Among the many strange, unexpected, bizarre, and puzzling events of our time is the founding of an all-boys boarding school in the Blue Ridge Mountains. Not only is a single-sex school for boys a most countercultural development. To attempt such a thing a stone’s throw from left-progressivist Charlottesville is daring. But given the scholastic situation in America in A.D. 2025, who will tell these educational entrepreneurs that they appear at once reactionary, romanticist, and idealistic, and that what they are attempting is simply not done these days? Do not ask me to tell them, for what they are up to thrills me to the core.
The reader may not know that I am an educational consultant whose firm, Dudley & Prehn, specializes in helping families find the right boarding-school fit for a daughter or a son. We place all kinds of teenagers in many sorts of schools. School leaders all over the world therefore invite us to visit their schools. I try to see as many as I can over the course of twelve months. Some family clients I work with are looking for a school of robust Christian commitment. Unfortunately, I can count on one hand the number of schools in the United States that come up to the standard of these devout parents, who are looking for an institution committed to both a superlative academic program and authentic Christian faith practiced in community. True Church schools are almost as rare as ivory-billed woodpeckers. I assure the reader that a great many parents are disappointed to find so few top-caliber boarding schools dedicated to the historic principle of fides quarens intellectum. I pray for more bona fide Church schools, that I may offer parent clients more from which to choose.
Last summer, Mark Perkins, the chaplain and assistant headmaster of St. Dunstan’s Academy, emailed me out of the blue and asked me to come visit the school, which has suddenly appeared not too far from my home in the Shenandoah Valley of Virginia. Someone told Mark that I was going to be interested in such a novel development. Hence he contacted me and we set a date. Mark and I met for lunch in Waynesboro, headed over the Blue Ridge by way of the Afton Pass, then drove about 40 minutes into rural Nelson County. The school is arising on over 200 acres in the piedmont, not too far off the road to Lynchburg and in view of the Priest Peaks of the Blue Ridge.
The mission of St. Dunstan’s is front and center on its website. “St. Dunstan’s Academy seeks to raise up godly men, formed by life in the Church, a classical curriculum of study, and life-giving experiences with the True, the Good, and the Beautiful.” What is not mentioned here is taken for granted, I’m sure: the One, which is the Transcendental crucial to all the others. As the Psalmist put it (no. 133), Ecce quam bonum et quam jucundum habitare fratres in unum — “Behold, how good and pleasant it is for brethren to dwell together in unity!” Christianity is the religion of the Incarnation of the Word of God, and we Anglicans are taught that the Incarnation is a “continuous” phenomenon in this world (thus Hooker, Andrewes, Jeremy Taylor, et al.).
The people building St. Dunstan’s never forget that incorporation into Christ Jesus and the work of education are integral to each other, and so it must always be. This incorporation and learning occur in a Church school. Such a school is the Church in its scholastic mode. In the Body scholastic (if you will), which is the Body mystical in its educational aspect, there is profound confidence that high standards can be established for children and youth because God’s Grace is mediated in Christ to and by the members of the Body scholastic. This is one reason why the great Church schools were able to get remarkable results even with students born with somewhat average intellectual power. If it is true that “star differs from star in terms of its brightness” (St. Paul), and thus some students take longer than others to hit the Target, this is no reason at all to move the Target closer to some archers. The scholastic brotherhood will ensure that all archers hit the Target in some manner. The Target of such a school is Virtue in the fullest Christian sense of the word. God will give the necessary and sufficient Grace to each student, that he or she can attain the Target. C.S. Lewis expresses the idea well in Mere Christianity: “Aim for Heaven and you will get earth thrown in; aim for earth, and you will get neither.”
This philosophy of education was perhaps best practiced by William Augustus Muhlenberg (1796-1877) and his disciples. Muhlenberg was one of the greatest educators in American history of whom most Americans have heard nothing, mostly because Muhlenberg became famous for other feats after 1845, when he removed to New York City. Beginning in 1828, Muhlenberg and his disciples founded no less than 11 Church schools in six states. Several of these schools — e.g., Saint James in Maryland and St. Paul’s in New Hampshire — continue to pursue their historic and ambitious mission.
