Mission Moment

Dear Covenant Families,

Senior Thesis season is upon us.

For the past year, each of our 41 seniors has worked hard to identify and answer a controversial (but not hot-button) question. The result is a 10-page researched argumentative essay, which has been through multiple drafts of revision. Next week, each of them will give a 10-minute speech, from memory, advancing an argument on that topic and defending that argument before a panel of judges composed of Covenant faculty members. Here is a short sample of their chosen topics:

• If it Doesn't Challenge You, it Doesn't Change You: The Cultivation of Virtue Through High School Athletics
• Why Not Take a Break? Assessing Responsibility of Preventing Addictive Video Game Play
• Imagine That: The Destructive Effect of Technology on Childhood Imagination
• Our Place In The Stars: A Proposal for Terraforming Mars
• The Price is Wrong: A Solution for Professional Golf in Light of the PGA Tour - LIV Split

These are a random sample of 41 truly impressive papers, all of which I plan to read–and all of whose presentations I hope to attend.

Senior Thesis week is a time when my heart bursts with pride and gratitude. This is the week when our senior parents see the culmination of all the hard work of a Covenant education.

I’m a Grammar School parent. My 5th grader is hard at work on his Prince Caspian monologue, having just finished the final draft of a short story–historical fiction–inspired by the voyages of Cabeza de Vaca. My second grader has just finished a clay sculpture of a flower–a Black-eyed Susan–which she will soon describe and analyze for a class of 8-year-olds. Both of them are practicing their scripture recitations every day. And every day, my wife Laura and I encourage them to stand up straight and recite the scriptures with clarity and poise. It’s a daily struggle. There are many evenings when we fall short of our Grammar teachers’ high expectations. (And if we do manage to get our homework done properly, there’s always a chance that we’ll forget some other detail–like the booster seat that I failed to send with my 2nd grader this week for her field trip! Don’t worry, parents, we’re all in the same boat!)

Presentations, recitations, orations, monologues–this is what a Covenant education is all about. We ask our Grammar students to narrate what they have learned about George Frederic Handel or Ludwig van Beethoven. We require our Logic students to study formal and informal logic, and we ask our Logic and Rhetoric students to memorize poems and speeches from history.

When our seniors offer their thesis presentations, it is the culmination of years of preparation in research, writing, memorization, and public speaking. They have spent the past year researching their topics and formulating arguments. Their classical education has prepared them to engage with the best available arguments on contemporary issues.

Every Covenant graduate is a competent orator. More than a few of our graduates are simply magnificent. When our seniors present their theses next week, I hope you’ll join us–and give thanks for the faculty and curriculum that train our students to be winsome advocates for truth and beauty.

Non Nobis,

Christopher D. Schmidt
Rhetoric School Head