The office manager looked at me with a straight face and said, “Boss, we have a goat problem.” I’d just wrapped up a meeting and was about to return some phone calls when she made that pronouncement. I paused for a moment, looked at her, and asked rather hopefully, “Is that a metaphor?”
Unfortunately, it was not. Indeed, three goats had escaped their fencing a few properties over and made their way to our school. They trotted over here just as we were starting our younger students’ lunchtime. Of course, those three rather large goats headed straight for the sound of laughing, playing kids.
Two staff members made quick work of diverting the goats’ attention, but then we faced the almost comical task of keeping the goats away from students for the next hour as we moved from lunch period to lunch period. Using a long stick, a jump rope, and a fanny pack (long story), a couple of staffers and I worked hard to herd those goats away from students and away from the buildings. After much laughter and more than a bit of frustration, we were able to contain them in our fenced-in student garden, where, of course, the goats enjoyed an abundant fresh plant and wildflower snack.
Don’t get me wrong. Goats can be very helpful animals and I’ve heard rumors that nothing beats delicious cheese made from goat’s milk. But, on a school campus? “Helpful” isn’t the word I would use for them. Clamoring behind a portable building and dashing across our parking lot instead made them distracting and possibly destructive.
Believe it or not, education can be a lot like that. Those three goats made me think of those things in our children’s education that can be helpful in the right context, but also hold the capability of being distracting or destructive. In a world where the education possibilities are endless, we have to be even more selective in those things we choose to use.
Things like technology or textbooks might fall into that category. Technology is great and can be an incredible tool, unless our students are asking Alexa to solve their algebra homework. Textbooks can be a helpful source of information, but not if we spend all of our time reading about Darwin instead of reading directly from Origin of the Species.
As we think about all of the good things that exist for educating our children, I can promise you the list is long. Instead, let’s narrow that list considerably and only aim for the best things for our students. At Libertas Academy, as a classical, Christian school, we work hard to only aim for and use the best things. Whether it is our rigorous classical PE program, or reading directly from source texts, or learning to debate using reason and rhetoric, we aim for the best and our students get the best.
Day in and day out, semester after semester, year after year, we put aside what is distracting, we reject what is destructive, and we focus on what is the best. We aim for the best things, in the best context, all for the benefit of our incredible students. Even if that means we have to battle a goat or two.
Holly Kalton
Head of School, Libertas Academy
