What and Why and How
Left: Leonardo da Vinci’s Wreath of Laurel, Palm, and Juniper with a Scroll inscribed Virtutem Forma Decorat (latin for beauty adorns virtue), c. 1474/1478. Right: Rendering of the Leonardo da Vinci painting above by a 6th grade student during a recent trip to the National Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C.
Dear Parents,
A weekly activity during the months of February and March is holding interviews with the parents of applicants to our school. The interviews are an hour in length and consist of a number of questions with topics including parenting approach, home life during the week and on weekends, approach to digital media, and how the child responds to the word “no.”
One of my favorite questions we ask is what is being read in the home, both by the children and the parents. It is through these interviews that I have been inspired to add a number of books to my personal reading list.
Recently, one gentleman mentioned the book Start with Why by Simon Sinek. Have you read this one? He shared with me the author’s point that we can all easily state what we do — even how we do it — but why is something different entirely.
At Ambleside, our “what” is easy — we educate. Our mission statement testifies that clearly:
Ambleside School is a Christ-centered school committed to providing a Charlotte Mason “living education.” In partnership with the family, we guide and empower each student to think with the mind of Christ and to author a life rich in relationship to God, self, others, ideas, and all of creation.
But “why” do we do what we do?
In a recent teacher’s meeting we began with this quote from Charlotte Mason’s Parents and Children: “Suppose the teachers see that the formation of character is the ultimate object of education; see, too, that education is, in the rough, the inherited tendencies of the child modified by his surroundings, but that character may be debased or ennobled by education.”
And then, “Character is an achievement, the one practical achievement possible to us for ourselves and for our children; and all real advance in family or individuals is along the lines of character. Our great people are great simply by reason of their force of character.”
Why do we do what we do? So we can send people of character out into the world. That is our “why.”
And then, how do we do it? Two ways: discipline/discipleship and the instruction of conscience.
Our Reports of Growth begin with a section on the student’s maturity traits. The students' habits in managing themselves, their relationships with others, and their relationship to work are all considered. These habits, when cultivated and achieved, are the mark of a person of character.
Are they joyful? Self controlled? Do they respond willingly and promptly to authority? Do they begin work promptly and execute it in a timely manner? Are they respectful? Kind? Do they resolve conflict in a healthy manner while they seek truth, justice, and reconciliation?
An unkind remark is corrected. Sloppy work is redone. Reverence is modeled and expected during morning assembly and our weekly Chapels.
These ways of being in the world — these habits that are developed in youth — matter.
Our other vehicle in forming people of character is through the instruction of the conscience. There are lessons in our Bible readings, literature, and history. All instruct in what to do and what not to do.
“The characters in the books we know become our mentors or our warnings, our instructors always” (Mason, Ourselves).
My former pastor, Dan Duis, said at one point, “You can learn things the easy way, or the hard way.” We can see the mistakes others have made in history, in the Bible, or in our literature books and avoid them ourselves.
I recently read Keeper of the Bees by Gene Stratton-Porter after checking it out from Ambleside’s library. At the very end of the book, in her concluding remarks, the author wrote, “To my way of thinking and working, the greatest service a piece of fiction can do any reader is to leave him with a higher ideal of life than he had when he began. If in one small degree it shows him where he can be a gentler, saner, cleaner, kindlier man, it is a wonder-working book. If it opens his eyes to one beauty of nature he never saw for himself and leads him one step toward the God of the Universe, it is a beneficial book, for one step in to the miracle of nature leads to that long walk, the glories which strengthen even a boy who thinks he is dying, that he faces his struggle like a gladiator.”
Our curriculum at Ambleside is filled with such lessons, and we daily put into the hands of our students wonder-working books that inspire and instruct them to be the best version of themselves that they can.
Ad majorem Dei gloriam!
Glory to God in the Highest!
Krise Nowak, M.Ed.
Head of School