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Dec. 21, 2024 - Epoch Times
23:10
Why Kids Thrive in Classical Education: Michael Fitzgerald
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What we're doing at the schoolhouse is we've taken away those letter grades, but we've simply filled the entire atmosphere with the best things you can learn.
And of course the students don't want to study Shakespeare.
They don't necessarily want to study Charles Dickens and Jane Austen.
It's hard.
But actually, it's about going back into tradition, back into the humanities.
And as you constantly go back to the origin, your work becomes more creative and it becomes more original.
Skills are highly important, but those most sophisticated skills come out of rich, challenging content.
As part of our special series on alternative models of education, I'm sitting down with Michael Fitzgerald.
He's the principal of Northern Schoolhouse, an upstate New York private school focused on classical education In the end, we want them becoming autonomous people who know how to move themselves well through the world, who recognize beauty.
If you recognize beauty, you can recognize what's good.
This is American Thought Leaders, and I'm Jan Jukalek.
Michael Fitzgerald, such a pleasure to have you on American Thought Leaders.
Thank you.
Thanks for having me.
So tell me about Northern Schoolhouse.
Well, Northern Schoolhouse, it's an elementary school.
It's grades one through five, though some of our sixth graders can stay with us.
So it's like one through five, one through six.
It's a part of a larger system called Northern Academy, which was originally a middle school and high school.
So it serves grades six through twelve.
And rigorous academics, doing some wonderful things, focus on dance and music and fine arts.
It's just a very well-rounded school.
And I was working at the academy and then they asked, do you want to start an elementary school?
My wife and I, she's also very forward-thinking, I think, with education, but with this hard-line traditional emphasis.
And so we started putting some ideas together and out came Northern Schoolhouse.
What makes it special?
Generally, you'll get schools that kind of fall into, especially today, you'll get schools that kind of fall into one track or the other.
And you'll get these schools that are sort of nature-based, creative, student-led.
And so you kind of get that vein.
And then you get kind of another track that's what schools might call classical.
And I'm talking about private schools, mostly.
And classical schools are really focusing on maintaining tradition, maintaining spiritual elements, largely Christian.
A lot of Catholic schools would call themselves classical.
Trying to maintain a focus on beauty and high standards and these sorts of things.
But you don't have a lot of schools that intentionally try to mesh both together.
And so our goal was to create a school that was focused on giving the kids the best of literature and history and art throughout time.
We start Shakespeare in grade one, for instance, with all our kids.
But also bringing in this heavy emphasis on self-direction for the students, lots of nature study, being outside as much as possible, and a lot of opportunities for the kids to practice leadership and to kind of step out of the path a little bit.
So we call ourselves creative classical.
So it's kind of the merging of these two worlds.
You don't really have many schools that exist like this.
So I noticed, you know, the kids in grade school are memorizing Sonnet 65 by Shakespeare.
Yeah.
Yep.
So I hadn't heard that happening before.
Yeah.
If I was to say school should focus on two things, you'd have Shakespeare and math.
Those are the things we're starting as soon as we can with them.
And then blending in the heavy nature with it.
And so we said, well, we're starting this school and it's like, what would our dream school look like?
We said, well, we have to have Shakespeare.
It plays a center role in the humanities for the last four or five hundred years.
It draws on everything from biblical stories and Greek and Roman mythology and the contemporary issues of the time and pulls them all in.
It's amazing.
And it's beautiful.
And frankly, you know, I haven't sat down and read Shakespeare in a long time.
So, you know, just reading that, I was like, my God, this is amazing.
It's amazing.
It's so beautiful and thought-provoking and insightful and hard.
It's really hard.
And so we want to give the kids really hard, challenging things that are completely worthy of their time and worthy of them as humans.
So we give them Shakespeare instead of Sesame Street.
For instance, we don't have cartoons posted all over the walls.
We want to give them the real stuff.
And that's really interesting.
So, you know, every school that I've been to, including some very innovative schools that I visited over the last few years, there seems to be some kind of, I don't know, like caricatures, cartoons.
It's a very different feel that it was completely absent from Everything I've seen.
Yeah, that's a major piece in schools.
It's kind of taking kids and thinking, well, they're kids, and so we better give them kids stuff.
But actually, it doesn't mean we give them adult materials, but we give them things that are fit for humans.
Because they are.
They're born people.
Charlotte Mason, a great educator from the 1800s, one of her first rules for teaching was to remember that children are born people.
And so what do people feed upon the best?
And they feed upon great ideas, beautiful things.
