At Portsmouth Abbey, we do not shy away from these moments renew and refresh the daily toil and big questions. Beyond the facts, we demand our remind us that the classroom at its best is a place of students go further. We do not shirk the brazen high celebration. earnestness of our enterprise: to help young men As you read through the following excellent articles, and women grow in knowledge and in grace. This I hope you are reminded of the special quality of the is the work, this is the labor. We render ourselves Portsmouth Abbey classroom. A school is a complex intelligible through the classroom, students and organism, yet everything conspires together to protect teachers alike. The classroom – limited by time, what can happen each and every day here. Enjoy. space and personality – is charged with possibility, that peculiar grace of the moment. As a teacher, – Kale Zelden, Academic Dean

THE PORTSMOUTH ABBEY HUMANITIES PROGRAM: A RETROSPECTIVE

a crisp November morning, as an early frost O’Connor, head of humanities at Portsmouth, leads a semi- melts under a sluggish sun on the grounds of nar that delves into medieval England, ancient Greece, mod- Portsmouth Abbey School, a group of Fourth ern Rome and 21st-Century America. While focused on “The OnFormers shuffl es into a conference room on the fi rst fl oor of Nun’s Priest’s Tale,” the discussion touches upon Chaucer’s other the art building. The students remove their backpacks, shed tales, Dante’s Purgatorio, Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, Thomas their coats and crowd around a table before their teacher, Peter More’s Utopia, the ideas of Pascal and Descartes, parables in the O’Connor, asks them to rise to recite the “Our Father” in Gospels and contemporary books and movies. Underly- Latin. Once seated again, all thoughts turn to Chaucer. ing all of the discourse and discovery is a sense of engagement with the questions that lie at the “Why does the host interrupt the monk in the heart of our common humanity. prologue?” asks O’Connor, the fi rst in a series of ritual quiz questions based on selected reading “I think it’s very important not to see this in the Abbey’s Humanities Program – in this as some sort of Great Books Program,” said case, “The Nun’s Priest’s Tale,” a 626-line nar- O’Connor after class. “We think of this as rative poem that is one of Chaucer’s Canterbury a living tradition, an ongoing enterprise. Tales. After students turn in their answers on It’s a program that explores how we ought paper, the class reviews the questions together. to live as part of the larger conversation of (Both the knight and the host, said one student, what it means to be human. What it means interrupted the monk because they found him “bor- to be intelligent. What it means to be part of a ing and annoying.”) community. We take seriously the idea that, for the students, the classroom is a dynamic space, a world in “And the host gave a direction, didn’t he?” O’Connor asked. which we look at ourselves in community as an integral part of “What do all stories need? Every story must have two qualities. a Catholic liberal arts education.” Every tale must have meaning and delight. It’s why we like to listen to stories, and it’s the primary axiom for the entire Can- That the Humanities Program, a requirement for all Fourth terbury Tales.” Formers, has become such an integral part of an Abbey edu- cation could be seen as a lesson for academic institutions to It’s also a quality that could be used to describe the Abbey’s sig- remain true to their core values. But it didn’t happen without nature Humanities Program. On this occasion, for 45 minutes, some controversy.

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“It was a radical idea in some ways,” said Headmaster Dan “The first year of the pilot program, we basically filled it with McDonough, who was among the team of administrators and our strongest students,” he said. “We just wanted to work out teachers that launched the program in the late 1990s, a decade the kinks. The next year we took our 16 top students and 16 in which Abbot Mark Serna, as headmaster, reintroduced Latin students picked randomly, then mixed them together into two into the core curriculum. “In the late 1980s our enrollment had classes. That’s when we knew it could work.” During the second declined. And here we were, bringing back Latin and talking year of the pilot program (2000-2001), the School strengthened about the humanities.” the history component and incorporated other facets of academ- ic life at the Abbey. Abbot Mark had written an essay titled “A Portsmouth Abbey School Education,” stressing the need for every Abbey student to One of the students in that first pilot program was Dan’s son, develop the capacity for independent inquiry and critical think- Joe, now a teacher of classics at Kent School in Connecticut, who ing in order to fulfill his or her intellectual and spiritual poten- credits his experience in the Abbey’s Humanities Program with tial. Under Abbot Mark’s leadership, the wheels began turning. having a profound influence on his own educational beliefs.

