"Tradition"

It is a beautiful late summer day brimming with the anticipation, excitement, and joy that each "first day" brings. As we begin the second half of our 75th anniversary celebration, and Saint David's 76th school year,  I'd like to share excerpts from my opening letter in which I explore this year's school-wide theme:"tradition." 

People often ask, why do Saint David’s boys still read Homer and Shakespeare? Why do boys spend so much time with Michelangelo, Raphael, and Artemisia Gentileschi; with Bach and Mozart; Einstein and Archimedes; with the history of ideas? Why are they required to study Latin? Why do we still teach handwriting? Why do we insist every boy play sports every day, whether or not he becomes a varsity athlete? And that every boy experience vocal, drama, strings, percussion, and bells, regardless of whether he joins a performing ensemble? Why do we ask boys to serve the greater common good, every year of their education? Why, in this secular age, do we remain committed to a faith tradition? Why do we insist on such a formal dress code? And, why not more computers, technology, and artificial intelligence? 

The answer is that education is, at its heart, an act of inheritance, and every generation, if it chooses to, receives this remarkable accumulation of wisdom, discoveries, and achievements from those who came before. At Saint David’s, we call this tradition—not because it is old, or the way we’ve always done it, not because we fear change, but because it has endured. Our pedagogy is grounded in the classical tradition and driven by what works for boys—tried and true—not the latest fad or the most popular methodology at any given time. It continues to promote long conversations, honest face-to-face debate, difficult (long-form) reading of books, note taking, sustained attention, thoughtful teachers, honest friendships, failure, revision, and reflection, practice, repetition, and memory development. It grows in classrooms where thinking is made visible, where questions matter more than quick answers, and where boys discover that uncertainty is not something to avoid but something to inhabit. That is the kind of education we believe in.

Technology— computer algorithms, quantum computing, artificial intelligence—will continue to evolve and we should welcome it, learn from it, and use it wisely. But we can’t confuse the efficiency or expediency that advancing technology promises with education. Education is slower and more painful. Tradition, too, is slower. Both require patience because they are not concerned only with what a boy knows, but also with who he becomes. It is for this reason, that Saint David’s remains committed to the social graces—good manners, eye contact, shaking hands, holding doors for those who follow, greeting those new to the room, arriving on time, family style meals, waiting for all to be served before eating, hand-written thank yous, to name a few—because all learning is social and because social graces form the moral core of a good person. We also remain committed to hard work—academic, athletic, aesthetic—because we believe that true learning is the result of the earnest commitment to striving for our very best, for excellence, in all we say and do. 

Found in three of our mission’s four paragraphs, signifying its importance to our founders, “tradition” is referenced first in paragraph one as “classical tradition,” in paragraph two as learning “from all religious traditions,” and in the third as “the tradition of the school affirms...”  The founders’ use of “tradition,” and by extension the school’s educational purpose, is not to recreate another era or indulge in some nostalgic sense of “a better time.” Tradition, in our context, is not the worship of the past; it is the stewardship of what is timeless. We immerse our boys in the best of what has been thought, written,  painted, composed, and lived because these works enlarge their imaginations, sharpen their judgments, and shape their characters. Tradition is about preserving inherited values, fulfilling duties, and upholding established social and moral norms. It is also about those who struggle against, resist, or oppose it, thereby helping to reveal both its strengths and its weaknesses—but without it, without tradition, there’d be nothing to oppose, resist, or struggle against. I know it isn’t necessarily in vogue right now to talk of tradition but it’s important. As we enter the second half of the school’s 75th anniversary year, it is only fitting that our theme this year be “tradition”—what it is and means to us.

When a boy is exposed to tradition over time, something remarkable begins to happen. These examples of the best the past has to offer (that have stood the test of time) become part of his repertoire, the standards against which he measures his own work, feeding his imagination and creativity. He develops an inner guiding force if you will, a compass that points him toward truth and the good—not because some algorithm has concocted it for him, or someone tells him so, but because he has lived with the good and been surrounded by excellence long enough to recognize it instinctively.

