The Running Start program through the public school system offers pragmatic benefits: future savings on college tuition, foregone costs of the final years of high school tuition, and course credits that offer a head start on the college journey. It offers an enticing option to commence a career path. But parents and students are wise to ask some questions: What is gained? What is sacrificed? And perhaps most importantly, what is the purpose of education?
In a two-part series, we will examine some of the realities of Running Start, weighing the benefits of staying the course and completing grade 12 at Providence. Below are five major areas of consideration for parents and students.
1. Academic Completion
The Providence curriculum coheres such that courses progress and culminate in the upper grades. While every grade level offers foundational learning, the upper grades solidify and cement key learning in philosophy, history, science, literature, rhetoric, and theology. Senior year offers wonderful preparation for the academic rigors of college. The academic class our graduates most cite for their college success is senior rhetoric, with this common refrain: “After senior thesis, nothing in college phases me.” Foregoing these last few years of key study is analogous to painting three of your four living room walls: the process is truncated, incomplete, unfulfilling – though perhaps not so visibly obvious in one’s education as a room in the home.
2. Spiritual Equipping
The spiritual training of students in junior and senior year offers essential discipling and mentoring that equips students to live Christianly beyond high school. And we should consider more than Bible class. All courses, including European and U.S. history and literature, science, and rhetoric offer significant preparation in honing a student’s worldview. Every year we ask graduates, “Which class was most instrumental in your worldview and spiritual development?” The vast majority cite senior Apologetics as the most essential class in helping equip them for life after high school. The Good Soil report published by ACCS highlights seven specific life outcomes reaped in the lives of ACCS alumni through the sowing of classical, Christian education.
3. Preparation for College (but not “College Prep”)
A Providence education is distinctly designed to prepare young men and women for lives of virtue. Given that over 90% of our graduates will enter college, we also offer a College Advising program to assist in this important transition. We don’t take lightly our goals to ensure students are well prepared for this next step. The financial advantages of Running Start can be mitigated by current Providence offerings of several AP and dual-credit courses which can translate into 15-24 college credits depending on student scores and what a particular university awards. We are working to provide the opportunity for additional credits next fall. Some graduates take CLEP tests prior to college entrance to forego certain course requirements. Students are also well prepared for the PSAT, and SAT and CLT entrance requirements. While college preparation is not our primary goal, graduates are thoroughly equipped for college success.
4. The Senior Experience
Have you ever tried to explain a special vacation to a person who has never visited the location you are describing? Such is the year for our seniors. We seek to make it special through a host of privileges and special activities, beginning with a life-changing trip: the Grand Tour to Greece, Italy, and England. Within the two weeks of spiritual and social bonding, students experience the birth of Western Civilization in history, art, music, architecture, and theology. Senior year also includes unforgettable traditions such as senior sunrise, house leadership, retreat privileges, senior prank, and our version of the senior trip: the overnight senior protocol event in Idaho.
5. The Telos of Education
What is the telos (i.e. purpose) of education? Modern, progressive education suggests an anemic life cycle:
a) Get an education to prepare for college
b) Attend college to get a good job
c) Get a job to make money
d) Make money so I can repeat the process with my own children
This is a paltry approach to a Christ-centered, kingdom-building, culture-changing education. The best K-12 education inculcates spiritual, academic, and life lessons that form young men and women prepared with “soundness of judgment, wisdom of speech, and integrity of conduct.” As author James K.A. Smith writes, “What if education was primarily concerned with shaping our hopes and passions – our visions of the ‘good life’ – and not merely about the dissemination of data and information as input to our thinking? What if the primary work of education was the transforming of our imagination rather than the saturation of our intellect?” What if, indeed.
The import of the concluding years of a classical, Christian education cannot be overestimated. In December, we’ll hear personal testimony from a Providence alumnus who was initially captivated by the allure of Running Start and the subsequent result.
