Mission Moments Blog

By Linda Pryor, Executive Director, The Center for Mission & Academics

We were fortunate to have Ms. Mary Anastasia O'Grady, Opinion Columnist from The Wall Street Journal visit our school this week and speak with Upper School students and parents. We had a great group in attendance and Ms. O’Grady shared some valuable insights and reflections on freedom, culture, and journalism.  

 

I am sure you have all had the experience of reading or hearing an idea in one context and then, a day or two later, reading something else unrelated that comes to that same revelation from another perspective. Ideas align, perspectives come together and there is greater clarity.

Excerpts from the Classical Heritage Series talk, Freedom: The Western Narrative, with David Wacholz, Upper School English Chair and history teacher.

The Center for Mission and Academics seeks to ask worthwhile questions and allow thoughtful reconsiderations of how certain topics align with our identity as an institution.

As part of an ongoing examination of how curriculum aligns with mission, Mrs. Pryor asked us to explore how and why we teach history the way we do at Brookfield Academy. To consider, especially in light of so much of the controversy surrounding education recently, what it is we value in the teaching of history and how it serves our ultimate goal of educating the whole person in the skills, values, and heritage of responsible, constructive, free people.

Whether we like it or not, schools and teachers don’t get to choose whether we teach values. Schools and teachers are always affecting values by what we decide to praise and punish, how we balance students’ differing needs, how we articulate students’ obligations to each other, how we teach the lessons of our past.  The question isn’t whether schools teach values, it’s whether we choose to be deliberate about it.

In this regard, the over-arching question that confronts us is why study history? Perhaps another way of asking the question: why study history? Is: what story should we tell about the past?

As a humanities teacher, I am sensitive to the fundamental way that narrative works in our lives both in and out of the classroom. Since narrative is intrinsic to humans, it is the most natural and potentially rewarding of studies. Reading narratives, both fictional and nonfictional, gives us intimate contact with the best and the worst in human nature, the honorable and dishonorable, and provides both mirror and lamp: a mirror for self-examination and a lamp for illumination.

For this reader, the basic truth at the bottom of this conversation is that History begins with a sense of wonder. Why and how did that happen? What’s next? Clearly, there’s a positive relationship between curiosity and knowledge and it is cause and effect that power curiosity.

As the College Office gears up for a new semester and another round of Junior College Class (here we go, Class of 2023!), it seemed like an opportune time to reflect on one of the more interesting juxtapositions found within the college search process: time. Sometimes high school can feel like a never-ending slog. In other, more positive, words it might seem like there is all the time in the world before college. And rightfully so. Underclassmen have time to explore, to try new things, to get involved and take advantage of all that the Upper School has to offer. Then senior year hits. BA’s college placement program oftentimes shines a brighter than normal light on this shift in focus regarding time, when college-specific deadlines necessitate a literal focus on the calendar. Junior year, however, should be seen through quite a different lens.

By Linda Pryor, Executive Director, The Center for Mission & Academics

As we move swiftly to the end of the school year, making plans to celebrate our Class of 2021 graduates, we cannot help but think about our “Portrait of a Brookfield Academy Graduate.” The Portrait is a description of the characteristics that have been taught, cultivated, and celebrated for each of our students during their BA journey. This document, written by the faculty, inspires us as we begin our school year, and fills us with pride as our graduates cross the stage and receive their diplomas each May. Given this year of COVID-19 and the many changes we have endured, tweaks to our course of action at BA might be considered acceptable -- including shifted goals and reduced expectations. Some might suggest that it’s okay to look for less. 

Brookfield Academy offers students a classical education with an emphasis on character development.  How do these two aspects of our program work together? 

In his book, The Global Achievement Gap, Dr. Tony Wagner outlines seven skills that he has identified from his research gathered while talking to many CEOs and successful business owners regarding the skills that our students will need when they graduate and want to enter the workplace. He proposes that these skills will be needed to succeed in the 21st-century global economy but will also be important for students to become engaged and contributing members of our democracy.