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St. Jerome was a 4th century priest, who is best known for being the first to translate the Bible into Latin. Unlike many academics, he was also a brilliant teacher. I love reading his advice to an anxious mother, Laeta, about her daughter, Paula. His wisdom is simple yet powerful, and strikingly similar to many of the methods we work to implement in our school.
He begins by recommending playful ways to encourage her to learn the alphabet:
“Get for her a set of letters made of boxwood or of ivory and called each by its proper name. Let her play with these, so that even her play may teach her something. And not only make her grasp the right order of the letters and see that she forms their names into a rhyme, but constantly disarrange their order… that she may know them all by sight as well as by sound.” (Letter 107)
He then discusses how to motivate her to excel in her studies:
“Offer prizes for good spelling and draw her onwards with little gifts such as children of her age delight in. And let her have companions in her lessons to excite emulation in her, that she may be urged on when she sees them praised.”
He cautions against excessive discipline, and encourages lifelong learning:
“You must not scold her if she is slow to learn but must employ praise to excite her mind… Above all, you must take care not to make her lessons distasteful to her, lest a dislike for them conceived in childhood may continue into her maturer years.”
Jerome’s advice is filled with a warmth and compassion for his pupils that continues to surprise and impress me. Without putting ancient voices on a pedestal, passages like these remind me how much wisdom and insight they often had.
I appreciate being part of a school that does not constantly seek to reinvent the wheel for its own sake, but strives to study and perfect the wheels our heritage has so generously handed down to us.
“I say then, that this question [regimen] is a most excellent one and allied to many others, some of the most vital importance in the art [medicine], for that it can contribute much to the recovery of the sick, and to the preservation of health in case of those gymnastic[athletic] exercises, and is useful to whatever one wish to apply it.” Hippocrates Acute Diseases
-Kelsie Powell
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