“It was unlike any class I’d ever had before,” he said. “First, it was team-taught, with three teachers teaching. We also had a writing session that was more intensive and directed than any- thing I’d experienced. Everything about it was unique. I remem- ber Dr. Mark Clark giving us a three-word exam: “What is love?” We had a half-hour to answer it. Just the fact that we had the ability to write something reasonably intelligent in response to a question like that was remarkable.”

Dr. Clark is now an associate professor of Church history at The Catholic University of America in Washington, D.C. He still re- members those discussions about core education at Portsmouth. “There are two ways to go when you start a humanities pro- gram,” he said. “You can go literature/history or philosophy/the- Mark Clark at Portsmouth Abbey, 1998 ology. I wanted to combine them to get a balance of philosophy, theology, literature and history.” In 1998-99, Mark Clark, who later became the first head of the Humanities Department, offered an experimental seminar in In 2001-2002, with its essential curriculum set, the pilot pro- Western Thought to honors-level Fourth Form students. One gram became the core humanities curriculum for the entire year later, a pilot program was offered to select Fourth Formers Fourth Form under the direction of David McCarthy, who was who took a core humanities course in place of existing offerings acting head of both English and humanities. It was decided that in history, English and Christian doctrine. The purpose, accord- teams would consist of two teachers rather than three, but the ing to O’Connor, was two-fold: First, “to reaffirm the place of intellectual rigor of the program and opportunities for faculty theology and philosophy in a humanities core that not only edu- collegiality would continue to be benefits of the program. cated but also inspired;” and second, to replace existing liberal McCarthy said that the Abbey made a radical choice to move in arts courses “with a unified curriculum that balanced assimila- the direction of the humanities in an age of specialization when tion of data with the opportunity for in-depth reading, discussion other institutions were streamlining their curricula away from and analysis of primary sources under the close supervision of traditional approaches. In the Portsmouth Abbey School Summer faculty.” Moving beyond the traditional lecture format, the Hu- 1999 Bulletin, McCarthy presented a defense of Portsmouth’s de- manities Program would combine several pedagogical approach- cision to institute a Humanities Program and re-introduce Latin es, including lectures but also seminars, plenary and small-group into the curriculum. His parting words then were a bellwether writing sessions. Additionally, wherever possible throughout the for the program’s success now: curriculum, primary sources would replace textbooks. “But how, one may wonder, can such curricular changes mak- Early on in the process, McDonough had worried that any ex- ing obligatory Latin, a dead language, and what for many today perimental program would be difficult to implement to Third seems the parochial cultural heritage of the West, be considered Formers, given that students were still adjusting to the social and visionary?” McCarthy wrote. “Such questions imply our ambi- educational climate and expectations of the School and knowing guity about how our inherited past is relevant to the shaping of that the coursework would be challenging.

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our future. St. Augustine’s comments on memory in his Confes- sions offer a hint of an answer. Memory, he argues, is no simple reservoir of things seen, done or learned. Rather, like Plato’s idea of anamnesis, it brings to consciousness things the con- scious mind does not know it knows. Only by studying the past can one give birth to the past in the present, and only by mak- ing the past one’s own can one understand its meaning for the future. ‘I encounter myself and recall myself,’ says Augustine, ‘and by so doing, create the way I move into the future.’”

