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The Sorting Ceremony: Finding an Academic Home

The Sorting Ceremony: Finding an Academic Home

Last updated on: August 27, 2016 at 8:31 am by John Mark N. Reynolds

The Sorting Ceremony: Finding an Academic Home 2016-08-26T15:41:53-04:00 John Mark N. Reynolds

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School Houses, Oxford Colleges: Academic Homes

Many of us are mentally lost, because we never found an academic home. We root for the school team, especially if we are in a state like Texas, but our academic life was autonomous or at best centered in the department of the major we chose. This cuts us off from close fellowship with people who are academically different . . . there is value in the engineering student hanging with the theater major!

That is a loss and we should remedy it for ourselves and our children if we can. We need homes for our mental life!

Perhaps the most endearing scenes to me in the Harry Potter series are the house sorting ceremonies. Vital to the story in the first book, it gets progressively less emphasis in the series as the problems the wizarding community face grow worse. What is never lost is the sense of what House a character is in: that Hufflepuff is the House of Cedric Digory matters.

Read the books to find out why, but the value of houses are obvious. Nothing can ever replace our biological home. All children should have the chance for a mother and father’s love, but home is not all sufficient. Moms and Dads need pastors and civil authorities . . . and in many cases those pastors and civil authorities are trusted by Mom and Dad or by the person himself with the job of education.

A family can be a warm and loving place, but it is not an academic home. Family is greater than the academy, but is not the academy. This is not a knock on homeschooling, after all we homeschooled all four of our now adult children. It does point out that while taking on more of the burden at home than if we sent them to school, we still worked to find them intellectual role models and academic communities. Torrey Academy and Trinity Hall are two such “homes” we recommend.

Academic homes do not replace anything, such institutions do a different job. An academic home is a place where the life of the mind and the heart is nurtured in conjunction with the rest of the soul, but where the primary focus is on academic (including artistic) learning. As a result, no school program (ever!) can do the whole work a person needs. You cannot send your child to The Saint Constantine School and then never go to church.

We all need a church home too!

No college (like The Saint Constantine School) can replace the need to start your own family as you become a Christian adult.

Everyone gets this truth when it comes to church and family, but few keep close ties to alma mater. Partly this is because we move so much. If high school was the last school we attended, that alma mater might be two or three states (or countries!) away. Second, our school or college may have done big events (football, dances) to promote school spirit, but been too gigantic for true hominess! You can get school spirit in a stadium or a lecture hall of hundreds, but not home.

Just as mega-churches need fellowship groups, mega-schools should have houses, but most do not. Fraternities and sororities can be fine institutions, but they are service organizations (at best) and rarely academic in focus. We need small groups with diverse interests centered on learning: an academic house.

I have been able to start a “house system” at two different schools: the Torrey Honors Institute at Biola University and The Saint Constantine School.

They are warm communities (when they work) that might provide some social functions, but always give older students a chance to guide and learn from younger students. Often the passion of the youngling will help the older house member while the gravitas of the senior will help the junior!

Or vice versa!

In any case, imagine a room or place where books are discussed from a variety of majors and from a multitude of skill levels and you will begin to picture an academic home. If you are in Saint Lucy House at The Saint Constantine School, a college student can tutor a high school student (with some supervision) while a middle school student works with a kindergarten student. Houses can help the academic side of a soul flourish while the good fellowship helps us not to forget the rest of life!

Saint Anne, Lucy, Helen, or Elizabeth are diverse academic communities at our school drawn together by a common desire to learn. They are small enough for good fellowship, but big enough so anyone can find a friend. Like a church or a civic organization, not every academic home is working well at any given time, but the needs is great.

This compliment to our family, church, and civic organizations is necessary for human flourishing. It is the reason people start book clubs in their homes, but a book club is not enough. We need to find schools and colleges that will allow us to return and learn in houses. Again this will require care and supervision, but we can all find homes.

We are not healthy right now mentally. We believe lies told by grifters easily and get mad when those lies are exposed. Our thinking in our professions is first rate, but our approach to culture or human things is childish. Finding an academic home is not the only answer, but it is a place to start. Homeless people always need many things . . . but one of the first things is an address.

Find a home.

Let’s start today.

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