Do you recall a time when you delighted in learning something? Somewhere in the realm of elementary school, I was introduced to the Fibonacci sequence, and it fascinated me. I’ve always been drawn to patterns and puzzles, and here was a codified number pattern that warranted having its own moniker.
On a recent episode of Basecamp Live, guest Bill Stutzman spoke of learning within the context of Proverbs 25:2, that we are doing the work of kings when we search out knowledge.
Proverbs 25:2 (NASB)
It is the glory of God to conceal a matter,
But the glory of kings is to search out a matter.
Searching out matters— a quest for discovery and for revelation is noble work that God has set before us! The pursuit of knowledge yields wisdom like treasures. The Fibonacci numbers were (and still are) a treasure to me. After learning how to read, this mathematical concept was a gold mine to delve (and children do yearn for the mines).
The Fibonacci sequence is often referenced when exploring the irrational number Phi, Φ, as the sequence mimics a close approximation. If you need a quick refresher, an irrational number is a number that cannot be expressed as a fraction, the most widely known being Pi, π. So, while using the Fibonacci sequence as a starting point 8/5 (1.6) all the way up to 6,765/4,181 (1.618033963166707), gets us closer to Φ. Phi is called the golden ratio and is also reflected in the golden spiral, which is found throughout history in the various visual arts from paintings to architecture. The patterns of Fibonacci and phi are also found in God’s creation, observed in the spirals of shells and horns, the spread of dahlia petals, and even the double helix of DNA.
Perhaps it was this early experience that allowed me to do something that is often missed in modern math education—become enchanted. I don’t know what came first—a delight in math or being comfortable with math—but I’m inclined to think that by first becoming enchanted with math, it became something I found comfortable (not necessarily easy but not insurmountable to work through) and even welcomely anticipated. If a student dreads a subject or is even apathetic toward it, something has gone amiss as we’ve disenchanted that area of knowledge. As Ken Myers points out in his introduction to Beauty for Truth’s Sake, “modern culture has disenchanted the world by disenchanting numbers. For us, numbers are about quantity and control, not quality and contemplation” (4).
Stratford Caldecott, the author of Beauty for Truth’s Sake, shares his delight and contemplations around phi. He writes about how subjects that we now typically refer to as STEM and often erroneously pit against the humanities, are vital to a complete liberal arts education. Caldecott writes, “If we look at the underlying principles or ideals that led the ancients to codify the seven Liberal Arts in the first place, we find there a vision in which the arts and sciences, faith and reason, are not separated, as they have been since the Reformation and the Enlightenment in our mainstream philosophies; rather they profoundly complement each other” (132).
We at Trinitas often speak of educating the whole child. If our and’s become or’s, “art or science,” “faith or reason,” we are in danger of teaching only a half or encouraging a student to choose only a half, we are in danger of stunting not only a student’s cognitive abilities, but their humanity as well. This is the beauty of a liberal arts education, that education is not merely a transmission of facts and figures, but the formation of whole persons.
“The fragmentation of education into disciplines teaches us that the world is made of bits we can use and consume as we choose. This fragmentation is a denial of ultimate meaning… We do not need to be content with our fragmented worldview, our fractured mentality. It is not too late to seek the One who is ‘before all things’ and in whom ‘all things hold together’ (Col. 1:17),” writes Caldecott (17).
If you have been around Trinitas for a while you’ve heard us speak of the trivium—grammar, logic, rhetoric—an ordering of how students learn. Caldecott spends most of his time focused on the other four facets of a liberal arts education, the quadrivium—arithmetic, music, astronomy, and geometry—and how they work with and expound the foundation laid by the trivium. “The ‘purpose’ of the quadrivium was to prepare us to contemplate God in an ordered fashion, to take delight in the source of all truth, beauty, and goodness, while the purpose of the trivium was to prepare us for the quadrivium. The ‘purpose’ of the Liberal Arts is therefore to purify the soul, to discipline the attention so that it becomes capable of devotion to God; that is, prayer” (90).
Let us continue doing the work of kings, and let our curiosity lead us to pray without ceasing.
© SES
I was going to title this post “Screen-free Learning at Trinitas,” but our decision to be a screen-free* environment is about more than helping kids build their attention spans for academic achievement. It’s also, and more importantly, about helping them build their ability to pay attention to others, to engage the person next to them or across the table, to “be present” in community. We founded Trinitas in 2006, the year before the first iPhone was introduced. Already many schools were jumping on the screen-learning bandwagon. We resisted that temptation, not primarily for budget stewardship reasons but rather for the sake of the students (and their teachers and families). We suspected that benefits of screens in schools might turn out to be something like the emperor’s new clothes. What we had not anticipated was how screens at school and at home and in cars and in pockets and nearly perpetually in hands could be worse than the naked emperor.
