Religion

BY PATRICK BUTLER
Religion Editor

The story of a tiny Christian school in Tyler consistently ranked in America's top 4 percent of high school debaters began with an unsought revelation in Idaho years ago.

As a result of that encounter Good Shepherd School will send seniors Taylor Hoyt, Taylor Jewell and Christian Cowan to "the Nationals" - the debates of the National Forensic Speech and Debate Tournament in Las Vegas - on June 15. It is the sixth straight year the small Shepherd School has gone up against its competition of much larger public schools.

The school's debate coach, Tyler attorney Sara Maynard, said she is "thrilled."

"Each year there are about 90,000 students participating in National Forensic League debates in 2,600 schools nationwide," she said. "Only 3,500 students will go to national tournament."

That means participants are in the country's top 4 percent of debate students simply by surviving the rigorous qualifying tournament and receiving the invitation to the Nationals. There's always a chance Good Shepherd students will go further into the tournament as competition unfolds and the giants begin to fall.

"A few years ago we lasted four of the five days of the tournament," Mrs. Maynard said. She was a high school national semifinalist herself in the impromptu speaking category, ranked 11th in the nation and knows the thrill of competition and victory. "Some years have been better for us than others," she said, "but we get there."

The tiny Good Shepherd Reformed Episcopal Church that specializes in "classical" education has sent a portion of its high school students (there were 12 in the senior class this year) since debate started at the school in 2002. And in part it's because Mrs. Maynard and her husband Roy visited a Moscow, Idaho, Christian school in 1992. Maynard, then a writer for World magazine, was on assignment. Mrs. Maynard was along for the ride.

"We went to the Logos School in Moscow," said Mrs. Maynard. "They taught the classical model of education, 'the trivium,' that emphasizes grammar, logic and rhetoric. Roy had read about it before, but I'd never seen it. That was my first introduction to it."

The trivium was a revelation the Maynards decided to pursue at some point.

"We had no children, but thought when we did, this was they way to educate them," she said.

After moving to Tyler, the pair started a trivium interest group. It was soon discovered Good Shepherd was already making moves to incorporate the trivium in its curriculum.

"It's a fabulous education," Mrs. Maynard said. "I'm biased, of course, but I think it's the best school in town. I'd move if I thought a better education was available elsewhere."

To put their three children, Calvin, Laurel and Blyth through Good Shepherd, Mrs. Maynard trades her services as a debate coach to the school in lieu of tuition. Her husband joins in when he is able at the many weekend debate tournaments throughout the academic year.

"I only had a few years to get a strong debate program going before my own children would be in it," said Mrs. Maynard. Debate is a required class for all high-school age students at Good Shepherd.

"Taylor Hoyt will compete in original oratory," she said. "Taylor Jewell and Christian Cowan will participate in student congress. Many of our national leaders, senators and congressmen point to their participation in debate as the foundation for their public careers."

The National Forensic League was begun in 1931 and the nationals have been held every year except one, during World War II, said Jackie Oakes at the forensic league headquarters in Wisconsin.

Mrs. Maynard said, "Debate is a tool for kids to reach their God-given potentials. I think reaching potential is what God had in mind when it came to people."

America's "Classical Education" movement is a philosophy of learning based on unlocking keys to all academic subjects through the "Three Roads" or trivium, Mrs. Maynard said. The curriculum is employed in early primary and secondary education, She points to British author and "Christian humanist" Dorothy L. Sayers (1893-1957) a friend of C.S. Lewis and T.S. Eliot, as a primary advocate of the Three Roads to education - grammar, i.e. language and memorization, including Latin, logic and rhetoric.

In her now widely read essay favoring the trivium, "The Lost Tools of Learning" Sayers wrote, "I will say at once, quite firmly, that the best grounding for education is the Latin grammar. I say this, not because Latin is traditional ... but simply because even a rudimentary knowledge of Latin cuts down the labor and pains of learning almost any other subject by at least 50 percent. It is the key to the vocabulary and structure of all the Teutonic languages, as well as to the technical vocabulary of all the sciences and to the literature of the entire Mediterranean civilization, together with all its historical documents."

Many faith-based schools nationwide, including Good Shepherd, teach Latin at the earlier grade levels.

"That's when the brain is wired for memorization," said Mrs. Maynard. "My children have memorized all the states, capitals, presidents and so on. Calvin, 11, started Latin in the fourth grade. He can translate now."

Why not Latin in the fourth grade? she asked rhetorically, of course.

"It seems to me a logical way to learn it when children are already memorizing poems, songs and rhymes and so on. Why not Latin? And later, debate is the way to implement that rhetoric component of the trivium."

Sayers, often noted for her wit, also advocated vociferous debate for teenagers, knowing full well that teaching kids to challenge the thinking of an adult world was a two-edged sword. She met parental fears of argumentative teenagers head-on, advising parents use the "natural teenage argumentativeness" for positive learning.

"It will doubtless be objected that to encourage young persons at the Pert Age to browbeat, correct and argue with their elders will render them perfectly intolerable," wrote Sayers. "My answer is that children of that age are intolerable anyhow; and that their natural argumentativeness may just as well be channeled to good purpose, as allowed to run away into the sands."

Ms. Sayers also authored "Are Women Human? Astute and Witty Essays on the Role of Women in Society," and the more religiously oriented "The Mind of the Maker." She was a member of the Anglican Church and offered an honorary doctorate degree from the Archbishop of Canterbury, which she declined.

Once widely employed, the trivium may now be experiencing resurgence and becoming an attractive alternative to families interested in grooming public and private leaders. Tyler's experiment with the trivium evidently is finding fertile soil in the minds of Good Shepherd students who regularly compete at the national level.

Though powerhouse public schools - drawing heavily on recruiting from large student populations - are favorites at the Nationals each year, tiny Good Shepherd with its trivium remains competitive and that's remarkable, Mrs. Maynard said.

"To be in the finals for six years and compete at the national level for the size of the school we are says a lot for the education the school provides," she said. "In my mind, it validates the classical model. These students are competing against their peers in public schools and succeeding."

NATIONALS: Taylor Hoyt, Taylor Jewell and Christian Cowan, all 18 years old and part of a senior class of 12 at Tyler’s Good Shepherd School, stand in the classroom where they learned logic and rhetoric during their high school years. The trio, trained in the trivium “classical” education style, are headed to the National Tournament of the National Forensic League June 25 in Las Vegas.
(Photo by Patrick Butler)