THE AQUINAS INTELLECT

AQUINAS ACADEMY

www.AquinasAcademy.com To Teach, To Educate, To Form December 2013

A Catholic School Forming the Leaders of Tomorrow Since 1991

Important Dates & Future Events

Jan 2 Classes Resume

Jan 3 8 am—Holy Mass

First Friday Adoration

Jan 8 Popcorn Sales

Jan 10 8 am—Holy Mass

Jan 13 MS Exam Week

Jan 17 8 am—Holy Mass

11:15 Dismissal

Last Day 2nd Quarter

Jan 20 Spirit Week

Jan 24 K3-K5 Play Field Trip—Schauer Arts Center

Jan 28 Feast of St. Thomas Aquinas (our patron)

8 am—Open House—Pancake Breakfast

2 pm—Holy Mass

6 pm—Open House—Family Social

Jan 30 100th Day!

Jan 31 8 am—Holy Mass

Merry Christmas from Aquinas Academy

“I deeply appreciate the unique educational opportunities and ex-periences that the excellent Catho-lic, classical curriculum at Aquinas Academy offers its students and their families.”

—Dr. Kathleen Cepelka,

Superintendent of Catholic Schools

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Catholic, Classical, Never Common - by Dr. Richard S. Arndt

“The days have come...in which the school is more necessary than the church.”

(—Archbishop John J. Hughes of New York, c. 1850)

When Archbishop Hughes made this statement, he obviously did not mean that Catholic schools and teachers provide something more important than that which Catholic parishes and priests provide: the sacraments. What he did mean, however, was that American culture and American society were ill-equipped to form people either in fundamental virtues or even in the basic beliefs about Almighty God that would support the development and practice of the Christian faith. If Catholic parishes did not operate authentic and effective Catholic schools, Arch-bishop Hughes prophesied, then fewer and fewer young Catholics would develop into practicing adult Catholics. If Catholic schools did not provide an authentic Catholic education then there would be fewer and fewer practic-ing Catholics to participate in the sacramental life of the parish.

Indeed, we have statistical evidence today to support what Archbishop Hughes predicted. For all the manifold faults of so many of our contemporary Catholic schools, it is nonetheless true that having attended a Catholic school and especially having graduated from a Catholic high school are the best predictors of whether a person will practice the Catholic faith as an adult as well as whether a young man will consider the priesthood. I think it stands to reason and it is my expectation that the more authentically Catholic the education, the more likely it is that a graduate will practice the Faith as an adult.

Personally, I think it is particularly interesting that Archbishop Hughes, from a perspective near the end of the American Romantic period—an artistic and philosophical movement based on widespread acceptance of Enlight-enment philosophy, its rejection of the spiritual order, its distrust of traditional society, and especially its naïve faith in the goodness and purity of nature and even human nature—was already advising Catholics to be wary of sending their children out into society without teaching them to see the world through the eyes of the Catholic faith and to think about reality with the mind of the Church. Merely from observing the widespread acceptance of Romanticism among the social elite, Archbishop Hughes could predict what was going to happen to American society and American education.

Fifty or so years after Archbishop Hughes, in the 1910s, the American educrats definitively rejected classical education, which was at least open to a traditional and Christian worldview, and grounded the new curriculum in the principles of Progressivism (or Romanticism). Over the next fifty years or so, and especially after Vatican II, Catholic educators would forget why they needed to resist adopting the public school curriculum as a model, and would slowly abandon the tried and true content and methods of classical education in favor of the Progressiv-ism. Move forward another fifty years to the present day, and instead of finding the educrats abandoning Pro-gressivism and returning to classical principles, we find them scratching their heads over the continued failure of American education, blaming the failure on some external influence, and then recommending some new Pro-gressive program, in response to which everyone sagely nods his or her head, and the cycle of failure continues.

Thanks be to Almighty God that we are able to make a more effective educational choice!

Second Grade Artistry: 3D Candy Canes; Markers and Glitter; Tracing and Overlapping

The feast of St. Thomas Aquinas is on Tuesday, January 28th. In celebration of the life and work of our patron, Aquinas Academy will be hosting a delicious pancake breakfast from 8 am until 10 am for all of our students, parents, teachers, families, and guests. Save the date so that you can celebrate with us! In conjunction with the pancake breakfast, we will also have an Open House for all of our guests. Tours will be given throughout the morning. Please be sure to invite your rel-atives, friends, neighbors, and colleagues to tour the academy. Everyone is also invited to return at 6 pm for a second celebration and Open House event. Learn about the life, work, and importance of St. Thomas Aquinas in the theology of the Church. Bring family, friends, and acquaintances to meet some of our students, teachers, and families.

Feast Day, Pancake Breakfast, and Two Open House Events—Tuesday, 28 January 2014

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St. Thomas Aquinas

Christmas 2013 at Aquinas Academy

Mrs. Rose Von Rueden’s 4th Grade and Mr. James Berry’s 5th Grade.

