We would like to convey our belated birthday wishes to the United States Marine Corps on its 241st year of service to the American republic.

If we suspend disbelief completely enough, we might still see clearly enough to take stock and vote as citizens of a free republic. It is sometimes the case that it is the preservation of our past that gives hope to our future.

It would be indecent not to dedicate the Principal’s Perspective this week to the event that changed our nation fifteen years ago.

Our school is healthy and vibrant, but if there is one aspect that is difficult to make students appreciate, it is this: the harder you work for your school, the harder your school can work for you. While there is a neat parallelism to that sentence, there is actually much that makes it a complicated truth.

One aspect of Ridgeview that must be improved is its ability to speak to others who are not inclined to hear and persuade them of those things we have found virtue in.

Of particular interest to parents of high school students should be the ACT. While the test is still months away, our students' performance on it has more serious implications for our school and our students than the state standardized tests we tend to hold in much lower esteem.

There are fifteen school days remaining before the Christmas break, and while it is important that students complete the second quarter with the same verve and studiousness they began it, is undeniable that preparations for the holiday season are underway.

Many of us have doubtlessly known some measure of heartache this past year, but from harvest feasts to the cornucopia of foods that form our modern spread, Thanksgiving Day remains a time to reflect on our appreciation for all that we could not have known to ask for and all that we might otherwise take for granted.

Ridgeview has been neither an intellectual monolith nor a violet shrunken at the first appearance of an alternative perspective. Teachers profess and students opine, but all are expected to do so respectfully and with a view to the edification of all involved.

Ridgeview is sometimes disdainfully described by its critics as a school for the study of literature and poetry. We are unashamed of that, but we hasten to add that we are a liberal arts school that equally values the study of the natural sciences and mathematics.

Your children will be sharing classrooms and hallways with some of the most talented teachers in the nation, and they are uniquely interested not only in seeing your children succeed academically, but in developing their character and seeing them flourish as individuals.

What follows is not simply or even predominantly an exposition of the great student as I have come to know him throughout both my years as a student and my time as an instructor at Ridgeview, but a challenge to those students and parents who are new to the school, and those now slowly awakening to the uniqueness of Ridgeview’s conception of education and the demands of its instructors.