Education: Loving the Old Places

Oct 5, 2011

In his novel Hannah Coulter, Wendell Berry notes that, for moderns, education means leaving. Moving up has become synonymous with moving on - and moving away. At this year’s CiRCE Conference, Ken Myers in his talk “On Cultural Authority” echoed Berry’s thoughts when he lamented that people today think, Where can I go to use my gifts? Instead of, How can I use my gifts where I am? He’s right. It’s odd that Christians are quick to recognize that God has given us gifts and that He expects us to use them to further His kingdom and to bring Himself glory. And yet, at the same time, we forget that the same sovereign God who gives gifts to specific people also places specific people in particular geographical locations. Our place of birth, just like everything else about us, is no result of random chance, no cosmic accident. Might the same God who blesses us with talents and abilities expect us to use them in the communities in which He places us? I’m not suggesting that it is sinful to change locations. Some people are in fact called by God out of the places of their birth. Biblical examples abound. But, I think this is the exception rather than the rule it has now become. Young people are expected to leave. It is a mark of success. To remain in your hometown is to have failed. The modern ideal is to cast off the past, family traditions and relationships, ties that connect us to places and to people, and to forge our own unique paths. We disconnect ourselves from everything and everyone who gives our lives meaning and then suffer the modern (or postmodern) affliction of isolation and alienation. The church has responded to this peculiar modern affliction by emphasizing the need for Christian community. But all too often that means Christians looking at the map, trying to find a Christian community to move to instead of trying to build one right where they are. As a classical educator, I strive to instill in my students a love of the old ways. Now I’m also trying to nurture a love for the old places. Instead of trying to inspire them to change the world, I now try to encourage them to tend their own gardens, to change their neighborhoods and communities. Rather than talk about when they are going to graduate and go off to college (as if the leaving is the thing to look forward to); I talk about the return. When they will buy houses and start their families right in this community. When they will be the next crop of church and civic leaders. When they will continue the work of building God’s kingdom that their parents have begun. When their own children will both reap the benefits of the community we have built and expand it far beyond what we could imagine. And they get really excited. And they want to stay. They want to change the world by changing their own communities.

Angelina Stanford

Angelina Stanford has an MA in English literature from the University of Louisiana, graduating Phi Kappa Phi, and has taught in various Christian classical classrooms for over 20 years. She is currently teaching the Great Books online to high school students at the Harvey Center for Family Learning and recently joined the online faculty of the Circe Academy. She’s also the co-star of the popular Circe podcast “Close Reads.” She has a particular interest in myths, fairy tales, and understanding literature through the study of mythological archetypes and biblical typologies—as well as a mild obsession with the influence of Celtic fairy stories and Celtic Christianity on the development of British literature. She also has a more than mild obsession with Wendell Berry.

The opinions and arguments of our contributing writers do not necessarily reflect those of the Institute or its leadership.

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robertmpeters@hotmail.com 10/06/2011 - 11:08pm

My parents, my mother still living at ninety-four and my father deceased, gave as a gift to me an appreciation of the old places. As a very young child, I learned to recognize old but forgotten homesteads by the jonquils growing among the weeks, by stately but wizened oaks among the scrub trees, by old pear trees holding their own in the forest.

This Saturday, I will take my mother to a cemetery, to our family cemetery, founded by my great great grandfather in 1850. The little church which he also founded is still there. It is the Madden Cemetery. We will have a graveyard working, with dinner (noon meal in our climes) on the ground. We will clean the cemetery. We will walk among our ancestors. By this time next year, some of us who walk among them this coming Saturday may well be resting with them. The cemetery is in a beautiful setting, on the Madden Mill Creek, surrounded by huge red oaks and large hickory trees. If Providence allows, I will be laid to rest there, there to wait until the fall of Eden is undone in the final harvest as it has already been undone in the First Fruit of that harvest, namely in the resurrection of the Christ. At that time, there will be a great feast, a feast foreshadowed by the fired chicken, the squirrel dumplings, the turnip greens, the huckleberry cobbler of all the years gone by, years since my early childhood when I first made the annual pilgrimage there were we ate, played and told great stories which were, of course, eddies of the Great Story of which they are a part.

Alison F. Solove 10/05/2011 - 9:16pm

You mention talking about returning to college from college to your students, but perhaps we ought to be advising our students not to go far away to college at all. Most states have respectable state colleges which students can attend without the high financial and emotional costs of leaving their families behind.

I went off to college out of state, fell in love with a man from across the country, and settled near our undergraduate alma mater for lack of a better compromise. We can't both go home again.

Tucker 10/05/2011 - 3:43pm

Could we then say, without trying to be too dogmatic, and while recognizing the unpredictable hand of God, that, for the most part, to remain in your hometown is to have succeeded?

Steven 10/05/2011 - 1:42pm

Wow. Great article. I'll admit I have in the past viewed leaving my hometown as some type of accomplishment. I'm reminded of my sister. She left Louisiana and moved to Maryland to pursue a job and she is now suffering from the disconnect from everything and everyone. She hates it and wants to come back to the South.