On Thursday, April 27, I participated in the first event I had come out to Kansas for. Josh Ney, ISI’s Campus Representative at the University of Kansas, came up with the idea for a high school essay contest months earlier. On this night, there was an official awards ceremony in the Signs of Life art gallery, which is on the second floor of the Signs of Life bookstore.
All 13 participants, each from local high schools in the Lawrence area, received a free copy of ISI’s college guide,Choosing the Right College: The Whole Truth About America’s Top Schools. The college guides were provided by ISI, while the Signs of Life book store provided cash awards for the top 3 winners. Each student had to write about a 3 page essay on “The purpose of my education.” All were excellent, particularly the winner, whose essay really stood out as exceptional.
Just before the awards were handed out, Josh gave a short talk on why he put together the essay contest, Dr. Daniel Harden, a Professor of Education at Washburn University (and longtime ISI Faculty Associate) in Topeka gave a talk on education and its purposes, and I gave a brief talk on ISI and some of the programs these students might consider getting involved in. I had actually met Dr. Harden earlier in the day and he told me he had been a member of ISI since 1957! He knew Russell Kirk and his wife Annette Kirk well and he gave me plenty of ISI stories. We talked for over two hours and he told me some of the good news he is working on at Washburn University. During his talk to the students, he went on and on about ISI and how it was essential to his own intellectual development.
The one-hour ceremony in the bookstore made me think about the different roles that Josh, myself, D. Harden, as well as the students and their parents were in, and about the role the bookstore provided for us all to come together for a unique evening. You had different generations of people all committed to promoting a truly liberal education and seeking this education not necessarily for utilitarian purposes, but as one high school student put it in his essay, for a deeper truth and meaning in order to help us each get a glimpse of our Creator.