Chesterton Academy High School vs. Secular High School
Classical
• Dignity inherent. Made in image & likeness of God
• Reality in true fullness of both material (body) and immaterial (soul).
• Direction and purpose is long term—pointed to one’s final end, which is union with God in heaven.
Secular
• Materialist view. Valued in relationship to production/contributions.
• Reality is limited to what is seen, and no acknowledgement of man’s true final end.
• Actions are solely directed toward intermediate and immediate “ends” (ACT, college placement, pleasures).
On Relevant Radio Father Simon exhorted us all to "stop looking at the waves" like our first pope did. Dear St. Peter (rock) was sinking like a stone because he couldn't get over the immediate danger and disaster. Sound familiar? He couldn't focus on the Word made flesh, but rather just on the waves made choppy. In a world where sneezing in public is scary, we have reason to be frightened though!
Classical education does not tell the student (Peter in this example) to fret and focus about the storm because we have a greater good and goal, the Son of Man. All our learning stems from that reality in a very coherent and clear way. However, modern American schools focus solely on the temporal, the passing, basically the short-term storm we often call life. But what can these student factories even be allowed to point to that is eternal? Everything is fluid now and truth is a construct right?
At Chesterton Academy schools, we truly see your children, our students, as incarnate beings made by Love itself. Not just a pupil who needs to fill out a worksheet or jump through a hoop just to have some life skills. That low and narrow bar is demeaning to the inherent Goodness and Beauty we were made for. Our relativist and materialist world has reduced us all to numbers. Recently, Saint John Paul II warned against this onslaught as well as Pope Emeritus Benedict XVI where we become functionaries for the State. They should know, they lived through the Nazi and Communist States. So it is our core mission that Chesterton Academy students know and love the real and deep visions of reality, not the cheap shadows many institutions pedal as "learning".
Plato's Allegory of the Cave:
Dare I ask, who among you feel like your children are entering a world that is valuing their beautiful humanity as opposed to their utility? Who among you prays at night that Johnny just grows up to be an efficient worker acquiring many fine, comfortable things because that will make him happy? I will go out on a short limb and say good parents don't wish or pray for simply those things.
Good parents want good children who know Goodness itself. That can only happen if you address it, acknowledge it and weave it into every subject you learn and practice. That is exactly what you will get at Chesterton Academy of Saint John Paul II Classical School which is getting set to launch its inaugural year this upcoming fall 2021. Our curriculum and student life serves rigorously and joyfully the whole person as an integrated whole. Students will begin to see in large dimensions through the great works and thoughts that have rightly shaped our world. Our curriculum truly is for anyone, not simply the few.
Please stayed tuned for our next blog where we will share curriculum examples, expand on student life and direct you to see the big picture of our school and ways to share and expand our message. If you would please share this with others so that we can reach out to the many who have yet to hear of us I would be deeply grateful. For now, please direct all inquiries to pmckeown@gracesystem.org, thank you!
AMDG,
Patrick McKeown
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