Each afternoon I join the Regents juniors and seniors in Omnibus class and read great literature with them. It would be hard work if it weren’t so much fun.

The last few weeks we have been reading Walden by Henry David Thoreau. One of the most read and well-loved books in the American canon, Walden is Thoreau’s meditations on his two-year experiment in living alone at Walden Pond near Concord, Massachusetts, where he endeavored to find a simpler life so that he might better know himself and his environment. The book reads sometimes like a diary, sometimes like a naturalist’s journal, sometimes like a collection of essays, and sometimes like a prophet’s screed. Some of Thoreau’s most trenchant comments concern the reading of books. The classically trained Thoreau was a devoted bibliophile who kept a copy of Homer’s Iliad open on his table in his cabin at Walden Pond.

In his chapter titled “Reading,” he makes many comments worth considering:

• “For what are the classics but the noblest recorded thoughts of man?”
• “A written word is the choicest of relics. It is something at once more intimate with us and more universal than any other work of art.”
• “Books are the treasured wealth of the world and the fit inheritance of generations and nations.”
• “[Books'] authors are a natural and irresistible aristocracy in every society, and, more than kings or emperors, exert an influence on mankind.”
• “Most men have learned to read to serve a paltry convenience, as they have learned to cipher in order to keep accounts and not be cheated in trade; but of reading as a noble intellectual exercise they know little or nothing; yet this only is reading, in a high sense, not that which lulls us as a luxury and suffers the nobler faculties to sleep the while, but what we have to stand on tip-toe to read and devote our most alert and wakeful hours to.”
• “We are underbred and low-lived and illiterate; and in this respect I confess I do not make any very broad distinction between the illiterateness of my townsman who cannot read at all and the illiterateness of him who has learned to read only what is for children and feeble intellects.”
• “How many a man has dated a new era in his life from the reading of a book!”

Thoreau states it far more eloquently than I can: it is through reading great books, the books “we have to stand on tip-toe to read,” that we come into contact with the great and transforming truths that have shaped our culture for generations. This is the guiding principle behind the Omnibus curriculum.

When students behold what is true and good and beautiful in the printed word, they find their souls being nourished and their minds being challenged. They find wisdom and eloquence being formed in them. They often find “a new era in their lives” being birthed.

The hard truth is that we are naturally shallow, lazy, and self-centered. Only God’s grace can shake us from our superficiality, lethargy, and egotism. One way God does so is through teachers who expose our minds to the beauty and power of the printed word, especially in the books of the Great Tradition, and the ideas they contain.

At Regents Academy we teach great literature, “the noblest recorded thoughts of man.” We do so unashamedly, and we aspire to do so with excellence. We hope to do nothing less than change students lives. With God’s help and with inspiration from thinkers like Thoreau, we will do so for years to come.

Our culture seems to have a love-hate relationship with reading. Book-selling is big business, but the entertainment industry is bigger. The Bureau of Labor Statistics reports that American adults watch 2.8 hours of TV per day, while the Kaiser Family Foundation documents an average of only 25 minutes spent reading daily. The BLS also reports that in 2009 “individuals ages 15 to 19 read for an average of 5 minutes per weekend day while spending 1 hour playing games or using a computer for leisure.” I venture to say that most children could more readily identify SpongeBob than Mark Twain. I hope I’m wrong.

I once saw a sign that said, “If you can read this thank a teacher.” Parents of Regents Academy students in particular should thank their children’s teachers. Regents teachers are preparing their students to read, and read well. Reading instruction takes place in phonics, spelling, literature, science, history, Omnibus – indeed, across the curriculum. And this is a wonderful gift. Reading well is essential for a well-educated mind and indispensable for a life lived well. As Mortimer Adler wrote, “Reading is a basic tool in the living of a good life.”

One key training ground for readers in grades 2-12 is the Regents Reading Program, in which
students read one book on their own each quarter. These books are high quality literature that challenges them and, Lord willing, fosters a love for reading. Teachers lead students to choose books that they will enjoy and that will kindle their imaginations. Reading a good book is its own reward, but I hope that our students are being rewarded in other ways as well, as they sense the accomplishment and excitement that comes from reading.

English scientist and philosopher Francis Bacon said this of reading: “Read not to contradict and confute; nor to believe and take for granted; nor to find talk and discourse; but to weigh and consider. Some books are to be tasted, others to be swallowed, and some few to be chewed and digested: that is, some books are to be read only in parts, others to be read, but not curiously, and some few to be read wholly, and with diligence and attention.”

Taste, swallow, chew, digest. There is a book for every purpose. Our job is to set the table and whet the appetite. With the guidance of excellent teachers, the enthusiasm of parents, the diligence of students, and the strength of the Lord, together we can create a culture that values and inspires reading and that cultivates “weighing and considering.” I would encourage you, parents, to read good books yourself, read aloud to your children, be involved in the books your children are reading, and donate good books to our school library.

Then go find a teacher and say thank you.