Everyone says that education is the key to the future, the solution to our problems, the only way to form the nation’s destiny.  But does anyone have a clue what education is really about? For government bureaucrats, it’s often a buzzword that means: spend a lot of money on professionals who have a vested interest, even though statistics show that students are getting stupider and stupider all the time.

Education, from the Latin ex-ducere, means “to lead out”—so the logical question is, lead out from what?  From ignorance, error, and sin, into knowledge, truth, and holiness.  It is a reflection of the journey of Israel, led from slavery in Egypt to freedom in Canaan.  True education presupposes the Christian revelation of man’s fallen plight and of the wisdom from above that can heal him and elevate him.

Admittedly, there is no merely human teacher who is altogether free from ignorance, error, and sin.  But as we know, some sins are qualitatively worse than others; some errors are more massive and pernicious than others; and some kinds of ignorance are far more terrible than others.  Teachers do not have to be already perfect to be effective guides to the Eternal and Incarnate Wisdom that stands beyond all of us.  As long as they are tethered to the truth that sets us free, as long as they hint at the beauty of holiness, as long as they exemplify a hunger and thirst for reality, their students will be blessed indeed.  Their students will catch a glimpse of what it means to be fully alive in Christ.

The point of liberal education is not to form perfect beings on the model of already perfect beings but to initiate a lifetime of apprenticeship to the one true Master, Jesus Christ, freeing the mind from the debris of a collapsing late imperialistic urban culture and freeing the heart from the chafing shackles of confined and self-centered desire.  Students who receive such an education are granted the opportunity to find a spiritual freedom that is more precious than all the riches of this world.  And when they go out into the world after graduation, they will prove over time to be the leaven that lifts the loaves, the salt that flavors the food.

Sometimes people wonder how much good can come out of a tiny school in the remote backwaters of Wyoming.  It is not much different from the question posed by Nathanael: “Can anything good come out of Nazareth?” (Jn 1:46).  Notice that Philip, in responding, doesn’t start an argument; he makes an invitation, which is a bit of a challenge: “Come and see.”

Dr. Peter Kwasniewski is Professor of Theology and Philosophy at Wyoming Catholic College, as well as Instructor in Music History and Theory.

My freshman year at Wyoming Catholic was full of such newness. I mean, I’d never seen a mountain before, I’d never been to a rodeo before, and I had never had a conversation over my breakfast cereal in Latin- what novelty! As the summer began, I worried that the wonder I had discovered within myself might fade out against the ordinary backdrop of home. I had nothing to fear, though, because I’ve spent most of the summer on my [hands and] knees. I’ve come to better understand the thrill of my freshman year by spending the summer taking care of little children.

Children recognize a beauty that many of us miss. One three-year-old, resting quietly in my lap, was shaken out of her exhaustion by a flock of ordinary blackbirds that flew over us. She sat erect, bringing her wide-eyed face close to mine, and with all the solemnity of a great secret, she cried, “Birds fly!” The magnificence of a flying bird (a flying bird!) has perhaps never truly hit me as it did at that instant. Suddenly the exhilaration of being a small student immersed in a vast beautiful world of Truth consumed me again.

Little children giggle over and over at some repeated antic. Medium-sized ones could search in pursuit of a hidden ball for the whole afternoon. Their excitement doesn’t seem too far a cry from our second-semester Humanities Xenophon, where Socrates thrills over the fact that we have eyelids that open and close at our every whim, or that even though our ears drink in so many sounds, they are never clogged up by them. The hidden ball is always the same, but it seems to be re-discovered each time with a fresh delight.

My first year at WCC was akin to re-discovering that rubber ball. It was something like realizing that those things soaring above my head are blackbirds. And they’re flying!

Maybe it’s a little wild that I spent most of my first college summer playing peek-a-boo, catching caterpillars, and serving gourmet PB+J. But altogether, I think it was perfect.

Margie N., a member of the Class of 2013, has traveled to Wyoming Catholic College from Boca Raton, FL.

