|
An Unhurried Curriculum Our culture seems too often hurried and greedy, wanting as much as possible as soon as possible. Many in our world are discontented with a quiet life of minding their own business (I Thessalonians 4:11). Our world pressures children and families into an accelerated pace of life and learning, and often ignores the wisdom of Ecclesiastes 4:6: “Better one handful with tranquility than two handfuls with toil and chasing after the wind.” At Trinity, learning to live an unhurried life is seen as an essential part of a godly education. This takes daily decisions by faculty and parents to resist cultural and personal temptations to intellectual greed and envy that prompt us to want to teach everything, learn everything, accelerate formal learning, or copy another school or family. A child’s education is broader than just that which occurs at school. There are in fact three spheres of education: Formal education in school. This covers the things every child should learn, but at Trinity is oriented especially toward the love of learning, tools for learning, ways of organizing learning, and ways of communicating. Formal education outside of school. Church and Sunday School activities fall within this sphere, as do lessons and activities that address the interests and talents particular to the child, such as dance, music, Scouting, and sports. Trinity assists with formal out-of-school education by offering a variety of after-school clubs and courses, and the school’s schedule and pace is designed to leave time for lessons outside of school. Beginning at the middle grades, Trinity also provides an interscholastic athletics program that serves a large percentage of our students. Informal education. This occurs both inside and outside of school and includes time with family and playmates, and time alone for reading, investigation, and contemplation. At Trinity we value the informal times when life’s lessons are often best learned: after school, at breaks and recess, on field trips, at those serendipitous times when the schedule is disrupted. Play is, in a special sense, the unique “work” of children, for by it their imaginations are awakened and nurtured. We believe that allowing children and young adults the time and opportunity to play is a vital part of an excellent education. Trinity’s shorter school day and year, and our emphasis on little homework before the teen years, aim to protect this time. Attempting to balance the demands of school and of family, Trinity allows time for children to grow in academics, in the arts, in sports and recreation, and in the other opportunities their families choose. We believe that a truly rich and intellectual education need not be rushed. Trinity is a place where children are free to be children, to learn as children, to play and read in ways that fit their natural bent at each age. Trinity’s developmentally sensitive curriculum respects children as maturing, but not yet fully mature, bearers of God’s image. Without accelerating them, we want to challenge them with the information and problems that will grow their imaginations and their abilities naturally, and so help nurture in them a lifelong love of learning. Trinity School of Durham and Chapel Hill |
||||
| Return to Mission Page | ||||
