Character Education at La Vie’s ‘Health and Healing Days’ - A Conference on 'In-Acceptance-Being'

La Vie’s ‘Health and Healing Days 2024’ presented the core ideas in the charism of Elizabeth Duet and its relevance to character education. Her charism for healing, recognised by the Catholic Church, is founded upon what is called ‘in-acceptance being’, a practice of reconcilling oneself with the basic ‘brokenness’ that is inside us as a consequence of our separation from God caused by original sin. Acceptance here does not at all mean to deny the reality of sin; it rather points to the root of sin in our frail (but not intrinsically corrupted) humanity, presenting a distinct moral problem from that of mortal sin. This frailty must be lovingly accepted foremost at the level of personal intimacy, not just intellectually. The ‘brokenness’ of our human condition itself precedes consicous or mortal sin, as that which disposes us towards mortal sin. It is a condition which we have not orignally wanted for ourselves, yet it does separate us from God. We are, then, at least to some extent victims of a certain arbitrariness about our limitations, deficiencies, and disordered desires. It is also true that we typically relate to this brokenness, not with the acceptance proper to our finitude and mortality, but with denial, which breeds imprudence and pride, or with resentment, which fosters envy, hatred and self-destruction. La Vie’s charism, twenty-five years running, continues to help their patients understand how their pathologies may be at root a lack of acceptance of the brokenness which is integral to their humanity. They come to experience this acceptance as a new and deeper reconciliation with God, as they offer up new depths of their personhood which were previously inaccessible to God’s grace, for the reason that God respects our freedom to invite or reject Him.

To read more about the charism and what it suggests for character education, read the full article here. 

Sixth-Form Core Course: Potential for collaboration with Great Works Academy, Bratislava

In mid-July, Robert Teague and Jack Thomson spoke with Miroslava Duranková, founder of the Great Works Academy in Bratislava. GWA provide online access to comprehensive teaching and study resources on an exceptional range of topics both common and uncommon to traditional liberal education. Their courses are not limited to texts but include music, art, and film. They offer complete certified courses for 16-18 year olds and also smaller courses for extra-curriculur use. Since 2019, GWA has impacted 1223 high school students under 202 teachers across 49 schools. They have also attracted 200 working professionals to their courses. 

Miroslava suggested, to our surprise, that we could purchase their comprehensive course for trial in the PACT schools, at a cost of around £150 per student. Parents who can afford it would be willing to make the investment if they knew their child was getting a quality education, however this will become more difficult with the pending VAT on private schools. The state schools are no better positioned to fund it because their budgets remain extraordinarily tight despite recent increases in DofE spending, so they would likely be just as dependent upon parents. Therefore, we suggested the product be developed into an annual license which could be sold directly to schools, ideally reducing the cost for parents. This is a deal they are already working on with some schools in the Netherlands. 

The Cedars School staff considered the logistics of this, however ultimately decided there would not be sufficient time to devote to it nor a real need, since they already offer excellent formation in classics. Furthermore, Robert and Jack ultimately decided that it would be preferable to build something here with our resources. We have therefore committed to developing Roy Peachey's Sophia's Stories into a Sixth-Form core course as originally anticipated, more on which you can find below. 

Besides these courses, Miroslava has been researching the effectiveness of one character education centre in particular and will share her findings with us. 

Postgraduate Certificate: Partnerships with University of Notre Dame Australia and Northeastern University London

Robert and Jack subsequently spoke with Dr. Leonardo Franchi of the University of Glasgow. Dr. Franchi has studied extensively the catholic approach to liberal education and has recently attended a large conference on this subject in Australia. The market there for the kind of programmes we are interested in building is fertile, arguably more than the US, which is now rather saturated with such courses. The University of Notre Dame Australia now offers a graduate certificate in Catholic thought for teachers which, like the Scala Foundation in the US, stresses the importance of exposure to the fine and plastic arts to understand its relation to philosophy, theology, and culture. Dr. Franchi suggested this could be a good opportunity for a partnership, when we begin to consider more seriously how we might build an online postgraduate certificate.

