Education is much more than the delivery of a curriculum, however outstanding such a curriculum may be. Authentic education involves a forming of the mind and heart so that students and teachers embrace the riches of a liberal arts curriculum, constantly striving to delve into these riches. A strong part of the school culture is a recognition that focused, serious study is an important professional obligation for students. Indeed, the sense of schoolwork as the beginning of one’s professional life and thus an important means of serving others informs the way study is viewed in the Heights community. Furthermore, the relationship between The Heights School and Opus Dei helps to foster the sense that doing even the most ordinary things, like studying, extraordinarily well for a noble motive enables us to offer our best to God and so draw close to Him.

 

Concentrated study, especially in our fast-paced, entertainment-driven culture, requires practice in building up one’s ability to focus, memorize, analyze and contemplate with a sense of wonder. Students need to foster the strenuous silence of living at a slower, more contemplative pace – to be comfortable with the pace of a page turning. Living an intellectual life today requires a certain amount of asceticism. Students need to limit time spent in front of television or computer screens, with their fast-paced barrage of images, and spend time every day in real study in an environment free from distractions. Fortitude and temperance lead to a well-ordered soul, one that is capable of living a studious life. But this strength of mind must also be accompanied by real wisdom of the heart – the appropriate fostering of the imagination and intuition so that the heart is attuned with the attractiveness of the goodness of reality. Intellectual virtue is perfected when it leads to true contemplation.