At the start, God entrusted all living things to man's care, to name and rule. We are by nature ordered to living things– to know, care for, and use them to good ends– and so part of our happiness in this life lies in doing these things.
This is associated with Man's nature as father, which is also to name and know, and to care for his wife and children.
For both these reasons, young men derive great benefit from learning to cultivate and care for living things. Agricultural work provides opportunities to learn discipline from hard, at times unpleasant work, and from the inflexible needs of living things which require constant tending. Agriculture entails attention to the particular characteristics and qualities of living things, and involves a man in a process that follows its own imperatives and is in many ways outside of his control. This cultivates virtues that are very different from those encouraged by an engineered world, where men have the illusion of mastery by design, and learn to disregard the natures of things, and in the end even of themselves.
Most of all, fatherhood demands virtues of discipline, diligence, care, and protection which can be developed singularly through agricultural work. The raising of children has far more lessons to learn from the care of crops and animals than it does from the production of machinery or the managed delivery of goods and services.
In the context of our program, doing agricultural work for at least a short time on a more or less daily basis will correspond both to the needs of the work– plants and animals need to be tended– and benefit of the students– boys need daily physical exertion, and virtues like diligence and conscientiousness need regular exercise.
Practically, this will involve 20-30 min per day of work on weekdays, the first year by 12 or so boys. For some larger projects, a day may be set aside, but the program will need to select activities which can be managed in the confines of the daily time allowance. This arrangement will entail proximity between the academic and agricultural activities, a "farm school" arrangement of some sort.
Provision will need to be made for maintaining the agricultural activities on weekends, holidays, and during summer recess. Livestock which can be kept during the school year may be more desirable for this reason. The slaughter and butchery of pigs and possibly cattle will also create unique learning opportunities for young men.
A financial return on these activities is not expected, although it ought to be self-sufficient. It may be possible to provide regular midday meals for students and faculty, and perhaps also provision feasts on certain holidays and solemnities.
Opmerkingen