Students of the Quarter
At the end of each quarter the faculty and administration recognize one middle-school and one high-school student to honor at an awards assembly. Without further explanation, this sounds like an unexceptional occurrence—the kind of mundanity one has come to expect from education as consolation. It is, however, the manner in which these students are chosen and the reasons for which they are regarded as notable that distinguishes this award.
A student of the quarter is scrutinized by the faculty, not merely for his academic proficiency and achievements, but for the sort of conduct he has demonstrated. Without proceeding much further, it bears mentioning that there are two types of undesirable conduct: coerced and affected. Alternatively, there is the kind of conduct that is self-chosen, retains its constancy under strain and social pressure, and remains virtuous throughout. Lord Moulton, writing in 1924, delineated what he called “three great domains of Human Action.” These included the domain of “Positive Law, where our actions are prescribed by laws binding upon us which must be obeyed. Next [came] the domain of Free Choice, which includes all those actions as to which we claim and enjoy complete freedom. But between these two there is a third large and important domain in which there rules neither Positive Law nor Absolute Freedom. In that domain there is no law which inexorably determines our course of action, and yet we feel we are not free to choose as we would…it is the domain of Obedience to the Unenforceable. The obedience is the obedience of a man to that which he cannot be forced to obey. He is the enforcer of the law upon himself.”
For a student only to be unoffensive for his upholding of policies or basic rules is not notable. In this sense, he has only done what he has been obliged to do. For him to have done what might further his own perfection within the domain of free choice, is somewhat more interesting, but still not determinative of which of our students can be regarded as worthy of a special honor. What is interesting is whether a student will enforce the unenforceable upon himself. It is this student, understood in what is arguably a uniquely Ridgeview way, who contemplates not only his own needs, but ministers to the needs of others, understands himself, and demonstrates a capacity for self-knowledge and pursues his betterment honestly and humbly.
It is, moreover, the constancy of his efforts under duress that counts. As Lord Shaftesbury wrote in 1732, “If by Temper any one is passionate, angry, fearful, amorous; yet resists these Passions, and notwithstanding the force of their Impressions, adheres to Virtue; we say commonly in this case, that the Virtue is the greater; and we say well. Tho if that which restrains the Person, and holds him to a virtuous-like Behaviour, be no Affection towards Goodness or Virtue it-self, but towards private Good merely, he is not in reality the more virtuous…But this still is evident, that it voluntarily, and without foreign Constraint, an angry Temper bears, or an amorous one refrains, so that neither any cruel or immodest Action can be forc’d from such a Person, tho ever so strongly tempted by his Constitution; we applaud his Virtue above what we shou’d naturally do, if he were free of this Temptation and these Propensitys.” This is what makes a human being humane: his desire to be more than he is.
This desire can take many forms, and not all manifestations of this desire will be good. It could manifest as greed, sycophancy, vainglory, the pursuit of social standing—ambition, as it was originally understood as the “inordinate desire to rise to high position, or to attain rank, influence, distinction or other preferment.” Ordinary desire to better or become more than oneself can be perverted and made subject to social approbation and opprobation rather than being the product of self-reflection, contemplation, and self-understanding. Rather than being thoughtful or compassionate, we can be reduced by systems and institutions to automata responding to stimuli—unthinking man’s compass can be reduced to the “philosophy of swine” that J.S. Mill warned against.
What Ridgeview endeavors to create is an environment wherein the frenetic noise from the outside is quelled and a person can “hear himself think.” In those instances when, by contemplation or habituation, he does good, rather than by avoiding ills for fear of punishment, we regard that virtue as the higher. In the late seventeenth century, William Penn, in contemplating a new constitution, contended that, “…surely it is a melancholy truth—it is a melancholy consideration that, in constructing a constitution, it is found necessary not to encourage virtue but to repress vice, and to contrive mutual curbs upon ambition and licentiousness. It is a tacit but a most emphatic acknowledgement, how much private inclination triumphs over public virtue, and how little legislators are disposed to keep in the right political path, unless they are restrained from deviation by walls and spikes.” What might be right to expect of politicians is too melancholy a thought to form our expectations about students. Hope requires that we have the courage to expect more from them.
Nevertheless, we are too familiar with discipline since without some measure of order, nothing can be accomplished, nor any meaningful freedom enjoyed. Too often, however, our discipline is aimed at preventing those behaviors that are socially disruptive rather than limiting those behaviors that compromise the character of the individual. While there is a measure of overlap, these two objectives are not the same: one has as its primary interest expedience and the other principle. One considers only the outcome and is utilitarian in mindset. The other considers the motive and the intent, while the latter only peripherally concerns itself with the actions and outcomes. We have too often been led along a relativistic path, whereupon we are disallowed from judging a person’s character. We are not permitted to make considered judgments about a person’s motives or intents, and thus we have arrived, via a process of elimination, at only the most utilitarian consideration of a person’s accomplishments: generally, this is limited to his GPA or his standardized test scores. Society is so organized that clever people are elevated far above good people and manipulation trumps nobility.
Manners, humility, resilience, and the institutional promotion of virtue: these should be the aims of any award at Ridgeview. Just as a moral philosophy course cannot make a person more moral, neither can Ridgeview make a person more just or more virtuous. While we want these things, the course or the school can only act a prompt for an individual to consider his thoughts, words, and actions, and to recognize that his life entails certain duties towards himself and others. It is insufficient to say that we want for our students (and colleagues) to respect one another. There is the important matter of what this entails. As Plutarch wrote, “For they believe their colleagues to be their equals and so they fight against them; or they believe them to be superior and so they envy them; or they believe them to be inferior and so they despise them.” This will not do. Instead, Ridgeview, particularly in acknowledging a student of the quarter, should create a situation in which we “pay court to the colleague who is superior, make the inferior better, and honor the equal.”
Coming to a decision about who merits this award requires an all-hands-on-deck approach: each of us carries around pieces to a puzzle of which we are ignorant concerning its final form. It is only when all of these pieces are put on the table that a complete picture begins to emerge. We collect nominations and call a meeting of the faculty. We begin with a discussion about all the fine qualities of the students under consideration; we contemplate their progress, what we have seen them do for other students, in what ways they have exhibited leadership and contributed to the life of the school, how they have lived up to and upheld the character pillars, how they have handled their successes, and more importantly, how they have handled their failures. If we listen carefully to one another, we understand the complexity of the students we nominate, and in the end we make a decision and hope that it is the right one: one wherein we have not been deceived, misled, or bamboozled, and one in which the students will recognize the merits of our choice. We do not always get it right, and sometimes students do not live up to the high praise we have lavished upon them. We might be embarrassed by this, but a part of our error is the result of no individual ever being complete, and least of all, young students in the midst of their own self-discovery.
Whether it is Candice Niquette in 2001 or Sophie Harrison and Ryan Mantey in 2020, we hope that it will not only be the faculty or the administration or the great authors we read that help people at Ridgeview to lead their best lives, but that some among our student body will show us that even at this early point in life, it is possible to live well and nobly. Our congratulations are due to them, but our community is also to be congratulated for the privilege of being in their company. I hope that they will live up to the kind things we have said about them and take seriously the role they have been given. It is up to each of us to help all of us live as well and as virtuously as we can.
D. Anderson
Principal