The millennium was still new, but the Abbey’s choice to em- brace the humanities was anything but. By the time the dot. Faculty Emeritus David McCarthy com bubble had crashed globally, humanities were entrenched in the curriculum. As constructed, studies would encompass cal aspects of composition by imitating or critiquing readings of Western literature and history from Rome’s descent from re- antiquity and modernity. Overall, students become grounded in publicanism and the early Christian period through the Middle the essential elements of fiction, develop a habit of “close read- Ages, Renaissance, Reformation, Enlightenment and French ing,” and learn the four basic genres of tragedy, comedy, epic and Revolution, ending approximately with the First World War. lyric that comprise the bulk of literature. Christian doctrine is examined closely through the texts of Dr. Clark called the program’s overall success a testament to the Christian philosophers and theologians and by exploring Chris- commitment of students, teachers and administrators at Ports- tian themes in literature. Study of “the Church in the world,” mouth and its inherent traits. said O’Connor, underpins the entire course. In the seminars, students have explored such seminal works as Saint Paul’s “Let- “Its greatest strength are those interdisciplinary connections that ter to the Romans,” Aquinas’ Summa, Dante’s Inferno, Malory’s occur… the ability to learn and to think and to acquire a habit Le Morte D’Arthur, Shakespeare’s The Tempest, Milton’s Paradise of mind that young, which can be applied to all disciplines,” he Lost, Descartes’ Discourse on Method, Pascal’s Pensees, Locke’s Sec- said. “Its second-greatest strength is the sense of wonder and ond Treatise on Government, de Tocqueville’s The Old Regime and the amazement one gets when those connections are happening.” , Goethe’s , Coleridge’s French Revolution Faust The Rime of the An- Those connections occur across all of the areas of study. Blake , Marx’s , Turgenev’s cient Mariner Communist Manifesto Fathers and Billings ’77, director of spiritual life and head of Christian Doc- , Ibsen’s , Freud’s , Sons Hedda Gabbler Civilization and Its Discontents trine at Portsmouth Abbey School, taught in the program from and . T.S. Eliot’s Four Quartets 1999 until 2010. He said that while it has certainly evolved from The seminars, which encourage students “to attempt to catch its inception, “the predominance of classic texts from the Chris- a glimpse of the intellectual process of the writer” in an ex- tian canon helps to keep the intellectual climate and interests amination not only of the source text but also the emotional solidly rooted in a Christian perspective.” According to Billings, and intellectual life of the writer and his or her period in his- the intellectual rigor and sense of community that the program tory. Seminars are supplemented by formal lectures on the his- inspires has its roots in the traditions of Portsmouth Abbey life. tory, literature, philosophy, theology and art of the West. They “I believe that the practice of a thoughtful and open-minded weave various and seemingly disparate strains of theology, phi- intellectual program, undertaken within a community of faith, losophy and literature into a narrative that is both chronologi- resonates with our School’s Benedictine tradition,” he said. “Our cal and thematic, putting the works into an historical context. monastic community, from the time I was a student, always Plenary sessions emphasize the discussion of unifying themes, struck me as sincerely engaged in the pursuit of both human where the two instructors and the students make connections and divine wisdom – finding God along the way of the intel- between how those timeless questions are explored in the texts lect and culture as well as prayer. The most explicit benefit of a and how they are still being addressed in the modern era. They consciously interdisciplinary program like ours is to facilitate the are opportunities for moments of “surprise and delight,” with a connection of a student’s thinking and to help move away from goal of moving toward some larger understanding of meaning an overly compartmentalized way of approaching their studies.” by sharing individual reflections and opinions about the works. Another integral component, the small writing section, splits McCarthy, who taught at Portsmouth Abbey School for 31 years, the class between the two instructors and focuses on students’ remembers the program enduring some growing pains. While writing through either a study of poetry or expository writing. supportive of the idea that a school working within the Bene- Twice a week students are asked to explore poetical and rhetori- dictine tradition of education would strive to develop a liberally

PAGE 3 educated person, he thought the humanities requirement was too difficult for many Fourth Formers and might be better suited as a I can’t tell you how many emails capstone course for the Sixth Form year – a scenario that would prove impractical to schedule, given conflicts with students tak- and phone calls I get from young ing upper-level math and science courses. He recalls those first two years as a struggle, but felt that by the third year, he and his alumni thanking us because they teaching colleagues began to have the necessary dialectic give- and-take that engenders success in a course devoted “to the ha- are so ready for their first two bitual concerns of human beings – What is man? Who am I?” years of college. As it has turned out, perhaps one of the most fortuitous decisions made early on was to ground it into the students’ Fourth Form year. Kale Zelden, academic dean at Portsmouth, who moved his family from Los Angeles seven years ago in part to become in- volved with the School’s Humanities Program, believes it is “per- fectly situated in the student’s development here.”

Zelden said Third Formers come in with a variety of cultural and educational backgrounds and spend much of the year acclimat- ing themselves to the rhythms of Portsmouth Abbey life. “By the Fourth Form,” Zelden said, “they’re settled. They know the rou- tine. So they’re ready for a program like this.”

The students who participate are at an age when their intellect is developing and “they really want to get excited about something,” Dr. Clark said. There is comfort in discovering and realizing that others before them have “contemplated and grappled with all of those abstract thoughts and questions we have.” Asked when he knew a humanities-based program could succeed at Portsmouth, Dr. Clark didn’t hesitate.

