What’s Past is Prologue: Curriculum Renewal at Holy Rosary Academy

At the start of Act Two of William Shakespeare’s The Tempest, Sebastian and Antonio literally set the stage for the main action of the play.  They do this through a series of deliberately theatrical allusions to setting, cast, and plot.  In one of the most memorable lines of the production, Antonio declares that what has gone before is merely the backdrop for the play’s central storyline:

We all were sea-swallow'd, though some cast again
(And by that destiny) to perform an act
Whereof what's past is prologue; what to come,
In yours and my discharge.

 This is Shakespeare’s mature genius on full display, as the actors give knowing winks to their craft, even as the tale of The Tempest unfolds in its own right.  The result is a moment on the stage when the characters are conscious of their roles in a particular context, heirs to preceding events, choices, and circumstances.  They also indicate that it is their duty to relay the particulars of the ensuing story.  This vignette reveals to us an important aspect of our own humanity: we come into existence in a particular moment in time and a setting that we do not choose.  We have a duty, however, to carry out our roles to the best of our abilities with the talents that God has bestowed upon us.  The past is essential to understanding what and where we are.  It does not, however, determine our future.  Indeed, knowing our past fosters our freedom, by making it less likely that we will repeat the mistakes of our forebears.

 As we get near the curtain call for the 2021-2022 academic year, the star cast of Holy Rosary Academy have greater sympathy with many of the characters of The Tempest.  We have witnessed clouds of controversy and endured the gale of changing circumstances.  We have had to make the best of difficult circumstances that we did not choose for ourselves.  We are a stronger and more resolute team for the difficulties we have faced together.  We are determined to have this blessed Academy be the best possible version of itself.  Among the many parts of our efforts to deepen our classical identity this year has been looking closely at our curriculum.   

A major objective for us in this area is ensuring that our students have a comprehensive and coherent introduction to the full sweep of Western Civilization. Over the past several weeks, the faculty have been re-evaluating the way we teach History at HRA.  Going forward, we intend to focus more on original sources, to help students see how each period of history sets the stage for the next era of human trials and triumphs, and to connect literature with the story of our cultural heritage in the West. This means that classical literature like Aesop’s Fables and the exploits of Achilles and Odysseus will be a part of the narrative backdrop for students in Kindergarten through Second Grade.  The “prologue” to our new History curriculum will be in Third Grade, where students will have a cursory overview of Greek and Roman History.  The main History drama will play out in five acts, starting in Grade Four and continuing through Grade Eight.  Students will, over the course of those years, encounter everything from “Plato to NATO,” as we have jokingly said to ourselves.  In high school, students will go deeper into the major eras of Western History with seminars in Ancient, Medieval, Renaissance and Reformation, and the Modern Era.  The last of the seminar sessions will feature an intensive focus on American History.

 As we work to frame the themes of our new and enlivened approach to History, in-service days and Faculty Meetings now regularly involve animated discussions about the major events of distinct time periods, conversations about battles that changed history, and notes on literature, art, and music from different eras.  By deliberately sequencing our History courses, we are ensuring alignment from grade to grade.  Our hope is to integrate Art History and Literature into the new curriculum so that several parts of our instruction are mutually reinforcing. 

One of the major emphases of the new curriculum is helping students to understand that Jesus Christ stands at the very center of the drama of human history.  He came into the world “in the fullness of time,” as Saint Paul tells us (Galatians 4:4), at the confluence of the Jewish religious world, the Greek thought world, and the Roman political world.  Everything changed—society, government, morals, art, literature, and science—in the wake of Christ’s ministry, crucifixion, and resurrection.  Even the way we reckon time, from B.C. to A.D. (despite revisionist efforts to deploy “B.C.E” and similar secular nomenclature, the numbering of years and centuries remains before and after the birth of Christ), indicates that God’s becoming one of us changed everything, literally, for all time. 

You will see many of the fruits of our curricular labors in the summer reading texts for your children.  Many of the titles chosen are meant to encapsulate something important about a particular period of History.  Our hope is to pique our students’ interest, and to complement their broad historical perspective with a deep look into the lives of a family or other group of people who lived at that time.

 The new History sequence is:

Grade Period

2nd Introduction to Greek and Roman Mythology

3rd Introduction to Greek and Roman History

4th Dawn of Civilization through the end of the Roman Republic

5th Roman Empire to the High Middle Ages (44 BC -1000 AD)

6th High Middle Ages through the Age of Exploration (1000 AD to around 1700 AD)

7th Renaissance, Reformation, and Revolution (1500-1900, overlaps temporally in part with 6th, but not topically)

8th 20th Century and Modern Era

Keyed literature selections will make this presentation of History come alive for our students.  Students in Grade 4, for example, will read The Bronze Bow by Elizabeth George Speare to give them extra context on Jesus’ ministry within the setting of the Roman occupation of Jewish Palestine.  Students in Grade 5 will read selections of The Song of Roland that recounts, among other things, the military campaigns—and losses—of Charlemagne.

Our great hope is that your sons and daughters will be able to see at the end of all of this that the past is indeed prologue—our history is the framework of what we are.  If we do not see that the roots of democracy go back to ancient Athens, the torch of liberty may slip from our hands.  If we do not understand that Christian faith is essential to formation in virtue, Western society may again lapse into pagan hedonism.  Our past does not determine what we are.  Ignorance of it, however, may seal our fate to be a lesser and lower nation than our forefathers conceived in the founding of the American Republic.  By recalling our students to the great moments of Western Civilization, our hope is to have “the dark backward and abysm of time” serve them in the future, as they bear witness to what God has called man to be. Embracing our heritage begins with a true Christian and classical education of the kind we offer to the students we serve in Christ’s name at Holy Rosary Academy.