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Monday, September 06, 2010
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Saint Michael’s Episcopal School is a day school providing a classical, college preparatory program for children of all faiths and nations. The school is committed to the ideals expressed in its motto: Scientia, Pietas, Fides, “Learning, Character, and Faith.”
 Saint Michael’s Episcopal School is a coeducational college preparatory day school serving early childhood through the twelfth grade. A rigorous, classical curriculum prepares students for college and infuses them with lifelong intellectual curiosity. In this definition, a classical education emphasizes the interrelationship of all disciplines in all aspects, ancient and modern, cultural and spiritual. A classical education must include a process of searching and questioning.
Saint Michael’s operates in an atmosphere of trust, cooperation, and commitment among parents, faculty, and students. The school promotes a vision of the individual’s responsibility in a world community. Methods of teaching have the objectives of instilling knowledge, developing mental discipline, and stimulating curiosity and creativity. Saint Michael’s promotes fair competition and provides a setting where students can develop clear values and moral vision.
Students who attend Saint Michael’s come from a wide geographic area representing all of Brazos County and beyond. The school is small by design and caps its single section of each grade at sixteen students. A member of the National Association of Episcopal Schools, Saint Michael’s is fully accredited by the Southwestern Association of Episcopal Schools, the only faith-based accrediting association recognized by the National Association of Independent Schools.
Saint Michael’s Episcopal School is a day school providing a classical, college preparatory program for children of all faiths and nations. The school is committed to the ideals expressed in its motto: Scientia, Pietas, Fides, “Learning, Character, and Faith.”
Saint Michael’s Episcopal School is a coeducational college preparatory day school serving early childhood through the twelfth grade. A rigorous, classical curriculum prepares students for college and infuses them with lifelong intellectual curiosity. In this definition, a classical education emphasizes the interrelationship of all disciplines in all aspects, ancient and modern, cultural and spiritual. A classical education must include a process of searching and questioning.
Saint Michael’s operates in an atmosphere of trust, cooperation, and commitment among parents, faculty, and students. The school promotes a vision of the individual’s responsibility in a world community. Methods of teaching have the objectives of instilling knowledge, developing mental discipline, and stimulating curiosity and creativity. Saint Michael’s promotes fair competition and provides a setting where students can develop clear values and moral vision.
Students who attend Saint Michael’s come from a wide geographic area representing all of Brazos County and beyond. The school is small by design and caps its single section of each grade at sixteen students. A member of the National Association of Episcopal Schools, Saint Michael’s is fully accredited by the Southwestern Association of Episcopal Schools, the only faith-based accrediting association recognized by the National Association of Independent Schools.
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Virtus, Doctrina, Opinio? -- for Sept. 3, 2010
(originally delivered at as speech at the Domus Aperta Secunda, Aug. 12, 2010)
by Kathryn M. Lucchese
The founders of the school who met in that Saint Andrew’s vestry, back in 1972, and decided to found an Episcopal day school named Saint Michael’s Academy, believed in many things. For one, they believed in a child’s capacity to be a serious scholar, no matter how young; to delight in discovery, no matter how “grown up;” to reject cruelty, ignorance, fear, incivility, and greed; to long for beauty, kindness, courage, respect, and generosity, to long, in other words, to see the face of God.
They translated this vision into the school itself and into the motto of the school: Learning, Character, and Faith. By Learning, they envisioned the use of each child’s God-given reason to learn the “truth that makes you free.” To inculcate Character, they could begin with the Golden Rule and return to it again and again. Faith was simply the underpinning of the whole system, the whole culture of Western Christianity, or at least the best of it.
When the late Zoltan Kostolnyk, then on the History staff at TAMU, came to translate this motto into Latin for the school, some years later, he had many choices to make in finding precisely the correct term to capture this vision. When one translates a piece of writing, one necessarily interprets the “original intent,” as members of the Supreme Court must do when measuring a law against the Constitution. One must consider the implications (literally, “the in-foldings”) of the original term as well as the ramifications (literally “the branchings”) of the translation. Where do those choices point? Are they true to the original? It is one reason computer translations always fail!
For LEARNING, Dr. Kostolnyk could have chosen doctrina, or eruditio, either one an arid, pedantic interpretation. Instead, he went with scientia, implying not only (according to my hefty Lewis & Short Latin Dictionary) “knowledge” but also “skill, expertness,” the sort of thing one might acquire in art or music as well as biology or history.
For CHARACTER, he could have chosen virtus, implying “manly courage in battle,” which is all very well for an archangel, but not the sort of thing we need in everyday life. Instead, he chose pietas, a virtue which implies “dutiful conduct” towards God, family, comrades; patriotism; justice; kindness; duty. In a school where Gilbert and Sullivan operettas are full of “slaves of duty,” and in which we read of the deeds of pius Aeneas, who lead his people from the fall of Troy to the promised land of Italy, pietas was perhaps the natural choice!
As for FAITH, if you define it simply as “belief,” you might use the word opinio, which would be to impoverish its meaning and certainly alter the intentions of the founders. Nothing less than fides would do, encompassing as it does in its meaning “trust, faith, credit, reliance, honesty, assurance, guaranty” as well as “the Christian system of belief.”
