Great Literature, Great Ideas, Good News

By Nick Eicher

Not every day do middle and high-school students spontaneously recite from memory classic 18th Century poems about ancient kings. Nor is it typical to see a guest speaker applauding the audience. But Wildwood Christian School is hardly typical.

This past spring, the 70-student classical Christian academy that meets in the facilities of Heritage Presbyterian Church off Highway 109 and Alt Road in West St. Louis County hosted a college president as chapel speaker. As the academic executive sought to illustrate his point with a quotation from literature, he noticed several of the kids quietly mouthing the words he read from a prepared text. Surprised, the speaker paused and invited the students to finish the 111-word poem Ozymandias, which tells of an arrogant Egyptian king who built a monument to himself but now lies in ruins—

“Nothing beside remains. Round the decay

Of that colossal wreck, boundless and bare

The lone and level sands stretch far away.

“I love this school,” a beaming Covenant College President Niel Nielson told the students as they finished the poem in unison.

Later, Nielson would tell headmaster Chris Baker that Wildwood students were precisely the quality of students that Covenant College, rated one of U.S. News and World Report’s best in 2007, sought to recruit. Nielson told Baker he didn’t realize students were memorizing literature like that anymore.

Nielson’s pleasant surprise was, to Baker, “the fruit of our work coming out in an unexpected way.”

“Here was someone involved in higher education affirming the model of education we’re offering here,” Baker said.

That model is classical and Christian. “The objective,” Baker says, “is to teach the student the tools of learning and thinking, that is the tools of reasoning, so that he can learn on his own.”

Wildwood’s tools are Latin and Latin-based Grammars, Aristotelian Logic, and Rhetoric. These make up the backbone for a curriculum rich in the great classic literature of Western Civilization, the history of ideas. Students are expected and encouraged to linger over the great literature and discuss the great ideas.

Great literature and great ideas, yes, but also Good News: The theology of the Protestant Reformation shapes Baker’s educational philosophy [see the article Portraits of God in this issue]. “The Christian student is like no other student in the world,” Baker explains. “His advantages, resources, standing, potentials are great in Christ. The faithful school trains him up recognizing and utilizing those divine resources while all the time crafting in him an understanding of who he is and what he must rely on in order to live for truth, goodness, and beauty.”

Once they complete the Wildwood program, students are thoroughly prepared. As literature teacher Bethany Hockenbury put it, “Because of our engagement with books...and really emphasizing writing and really deep reading, the students graduate and then come back and call me up and say, ‘You’re not going to believe it. I don’t even need to take these classes in college. I’m way ahead of my peers.’”

Katie Carpenter, 2005 Wildwood graduate, entered the Honors College at the University of South Carolina without having taken a single advanced-placement class. The sophomore credits Wildwood with imparting a solid theological foundation for the sanctity of human life: that all are image bearers of Christ and worthy of respect. She plans to go into medicine. “Wildwood students understand that they have a place in this world,” said Jane Carpenter, Katie’s mother.

“Academically it’s very challenging, but also spiritually,” said rising senior Katie Tipton. “Wildwood teaches you a lot about your worldview.” Indeed, Wildwood’s emphasis on a Christian worldview produces “Christian-thinking adults who engage the world.” Said headmaster Baker: “Our desire is to see them...be able to interact with the diversity of ideas that they are going to face in this world.”

Mark Brunson graduated from Wildwood this spring and is headed to San Francisco State to study urban planning. His mother, Laura Brunson, recalled that Mark attended several private Christian schools throughout elementary school and junior high before enrolling at Wildwood, the school he believes made the biggest difference in his life. Mrs. Brunson said her son entered school as a “computer-minded techie and graduated as a well-rounded young man.”

Nick Eicher, a journalist, as well as the publisher and CEO of World Magazine (www.worldmag.com), is also a board member of Wildwood Christian School and the parent of two students who attend the school.