During this exciting first week of Saint David's 75th year, I would like to share excerpts from my opening letter that delve into our school-year theme, "Excel."
A great education from a great school not only trains a boy in reason, virtue, and prudence but instills within him the notion that he must first learn to govern himself before he seeks to influence or govern others. The enlightened classical tradition that informs our program offers an educational vision rooted in truth, beauty, and goodness; in language and logic; and the value of memory and imagination. It believes that a boy is not a vessel to be filled, a problem to be managed, or a consumer to be monetized, but rather a mind, body, heart, and soul (a whole human) to be cultivated and shaped. It seeks to help a boy find balance in his life—at Saint David’s, that’s defined across the academic, aesthetic, athletic, and spiritual—and it recognizes that education at its core is a life-long journey of self-discovery; a quest to answer two fundamentally important questions: Who am I? and Why am I here? And, a great education instills within a boy a perpetual striving to excel—to be the very best he can be.
We find the word excel, this year’s school-wide theme, in our mission’s fourth paragraph. Our school’s founders were wise. They did not use the noun (excellence) or the adjective (excellent), but rather the verb. Their intent was to connote movement, action. Excel’s origin is late Middle English and comes from the Latin excellere (ex meaning ‘out, beyond’ and celsus, meaning ‘lofty’). To excel then, is to move out of what is known and comfortable, what’s been experienced to date, and up into the new and unknown, and while doing so aspiring to be exceptional or highly proficient, brilliant, outstanding, skillful, talented, preeminent, to stand out… to shine in whatever activity, subject, or area being engaged.
Our founders, though, did not state that Saint David’s boys should be perfect men, but rather that they should aspire to be good men. To excel in this context means that tomorrow our sons will strive to be a little better than they were today—a little kinder, more compassionate, patient, selfless, studious, creative, engaged—not because they are told to, but because they want to. And if our founders’ charge is that they aspire to be good men, we must also help them internalize the idea that to excel is more a commitment to continued self-improvement than it is a destination.
Modern takes on education often give great lip service to increasing a boy’s autonomy, his desire to excel, and his opportunity to exercise freedom, but in reality often fail to instill that inner understanding of what true autonomy, excellence, or freedom is: the freedom to do what he should, not what he wants. In our media-driven culture, our children often are left unschooled in logical thinking, disconnected from history, more socially isolated, and increasingly ruled by emotion rather than reason. Schools like Saint David’s are an antidote to this, and we will continue to critically evaluate when, where, and why boys are behind screens with an institutional bias toward the more physical, tangible, and interpersonal.
In Thinking Is Becoming a Luxury Good, Mary Harrington argues that “increasingly, the very act of reading scarcely seems necessary” because today’s social media platforms offer a “bottomless supply of enthralling, short-form videos” with the result being a media environment that “seems like the cognitive equivalent of the junk food aisle and is every bit as difficult to resist.” Long-form literacy, she quotes literary scholar Maryanne Wolf, “is not innate but learned,” and acquiring and perfecting it “is literally mind-altering, rewiring our brains, increasing vocabulary, shifting brain activity toward the analytic left hemisphere and honing our capacity for concentration, linear reasoning and deep thought.” However, the habits of thought formed by digital reading are “optimized for distraction… and designed to be addictive, with the sheer volume of material incentivizing intense cognitive “bites” of discourse calibrated for maximum compulsiveness over nuance or thoughtful reasoning.”
Our boys, like so many of us, can often find themselves trapped in what many have labeled a reinforcing echo chamber of their own thoughts, perspectives, and opinions. Great schools fight against this. At the same time, the enlightened part of our classical tradition speaks to our not living in the past, bound solely by its conventions, never changing, never adapting; but rather continually evolving while not losing sight of what’s tried and true, like the seasoned sailor who knows he can’t see north, but that the needle can. The classical tradition grounds our pedagogy while best practice, informed by research, guides it. Saint David’s is on the move.
If we want our boys to thrive today and especially tomorrow, they must read books, spend time with literature, think analytically, engage in respectful discourse and debate with peers and adults, and learn to listen and reflect upon thoughts and opinions that are not their own. An enlightened, classically informed education achieves this because it begins with the human being, rather than arbitrary benchmarks, standardized criteria, or marketable skills.
An enlightened, classically informed education asks each of us as parents and teachers to consider the essential questions at the heart of a true, quality education: What kind of soul must a child possess to live fully and serve the greater good? What kind of mind is required to discern truth? What kind of body is to be honed to live a healthy, productive life? What kind of heart must be cultivated to desire all that is noble and right, even when it is unpopular or difficult? A good education is not governed by the latest educational trend or the day’s most popular pedagogy, but by the rich tradition found in an enlightened classical tradition: a broad education, where students move from the foundation of language (grammar) to the clarity of thought (logic) to the power of expression (rhetoric). This is why Saint David’s boys still memorize poetry, read and discuss great literature, parse Latin verbs, think logically, run, jump, and play with each other in unstructured activities, and learn to speak, write, paint, draw, experiment, iterate, and build in a variety of genres and disciplines with precision, eloquence, creativity, and grace.
A Saint David’s education is not decorative. It is not designed to look fancy or fit neatly into some box; it shapes the soul, orders the mind, trains the body, and orients the heart toward wisdom. It's an education that both informs the intellect and shapes the character of each boy. It purposefully teaches him to think and study wide, deep, and critically—to consider broadly, remain open-minded, be inquisitive, always humble, and quietly confident.
Right before they graduate, Saint David’s boys visit the incredible life-sized sculpture of Bernini’s biblical David in situ at the Villa Borghese in Rome. Our school’s namesake is young and strong, clearly a man of action, conviction, and confidence. Like our soon-to-be graduates, he knows who he is and what he must do when called upon. Bernini’s David is poised, prepared for the immediate challenge before him; capable of felling his giant. He carries with him the hope of his people, like our boys do the hope of theirs. The values Saint David’s has instilled in them will help our boys maintain their character when they confront the ‘Goliaths’ of their lives. Ut Viri Boni Sint