Few Catholics today would deny that the world of arts and entertainment is profoundly hostile to our faith.  Anti-Catholic images abound.  Not every priest or bishop in the Middle Ages was corrupt, but every Hollywood prelate seems to be.  Children formed by such portrayals become wary of Catholicism—not even open-minded about the faith, but actively hostile to it.

The secular community has raised its children with the ostensible aim of enabling them to choose their own religion.  In reality, though, images from the popular media predispose these children to atheism, agnosticism, and nihilism through a lifetime of anti-Catholic art.

What they need is a new kind of art—the kind that will predispose them to view the Church positively, to make it their viable answer.

In a way, works of art are sacramentals, what the Catechism defines as “sacred signs which bear a resemblance to the sacraments.  . . . By them men are disposed to receive the chief effects of the sacraments” (1667).  A sacramental, such as a rosary, scapular, or St. Benedict medal, will not of itself bring a person to grace, but will make that person desire grace.

Similarly, art can make people desire the Church, not by presenting Catholic dogma in a crude or didactic manner, but by involving audiences in an appealing world that makes Catholic assumptions.  We all know that the Church is right; art makes her attractive too.

A fellow Catholic novelist, Mark Sebanc, calls this Stealth Catholicism.  Anyone who has seen the recent movie The Book of Eli knows what Stealth Christianity looks like—a work of art that appeals to a wide audience but which slips Christian assumptions in covertly.  In fact, Stealth Catholicism will obey all the rules of the genre it infiltrates.  A Stealth Catholic post-apocalyptic movie like The Book of Eli will be crude and violent in many ways.  What audiences won’t expect is the subtle affirmation of the Catholic worldview that leads them, almost unconsciously, to the Church.

Millions of people in the secular environment are sick of it, and ready for the Church.  It’s the job of the Catholic artist to introduce them to Her.

Mark Adderley is Associate Professor of Humanities and the Trivium at Wyoming Catholic College.  The first two novels in his Matter of Britain series, The Hawk and the Wolf and The Hawk and the Cup, are available from Amazon.

Part of the charm and appeal of WCC is our rural setting: a quaint downtown, friendly townspeople, and a quiet atmosphere set against the backdrop of the majestic Wind River Mountain range. But our simple setting doesn’t mean a sleepy economy. Rather, Lander and Fremont County are seeing plenty of recent growth in these uncertain economic times.

Recent statewide revenue increases are helping move WY forward. Local officials are confident that a surge of new business openings, expansions and tourism are keeping Lander a vibrant place to live, work, and play. A local group of businessmen meet every Wednesday morning to discuss how things are going and what can be done to keep Lander economically positive. The group played a key role in attracting WCC to Lander. 

Annually, the College pumps $3.5M into the local economy: home and car sales, salaries, supplies and services, not to mention the disposable income that 120 students spend locally. While the WCC will likely not turn Lander in Laramie (home of the University of Wyoming) overnight – or ever – WCC is proud to be a part of the economic and social fabric that makes Lander one of the top best small towns in America.

Mark Randall is the Vice President for Institutional Advancement at Wyoming Catholic College.

Once every month, all the teachers at Wyoming Catholic College meet to discuss a great text.  Over this coming year, we will read together John Henry Cardinal Newman’s classic work on education, The Idea of a University.

In this book, Newman says that liberal education is for “culture of the intellect.”  At first, this sounds contrary to WCC’s motto, “educating the whole person.”  Does Newman disagree with WCC?

As Newman makes clear, “culture of the intellect” actually requires cultivating the whole person.  No one who is imprudent, wicked, cowardly, or greedy can see reality clearly, and any school worth its salt will instill prudence, justice, fortitude, and temperance.  As Newman says, liberal education imparts “all the qualities of a gentleman.”

Today many have trouble understanding what Newman means by “culture of the intellect,” because we think of “intellect” as a cold, calculating power.  This comes from modern philosophy, especially from Immanuel Kant, and it is not what Newman had in mind.