Socrates says the goal of education is to teach kids to identify what is beautiful.
And so we have to give them beautiful things.
And that means, what do we have on our walls?
Well, we should have the School of Athens.
We should have paintings from the Song Dynasty.
Other classical pieces that are going to evoke in them a deep sense of reverence for tradition, but also beauty and truth.
And these are the things we want the kids to have.
So that's Shakespeare, that's poetry from the Tang Dynasty.
It's these really deep things that even if an adult goes and studies to them, they won't get to the bottom.
And so, that's what we need to give to the kids.
What could public schools learn from what you're doing?
Yeah, that's a really challenging issue because they're so big.
If they were to do anything with their size, it would be about looking back to tradition.
That's really where the answer is.
You have to look.
Right now it's about chopping the curriculum into bits and pieces that are about trying to pull in texts that align with what they think the students really want.
And of course the students don't want to study Shakespeare.
They don't necessarily want to study Charles Dickens and Jane Austen.
It's hard.
But actually, those old texts, that's where the answer is.
It's about going back into tradition, back into the humanities, and bringing those things out to the students.
You become more original by going to the origin.
I think it's something more like that.
And as you constantly go back to the origin, your work becomes more creative and it becomes more original.
Even though it's not in what we think of as original at all, it's not.
You're just looking to what the ancients did and trying to put your own spin on what they did.
Rather than what we're doing today, we're trying to cut it off.
And the curriculums are getting all chopped up because of that.
And they say it's more about skills are highly important.
But to me, I think the content is the most important.
The culture and the content is way more important than the skills.
I say that those really high-level skills, those most sophisticated skills, come out of rich, challenging content.
What is your biggest challenge that you face?
It's related to that problem in that we've all gone to school in a certain way.
We've seen report cards issued in a certain way.
We have our own unique report card we issue.
We're not giving the kids letter grades like we've all received.
They get different forms of feedback.
And so I think some of the hard things to overcome are the habits that we bring to understanding.
We come with a certain set of notions into schools now because we've been raised in those schools, our parents were, our grandparents were.
They were all raised in the same style of schooling.
And so we think that's how schooling always looked.
And so sometimes it's about first you can articulate a certain vision and then you put the vision into motion and even if people see it and they're like, well, it's really good.
I really love what's going on.
But it still doesn't perfectly resonate with me because that's not how I was schooled.
We're just going to take a quick break right now and we'll be right back.
And we're back with Michael Fitzgerald, the principal of Northern Schoolhouse.
Typically from people I've spoken to in the educational profession, kind of, you know, pushing the boundaries or trying to, you know, increase standards again.
The removal of the use of letter grades or percentages or something that is associated with the lowering of the standard.
Yes, yes, yes.
So explain to me what you're doing.
Yeah, and it can definitely be that way.
It can definitely be that way because oftentimes what happens is you take away the letter grades and in the name of taking away the letter grades, you're making it more student-centered.
And so in that way to make it more student-centered, The students aren't going to choose to want to study Shakespeare.
I keep mentioning Shakespeare.
I just keep going back to Shakespeare.
I love it anyways, and so I just keep going there.
But it could be any traditional text.
They're not necessarily going to want to choose to study higher forms of math.
You know, an eighth grader isn't necessarily going to want to choose to study algebra.
Like, if you leave it up to them, they might not choose that.
They'd rather just stick with their multiplication tables.
So if you take away letter grades, Then it can easily come with students having more say in what they're learning, which means they're going to choose to learn the easier things.
And in that case, the standards are being lowered.
What we're doing at the schoolhouse is we've taken away those letter grades, but we've simply filled the entire atmosphere with the best things you can learn.
We're teaching these remarkable things in education, even in public schools all around the country.
What would happen today If in those schools, you went to those students and you said, we're going to study this thing today, but you're not going to be graded.
The students' responses would be, well, why would I study it then?
I think that's right.
So they've been conditioned, bribed.
I don't use this word lightly.
They've been bribed.
To do the work because they want the end result, not because the thing is valuable for their hearts.
Now, that's not to say that grades can't be useful.
They can be.
They can be done well.
They can be done really well.
But I don't think they are done well.
I think they're used as the sole means to get kids to learn.
And because of that, the kids don't actually care, not all the time.
But they, by and large, don't care about the stuff they're learning.
We've broken our periods down into five.
So each one of those five, we call it tour.
And at the end of each tour, the students We help them put on these workshops for the parents, and we call it a summit.
So the tour, you're touring all of this new knowledge, and then we hold these giant presentations.
