Hallmarks of a Chesterton Academy Education: A Joyful Learning Environment (#3 of 6)
By Peter Ohotnicky, Headmaster
This is the third article in a series of six which will describe the Hallmarks of a Chesterton Academy Education.
“At Chesterton, we seek to create environments where students experience the joy of community, the joy of the discovery process, and the joy of learning. We work to provide students with an opportunity to live out their spiritual life and grow in holiness in an atmosphere of joy and fun. We hope to inspire lifelong learners, committed to building up joyful communities of faith as they mature into adulthood.” (The Chesterton Schools Network Course Catalog)
“The most childlike thing about a child is his curiosity and his appetite and his power of wonder at the world.”
One of the joys of having a baby or a small child is his or her sense of wonder at the world. Everything is new, and each discovery brings waves of ecstasy upon the child’s face: the phases of the moon, a bird’s nest, the rhyme of a poem, the sound of a new instrument, the rhythm of counting by fives. The teacher or parent also shares this joy. G. K. Chesterton understood this well, and put it into words as only he could: “We do actually treat talking in children as marvelous, walking in children as marvelous, common intelligence in children as marvelous… [and] that attitude towards children is right. It is our attitude towards grown up people that is wrong.”
But somewhere in middle school, the joy of learning becomes lost. The voices which enthusiastically rang out hymns of praise in third grade fall into mumbling in eighth grade. School is less about participating in a community of learning with peers just for the sheer joy of discovery, and more about tests and grades, as well as indifference and skepticism about the value of material. This is one of the by-products of an education focused merely on the limited ends of obtaining grades as a currency to be traded for college entrance and further advancement in the economic machine.
At Chesterton Academy, we don’t believe high school should be like that. Chesterton says that education is truth in the state of transmission. When students study at Chesterton Academy, they learn the whole truth of things, and in knowing it and speaking it, they become happy. As human beings made in the image of God, we are made with a hunger for truth—for Christ Himself, who is the Way, the Truth, and the Life. Each aspect of a Chesterton education is a participation in the Truth of the Second Person of the Trinity, through whom all things were made: the harmony of music, the mathematical regularity of the universe, the need for conversion and redemption seen in great literature, and especially in the celebration of Holy Mass every day.
But Chesterton Academy not only wants to make learning joyful for high school students, but we think that living a life of faith in Christ also leads to deep fulfillment and happiness. The world portrays religious practice as dour and melancholy. Our popular culture and news media reinforce this message with negative depictions and reporting of religion and religious figures. Unfortunately, much of it is true! Finding religious faith, be it the Catholic or any other, does not instantly result in full sanctification, heroic virtue, and complete removal of the lingering effects of original sin. So the Church puts before us true exemplars in the Christian life. Our patron G. K. Chesterton—a Catholic convert and fierce defender of Christianity—lived a life of joy, awe, and wonder at the cosmos, his fellow men, and at God’s grace working in his life. Just consider the following quotes:
“The most extraordinary thing in the world is an ordinary man and an ordinary woman and their ordinary children.”
“For the universe is a single jewel, and while it is a natural cant to talk of a jewel as peerless and priceless, of this jewel it is literally true. This cosmos is indeed without peer and without price: for there cannot be another one.”
“In so far as I am Man I am the chief of creatures. In so far as I am a man I am the chief of sinners.”
“He who has seen the whole world hanging on a hair of the mercy of God has seen the truth.”
“When it comes to life, the critical thing is whether you take things for granted or take them with gratitude.”
“Life exists for the love of music or beautiful things.”
“The world will never starve for want of wonders; but only for want of wonder.”
Although Gilbert and Frances Chesterton never were blessed with children of their own, their house was constantly filled with neighborhood children who were attracted to their joy and love for life. That spirit of gratitude to God infused not just the plays, poems, and stories they both wrote, but how they interacted with each other and all who came into contact with them. Indeed, G.K. Chesterton’s fiercest philosophical opponents were his closest friends and greatest admirers.
Chesterton’s joy was undoubtedly a result of his Christian and Catholic faith. His favorite saint was St. Francis, another individual who continues to confound because he too contradicts the false narrative of cheerless religion. Chesterton said, “It is utterly useless to study a great thing like the Franciscan movement while remaining in the modern mood that murmurs against gloomy asceticism. The whole point about St. Francis of Assisi is that he certainly was ascetical and he certainly was not gloomy.”
Chesterton Academy seeks to saturate this joyful Catholic spirituality of our patron into our community of faith and learning. We seek to form young people, our faculty and staff, our board and benefactors, and those in our families into saints who are living out their vocations with a sense of wonder, gratitude, and happiness as children of God.
“And the more I considered Christianity, the more I found that while it had established a rule and order, the chief aim of that order was to give room for good things to run wild.”