Isabelle and Ava from Mrs. Toni Adams’s 3rd Grade.

Getting ready for the Christmas concert involved the hard work of every class room teacher, but it really could not have been done without our talented and dedicated music teacher, Mrs. Martha Ebent.

Our students sounded great! Jaws tended to drop just a bit when the kinder students sang so beautifully in Latin and then Ger-man, followed by the 1st, 2nd, and 3rd graders singing so beautifully in French.

Congratulations Mrs. Ebent!! Well done!!

Last Christmas Concert for 8th graders Ashlin, Jessica, and Margaret.

The Aquinas Academy gym was packed. Standing room only to hear our students

A special academy thank you to our accompanists, Mrs. Alexis Kutara on piano, Mr. Tim Dondlinger on bass vio-lin, Mr. Christian Young (alumnus) on clarinet, and Ms. Laura D. (6th grade) on violin. Thanks also to Mr. Jay Heppe for run-ning sound and to Mrs. Debbie Bran-ecky, Mrs. Marie Fessenbecker, and everyone else who made the post con-cert reception a success.

Christmas 2013 at Aquinas Academy

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Keeley L. and Angelina Z. from Mrs. Braun’s K3.

The 4th and 5th graders are ready to sing.

Gabbi K. from 6th grade with the 1st through 3rd

graders looking on.

Braden C. from Mrs. Frank’s K4 and his dad.

Ashlin L. from 8th and Laura D. from 6th.

Jacob M. from Mrs. LaFond’s K5.

Lucia H. and Andrew V. from Mrs. Frank’s K4.

Academy Students Raise Money for Millie With your help, Aquinas Academy students raised $326.25 to during the month of December. All of the money raised will be given to the Caritas foundation to support Millie’s education. Millie is an orphan in Uganda. Thank you for your generosity!! Congratulations student council members!

Middle School students.

During this Advent Season, our hearts are to be prepared for the coming of the Lord. The imagery of the Old Testament gives us the story of the hopeful longing of a people for fulfillment. In particular, this longing is for the fulfillment of the covenant with God. The idea of covenant is central to the Old Testament because it is a story about a people and their God. A covenant is a solemn binding agreement between two parties and the Old Testament shows us the story of the relationship between God and the people. The major covenants show us the shared religious experience of the people of Israel. The binding agreement that the nation of Israel has with God helps form them as a people and gives them purpose as a culture. The different covenants of the Old Testament have differing characteristics but still hold a central importance to the overall story. This story has been seemingly shattered by the Original Sin of our first parents, but God will continue to establish covenantal promises throughout Salvation History. First, the covenant with Noah shows us God’s compassion. God uses the sign of the rainbow to show that He will never again bring his destructive power to Earth as he did with the flood. God makes this covenant with Noah, who is the head of a family. Next, the Old Testa-

ment shows us how God makes His covenant with Abraham and promises him blessings, land, and lineage. While Noah was the head of a family, Abraham is the head of a tribe. Thus, God’s plan is spreading out.

After the covenant with Abraham, the covenantal plan of the Old Testament leads to the forma- tional moment for the nation of Israel. The Mosaic covenant is made be- tween God and the newly freed people of Israel through the mediation of the great figure of Moses. The legal as-pects and exclusive character of this covenant will be the cornerstone of Jewish worship. It gives the Jew- ish people their identity and explains who they are as a people. It also pro- vides the preparation for the return of the people of Israel to the land prom- ised to Abraham.

While the Mosaic covenant has preeminent importance to the story of the Old Testament, it is not the final covenant. With the establishment of a monarchy ruling over the unit- ed Israelite population comes another covenant. While the covenant made with Moses at Mount Sinai was made regarding the nation of Israel, the covenant with David was made in Jerusalem regarding the kingdom of Israel. The Davidic covenant would be an everlasting covenant that would honor the lineage of the Davidic line. However, the everlasting aspect of covenant would not end with David, but would take on a new context with the covenant mentioned in the Book of Jeremiah.

While the definitive Mosaic covenant was written on the stone tab-lets of the Law, this new covenant will be placed within the people and written upon their hearts (c.f. Jer 31:33). Christian tradition will take up the mantle of this covenant and apply it to the everlasting covenant established by Jesus in His Incarnation. As we celebrate the great gift of the Incarnation this Advent and Christmas Season, let us reflect on the promises made and the covenants fulfilled by God, who gave us his Only Son and, through Him, brings joy to the world. May this joy be found not only in our songs, but also written upon our hearts prepared anew to more fully receive our Lord and His promises.

