On Graduation: “Such an end…”
In just a few short weeks, on June 3 at 2 pm, we will graduate our latest class of seniors, the class of 2023. We invite everyone in the TRA family to join us in celebration of this great feat! But why attend if your own children aren’t the ones walking across that stage? To see what you and your kids are working toward. We want you to consider taking a long view of your child’s education; what end are you–and they–working toward?
I recognize that, for many TRA parents, the day that their children will walk across that stage and receive that well-earned diploma is so far off that it’s a barely visible speck on the horizon. Mountains of books, steppes of spelling sheets, plateaus of papers, forests of facts and formulae, and rivers of recitations lie between here and there. Graduation helps to keep that end in sight, to remind us all why we do what we do.
By the time our seniors graduate from TRA, they have successfully completed a curriculum of education that is tough and time-tested. The only way they were able to finish that race was through grit, grins, and a lot of hard work. Renowned British author and theologian G.K. Chesterton, master of wit and wisdom, 1 talks bluntly about the nature of success: “It is perfectly obvious that in any decent occupation (such as bricklaying or writing books) there are only two ways…of succeeding. One is by doing very good work, the other is by cheating” (Chesterton, “The Fallacy of Success”). Our students do very good work, reading difficult books, writing thoughtful papers, delivering deep orations, solving intense equations, and discussing great ideas. This does not come easy to many of them; for most, it involves years of blood, toil, tears, and sweat–sacrificed and shed in equal measure, I assure you, by our dedicated faculty and staff. But our students take Chesterton’s first way: they do very good work.
“...so again you ask: why would I come to watch others’ kids graduate? To see and celebrate the best that our education has to offer, and to get a glimpse into your own future. ”
Whether your children will graduate from TRA in two years or twelve, it can often be difficult to see the end result of this classical Christian education. Maybe you’re being bombarded by pleas to send your children to another school where they can take more AP classes (we offer 3, let alone our Humane Letters and Rhetoric classes which are at the college level and come with 5-points for their GPAs and prepare students with the content needed for the AP English tests). Maybe they want to play sports (we have had, nearly every year in the last 7, students who balance varsity and State-level athletic competitions with their rigorous academic load, some winning awards for their accomplishments). Maybe they want more extracurriculars (we’ve had many students star in local and high school productions). Maybe your children are terrified of that darned Senior thesis (come see our presentations on May 24-25 and be blown away by students who quaked at the thought of speaking 2 minutes in front of their class). Maybe Secondary is so far away that you’re waiting to cross that bridge when you come to it. All of these are understandable thoughts, so again you ask: why would I come to watch others’ kids graduate? To see and celebrate the best that our education has to offer, and to get a glimpse into your own future.
Our graduation ceremony features student speakers delivering eloquent, moving orations on the nature and meaning of their education. Our graduates walked a long, tough road to get to that stage, to poise themselves to take the plunge into the next journey of life. Our graduates will proffer the secrets of how they finished well. It’s their celebration of a race well-run, congratulations for successfully completing a challenging intellectual Iron Man Competition, readied with tools in their belts to take on whatever the world will throw at them. But they do not slink across the stage, furtively snatch their diplomas from the Head of School and dart off into the night. They speak of their deeds like the heroes of old, having done battle with Grendel’s mother, green knights, dragons, orcs, Big Brothers, Lords of the Flies, Trojans and Greeks, Philosophers and Kings, Logic, Thesis, Post-Truth philosophies–Physics, even–and they have emerged victorious.
When I graduated from my high school, I left and never looked back. Our graduates get their diplomas and hug us all. What’s more, they come back. They commiserate with us about difficult college classes, brag about how their English classes were a breeze, and share stories of how they’ve had the chance to be lights in this dark world wherever they go, for they have the tools and the grit, grins, and grace to succeed–not cheat–through life. So, if you’re wondering whether to compel your kids to stick through to the end (even whilst balancing a non-TRA extracurricular load): come see what that end looks like. See the smiles on their faces, the sweat on their brows from jobs well done, and the pride that comes with knowing they have, in the words of King Théoden, “[made] such an end as to be worthy of remembrance.”
-Tyler Howat, Dean of Academics
1 If you haven’t read any Chesterton, I urge you to start with his essay collection: In Defense of Sanity.
The River Academy 2022 Seniors on Graduation Day!