Christian cultural norms have faded or even disappeared right before our eyes. Is it simply inevitable that these trends will continue until we completely forget where we鈥檝e come from and from whom all our blessings have come? Or is it possible to turn things around, to reclaimcultural ground, and to preserve freedom and liberty? I鈥檇 like to suggest that 91原创鈥檚 mission offers us an opportunity to play a crucial role in the preservation and cultivation of Christian culture in our day. We can preserve freedoms and liberties and reclaim Christian cultural ground if there are men and women who want to preserve those things and who are also equipped to do so.

So how can an education at 91原创 equip students to make such a cultural impact? Our goal all along has not been to simply provide an alternative educational option or to simply offer a drug-free, gang-free environment where boys must use one restroom and girls use another. We鈥檙e in favor of those things, of course, but they are by-products of a much bigger and broader mission, one that seeks to inculcate biblical virtue, maturity, sound reason and faith, and a love for and a desire to serve others. A generation equipped with such tools can have a tremendous and godly impact on our culture.

Someone might argue that a private education like what 91原创 offers is all well and good for the really bright over-achievers who will go on to study at big name colleges or work in important fields (like politics) where the real cultural battles are fought. But I鈥檇 like to suggest that the most important cultural battles to be fought are in the hearts and minds of our children, in our homes, and in our communities. And that鈥檚 why the aims of classical Christian education and the goals of 91原创 are not simply about high achievement, college prep, rigor for the sake of rigor, information download, or data transfer. To be clear, students of classical Christian education have achieved quite a lot and tend to be much more prepared for college and jobs than their peers, but there is so much more to education than that.

This equipping of students at 91原创 takes place each day as students wrestle with deep and difficult questions which civilizations have sought to answer for centuries. As our kindergarteners line up with 鈥渂ubbles and ducktails,鈥� they are learning what it means to love their neighbors as they walk down the hall. Transformation happens when students are armed with critical thinking skills to distinguish between sound reason and foolish arguments and as they stand in the hall and have a heart-to-heart talk with their teacher about their behavior in class. Students are equipped wit

h culture-transforming traits when they learn to sing and serve, play, fall down, and get back up, as they win championship games, and as they lose them.

Considering education as 鈥渞eligion transferred鈥� or the 鈥渢ransfer of a way of life鈥� makes the field of education one of the mostcritical issues for any generation. Shepherding hearts, training affections, and seeking objective, biblical truth, beauty, and goodness, is the only way to equip the next generation to reclaim and to advance our Christian heritage. By God鈥檚 grace, cultivating virtue, maturity, and faithfulness in our students can produce a truly educated people who appreciate the heritage they鈥檝e been given, honor and respect those who鈥檝e gone before them, and are prepared to faithfully labor in whatever part of God鈥檚 kingdom they find themselves.

 

Lance Vermillion

Grammar School Principal

Harry Potter. Dumbledore. Gryffindor. Those are likely the first names or images that come to mind when you think of the 91原创 House system. It is a fair and simple way to contextualize the structure of the 91原创 House system, but not the heart of it. Instead of only celebrating the wins or mourning the losses of a Quidditch match, our primary goal for the House System is to give students opportunities to actively lead and shape the culture at 91原创. Our hope is that through weekly service projects, friendly competitions, House worship, and through connecting the Grammar and Upper schools, a pervading love for one another and the Lord will deepen.听

Structure: So, who plays Dumbledore in this scenario?听

The simple answer is no one. While our wonderful administrative team creates the structure and organization of the school as a whole, the House system is meant to be a student-led organization, with the support and guidance of the House Coordinator, Mrs. Lawrence, and the main House teachers – Mrs. Burklin, Dr. Hurst, and Mr. Modar.听

Our House system has four houses based on the churches of old – Jerusalem, Rome, Oxford, and Kampala, with the latter serving as the church of today. Each of the Houses has a Steward and a Vice Steward to lead and be the voice of its members. Our thoughtful and creative Stewards this year are:

• Anna Claire Powers and Kaitlyn McKenna serving Jerusalem
• Susannah Vermillion and Gabe Shipp serving Rome
• Mason Baker and Haylee Harman serving Oxford
• Katelyn Anderson and Quint Middlebrook serving Kampala

In order to create diverse Houses, our Stewards help to place new 7th grade students each year based on the student鈥檚 House choice, grade level, gender, and personality. These newcomers are then welcomed the first Friday of school by their House members in a unique and meaningful way.

What We Do: Leave Your Broomstick at Home

One of the most fruitful components of the House system has been the connection between the Grammar School and Logic/Rhetoric School. With the pairing of Buddies, we are able to expand the boundaries of fellowship across all grade lines. Because of the natural admiration that younger students have for older ones, our Logic and Rhetoric students are able to be models to younger students about behaviors and attitudes that are acceptable. We accomplish this with monthly picnics, letter writing, games at Field Day, and during the day-to-day encounters on campus.听

While the Buddy system is a bright highlight, we have a lot more going on behind the scenes that set the rhythm of each week and year.听

• Beginning of the Year Kick-Off – Building camaraderie takes time, and we do that by taking a day at the beginning of each year for various team-building activities. This year we had the opportunity to go to Escapology, an escape room, in Tyler.
• Mid- and End-of-Year Competitions – Houses pair up to plan and organize a fun competition to wrap up the semester. Our competitions aim to involve all students in a variety of song, dance, skits, and building challenges.
• Wednesday Worship – Students gather with their Houses every six weeks to worship God in song and discussion.听
• Friday Service Projects – Each Friday, following a weekly rotation, time is allocated for in-school service projects and games. Our service projects entail everything from playing with Grammar School classes so that their teachers can have a moment to eat their lunch uninterrupted to cleaning classrooms and changing air filters. Our games range from the typical card games you play at home to goofy games the students make up, like flag football but with a stuffed animal instead of a football.听
• Adopt a Non-Profit- This year, we are trying something new. Each House has adopted a non-profit organization to serve throughout the year, based upon the organization鈥檚 needs.听

House Points: Gryffindor Receives 50 Points!

In order to encourage camaraderie, compliance, and discipline, we have modeled our point system after the Oxford model (popularly expressed in Harry Potter), with the major exception being that it鈥檚 not arbitrary. Instead, the Stewards and staff give and deduct House points based on behavior-related actions, not academic ones. Our hope is that through positive peer pressure, students will strive to make personal choices that positively affect others.

At Christmas and the end of the year, the House that has earned the most points wins the House Cup, which is a handsome Greco-Roman bust of Apollo. The winners have the opportunity to add one extra item to the Cup, leaving their distinctive mark. Over the years, Apollo will gain character by morphing into a symbol that represents the personality and history of each of the Houses.

Continuing to Grow: Harry Grows Up, But We Continue On

As we enter our fourth year of the Regent鈥檚 House system, we are finally able to build off of the solid foundation previous Stewards have established. Now, we can focus more closely on establishing our leadership training for our Stewards, our daily connection with Grammar School, and our service to those both in the school and Nacogdoches community. We are thrilled to watch our students take ownership of their school and look forward to what it will become in the future.