The Great Conversation at Schola

In our TGC classes at Schola, I remind my students often as we join in "The Great Conversation" that we are learning to love things that last that are true and good and beautiful because we become like the things we love. This quiet and patient goal is easily drowned out in an "ALL-STEM-ALL-THE-TIME" world.

In the article "Training up visionaries,"  Mitchell Stokes posits that "it takes more than science and math classes to make great scientists and engineers." Stokes explains that "being an excellent engineer or scientist requires more than knowing a lot of facts about science, even when combined with mathematical virtuosity and practical know-how. These are crucial, but by themselves, they tend to produce mere technicians or calculators. 'Super talented' engineers and scientists need more, namely, creativity, innovation, and the ability to see the big picture—how everything hangs together. And by 'everything' I mean more than just 'the science part.' I also mean the humanities, including language, history, philosophy, and even theology. In fact, focusing only on science and mathematics can result in worse engineers and scientists. Good athletes don’t train only one side of their body."

At Schola, we whole-heartedly agree. A large part of "The Great Conversation" is thinking about "how everything hangs together." Most of all, this means learning to love things that last that are true, and good, and beautiful. How does that look in the classroom? Let me show you!

Truth: TGC surrounds students with ideas that reflect who God is. We can know truth because God is truth, and we are made in His image to know Him. The search for truth always brings us back to God’s reality, which is what we were made for.    

“Language, grammar, syntax, and vocabulary exist for a purpose, and that purpose is revealed only in the search for truth. As Chesterton saw, it is the search for truth that keeps us sane, because it always brings us back to reality. And why is reality so important? It is what we are made for. Reality is the food of the soul. ”    ― Stratford Caldecott, Beauty in the Word: Rethinking the Foundations of Education

Goodness: TGC surrounds students with examples of virtues (and their opposites) as they meet the authors, artists, musicians, and leaders who have stood the test of time.  

“The soul feeds on ideas, and the great ideas are most perfectly expressed in great books and great artifacts. Content and skills must be mastered in order for the student to absorb ideas, but they cannot serve as adequate integrating principles.” –CIRCE Institute, Principles of Classical Education

Beauty: TGC surrounds students with the conviction that true things are beautiful because God is beauty.  We cultivate a sense and love of beauty by spending time in the presence of beautiful things:  language, literature, art, music.

“The best things–the things we love so much that we pass them on across the generations–are treasures of wisdom.  The reason we love them so much is because they speak to something deep, deep inside us, something we can’t even understand–the image of God within us.” – Andrew Kern, What is the Purpose of K-12 Education?

Mitchell Stokes notes that "the great scientists of previous generations received a broad, deep 'liberal arts' education, which not only gave them knowledge of language, philosophy, mathematics, and science; it also taught them how to think deeply and creatively—even about mathematics and science. From Kepler to Galileo to Newton to Einstein, their liberal arts education made their visionary science possible. And they said so. Einstein was certainly clear about the necessity of such a curriculum: 'The value of an education in a liberal arts college is not the learning of many facts, but the training of the mind to think something that cannot be learned from textbooks.' "

Here's the good news for Christian educators: Stokes reminds us that "Christians also have a worldview that makes sense of integration: God made the world as a unified whole, all its parts wonderfully interconnected. And Paul tells us that in Christ all things are held together, which presumably includes all the disciplines." Let's be diligent in sharing that grand vision with our students to give them the big picture of God's cosmos.

--Patricia Samuelsen teaches The Great Conversation at Schola