In C.S. Lewis’s The Horse and His Boy, a terrifying chase by lions ends with two horses and two children barely escaping across a narrow inlet of the sea. As the four gather their wits, Bree, a talking Narnian horse, lays out the plan: “And now that we’ve got the water between us and those dreadful animals, what about you two humans taking off our saddles and our all having a rest and hearing one another’s stories.” Bree asks one of the humans to speak first, and the narrator tells us: “Aravis immediately began, sitting quite still and using a rather different tone and style from her usual one. For in Calormen, story-telling (whether the stories are true or made up) is a thing you’re taught, just as English boys and girls are taught essay writing. The difference is that people want to hear the stories, whereas I never heard of anyone who wanted to read the essays.”*
It’s a humorous comparison of genres but one that might make those of us in classical education a little defensive. A philosopher by training, I feel the need to explain, “Well, joking aside, Lewis actually thought essays were important and interesting too…” We shouldn’t be quick to set aside Lewis’s primary point though: stories are powerful. They grab our attention, engage the imagination, arouse emotions, direct passions, shape beliefs. In short, they form us. While it is important to train students in logic and analytical reading and writing, we have to admit that stories are important too—probably more important. As Jennifer Holberg writes in Nourishing Narratives: The Power of Story to Shape our Faith, “[N]o matter what one’s childhood—even if one was not or is not really much of a reader—we are all profoundly story-shaped people. We live in a world that, for better or worse, most often seems to process through narrative, not facts.”** Trinitas is a school built on stories—on God’s story, and on the myriad stories that point us to Him.
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