In reality, there is nothing more personal than the intellect.  The intellect can calculate, of course, but at root it is a power of understanding.  What is more lonely than thinking that “No one understands me”?  What is more comforting than being understood? To know that someone’s power of understanding now “stands under” me is deeply personal.  The gospel teaches that God knows each of us intimately and promises that in heaven we will know him intimately, too.

Scripture  often speaks of heaven as knowing God.  Jesus says, “This is eternal life:  to know you, the one true God, and Jesus Christ whom you have sent” (John 17:6).  The apostle John says that “we shall be like him, for we shall see him as he is” (1John 3:2).  The apostle Paul says, “We see now through a glass in a dark manner; but then face to face. Now I know in part; but then I shall know even as I am known” (1Cor 13:12).  Revelation says the saints “shall see his face” (22:4).

In this life we cannot see God directly with our minds, but we have his revelation, and we can study the world he has made.  The “culture of the intellect” is a little part of heaven in this life.

Dr. Jeremy Holmes is an Assistant Professor of Theology and the Academic Dean Designee at Wyoming Catholic College.

A balanced combination of informative and instructive lecture, Socratic and dialectic questioning, and rigorous argumentative dialogue is, all things considered, the best method for developing adequate self-knowledge and clear thinking about creation and the Creator in students. In lecture, the teacher gives to the students a coherent body of justified knowledge from which they can learn basic truths and to which they can address questions and comments. Socratic questioning best enables the student to make any knowledge he hears in lecture his own, to transcend uninformed, even though correct, opinion and arrive at justified knowledge.

Moreover, by employing Socratic questioning, the teacher is best enabled to discern exactly where the student is, as it were, in the subject matter to lead him to a higher level. This may be simply a movement from confusion to comprehension about the literal meaning of an actual text. At the next level, he moves from a state of unsubstantiated opinion to justified knowledge about the idea the text is about. At a higher level, the movement would be from unclear or superficial knowledge to a clear and profound understanding of a particular truth. At the highest level, it would be the transition from a profound understanding of a particular truth to a comprehensive vision of the whole Truth, the “big picture” to which our human ideas can only inadequately point and contact, even if they can point quite accurately and contact quite intimately. This perfect vision awaits us only in Heaven, but we can and must try for it now!

The overall goal, the telos, of teaching is to help the student to conform his mind to reality, adaequatio intellectus ad rem, both in the natural and supernatural realms. Through the rigorous absorption, analysis, and discussion of the problems and ideas constituting the ancient and medieval philosophia perennis, as well as the challenging dialectic exercise of confronting those modern thinkers who opposed it and articulated formidable alternatives, the imagination and intellect of the students are purified and illuminated, converted and expanded, so that they begin to think, feel, and see to some extent as the greats did.

The primary fruit of such study is not only knowledge but also, and ultimately, love. The students increase their love for God and His world through their rational contemplation of His truth in the book of nature and the Book of revelation. Socratic questioning and argumentative dialogue constitute an indispensable method for the discovery of truth and a powerful means to intellectual and spiritual growth in Christ. By being introduced to the finest thinkers who ever lived, they begin a loving relationship with Wisdom that will never end. Philosophy is “preparation for death” as Socrates once said, and through contemplation in this life of the Word, as found both implicitly and explicitly in the words of the great philosophers, they will, God willing, be more prepared to gaze upon Him face to face in the life to come.

Dr. Thaddeus J. Kozinski is Assistant Professor of Humanities and Trivium at Wyoming Catholic College. His book, The Political Problem of Religious Pluralism, And Why Philosophers Can't Solve It, is now available from Lexington Press.

The two most important qualities that a teacher can help develop in a student are personal-knowledge and clear thinking about reality, culminating in the intimate knowledge of God, the transcendent ground of the person, reality, and knowledge. To obtain personal-knowledge, the student must grasp the historical, social, cultural, intellectual, and spiritual influences that have shaped his individuality and continue to provide the context in and resources from which he may discover and live out his unique personal identity and vocation. In short, for the student truly to know himself, he must be introduced to the authors, texts, artifacts, and practices of the Western, Catholic, theological, philosophical, literary, liturgical, social, cultural, and political tradition of which he is a living part and member, and in which he will hopefully become a conscious, active, and leading participant.

