School of Rhetoric - Hall Model

Halls are Where the Heart is.

Do any of these statements sound familiar:

“Kids these days. They’ve got no respect!”“Why, in my day, if I back-talked or didn’t do my chores, momma would whip us.”“I don’t know what’s happened to today’s youth.”

At some point, these words have either been on our ears, minds, or lips. And where do we direct our concerns? The educational system. We build educational reforms on the promise that if we just do this differently, we can develop a better citizen. Yet, it seems we are hearing more and more that our reforms aren’t reforming. Scores have gone down, kids spend all day on the computer, and no students care about their classes.

Why?

We do not find the source of our students’ deformation in their scores, developmental stage, or in “boring” subjects matter. In short, the deformation is in the water.

Sir Ken Robinson, an eminent educational theorist, suggests that our industrial model of education is a kind of systemic anesthesia. Our schools currently model factories where bells, whistles, punch cards, and class rank stifle human interaction and creativity. Why exactly is the production date, 12th grade – or the Class of ’96, for example – the most dominant social classification that schools offer?

If he’s right, then our dysfunctional and bored students are products of a systematic poisoning. The grade levels, the academic groupings, and the separation of leisure and academic labor satisfy the conditions for a fragmented student.

Yet, at Paideia, we desire students who can practice virtue. This, of course, does not imply we want overbearingly pious or pompous pupils. Instead, we want them to practice wisdom, temperance, charity, justice, and more.

Because we crave community, cooperation, and academic courage, we instituted a system to enable them. Borrowing from a British style of education, we introduced a “house-system” to counter the isolating tendencies of current school models. Our upper school students now join as members of intergenerational “houses.” Each Wednesday our houses meet to discuss house events, to participate in intramural sports, to join together in prayer, and to offer tutoring to lower school students.

In this process, we have seen refreshed students emerge. Students, now exposed to different kinds of minds, attitudes, and ages in their houses, consistently demonstrate hospitality, patience, and friendship. We are not looking for the Beaver Cleaver of yester-year or the ultra-student of tomorrow. Rather, we seek virtue so that a student can practice the greatest of commandments in this day: to love your neighbor as yourself.

Ryan Garner

Dean of Nicene Hall

Paideia Academy