by Mr. Chris Buckles
“Know this, my beloved brothers: let every person be quick to hear, slow to speak, slow to anger…For we all stumble in many ways. And if anyone does not stumble in what he says, he is a perfect man, able also to bridle his whole body. If we put bits into the mouths of horses so that they obey us, we guide their whole bodies as well. Look at the ships also: though they are so large and are driven by strong winds, they are guided by a very small rudder wherever the will of the pilot directs. So also the tongue is a small member, yet it boasts of great things…”
James 1:19 & 3:1-5
In our present age, the temptation to let the tongue run wild is stronger than ever before. Be it in written or spoken form, the human tongue has always been a challenge to keep self-controlled, and new platforms, such as Twitter, are doing more to encourage rash speech and ambiguous expression than to aid in using one’s voice carefully and responsibly. As social media interactions increase, comfort with harsh and hasty speech grows beyond what we would allow in face to face situations. Tone is going unrestrained and strong assertions are being made when we do not have adequate information to make such judgements. As we consider some of these challenges, which are clearly not altogether new to our age, I hope to share some encouragement regarding some of our practices at Providence in preparing students to maintain well-bridled tongues.
Our mission here at Providence is that of equipping students for lives of wisdom, virtue, and eloquence to God’s glory, but how do we do this? Much of the student’s development in these areas has to do with the ordering of loves and the building of habits. Wisdom, virtue, and eloquence are not things that have to do with what you know, but what you love and how you live. Indeed, we all fall short of these high aspirations, and our students will be no different in that imperfection, but by the Lord’s mercy, we are optimistic that due to their educational experience our students will have softer hearts and sharper minds than they otherwise would.
One of the particular ways I have been privileged to see some of this transformation in students is in the logic class I have taught over the past several years. We study many aspects of language and thought in that class, including defining terms well, making sound inferences, and avoiding common fallacies. One of the features I have found particular joy in leading the students is in building the habit of exercising good judgement. In the logical sense, we don’t mean to equate judgement with condemnation, as it can be denoted in other contexts, but we simply mean the human capacity to discern between true and false.
As we study statements and the means by which to judge whether a statement is true or false, a couple of the primary habits we seek to form are those of suspending judgement when we don’t have enough information and boldly standing upon the truth when the proof is sufficient. These may seem like simple habits, but they are ones we can easily drift from, especially with the temptations present in the current age. What is really needed to form these principles within the student is to order our loves in such a way that grows them to love the truth more than winning an argument, as well as to form the habit of being quick to listen and slow to speak.
The main ways in which we order these loves and build these habits in class is in daily exercises. These exercises are sometimes conversational and other times on a worksheet, but they all challenge students to observe, think, and then respond with a well-formed answer; I warn students early on that the exercises are designed to trip up those who are in a hurry. Unfortunately, our instincts can lead us to perform these three actions in the opposite order: respond with your gut reaction, think about how you can justify it, and observe what holes can be poked in the retort of the opposing arguer. Instead of building onto these instincts, I encourage students to first see the act of reasoning as one that is a personal pursuit of truth, not necessarily needing to involve disagreement or debate with another. The first important habit in reasoning is to take in the information so you may understand it and make sense of it for yourself. Once it has been taken in and considered, there are then a number of responses that can be formed, one of which may be to admit that I still don’t have enough knowledge of the matter to say anything about it.
As we work through these exercises, one of the main things I hope to challenge students with is the dialectical art of justifying any answer they give. The more I do this, the less careless they become in responding to me and to others. When they begin anticipating that they will be called to account for their words, they begin to slow down. It is a joy to see how transformative these exercises in understanding terms, determining truth, and making inferences are to their thought processes and interactions. They cultivate the wisdom to speak only on what they know, the virtue of prizing the truth above merely winning an argument, and practicing an eloquence that is constructive in conversation, rather than destructive.
In the end, I think it is important to recognize that clearer thought and more careful language will not remove all of our problems, but it is certain that it will reveal some of the problems we face are merely in the imagination, and it will give us the cooperation we need to solve those problems that actually exist. We can never take lightly the power of delicate reason and deliberate speech.
Chris Buckles started serving at Providence in August 2013 as an upper school teacher and is now in his second year serving as headmaster, still teaching upper school logic. He and his wife, Lindsey, reside in Edwardsville, IL and worship at Center Grove Presbyterian Church. They are parents to Scott, Emilia, and their new baby, Peter.
