What We're Reading - June 2020

We have reached the end of the 2019-2020 school year! Though our year ended much differently than we had anticipated when we started out back in September, we remain so grateful for this special ILS community. We give thanks for the relationships and partnerships we have with our families and for the countless ways you have worked together with teachers and staff to support your children over these last months of the year.

We are grateful for the ways that our Immanuel community came together to support one another as we navigated this new path and figured out new rhythms and routines for our families. From Zoom class parent chats, Zoom class lunches, Facebook Live events for our Science Fair and Oration Showcases, to our online virtual Auction event, we have loved the creative and fun ways that we have been able to connect and engage as a community even while physically distant.

As we head into the summer months, which we hope will be restful and a time of intentional leisure for our students and our families, we have our June edition of "What we're reading..." We hope that these articles will continue our ongoing conversation about how we shape our culture together at home and at school.

Thank you for your continued partnership, and for engaging with us in these ongoing conversations and for sharing items you have read that may be inspiring to others in our ILS community! Please feel free to share a link in the comments to email us any time!

“Of course, at other times, I will be singing any number of secular songs, but I have realized recently that I seem to get hymns and liturgy stuck in my head more than anything else. So now, I might be skipping down my apartment stairs to go for a run singing about Jesus and His love for us. Or washing the dishes and humming about Christ’s resurrection. I do not purposely try to sing these things (other than when I am in church or attending a virtual hymn-sing); this is simply the music I am exposed to.

What kind of music are you exposed to? The music that is stuck in your head not only indicates the values you are instilling in yourself (and most likely your family), but it also becomes the message that you share with yourself and with the world. The music that is stuck in our head is the music we end up singing out loud. Our song becomes our verbal confession.

We must then consider what we want to confess. We must consider the words we are absorbing and subsequently verbalizing. Far be it from me to throw the first stone; the reality is that we all, myself included, will continue to absorb lyrics that do not befit children of God.

Imagine, though, if as God’s people, we were constantly singing, humming, and whistling prayers and praise to the triune God.

It doesn’t take our sin away. But it constantly reminds us of—and compels us to confess—the One who does.”
— Marie Greenway, "What Songs Are Stuck in Your Head?"
“Recently someone asked me if I ever reread books.

I was a little taken aback, because I do, and often, and I always assumed everyone else did too. It’s why Marie Kondo will never have her way with my shelves, physical spaces slouching under the weight of all the books I can’t bear to ever part with, or forget.

But it also got me thinking: why do we reread? Why, when we know exactly what is going to happen and how it all will end? And which books do most of us turn to again and again?

First for me is voice. Certain authorial voices calm me down, like a child listening to its parent. Whenever I read Jane Austen or Edith Wharton, something about their syntax soothes me in the same way the measured, marching tone of a cantata by Bach does. Austen and Wharton’s matchless gifts for prose has run deep grooves into my brain upon every reread, and each time I open their books I get more satisfaction with less effort, until it feels like their voices and my own have merged. Lines like Wharton’s “they all lived in a kind of hieroglyphic world” or Austen’s “I am half agony, half hope” are as much music to me as anything I have ever heard.”
— Natalie Jenner, "Doesn't Everyone Reread Their Favorite Books All The Time?"
“When most people imagine a classical school, they probably think of a K-12 institution with a compulsory Latin curriculum focusing on grammatical analysis and close translation, an integrated approach to humanities that takes inspiration from the Great Books programs developed over the last sixty years, and some compromise with the conventional STEM-orientation in science and math, perhaps incorporating readings from the “great texts” of science produced since 1600. The historical reality of classical education is quite different. From antiquity to its eclipse in the nineteenth-century, a classical education essentially meant one thing: Latin. Latin was the medium of instruction, and mastery of Latin was the single goal. History, language, literature, and composition were all components of a single Latin-based and Latin-centered curriculum, and what instruction took place in the subjects we now call STEM was largely limited to arithmetic and geometry with some exposure to algebra. Experimental science was wholly absent. This curriculum was not broad, but it was deep, and it produced people who were masters of language and who, through exposure to the theoretical and practical philosophy enshrined by the classical authors, approached Quintillian’s ideal of the “vir bonus, dicendi peritus.””
— Erik Ellis, "What is Classical Education"
“During quarantine, a lot of people I know have been taking up creative hobbies. I’ve seen tons of Instagram posts of people sharing their sourdough bread recipes, knitting projects, and watercolor paintings.

Being creative is definitely a gift from God—a gift that we might not always think of! Creative projects have actually been instrumental in my faith, as it makes me appreciate different facets of God’s character, as well as appreciating all of the blessings He has given me.

Even if you don’t consider yourself a creative person, I invite you to think about how you can try a new hobby or find a way to incorporate appreciating God into something you already do!”
— Hannah Osbone, "How Being Creative Makes Us Appreciate God"
“Birth to school. School to college. College to job. Job to retirement. Retirement to death. Rinse and repeat.

We live in a time and a country that is truly dedicated to that which is practical. There must always be a reason for what one does. Unfortunately, the reason is not inclusive. It must be reduced to a positive result, one that is physical, measurable, and obtainable (rather than attainable). Any and all effort must produce a physical product.

Here we have no new news. Before our time, Tocqueville commented on the unique degree of American pragmatism and industry. However, he did not witness unbridled industrialization and its poisoned fruits, namely industrialized education. Schools now attempt to produce students who will contribute to the workforce and, really, nothing more. Students are now frequently viewed as tools for the end of GDP; this demeaning use of a person shows that a pragmatic notion of education entirely misses the mark. Students—as people and, therefore, unique creations of God—have intrinsic worth and should not be reduced to an economic machine. The question on everyone’s mind should not be, “How will this help me in the future?”—which, if not directly stated, actually means, “How will this help me get and keep a job?”

As a classical educator, I attempt both to seek the Good, True, and Beautiful and to help my students in their search for these transcendentals. Although subjects that ostensibly make one more marketable at a job, such as math and science, can be worthy human endeavors, they do not encompass humans as a whole; they cannot replace the humanities. Math and science—as they are currently being taught—can build knowledge in their domain, but they can do no more. They cannot contribute to one’s morality save seeing generic order in the cosmos; we must seek another study for the instruction of virtue. For this purpose, we may make use of the humanities—such as history and literature—to build the moral imagination in ourselves and in our students. We cannot, however, continue to teach literature solely as a subjective tool to discover one’s feelings, nor can we teach history as mere information. We should, for starters, use the humanities to experience difficulties beforehand and to act accordingly when comparable difficulties actually do come, for inevitably they do come. In other words, to grow in humanity.”
— Andrew Jiminez, "Odin on Classical Education"