The Covenant Scholars Program

Recently I was reminiscing with a good friend about the blissful ignorance of youth. At the age of 16 my friend had been sure that he knew pretty much everything there was to know. It wasn’t that he counted himself excessively smart; he knew there were experts and intellectuals and that he was neither. But what he was missing was something the Greeks called aporia. In Plato’s dialogues, Socrates brings the statesmen and academics of Athens to an almost magical place of confusion – a place where everything they thought they knew about virtue or justice seemed to vanish into thin air. This was the moment of aporia – a realization that what they thought they knew was only hearsay, assumption, or opinion. How each character responded to the realization determined whether or not he kept his ignorance or traded it for knowledge.”

 
CCA has an exciting Covenant Scholars Program. Students meet with mentors, read books, and write journal entries. This program provides these students with essentially the sort of aporia that youth desperately requires – something to help rid students of their natural ignorance before they become attached to it. The books they read challenge their assumptions, the ideas they study open their eyes to new perspectives, and the teachers, parents and mentors are there to urge them on and to guide them in the process. Hopefully, all of our Covenant Scholars will, at the age of 16, know that they don’t know any small part of what there is to know or of what they will know.
 
From Athens to Peabody: A Classical Idea
 
The Covenant Scholars Program is patterned after the “complete education” of ancient Greece, which sought to train the whole person – mind, body, and spirit – toward the goal of intellectual and moral excellence. Aristotle first used the term “liberal studies” to refer to this manner of education across a broad number of disciplines. The foundational teaching of the elementary, or grammar, school prepares students for liberal studies, and liberal studies prepare students for lives of wisdom. This strong commitment to the liberal arts is captured in Covenant ’s mission to build students ’ academic, spiritual, and social foundations for lives marked by leadership and service in today’s global community.
 
What is the CCA Covenant Scholars Program?
 
The program is a six-year liberal arts, cross-disciplinary study of 100 books and 30 ideas. Students begin reading and studying in seventh grade, and are guided each year by a mentor until they complete the readings and the study. In their senior year, Covenant Scholars prepare a thesis in which they integrate the readings and ideas. This senior thesis is defended before a panel of faculty members from CCA and other select schools.
 
How Does the Program Work?
 
The mentor, the books and the journal: Each year that a student participates, he or she is assigned a mentor with whom the student will meet for regular guidance, encouragement, and accountability. Students will be given a Scholars journal in which they will keep track of their readings by making regular journal entries according to a specific format and design. Entries are required for each book. The student’s mentor reviews the journal entries to confirm progress and evaluate their quality. Mentors also guide students in scheduling their reading selections for the year.
 
The ideas and the essays: The Covenant Scholars Program provides students with guides for the study of the 30 great ideas. In order to complete this part of the program, students work through the guide booklets, completing about five per year. The booklets include short excerpts from books on the CCA Covenant Scholars Program 100 list, reflective questions to inspire student thought, and places for students to include material from their regular class work that applies to the idea they are studying. In addition to completing the guide booklets students must write one five-paragraph essay each year in response to their studies, guided by their mentor.
 
The oral exam: When students have completed all 100 books and all 30 ideas studies– typically in the fall of their senior year– they finish the program with an oral defense of their thesis paper that demonstrates their mastery of the material.
 
What are the Benefits of Participating?
 
The Covenant Scholars Program and college preparation: The benefits of this program for students preparing to enter college are difficult to overestimate. In the long term, acquiring such a broad-based, cross-disciplinary, educational foundation is its own reward. The Covenant Scholars will gain intellectual capital that will enrich their minds and hearts and endow them with a treasury of knowledge to draw upon throughout a lifetime of learning. In the more immediate term, Covenant Scholars will have a significant advantage in taking their SAT and SAT2 exams and in writing their college applications. They will also be uniquely prepared for their studies in college, having read more books, studied more ideas, and developed their writing and speaking skills at an exemplary level.
 
Additional Benefits of the Program
 
Enhanced instruction in writing: In addition to regular meetings with assigned mentors, the Covenant Scholars will meet with a designated writing instructor. The goal of these meetings is to ensure the Covenant Scholars’ ability to write exemplary, five-paragraph essays and to express themselves clearly, succinctly, and according to their own voice and style.
 
An exclusive opportunity: Students who participate in the program each eligible year through their junior year will have the opportunity to register for a college-level course designed collaboratively by members of the faculty at CCA and Gordon College. Through this exclusive experience, Covenant Scholars will receive college credit, add value and distinction to their high school experience, and be further prepared to excel in college.