But the parents come in and they get about five to seven minutes at each station, and the stations are a representation of what the kids have learned.
And so one of those stations might be the students helping the parents learn how to classify insects or how to identify certain parts.
Of an insect.
Or another one along the insect ones was that they did a geometric analysis.
So they take these different insects and then they draw them and then they start dividing the drawings into all these different symmetrical patterns to see the symmetry that nature is actually built into nature.
So that was another one that kids ran their parents through.
They had another one comparing poetry to some of the Greek myths that they were doing.
King Midas and then the Golden Touch, for instance, compared to a Robert Frost poem, Nothing Gold Can Stay.
And it was the parents' job to find the similarities and differences in the poem and in the Greek myth.
Some of them are more hands-on.
They had some art ones.
They had some singing ones where we're having the parents harmonize, practice singing in thirds, this sort of thing.
And the student, it's this feast idea.
We set the kids up with the templates.
And then the kids start bringing ideas to the table on what do they want the parents to do.
And we just help them form these things.
And they're super cool.
So at the end of the tour, the kids are so excited.
They even come up to me the very first day of school.
And they're like, Mr. Fitzgerald, what's my summit station going to be?
And I say, I don't know yet.
You've got to give me time.
But this is all about building the leadership in them and being able to relay the stuff they've learned.
And they're so excited about it.
It's like that's the best assessment right there.
That's the best assessment.
When you see these kids go out there and take command of a workshop and instructing adults how to do this really rich stuff.
And they're the ones walking the adults through it for seven minutes.
And by the end of it, they're beat because they've done 10 workshops, 7 minutes each, and they're just rotating one after another.
And it's really remarkable.
It's very special.
And they come out of it, they're just better.
They level up every single time.
So you talked about Fridays, which focus on the outdoor learning.
Yeah, yeah.
And so tell me a little bit more about that.
How does that work?
So during the week, we have our normal academic lessons, Monday through Thursday.
So they get their math lessons, and their history lessons, and their science lessons.
And they get, as we say, we're classic, we're nature, and the arts.
Those are kind of the three main things we aim for.
We have time where they're studying poetry, poetry tea time, so they're all pouring each other tea and reading poetry with each other.
And that's all happening during the week.
Also dance classes during the week as well.
That's Monday through Thursday.
And then Friday, we kind of set all that aside.
And in the morning, every Friday, we go on a hike.
So we just find trails nearby and go get out on the trails and we study the plants together, identify trees.
And if nothing else, just hike.
Just go.
And just to be outside.
And that has tremendous A tremendous impact on the kids in terms of their either becoming more courageous or it helps restrain them a little bit.
After all, you can only climb the tree with the branches it's giving you or you can only cross the river with the stones it's offering you.
You don't get to make your own rules.
So for some kids that are less self-restrained, it restrains them.
And for other kids, It encourages them to get off the trail a little bit.
Very special.
Then the afternoon, we set up a series of workshops.
And some of these can be more academically based.
Some of it might be an extension of a history lesson they've been doing, and it's some hands-on project.
I think one they did last, they were building like Greek theater masks.
That was a workshop.
The workshops can also be archery.
Sometimes they've made sauerkraut or bread, these sorts of things.
So it's a different mixture, and they rotate through all four workshops, about 45 minutes, and they rotate between them.
And so we offer four new workshops every week.
And so sometimes it's things like math, baseball, or other board games that are like very heavy on logic and reasoning.
It's just a wide mix of things.
Sometimes we have people come in, parents, and they've offered workshops.
We had a parent offer a Rosh Hashanah workshop a couple weeks back for the Jewish holiday.
So she came in and led The kids through the traditions of that.
How does the school interface with religion?
That's interesting.
Yeah.
I'd say we're always encouraging the kids toward the divine the best we can to think about it and ponder it.
And it shows up in a lot of the literature that we're providing with the kids and reading with them.
In Christmas, we focus on a bunch of stories from the Bible every Christmas.
We're reading right now with them the Buddhist text, Milarepa, about Milarepa.
Other Buddhist literature about Jataka tales, ancient texts, across the board.
And we're just trying to encourage the kids toward some sort of understanding that there are these divine elements in the world and it's fine for us to ponder them and think about them and talk about them.
And this is where we're also a little bit different as well because usually if a school calls themselves a classical school, they're usually religious-based, especially Christian-based.
And we're not.
We're just a private school that exists in society but is very open toward the kids wanting to ponder the deepest questions.
And if you're pondering the deepest literature, And history, and you're doing it honestly, those lessons are there.
You can't evade them.