The Importance of Covenant in the Old Testament: by Mr. Tom Adams

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American Education and the 2013 PISA Results— by Dr. Richard S. Arndt

In November, the US Department of Education released the results of the 2012 Program for International Stu-dent Assessment (PISA) tests. Once again the results demonstrate, as they have for years, that the grand US edu-cational experiment—which began with the intentional rejection of traditional or classical education in favor of the new, untested but ever-so-trendy Prussian model in the late 1800s—continues to be ineffective.

The results tell an embarrassing story. Among the 34 developed nations tested, the US educational system produces students who rank 26th in math, 21st in science, and 17th in reading. Despite spending twice the amount of money per student, the US educational system produced results that were below average in math and science and simply average in reading. For the sake of perspective, this means that the wealthiest nation on earth was outperformed by countries that are not traditionally recognized as academic powerhouses; e.g., the Slovak Republic, Latvia, and Vietnam.

I have no doubt that some educrats and politicians will respond by proposing some new, untested, but ever-so-trendy educational plan to replace the old and ever-so-trendy educational plan that we can finally admit has failed. Others, however, will rush to the defense of the old, trendy plan, and will suggest various external rea-sons for its failure and suggest modifications that will allow it to produce the kind of results its advocates have promised. Still others will argue that this just proves that the really old, untested, but ever-so-trendy educational plan, that the old plan replaced should be brought back. And thus things have stood within the American public educational system for the last century.

The problem is not that modern educational plans contain only bad ideas. Even the problematic but ever-so-trendy CCSS (Common Core State Standards) offers a few good ideas amidst a few really bad and a bunch of me-diocre ones. The problem is that every modern plan is based on an educational philosophy grounded on a flawed understanding of human nature and human flourishing and therefore cannot work because it does not respond to the natural needs and desires of actual students.

Instead of starting from psychological abstractions invented to describe a theory of human motivation and behavior, classical education starts by paying very careful attention to the behavior and needs of actual children, asking the most important question: what and how ought we to teach them? If children have a vocation from Almighty God, if they cannot be happy without virtue, if they need knowledge, skills, as well as a pious heart in order to serve others effectively, then Catholic, classical education will always be superior to modern.

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Kindergarten Artistry Line Variety Painting

Oil Pastels and Water Colors

Annual Fund Drive

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Host Families Needed

We are looking for a host family for an 8th grade girl from Korea who will be coming to the academy for two months starting on the 30th of December. She and her family would prefer a family with girls. If you would like to volunteer your home or find out more about the program, please call the school office or email Mr. Michael Schmainda at MSchmainda@AquinasAcademy.com.

The Second Planning and Development Committee Meeting—Tuesday, 26 November

Thank you to the more than twenty parents and teachers who attended the second meeting of the PDC. Here is a summary of what we discussed: 1) The first purpose of the PDC is to build good will between administration, teachers, and parents => improv-ing communications, collect feedback on retention and recruiting, clarify organizational chart: Principal is respon-sible for all day to day operations, is responsible for supervising all on site staff, and serves as primary point of contact for parents. 2) The second purpose of the PDC is to promote and organize the kind of volunteerism and fundraising efforts that make small, independent schools possible => We really need volunteers to help Mrs. Melissa McDonald and her committee with the Spring Auction; Suggested standing committees a) curriculum/accreditation; b) reten-tion and recruiting; c) fundraising; d) social events and networking; e) apostolic enrichment; f) alumni associa-tion. To volunteer, please contact Dr. Arndt => RArndt@AquinasAcademy.com

$200,000

Participation Parents: 21% Faculty/Staff: 21%

Dear Brothers and Sisters in Christ, My “Love One Another” comes between two great Marian feasts: the Immaculate Conception of the Blessed Vir-gin Mary, Patroness of the United States, on December 8, and Our Lady of Guadalupe, the Patroness of all the Americas, on December 12. It is the wisdom of the Church to turn to Mary as Mother for her care and protection. She is the new Eve whose obedient will to the Father offered God’s Son to the world. We, her children, voice our prayers in her honor: Hail Mary full of grace, the Lord is with thee, blessed art thou among women and blessed is the fruit of thy womb Jesus. Holy Mary, Mother of God, pray for us sinners now and at the hour or our death, Amen. When we are good to our Mother, our Mother is good to us; Mary loves her children and expects us, her chil-dren, to LOVE ONE ANOTHER. Alive in faith, Most Reverend Jerome E. Listecki Archbishop of Milwaukee

A Letter from Archbishop Listecki: Love One Another—December 10, 2013

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Classical Education and Cultural Literacy— by Dr. Richard S. Arndt

If the proof of the pudding is in the eating, might it be said that the proof of a school is in the reading? The answer depends on what one means by reading. Is it enough to turn printed marks into sounds and these sounds into words, or do we expect that one has only mastered reading when one can understand what they mean?