In addition to these thoughts, Dr Franchi commented on our proposals for the Sixth-Form core course, suggesting that it be marketed as character education. This fits well with our commitment to intellectual formation, which is integral to the formation of character as a whole. He mentioned the work of Dr. James Arthur of the University of Birmingham, who written extensively on character formation in education. 

Whilst in the Netherlands for La Vie's conference (above), I was introduced to the work of Mark Taylor, who has built great books programmes for teachers at the East London Science School. He has an interest in rethinking the trivium for contemporary education and has delivered seminars on this theme at the University of Dallas. I was told that he had spent considerable time working on a postgraduate certificate, which ultimately was not able to be completed for administrative reasons. I believe this would be another great opportunity for collaboration, given his experience in trying to develop these programmes. 

Landmerk and the Pascal Institute: The importance of well-formed teachers

Jordi Wiersma is the founder of the Pascal Institute, an institute in Leiden for advanced (PHD) studies in classics which also offers advanced courses in the great works. With Niko Schonebaum he co-founded Landmerk, a similar institute which offers a variety of courses for high-school and university students built on the idea of rhetoric. Robert and I were able to speak to Jordi recently to better understand what made Landmerk successful and how we might similarly serve the needs of education here in the UK. 

Landmerk is built on the idea of rhetoric, which enables them to move organically between philosophy, politics, law, and literature. Rhetoric is first and foremost about how to communicate one’s ideas, and only secondarily about debate; Landmerk therefore do not see themselves as a debating society. Their courses take students to those sites with historical or thematic ties to the content, for instance the Dutch parliament or senate, the headquaters of a political party, or, for larger courses, somewhere like the Roman Forum. Immersion in the right environment becomes a significant part of student’s character formation. 

Some of the courses Landmerk offer are purely for the enrichment of the student; these tend to be shorter. However it was also important for them to offer some accredited courses, which stipulated some form of assessment. These became their Masters courses, and they were accredited through a partnership with St. John’s College in the US, who in turn became a key source of students and tutors. 

Eventually those at Landmerk began to think about how best to instruct those who would teach their courses; this became their biggest expenditure, as they felt it was better to teach fewer students with higher-quality teaching than to have a much larger outreach at the expense of the delivery of the course. This is an issue we touched upon in our May Symposium, and it involves bringing teachers to think about education the way we do: education should first and foremost concern itself with the formation of the whole of the student’s character through immersion in the best literature and art available, thereby offering them a vision of the kind of person they ought to be; it should aim to develop students into effective discerning and adaptive agents; and it should use the relationship between subjects and the history of the development of the ideas in each over to frame content so that their education does not disintegrate into atomistic facts. Teachers must learn how to interrogate a text to draw these factors out for students.

The Pascal Institute presently offers at least one advanced course in English, with the intention of releasing a second, online course in the history of astronomy next year. They are also looking to set up a new 'in-situ' course in London reading the works of Shakespeare and other important English writers. 

Next Steps

These last couple of months have been instrumental in clarifying the possible options at our disposal for both projects which were proposed during the symposium. Whilst the postrgaduate certificate requires much more thought, the Sixth-Form core course can begin to be developed in the spirit of the seminars which Roy Peachey had previously developed for the Cedars and Laurels Schools. A positive direction will be to start running some seminars for Sixth-Form students based upon a revision of those materials which better reflects the needs of the Foundation, such as making them more accessible to secular schools without entirely compromising on the inclusion of Catholic authors (who really ought to be on the radar of the secular schools as they are important but sorely neglected voices in the historical conversation). 

Running a seminar series does not require that the resources be complete, only that some seminars be available for trial purposses. As these run, we can continue to develop the resources. Ultimately, we will strive for something which could be used by schools without much input from us. Because our approach to education is different, a website will be an important source of guidance for them, as will be training sessions which we could provide.