Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. and Classical Education
Dear Martin Saints families and friends,
Today during school prayers with the students, I pointed out that last week was MLK day and the March for Life in Washington, and next week is national Catholic Schools Week. There's a connection between all these events.
Catholic Schools Week is an occasion to remind ourselves why we do what we do: what is special about this education? Why do we value it so much, and sacrifice to create and grow these beautiful new classical schools, like Martin Saints?
Last week suggests one good reason why. Before he was famous as an activist, Dr. Martin Luther King taught philosophy at Morehouse College in Atlanta. MLK was classically educated. MLK was a classical teacher himself. This education gave Dr. King the capacity to see and articulate human dignity, when so many other people had a blind spot and missed it.
MLK knew why racism was wrong - he could explain it and defend his position - because he was fluent in the Great Books and the Bible. He understood and could explain the justice owed to the image of God in each person.
Here's a short article with more details about MLK and the classics. You can click on a link and see his syllabus, in his own handwriting, that he used when he taught philosophy. A Martin Saints student will recognize most of the authors, starting with Plato, Aristotle, Augustine, and Aquinas.
Most of our civilization's values - things like democracy, human rights, the right to life, marriage between a man and a woman, charity towards the poor, the integrity of creation, equality before the law - are not "common sense." We have inherited these values from previous generations, and they may be common sense in our homes, but this morality is no longer secure in our culture. In many places around the world, and in many times in history, these values were completely unknown, and those cultures were the worse for it. This vision of life needs to be savored, appreciated, respected, and defended.
If you want to live and keep your head when the culture around you is going crazy, you need to be rooted in the right place. If you want to maintain integrity, when there are so many temptations to relativism and despair, you need to feed your mind and heart with the right things.
That is the invitation at Martin Sains - to step into a curriculum that pursues the good, the true, and the beautiful. To marinate in all that is great and wonderful, and to fill our souls with the good things.
This is just one reason we have Martin Saints and our classical curriculum. I'll have more to say about this and other reasons in the coming days, as we approach Catholic Schools Week.
Pax Christi,
Deacon Roberts