“I knew right away,” he said. “I knew it in the second month. We were sitting around a table, reading Aristotle’s Physics. As the students struggled with that text, I remember the moment when we really figured out what he was saying. The experience was so profound, it affected the rest of my teaching.”

Students, alumni and teachers all point to those “aha!” moments when describing the impact of the program on their lives. Wheth- er the focus is on one discipline, or the synergy between them all, the humanities foster an eye-opening and consciousness-raising way of looking at the world. Zelden recalled a class in which the subject matter was Joyce’s collection of short stories, Dubliners.

“We had read the first story, ‘The Sisters,’ then after ‘Araby,’ and ‘Eveline,’ I mentioned how this one character in ‘Eveline’ reminds me of another character in the story, and all of a sud- den lights go on all over class,” he said. “One student said, ‘Mr. Zelden, you’ve been talking about a present absence. Isn’t Eve- line’s mother a present absence?’ It was like, yes! So we finally get to the last story in the book, ‘The Dead,’ which, of course, is the great present absence story, ghosts and all, and that certainly was not an insight I had in reading the book on my own. In criti-

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cal literature, people have made reference to this, but to see that is. However, the study of the humanities can reveal a lot about kind of insight and discovery happen without the benefit of an human nature and history. It helps us to understand why some article, to see it happen in class with those kids, it was such an events take place and to learn from those experiences. That re- exciting moment that I think it has altered the whole way I ap- quires a great deal of empathy, which the humanities foster, al- lowing one to understand and interact better with others.”

Humanities Prize winner Tim Cunningham ’14 said that knowl- edge of the humanities is helpful “for any path and career,” and is especially critical in a democratic society. It is important, Cun- ningham said, for citizens to know how to “think rationally, understand historical precedence, and be able to refer to both historical events and great works of literature and glean wisdom from them.” He believes that, by studying the humanities, stu- dents learn how to grapple with complex ideas in ways that can be applied to contemporary problems.

“I still use the information and the insight from the Humani- ties Program almost daily,” he said, “whether in discussions with friends and family, analysis of the latest book I am reading, or Peter O’Connor with his humanities students in a seminar just when lost in my own thoughts.” proach teaching, waiting and watching for those moments where students can make their own connections.” Kate Smith, who co-teaches in the program with her hus- band, Bo, acknowledged that many students feel intimidated O’Connor calls those moments “a kind of transformation, an at the start of the course. But as their reading comprehension awakening of the deepest capacity to learn and feel, that is at the improves and they begin to think about and talk about the heart of all real learning.” From a student’s perspective, he ex- sophisticated ideas found in the text, they move from a deeper plained, what begins as trepidation and confusion about how to navigate between six seminars, a lecture, a plenary session and two small writing classes becomes part of a dynamic approach to studying and schoolwork that builds confidence and competence. The expectations are challenging but clear. For the six seminar pe- riods, students prepare for their assignments one night each week, while the lecture and the plenary are opportunities to absorb and engage the texts critically. By the end of the year, students have learned to “open themselves” to the works in ways they never considered at the start.

Current students attest to its value. Douglas Lebo and Olivia Wright, both Fifth Formers who won the Humanities Prize last year, said that they have grown as students, thinkers and socially conscious young adults as a result of the program. Humanities teacher Kate Smith

“Looking back on it, I actually find it breathtaking how much it understanding to a genuine engagement – even confrontation – has taught me,” Lebo said. “As much as we tell ourselves that we with the material. live in a material world, we can never escape the three questions “When they start the humanities, some students expect to sit Mrs. (Kate) Smith gave us as central concerns: One, who am I? back and ‘be taught,’” she said. “They want more than anything Two, what is my place in the universe? Three, how do I know?” else to be told what to think. We try hard not to tell them. I don’t “The course pushes us to think about the ‘big questions,’ and I’ve want them to know what I think about Eve’s character in Para- found that [it] has helped me to constantly connect what I learn dise Lost – I want them to develop their own thoughts – and to in class or write in an essay to a bigger picture,” added Wright. learn to articulate them with discipline, clarity, and depth. And “It’s easy to lose oneself in a sea of the next trends, the biggest and I want them to be able to listen to and think about what others best technologies, or the pursuit of some goal because it is popular have to say about it, and to be comfortable with refining and among the masses. Sometimes one forgets what our real purpose changing their own perspectives.”