It seems to me that Dr. Kostolnyk could not have done better in his translation of the original intentions of the founders, but it also seems to me that there is another, fourth, aspect of life at Saint Michael’s, namely JOY.
We like to think that we turn out young women and young men who take joy in their studies, joy in singing, joy even in studying, wallowing in the glory of learning. The “nerd” or better yet, the “renaissance child,” is a true child of Saint Michael’s, who does all things quite well, and some things exceptionally so, who blooms into whatever sort of person he or she is meant to be.
Virtus, Doctrina, Opinio? -- for Sept. 3, 2010
(originally delivered at as speech at the Domus Aperta Secunda, Aug. 12, 2010)
by Kathryn M. Lucchese
The founders of the school who met in that Saint Andrew’s vestry, back in 1972, and decided to found an Episcopal day school named Saint Michael’s Academy, believed in many things. For one, they believed in a child’s capacity to be a serious scholar, no matter how young; to delight in discovery, no matter how “grown up;” to reject cruelty, ignorance, fear, incivility, and greed; to long for beauty, kindness, courage, respect, and generosity, to long, in other words, to see the face of God.
They translated this vision into the school itself and into the motto of the school: Learning, Character, and Faith. By Learning, they envisioned the use of each child’s God-given reason to learn the “truth that makes you free.” To inculcate Character, they could begin with the Golden Rule and return to it again and again. Faith was simply the underpinning of the whole system, the whole culture of Western Christianity, or at least the best of it.
When the late Zoltan Kostolnyk, then on the History staff at TAMU, came to translate this motto into Latin for the school, some years later, he had many choices to make in finding precisely the correct term to capture this vision. When one translates a piece of writing, one necessarily interprets the “original intent,” as members of the Supreme Court must do when measuring a law against the Constitution. One must consider the implications (literally, “the in-foldings”) of the original term as well as the ramifications (literally “the branchings”) of the translation. Where do those choices point? Are they true to the original? It is one reason computer translations always fail!
For LEARNING, Dr. Kostolnyk could have chosen doctrina, or eruditio, either one an arid, pedantic interpretation. Instead, he went with scientia, implying not only (according to my hefty Lewis & Short Latin Dictionary) “knowledge” but also “skill, expertness,” the sort of thing one might acquire in art or music as well as biology or history.
For CHARACTER, he could have chosen virtus, implying “manly courage in battle,” which is all very well for an archangel, but not the sort of thing we need in everyday life. Instead, he chose pietas, a virtue which implies “dutiful conduct” towards God, family, comrades; patriotism; justice; kindness; duty. In a school where Gilbert and Sullivan operettas are full of “slaves of duty,” and in which we read of the deeds of pius Aeneas, who lead his people from the fall of Troy to the promised land of Italy, pietas was perhaps the natural choice!
As for FAITH, if you define it simply as “belief,” you might use the word opinio, which would be to impoverish its meaning and certainly alter the intentions of the founders. Nothing less than fides would do, encompassing as it does in its meaning “trust, faith, credit, reliance, honesty, assurance, guaranty” as well as “the Christian system of belief.”
It seems to me that Dr. Kostolnyk could not have done better in his translation of the original intentions of the founders, but it also seems to me that there is another, fourth, aspect of life at Saint Michael’s, namely JOY.
We like to think that we turn out young women and young men who take joy in their studies, joy in singing, joy even in studying, wallowing in the glory of learning. The “nerd” or better yet, the “renaissance child,” is a true child of Saint Michael’s, who does all things quite well, and some things exceptionally so, who blooms into whatever sort of person he or she is meant to be.
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Founded in 1972 by Dr. James and Mrs. Helen Spencer and chartered as an Episcopal day school and non-profit corporation governed by a self-sustaining Board of Trustees, Saint Michael’s is an independent school that maintains close relations with local parishes through the Episcopal Community Network. The school relocated to its present seven acres on South College Avenue in 1990.
From the very beginning, Saint Michael’s undertook the mission of providing a superior education in an atmosphere of kindness and moral courage. The school grew over time to include a high school, from which the first senior graduated in 1983. Since then graduates have gone on to matriculate at excellent universities and have pursued careers of honor and accomplishment.
Recent years have witnessed campus expansions and improvements to its infrastructure. Mrs. Spencer retired following the 2006-2007 school year, leaving behind an enduring legacy of an education that strikes the proper balance between head and heart, mind and character - - the balance that cultivates and sustains enlightened leadership for the future good of all.
Founded in 1972 by Dr. James and Mrs. Helen Spencer and chartered as an Episcopal day school and non-profit corporation governed by a self-sustaining Board of Trustees, Saint Michael’s is an independent school that maintains close relations with local parishes through the Episcopal Community Network. The school relocated to its present seven acres on South College Avenue in 1990.
From the very beginning, Saint Michael’s undertook the mission of providing a superior education in an atmosphere of kindness and moral courage. The school grew over time to include a high school, from which the first senior graduated in 1983. Since then graduates have gone on to matriculate at excellent universities and have pursued careers of honor and accomplishment.
Recent years have witnessed campus expansions and improvements to its infrastructure. Mrs. Spencer retired following the 2006-2007 school year, leaving behind an enduring legacy of an education that strikes the proper balance between head and heart, mind and character - - the balance that cultivates and sustains enlightened leadership for the future good of all.
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