In the Muhlenberg-type Church school, it is taken for granted that the school is a family with Christ at its head. The school is not only a “little image of the Church” (Liddon) but, as said above, the life of the Body mystical is the life of the Body scholastic. Muhlenberg and his protégés found a way to apply Christianity to the perennial philosophy of education (a tradition of at least 2,500 years), which made the development of Virtue the first purpose of a school: If the mission is to educate the whole person to excellence, then the other “natural goods” (Aristotle) we expect from a good education will come to the students as a matter of course. One of Muhlenberg’s most ardent disciples was Henry Augustus Coit (1830-95) of St. Paul’s, who would often put the matter rather simply: “A high aim is better than a low one.” Coit was not talking about Ivy League admission but about Virtue, Maturity in Christ, and Heaven. Aim high and the rest takes care of itself.
Although Muhlenberg and his heirs created superlative academic schools, every one of these institutions was a thoroughgoing Church school as adumbrated above. Such schools are extremely rare today, and, oddly enough, perhaps especially rare in the world of the Episcopal Church. The Episcopal school in your neighborhood may be the best academic school around, and it might have an impressive college placement record and a good lacrosse team, but this school will typically be tepid about or typically espouse and practice a very lukewarm Christianity with little emphasis upon the central feature of the Muhlenberg-type school: the sine qua non emphasis upon Grace.
This is why the founders of St. Dunstan’s excite me. Their vision is the bona fide Church school. They begin freshly and freely. They avoid the disadvantage of attempting to reform an old school stuck in its ways. They know that their scholastic knapsack — a veritable cornucopia of ideas, models, and traditions — is full of tried-and-true practices that work and work especially well with young males. As with the Church schools of Muhlenberg and his protégés, St. Dunstan’s is the sort of school that can solve the great imbalance in North Atlantic education caused by rationalism. By “rationalism” I do not mean good reason or good science: I only mean the emphasis in a school upon the tuition of reason at the expense of other aspects of human nature. It is obvious nowadays that most schools — including many church-affiliated institutions, and even some “Christian classical schools” — take lightly the idea that boys and girls have souls and their destiny is well beyond this world.
I walked the 200-plus acres with headmaster Thomas Fickley and his right hand man, Mark Perkins. I listened to their plan. I heard their priorities and learning. I felt their palpable idealism and what drives it: God’s call to make (well-educated) disciples of Christ. I saw the sites where buildings will be erected. The boys and adult staff will be working the construction crew together. They are cutting their own wood for the buildings and milling it on site. I am talking about gigantic oak trees felled by the staff and made into huge square-hewed timbers for the superstructure of the coming chapel, schoolhouse, dormitories, and library.
Fickley has considerable experience, not only with adolescents, the outdoors, natural history, and tree-felling; he has good boarding-school background. Perkins, a priest, does not come from a boarding-school background but understands and is passionate about the mission, top to bottom. He brings relative youth and a superlative education to the task at hand. St. Dunstan’s is a young man’s undertaking. It is bold and ambitious. Reform and innovation are here to stay. Committed Christian parents all over the North Atlantic world are wondering if they have been gypped. They want a superlative academic program, skills development, and serious commitment to the formation of faith. They seldom get these goods in the same school. St. Dunstan’s is an Anglican way to be current with the market and the mood of unsatisfied parents. Whether it will fly; whether they can raise the funds requisite for a successful boarding school in today’s world; whether the customers will come if they build it: These questions can be answered in the near future.
The Rev. W.L. (Chip) Prehn, PhD, is president of The Living Church Foundation and is a principal of Dudley & Prehn Educational Consultants. He was a parish priest for 12 years before turning to school administration and consulting. Prehn writes poetry, fiction, nonfiction, and history.