Well, because it's such a central part of human existence.
It's central.
And I think that also comes out just in nature.
When the kids are in nature and seeing these patterns everywhere, And they're just seeing that there's like this perfection that's outside of our control.
That the tree is at once beautiful and more powerful than you.
And it's like it really puts you in your place.
And if you're put in your place so much and you start to understand your place in the larger scheme of things, some people might call that a spiritual experience.
They might call that a glimmer into the divine.
So it's very important that the kids are outside and seeing nature and seeing the colors change.
Right now in the fall, for instance, they're seeing the colors change.
It's like that's not man-made.
There's some other thing that's orchestrating these chemical reactions that's underneath them.
We don't have to really even give it a name.
The kids, they have a sense of it themselves.
So those are the Fridays.
It's a big part of being outside and just forming community with each other, but in these very structured ways.
Again, we are not student-led.
We're a very open, dynamic school, extremely dynamic and flexible, but in no way are we student-centered.
We are teacher-guided in everything we do, but we just really want to open up the experiences for the students.
That's how they're going to become leaders, and we want to educate their imaginations and build the compass for their heart.
And so there's not one set model to do that, but just to give them more.
So tell me more about this tea and poetry that you do.
We have a major emphasis on poetry.
I mention it all the time, especially when I'm talking about the schoolhouse.
And so what we do is, throughout the week, we'll have these sessions where the students come into our library and We just set out a bunch of great poetry resources for them.
It's all classical poetry.
Some of it might be like other little riddles and things like this, from Mother Goose, for instance, things like this.
And some of them are very simple, like that.
And then other ones is Robert Frost or Emily Dickinson or Henry Wadsworth Longfellow.
These are like real poets.
And we just set out this literature for them.
And they start perusing through it.
And at the same time, they're serving each other tea.
And reading poetry with each other.
We set up a reader's chair and somebody takes the chair and they read their poem that they picked for the day and we just sip tea and listen to them.
It's a very loose, light-hearted environment.
This is also where they will practice reciting their sonnet with each other or whatever new poem we've given them.
And it's just a chance to form community around normal human things, which is serving each other tea and reading poetry and just sitting with each other in this laid-back environment.
So it's at once very fulfilling and rich.
And also it's just pointing to something else that's bigger than us with the tea and poetry.
And it's like, let's just serve each other for a minute.
It's so fun.
It's so wonderful.
And again, you're still dealing with little kids.
So it's not like, you know, a bunch of adults sitting down with each other and we're all going to be so perfectly prim and proper with each other.
It's not quite like that.
But it's a great experience, and the kids love it.
They look forward to it every week.
And it's just another one of those dynamic experiences, but rooted in tradition that we're trying to give the kids.
So that's what it's about.
Just poetry tea time.
Very simple.
Well, Michael Fitzgerald, it's such a pleasure to have had you on.
Thank you so much.
You guys want to head up into the forest over here?
Let's head over here to the forest.
Hey girls, why don't you lead us?
Lead us through here.
Lead us through the trees.
You see it?
Oh yeah, you see that?
It's nice, huh?
Come on, let's go.
You know what this one is?
If it rolls, Then it's a spruce, but if it can't roll because it's flat, then it's a fir.
Wow!
Nice find, guys!
Here's their nature journals.
They label the day, and then they just start putting in whatever they were working on for that day.
It's cool and hot.
May, one of the girls, caught a moth.
It's small.
It's sunny and a little wind.
I heard birds and I'm hungry.
They're just reflecting on what they're experiencing in nature.
This is a 1800s Nature Journal.
They try to just mimic kind of what she's doing.
And all the great scientists did this through time.
It doesn't matter.
It doesn't matter what scientists you're talking about.
They went out and documented their insights.
They observed, made predictions, all cool stuff.
And so they'll be doing this today outside.
Fellas, older boys, you guys are going to go to Miss Palmer.
It's Monday.
Sometimes when we come into class on Monday, it's hard to get our minds right into the game.
But what you're doing is you want to force your mind into action.
You're here, so you might as well give your perfect heart to what you're doing.
Don't forget these words.
All right, team?
Put your hearts into it, all right?
Here we go.
Find your class.
Here we go, here we go, here we go.
Go to it! Go to it!
Go to it!
Go to it!
We'll be right back.
Good morning, schoolhouse.
Good morning, Mr. Fitzgerald.
Good morning, Mr. Clark.
Good morning, Ms. Brent.
Good morning, Ms. Patrick.
Thank you all for joining Michael Fitzgerald and me on this episode of American Thought Leaders.
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