PAGE 5 PORTSMOUTH ABBEY SCHOOL Smith described the humanities classroom as a “very intimate The hope, according to Smith, is that students who encounter space,” in which students learn to trust in their own intellectual these ideas in their original forms in the Humanities Program will faculties. As alumni, they often keep in touch with their humani- never feel intimated by a complex or difficult text again. “They ties teachers, thanking them for how well-prepared they are for learn that if they are read well, these books can be funny, dis- college-level work. turbing, naughty, bawdy, violent, bizarre – as crazy as any block- buster movie is today. They are often shocked to learn that the “These students are discovering that they do indeed care about truth of human nature is as complicated and challenging as it has the big questions,” she said. “And, impossible as they are, that always been. And alumni report back that their familiarity with these questions may actually be central to how they live their these books gives them a huge leg up on their peers in college.” lives. To leave their cynicism behind and to explore what they truly care about is a dangerous, scary thing. As teachers, we also “At some level all of these works we look at try to answer the have to take the leap of faith that the truth is accessible in these existential questions: ‘What am I supposed to do with this 75-80 great works of art that we study, and that the human mind is able years that I’m going to be around,’ and ‘What is the good life?,’” to find real truth, somehow.” Zelden said. “And the good life is probably more than the cynics would have us believe. So I see the tradition as not something that’s ossified, calcified and set in stone but something that’s a People don’t write well here because we little bit more blood and guts and alive. I think that’s why the teach good writing. They write well here Humanities Program is popular – because we’re passionate about it. It’s fun. Students pick up on that and get excited themselves. I because we teach them how to think. can’t tell you how many emails and phone calls I get from young alumni thanking us because they are so ready for their first two years of college. They’ll say, ‘I’m reading Dante for the second or In reflecting on the program’s success, Headmaster Dan Mc- third time and my roommate doesn’t even know Dante’s Italian, Donough recalled a conversation he had with another faculty never mind that the Divine Comedy is not a video game.’” member, Nick Micheletti ’04, who went through the program as a student and now teaches classics at the School. McDonough was Those frequent comments from alumni are ultimately the best remarking on the number of great writers that the Abbey has pro- validation for the Humanities Program, which in just over a de- duced (ranks that include the likes of Christopher Buckley ‘70). cade has earned a reputation as a course that prepares students for future success in some of the most prestigious colleges and “Nick said, ‘People don’t write well here because we teach good universities in the country. Zelden said. “What I tell them is, this writing. They write well here because we teach them how to is the first time you likely will have read these works, but it’s also think.’” my assumption that this is not the last time you will read them, “It’s always a great temptation in times of economic and cultur- and if you give them your attention and read with precision and al crisis to go practical,” said Academic Dean Zelden. “‘All right, let them wash over you, it can be life-altering. And I know this, we’re going to scrap classes in Shakespeare because we need to because it was life-altering for me.” In fact, Zelden described a make sure that kids know how to code and we need to make sure communication with one Abbey graduate from the Class of 2013 that students know what a spreadsheet is.’ To be sure, those are all who now attends the College of the Holy Cross. After he re- important things. But those are precisely the times that are most ceived his class list, the student went to the bookstore. important for students to encounter to the truth about themselves “Basically it was a hit parade of all the works he had read as a and the world and the way that people before them answered Fourth Former,” Zelden said. “He took pictures of every one of these questions. In retrospect, periods of crisis are wonderfully the books – Augustine’s Confessions and Aquinas’ Summa, Shake- rich. Look back at the time during which Shakespeare lived; it speare, Milton, Dante, Chaucer. He put them in one album and must have been scary: today you can be Catholic, tomorrow you sent me the link. And the name of that album was ‘Thank You, can’t, and vice-versa. So, in giving students exposure to how to Portsmouth Abbey.’ He added, ‘These are what other people are begin answering these questions, it’s nice to know that you don’t reading in college!’” have to reinvent the wheel. You can start with a story that has – Doug Norris already been started, and you take it in any direction you want.” Doug Norris is a freelance writer from Barrington, Rhode Island. He for- What anyone involved in the Program understands is that those merly served as Arts & Living editor for Independent Newspapers for old primary sources, some written centuries ago, most bound 12 years, and currently writes about art, travel and culture for a variety of in codices, are alive and dynamic. They speak to us today. The publications. His poems have been published in Frogpond and Ameri- Fourth Formers at the Abbey learn to join in the conversation. can Tanka, as well as in The Origami Poems Project.

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