Clear thinking about reality and the divine ground of reality is difficult if not impossible for the student to obtain without the mentoring of dedicated and proficient teachers, and the active participation in a vibrant community of learning grounded in and oriented to Truth, to God. It is especially difficult in the contemporary secularist and anti-contemplative milieu, where sound bytes, superficiality, and sentimentality are what passes for rational discourse, and where complacency and anomie suffuse the air our souls breathe. What is worse, like the prisoners in Plato’s cave, the denizens of the modern, virtual caves do not know anything different, because they lack the tools of discovering their plight, tools that they do not know they lack, or even exist. Thus, to be rescued from their ignorance, and especially the ignorance of their ignorance, students must be deeply immersed in the texts, deeds, artifacts, and practices of the tradition from which they have become existentially alienated.

Above all, today’s students need teachers who personally embody this tradition, who have made it their own in that unique, irreplaceable fusing of personal, concrete experience and universal, supernal truth that alone renders the fruitful transmission of the living Logos possible. In short, since liberal-arts education is a craft, as Alasdair MacIntyre has rightly termed it, students need proficient masters to which they can apprentice themselves.

In Part II, we shall discuss the pedagogical aspects of the proper telos of teaching.

Dr. Thaddeus J. Kozinski is Assistant Professor of Humanities and Trivium at Wyoming Catholic College. His book, The Political Problem of Religious Pluralism, And Why Philosophers Can't Solve It, is now available from Lexington Press.

Once in a while, an opportunity for greatness comes along and hits you upside the head like the cold, wet flakes of a snowy day. In late May. In Lander. And to top it all off, you only brought flip flops for your four little girls to wear.

Yes, greatness came falling from the sky as snowy white flakes covered our “green poacher" Suburban -- (the term Landerites use for Colorodians driving through on their way to Yellowstone) -- that had the remnants of peanut butter and jelly sandwiches on the once-clean carpets. Did I mention it was May 18th?

Still, as I sat listening to Fr. Cook and Mark Randall in my initial interview, I knew that God had placed before my family and I the opportunity to be invited into the Wyoming Catholic College community, and to experience first-hand the extraordinary way God is at work in this little town in Wyoming!

And so, after much prayer and discernment, I became the “New Guy” -- a title which I suspect will stick for some time.

Life in Lander is very different. Between the fourth of July extravaganza, the June "100 Year Flood" that rallied the entire town together, and the waves I get from passersby on a daily basis, this place truly feels like a community.

Yet the students here aren’t different, they are extra-ordinary. They are led by some of the finest minds in education today, and are fed daily by the King of Kings. Truly, this is the vision and challenge for us all as Christians: to form loving, joy filled communities that bring life to the dying world around us.

The secret is, I think I have found it, here in this tiny town, in a state/(practically a country) I never even considered as a final destination. To paraphrase C.S. Lewis, speaking through the character Reepicheep to another group of people who found themselves on a mountainous and glorious landscape, join me as I journey "further up, and further in!"

Charlie Mercer is the Associate Director of the Annual Fund at Wyoming Catholic College.

For many of our freshmen, today marks the beginning of a new life -- a sort of “baptism” into their future here at Wyoming Catholic College.

Yesterday, they departed for their three-week excursion into the wilderness of the Wind River Range, the mountains that tower behind the city of Lander. This time affords them the opportunity to labor, pray, and meet God on His own turf. The world itself was formed in the chaos of the wilderness, and for many WCC students, they too will be formed in this environment.

As they arrived last weekend, they were greeted by the welcoming faces of those who would be both their leaders and teachers over the next four years. These included President Fr. Robert Cook, who sought to lay a solid foundation for their education during his homily at the first student Mass of the year:

Today you begin your schooling at Wyoming Catholic College.  On our part we will make every effort to be the Catholic school that Pope Benedict XVI has said we should be, a school of freedom, a school of love, a place to encounter the Living Christ. On your part, we ask that you give of yourselves without stint, without holding back.  We ask that you be open and ready to learn ever more fully what it means to be free and how you are being formed by this encounter with the Living Christ, to be people of love.

