Eagle Ridge Academy School of Grammar Blog: We Hold These Truths...

”Since education is the cultivation of wisdom and virtue, and since wisdom and virtue are cultivated when a soul is nourished on truth, goodness, and beauty, we must teach our children truth, goodness, and beauty. The wise person understands the world he lives in (natural science and history) and has standards by which to distinguish what is from what ought to be (ethics and politics). The wise person knows the causes of things, and therefore is able to order things rightly and to judge things justly. Wisdom appears at different levels and in different kinds. The virtuous person is disciplined, purposeful, and focused in his thinking and behavior. In education we cultivate the moral virtues, the physical virtues, and the intellectual virtues. By refining all of them, we are enabled to bring them into a harmony that we can justly call integrity. Young people become wise and virtuous when their souls feed on truth, goodness, and beauty. The only way a person can perceive truth, goodness, and beauty is if these virtues are embodied or incarnated and he is then disciplined in their imitation.”

The words above come from the website of the Circe Institute. If you came to our Classical Education Parent Night earlier this month, you met Andrew Kern (the head of the Circe Institute). Mr. Kern was impressed that we were teaching our students about truth, beauty, and goodness. One of the basic tenets of true classical education is the fact there are truths in this world and we are to teach them to our students. Truths do not need to be deep, philosophical things. Something as simple as 2 + 2= 4 is a truth. It is universally recognized and we teach it to students. Truths take many forms and can be communicated to children in a multitude of ways. The most important part of teaching truths is that we show students there are truths in this world, things to be accepted without doubt or hesitation. We will continue through our curriculum to teach those truths to our students.

The October pillar ticket drawing took place on Friday. The winners are able to choose a Lower School teacher to have lunch with in the next couple of weeks. I will check in with the winners on Monday to get their choices and arrange the lunches. The winners are:

Nissa F.- 1^st Grade

Sonja O.- 3^rd Grade

Adam B.- 4^th Grade

Andrew M- 4^th Grade

Ayayo O.- 4^th Grade

Aquila, the eagle is residing in Ms. Rickard’s classroom this week. Her entire class earned Aquila by working together as good citizens.

October is fire safety and prevention month. The kindergarten students learned more about fire safety when they had a visit from the Eden Prairie Fire Department on Friday. Firefighter Bill and Firefighter Chuck educated the students on how to stay safe if there would be a fire at their home and showed them the equipment a firefighter wears to fight those house fires. At the conclusion of their presentation, the students were able to go outside and see one of the Eden Prairie fire trucks. A few pictures of the visit are below.