Trinity School of Durham and Chapel Hill: An Unhurried Curriculum

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Trinity School of Durham and Chapel Hill

An Unhurried Curriculum

Trinity is a school with an unhurried curriculum.
We pursue depth and understanding over coverage,
And we recognize that learning takes time,
Lots of time,
Different kinds of time,
The right time.
Sometimes we need to slow down to learn well.
And we know that the desire for too much can ruin the blessing of enough.

A Leisurely Pursuit of the Life of the Mind

Trinity can break and re-make the educational mold by being a school that not only trains the intelligence but also stimulates, respects, and enjoys the intellect. It is relatively easy to fashion a school into a place that stretches and stimulates intelligence. One can move a long way in that direction simply by ordering from a catalogue. But to build a school that is devoted to the intellect--that is a much taller order. It means, first and foremost, the gathering of people--teachers, parents, friends--who themselves embody this teeming fascination with the life of the mind.

Excellence through Moderation

Excellence or perfection comes to us humans only through moderation. This idea, like so many good ideas in a fallen world, is counter-intuitive and bears a little explanation. To say that a school strives to be excellent is to raise a critical question: “What is the best that you can be?” Our answer: To be happy, first in God, and then with others and finally with one’s self. And for the attainment of such happiness, there is but one road, the way of virtue. The pursuit of God through faith, hope, and love; the good life with others through prudence, justice, courage, and temperance; and the blessed happiness with ourselves that comes from knowledge, wisdom, art, wit, and the like. Now for the living of such a life, one principle is key: The happy Yes comes only through the painful No.

How do we know this? First, and most importantly, we have our Lord’s example, who “learned obedience from what he suffered” (Hebrews 5:18). Thus also did he counsel us, his disciples: “If your hand causes you to sin, cut it off. It is better for you to enter life maimed than with two hands to go into hell” (Mark 9:43). Like so much of Jesus’ teaching, this great truth was not new, but simply the fresh wind of the Spirit filling the old sails of the sayings of the wise: “Better one handful with tranquility than two handfuls with toil and chasing after the wind” (Ecclesiastes 4:6).

Articles of Interest

"How Challenging?" Chip Denton
"Boundary Lines in Pleasant Places," Chip Denton
"Excellence through Moderation: In Which the Headmaster Attempts to Explain a Puzzling Word in the Mission Statement," Chip Denton
"Engaging the Mind in Unhurried Excellence," Warren Gould
"Playing Around at Trinity," Chip Denton
"Snow Days," Chip Denton
"Stopping by the Woods on a Snowy Evening," Robert Frost
"An Apology to the Graduates," Anna Quindlen
"Slowing Down," Billy Collins

Charlotte Mason

"Boys and girls must have time to invent episodes, carry on adventures, live heroic lives, lay sieges and carry forts, even if the fortress be an old armchair, and in these affairs the elders must neither meddle nor make."

Eugene Peterson, Living the Resurrection

"The workplace is not the whole of life. But without a Sabbath, in which God goes beyond the workplace (but not away from it), the workplace is soon emptied of any sense of the presence of God. The work itself becomes an end in itself."

William Wordsworth

"The world is too much with us; late and soon,
Getting and spending, we lay waste our powers;
Little we see in Nature that is ours;
We have given our hearts away, a sordid boon!"

Charles Malik, The Two Tasks

"The infinite value of spending years of leisure in conversing with the greatest minds and souls of the past, and thereby ripening and sharpening and enlarging their powers of thinking."

Billy Collins, Former Poet Laureate of the United States

"Although teaching and learning themselves have been motorized by the hyper-pace of information, it is good to remember that the true tempo of education has always involved a deceleration."

Ecclesiastes 4:6

"Better is one handful with tranquility than two with striving and chasing after the wind."

Robert Frost, from Stopping by the Woods on a Snowy Evening

The woods are lovely, dark and deep.
But I have promises to keep,
And miles to go before I sleep,
And miles to go before I sleep.

Every teacher worth her salt knows this dilemma of learning. There are always promises to keep, the demands of the curriculum and the mastery necessary at every grade level. But the woods of learning are lovely, dark, and deep; and there are times when a good teacher will pause there, in awe and expectation. This is the unhurried education, sacred as a snowy evening.

One summer we sponsored a "Trinity Listens" program, in which every family was encouraged to listen to Handel's Messiah. Students from kindergarten up through high school were encouraged to slow down and listen—you can't really rush this assignment. Students were asked to create an artistic response to Handel's work, and their many creations were hung in the school hallways at the beginning of the year.