Father encouraged the students to become disciplined in their studies, and in their walk with Christ, speaking to them of freedom, and helping them to see that true freedom is not doing what you want; that is license. True freedom is becoming the person God made you to be. He then invited them and challenged them to take the next few weeks in the wilderness to hear their call to greatness and to leadership:

So as your school year begins, let us remember that it began at Mass.  That it began with Christ feeding us, giving us the strength, nay, more than that, giving us the desire to be more and more like him, renewed in our souls, our bodies, and our minds.  The greatest act of love is to teach and thus enable another to love.  We want to do that at this college but in that we are only trying to mirror Christ.  Think of it this way, when the priest, letting Christ speak through him, says this bread is my Body to be broken, this wine is my Blood to be shed, the priest ends the consecration with the words, do this in memory of me.  What does the word "this" stand for?  Obviously doing this consecration, this Eucharist  over and over, but the word "this" also stands for: you do this, you let your life be given away, your blood, sweat and tears be expended for others.  I welcome you to the challenging of doing “this” and I know that to do "this" is what matters to God, is his grace and is his salvation being offered to all of us.

Please pray for our freshman during the coming weeks, both for their continued safety, and that they will take this opportunity in the wilderness to find their true selves.

Charlie Mercer is the Associate Director of the Annual Fund at Wyoming Catholic College.

Wyoming Catholic College has a very unusual rule on our campus here in Lander: “No Cell Phones.”

It doesn’t stop there, either. Our students are also asked to forgo such technological luxuries as internet and television in their dorms rooms.  After reading this, one might assume that we have a constant riot on our hands or that we have no students. In fact, it’s quite the opposite.  After a (surprisingly brief) period of adjustment, our students grow to love the policy, and lament those times when they leave the College, finding themselves once again sucked into a culture of connectedness. 

In William Powers new book, “Hamlet’s Blackberry: A Practical Guide for Building a Good Life in the Digital Age,” Powers explores how one can find the good life amongst the constant busyness and connectedness.  His solution is to disconnect.  Every weekend his family takes an “Internet Sabbath.”  Powers explains, “We turn off the household modem, and we don't have smart phones, so therefore we can't get [in] our inboxes the whole weekend. We can't do Web surfing. We can still call, we can still text — but we're not really texting addicts.  We really enter this other zone, and it's wonderful.”

Unfortunately for most of us, an “Internet Sabbath” can only really last for a few days before we need to reconnect.  However, our students are privileged to take an “Internet Sabbath” for 4 years, which allows them to have real, meaningful communications with one another and to devote intense study to the greatest written works of all time -- all without being constantly distracted by the seemingly endless array of text messages, emails, or blog posts. 

However, Powers (and WCC) are not trying to dismiss all technology; ours is not a Luddite existence. As Powers says, "it’s easy to blame all this on the tools. Too easy. These tools are fantastically useful and enrich our lives in countless ways. Like all new technologies, they have flaws, but at bottom they can’t make us busy until we make them busy first. We’re the prime movers here. We’re always connected because we’re always connecting."

Here at WCC, we're all about connecting. But our students are connecting with the greatest ideas and thinkers the world has ever known. And they can't use their cell phones or Blackberry to do that.

As the emergency contact for the college, my cell phone is glued to my hip at all times, and I have noticed how easy it is to become a slave to it.  However, I will soon be departing on my own “Internet Sabbath,” joining our incoming freshman class for 3 weeks in the Wind River Mountains on their NOLS Expedition.  I will be away from cell phones, internet, and television, and I know that the true peace and quiet of the mountains will be the perfect opportunity for me to focus on human relationships and on my relationship with Our Lord.

Jonathan Tonkowich is the Dean of Student Life at Wyoming Catholic College.