Boys thrive on tradition and Saint David’s celebrates it not only through curriculum, but also through events, ceremonies, and rituals (from Chapel and ARCO to Armbands and Turkey Drives). These shared experiences represent shared values that connect boys to something larger than themselves and their families, foster identity and loyalty, and transcend generations. Boys come to realize that every Saint David’s boy past, present, and future has sat or will sit where they’re sitting, experience what they’re experiencing, and study what they’re studying. And we know, from Ned Hallowell and others, that a boy’s sense of connection—established through these shared experiences, these traditions—to his parents and his school are the most important factors in determining whether he’ll engage in risky behavior and poor decision making in his life. 

In keeping with our classical tradition, we teach the myths and legends of the ancients at different points throughout our curriculum. One character who embodies a sense of duty to tradition—through his devotion to the gods, loyalty to his family, and the responsibility he feels to future generations—is Aeneas. Unlike heroes driven primarily by personal glory (Achilles) or individual ingenuity (Odysseus), Aeneas, counseled by his mother Venus, consistently places his own desires aside to fulfill inherited obligations he holds dear. Aeneas’ “duty to tradition” is a living legacy he carries forward through commitment to shared values, sacrifice, and service. 

A Saint David’s education is an invitation into that “living legacy” of service, scholarship, sportsmanship, and beauty–the four pillars of our mission. This is Saint David’s in the 21st century. But receiving an inheritance like this is only the beginning. The purpose of tradition isn’t only about its preservation. Our goal can’t simply be to expose boys to good and great things. Rather, it has to be about helping them become the young men who will extend the tradition they’ve inherited, challenge it, and add something worthy to it.

Many schools today might mistake education as simply the teaching of skills—grammar, brush strokes, scales, footwork, formulas, underlying mechanics, coding, and/or other tech skills. But not Saint David’s. While all this matters, especially when teaching young boys, skill and technique are not “the education” and are certainly not in keeping with “our tradition.” The education of a boy and our tradition as a school has always been about something higher, something moral: the ability to exercise sound judgment, pursue truth, and serve others well. This distinction has become even more important with the onset of artificial intelligence.

This past year our leadership team has spent considerable time studying AI—its possibilities, promises, and risks. Much of our thinking has been shaped by Dan Be Kim and the work at Harvard University’s Project Zero on Making  Thinking Visible and Teaching for Understanding. There is much to admire about AI and there is also much to guard against. The greatest danger is not that AI will think for our boys; it’s that our boys will stop thinking for themselves. I’ve heard it said recently that AI isn’t going to replace humans; humans who know how to use AI will replace humans who don’t. But who really knows what all of this change will mean, what AI’s ultimate impact will be? The question for educators and parents right now becomes, when and how do we teach AI, work with AI? In a predominantly elementary school like Saint David’s, we believe it should be… not much; and when we do, it should be slow and thoughtful, and only after a boy’s underlying skills, thinking routines, and cognitive habits have been established and internalized. 

As teachers, we used to worry about boys copying answers. Now the worry is about boys outsourcing the very thinking that produces those answers. Take for example what actually happens when a boy is asked to write. He reads the question or prompt and immediately feels uncomfortable, maybe even incapable (what Piaget defines as a sense of disequilibrium). He begins to wrestle with ideas that don’t quite fit together, searches for sources, travels down different paths trying to piece together a coherent answer, often stopping and starting over, changing his thesis. He discovers contradictions and reworks, gets feedback, and then goes at it again, drafting and redrafting. Somewhere in that messy, frustrating process, he discovers not simply what he wants to say, but what he actually thinks. This same process is repeated in solving a novel math problem or science challenge. That process, that productive struggle to “learn,” is the education. The finished paper is simply the product.

