Last week’s “State of the School Address” culminated in the formal launch of our new Strategic Plan entitled, “Cultivating the Vineyard of the Lord.” (
Available here.) Drawing on the Scriptures’ frequent use, in Old and New Testaments, of the vineyard as an image of God’s chosen people, we hope to convey a sense of stewardship and continuity as we look toward the future. As a Catholic school whose “classical” designation announces our embrace of the inheritance of Christian culture rather than educational trends or popular culture, we are convinced that the fundamentals that make for excellent academic and spiritual formation are already in place.
As we begin to rally ourselves to look beyond the “tyranny of the urgent” and work strategically, I will occasionally use this weekly letter to touch on some aspect of our efforts. Today, I would like to direct your attention to the point under the Strategic Plan’s “Student Life” heading transcribed below:
Clubs, athletics, other extracurriculars are extensions of curriculum
What do we mean by this? Sadly, many Catholic schools may schedule a weekly Mass and place crucifixes in every classroom, but, when it comes to their curriculum and pedagogy, they appear indistinguishable from the public school down the street. It is not that these schools are not well meaning; they err, however, in failing to enlist the means by which the privileged classes of Christendom have been prepared for a life of virtuous leadership for millennia—a classical, liberal arts education. “These arts,” writes Catholic educational philosopher Stratford Caldecott in his book
Beauty in the Word, “were intended for the cultivation of freedom and the raising of our humanity to its highest possible level” (p. 9).
As a school, our commitment to “the raising of our humanity to its highest possible level” has direct implications for all aspects of our program of formation. Pedagogically, we seek teachers who radiate Christ and who are masters of their disciplines. Curricularly, we select for study the literature, the personalities, the ideas, the music, and the art that have withstood the crucible of time, and have been acknowledged by all generations as sure guides to the True, the Good, and the Beautiful.
When it comes to extracurriculars, the same principle applies. Recently, the nature of Academy dances has enjoyed some robust debate. When the administration met at the beginning of the year, one of the practices of the past that seemed out of step with our school’s Mission and its day-to-day efforts in formation was the use of contemporary music and movement at these dances. By all accounts, this practice perennially entangled teachers and administration in adjudicating families’ differing parenting philosophies, questions of what were “clean” versions of songs, and the policing of sexualized choreography.
As with many Catholic schools that have taken this approach, it ultimately commits the faculty and student body to a debate about what is “not bad” rather than what would
raise our humanity to its highest possible level.
By focusing on elegant, time-tested forms of dance and music that call the human form to some its most noble postures, The Atonement Academy will use school dances as the culmination of our community’s attunement to higher things, and not their contradiction.