While testing student reading abilities at two different colleges in the late 1970s, Professor E. D. Hirsch, Jr.

discovered that while decoding ability and vocabulary knowledge were important factors, possessing relevant background knowledge proved to be the more important factor in reading comprehension. “The lack of wide-ranging background information among young men and women now in their twenties and thirties is an im-portant cause of the illiteracy that large corporations are finding in their mid-level executives” (Hirsch, Cultural Literacy, 8). “Cultural literacy” is the term that Hirsch invented to describe this quality of possessing sufficient, relevant, and as wide-ranging background knowledge as is necessary to master reading in one’s culture.

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According to Hirsch, Americans who do not become culturally literate cannot generally access careers involv-

ing complex, upper level tasks. They cannot support the conditions under which Martin Luther King’s “Dream” can be available to every American. They do not have access to full participation in the American democratic re-public because they have neither the education nor the habits that Jefferson believed essential to prevent tyran-nical government. They are condemned “not only to poverty, but also to the powerlessness of incomprehension. Knowing that they do not understand the issues, and feeling prey to manipulative oversimplifications, they do not trust the system of which they are supposed to be the master” (Cultural Literacy, 12).

What surprised Hirsch was to learn that American kinder and first grade students were significantly better

than their European and Oriental counterparts at decoding and pronouncing words in their respective languages. By fifth grade, however, these students had caught up with and were on a par with American students. There-after, the European and Oriental students would significantly outperform American students at reading for com-prehension. Hirsch found that much of the difference in performance was explained by the observation that Eu-ropean and Oriental schools produce students who are literate in their respective cultures, while American schools do not. Immersed in the progressivism of Jean-Jacques Rousseau and John Dewey and the developmen-tal psychology of Jean Piaget and others, American educrats tend to blather on and on about the importance of teaching critical thinking, improving multicultural awareness (knowledge of other cultures), and maintaining a values-neutral/content-free curriculum in place of what they take to be the uselessness of the qualities of mind produced by the classical curriculum and its stodgy and bookish insistence on classical languages and traditional culture (Cultural Literacy, 116-119). The “fragmented curriculum” produced by educational progressives, howev-er, actually prevents students from acquiring sufficient relevant background knowledge to become a culturally or fully literate persons.

Allow me to be pause for a moment to say that there is nothing at all wrong with critical thinking. The ques-

tion is whether critical thinking is best taught by: 1) providing students with the background knowledge to in-creasingly complex and age appropriate examples of arguments (the apprentice model of classical education); or 2) providing students with examples of arguments, without reference to the appropriate background knowledge, and then asking them to share their thoughts and feelings and then to argue for a position with or without refer-ence to appropriate background knowledge (the sink-or-swim model of the progressive approach). In other words, the progressive model does not tell students what they ought to argue and supports this by ignoring the relevant background information that ought to be preliminary to an effective and realistic argument. Contrary to progressive expectations, for all its insistence on the tasks that progressives find so dull, stodgy, and unhelpful—memorization of basic facts, mastery of basic skills, attention to classical languages, gradual progression from basic to memorizing advanced facts and acquiring advanced skills, etc.—classical education is actually better at producing students who can think and argue critically about many and diverse topics.

Since he is addressing himself to the American public school system, Professor Hirsch found it useful to in-

vent the term “cultural literacy” in hopes of convincing them to abandon the failed progressive educational ideas that have gradually corrupted American education since the 1890s, the last time that classical education was acknowledged as superior by the American educational elite (Cultural Literacy, 119-124). We, on the other hand, have the benefit of being able to be very frank in our discussion of the case. Without apologies, we can simply call attention to the superiority of the traditional, Western, Catholic, classical education in producing students who are culturally literate and who therefore have greater access to the full array of careers and social circles.

Classical Education and Cultural Literacy— by Dr. Richard S. Arndt

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AQUINAS ACADEMY

Other needs to consider...

There are numerous ways to help Aquinas persevere. Below are a few of the opportunities that we ask you to consider for the upcoming school year. Please get engaged in your child’s school.

We need:

Host families for our international students Volunteers to help plan the March 22 Spring Benefit Auction Volunteers to help serve hot lunch throughout the year Volunteers to help the Schoenstatt Sisters Volunteers to participate on our yearbook committee

Thank you for responding to these needs and helping Aquinas Academy!

Send suggestions and newsletter articles to Dr. Arndt at:

RArndt@AquinasAcademy.com!

If you’d like to get involved in the publication of The Aquinas Intel-

lect, please contact Dr. Arndt!

The Aquinas Intellect

Aquinas Academy N72 W15935 Good Hope Rd Menomonee Falls, WI 53051

Ph: 262.502.1540 Fax: 262.502.1750 Email: info@aquinasacademy.com

Archbishop Fulton J. Sheen Quotation: “Pride is an admission of weakness; it secretly fears all competition and dreads

all rivals.”

5th Grade Artistry: Tangled Lights;

Marker and Chalk Pastels; Blending