Now imagine replacing that process with AI. The boy enters the question or prompt into a Gemini, Claude, or ChatGPT query bar, hits enter, and a paper is produced. The product exists, but the thinking doesn’t—no synapses in his brain have been fired, no neural pathways cemented. When we eliminate the productive struggle, we eliminate the very essence of learning. Meaningful growth of any kind requires some form of resistance—a boy’s muscles strengthen when they get challenged, his character develops when he’s encouraged to work through difficult situations, and his mind grows when he encounters problems he can’t easily solve. The struggle is at the heart of his education. If a boy becomes accustomed to escaping uncertainty rather than inhabiting it—avoiding the hard work, the difficult conversations, the conflicting opinions—something precious begins to erode. Curiosity weakens and patience disappears. Confidence becomes bought or borrowed instead of earned. Eventually, he loses trust in his own capacity to think, imagine, create, and solve. He becomes dependent on the external, as opposed to finding what he needs within. 

The discipline to attend carefully, the patience to wrestle with difficult ideas, and the ability to remember, imagine, reason, and ultimately judge: If all these things aren’t taught and practiced then they are not learned, and if they are not learned, how does a boy know if what AI is spitting out is true, accurate, or well-sourced? How can he become discerning and independent in his thinking? Schools must remain places where distinctly human capacities like this are intentionally preserved and strengthened, where the habits of mind that allow knowledge to become wisdom are cultivated.

T.S. Eliot once wrote: “Where is the wisdom we have lost in knowledge? Where is the knowledge we have lost in information?” In this fast-paced age, I am reminded of something Picasso said, “What good are computers, they can only give you answers.” As parents and teachers we know that the world, life, is not really about the answers, it’s about the questions—what questions to ask, when, and of whom. So, in answering my opening “why” questions about our traditions at Saint David’s, I think the answer is found in our mission’s first line: “to educate boys to fulfill their potential through rigorous academic pursuit, deliberate moral introspection and critical analysis of ideas and issues.”

       

With artificial intelligence and rapidly advancing tech all around our boys, the defining intellectual virtue going forward will not be their ability to generate answers—computers can easily do that. Instead, it will be their ability to discern truth, find beauty, and generate wisdom by asking good questions, gaining tangible experience in the world, reasoning carefully, reflecting deeply, and judging well—by being “rigorous,” “deliberate,” and “critical.” And these “first line” attributes, these habits of mind, cannot be downloaded or automated. They are formed slowly, through sustained attention, serious reading, thoughtful conversation, disciplined practice, independent processing and thinking, and the patient pursuit of truth; they are formed through the development of a cognitive resilience. This is our “classical tradition” and it will ensure that our boys are not imprisoned in the past. They will instead, be well prepared for their future.     

Wendy Mogel in her book about Jewish teachings and parenting, The Blessing of a Skinned Knee, commented that . . . “Preparing our children for this new world… is useless because we can’t second-guess the skills they will need twenty years from now. The only things that are certain to be valuable are character traits such as honesty, tenacity, flexibility, optimism, and compassion, the same traits that have served people well for centuries.” A sailor, it has been often said, cannot see the north, but knows the needle can. It’s that inner moral compass and strong sense of self within our boys that will help steer them through a successful, fulfilling life, regardless of advances in technology or geopolitical changes in the world.

In a Saint David’s boy’s final year, he travels with his classmates to Italy. While there, he stands before a huge marble sculpture by Bernini in the Galleria Borghese. It captures Aeneas fleeing a burning Troy carrying his father on his shoulders and with his young son, Ascanius, by his leg. In Ascanius’ hand he holds the sacred fire of Troy, representing Aeneas’ duty to tradition, his responsibility to perpetuate the history and traditions of his people in the new world, Rome. It’s this same passing on of our Saint David’s fire that will light that proverbial lamp of knowledge for each of our boys—the knowledge and wisdom that can help him understand who we were, are, and want to be… and by extension who he was, who he is, and who he wants to be. What better way to frame the second half of our 75th anniversary year?  

Ut viri boni sint

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