Mt. Sophia Ideas

This is Finals Week, here at the Catholic University of America.  But I’ve been talking to my friends at church who have kids in school, and they say they won’t be done till the middle of June!

Oh the pain!  Can you imagine being in school till the middle of June!?

Well, maybe you can.

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Why is it, after all, that colleges always get out earlier than high schools and middle schools and elementary schools?

And why is it that some homeschooling families don’t do summer vacation at all?

Is there one right time to begin school every year?  Is there one right time to end school every year?

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When I first went off to college I was a little annoyed that the school year started before Labor Day.  In the Tillman household, we had always started school the day after Labor Day.  That just seemed like the natural time to start.

But then I found out that colleges work on a different calendar.  They begin at the end of August.

Why?

Who knows.

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Aristotle said that you can’t always figure out exactly what you should do head of time.  Sometimes you have to wait till you’re in the situation before you can see how you should act in that situation.  Sometimes you have to feel it out from within the situation, rather than trying to reason it out from outside the situation.

Imagine, for example, a football coach who calls a play for his team.  In the play, one wide receiver is supposed to run down the field for ten yards, and then make a sharp left turn.  Then the quarterback will throw him the ball.

Now, imagine that the wide receiver asks the coach how many steps he should take to get to the ten yard mark.  Or, imagine that the wide receiver asks the coach what he should do if one of the defensive players gets in his way.

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What would the coach say?

He’d say, “Look, son,” (coaches always call their players “son,” evidently), “you’ll figure it out once the play starts.  Feel it out.  You’ve got the experience.   You’ve got the training.  You’ve developed all the right habits.  You’ll see what the right thing is to do when you’re in the middle of the play; you can’t just figure it out ahead of time.”

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There are many things in life like that.  You’ve got a goal, and a basic plan for getting there.  But many of the details can’t be figured out ahead of time.  You have to be in the middle of the situations that will arise before you can figure out what to do in those situations.

Of course, this only works if you’ve developed the right habits and dispositions and tendencies ahead of time.  It only works if you’ve become “virtuous” (to some extent), as Aristotle says.

But preparing yourself, on the one hand, and having a rational, step-by-step plan for every possible eventuality, on the other hand, are often two different things.

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So, why is it that we all seem to start and end the school year at different times?

Everyone’s got a goal (”Get educated!”) and a basic game plan (”Devote at least some of the year to schooling!”).  But college is a different situation than high school, and high school is a different situation than middle school, and all of those are different situations than homeschool.

And that means the people who make the calendar decisions for each group have had to work it out over time.  You can’t just impose a one-size-fits-all, purely rational policy on everyone in every situation.  Some things work for some people in some situations, that don’t for others in other situations.

But so long as those who are making the calendar decisions are well attuned to the needs of their students, and to the requirements of their curricula, and to the goals they’re trying to fulfill, they’ll be able to eventually figure out a way that works, even if they couldn’t have figured it out in the abstract ahead of time.

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And, as if things weren’t complicated enough already (wouldn’t it be nice if we could figure everything out ahead of time?), there’s often more than one good way of doing things.  Just because Option A is good doesn’t mean Options B and C aren’t equally as good.  All three may be better than Options D and E, but A, B, and C may all be “tops” (as it were).

So, some people go with A, without thinking badly of B and C, and others go with B, without thinking badly of A and C, and others go with C, without thinking badly of A and B.

I think it’s part of the greatness of God’s creation that there are often so many good options.

-Micah Tillman

^{[Micah is a Mt. Sophia graduate who is working on his doctoral dissertation at The Catholic University of America. He also gets to teach philosophy (as a "graduate fellow"), which he loves.]}

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