The Great Conversation

 

Liberty Common students are fortunate to attend a school that encourages thoughtful participation in the Great Conversation: the ongoing discussion of great ideas, theories, and wonderings that has taken place since the people-ing of the earth. One of the many ways this intellectual community of Liberty Common School participates in the Great Conversation is through its annual (free) Festival of Ideas. If you were fortunate enough to attend this year’s (free) Festival of Ideas on Saturday, October 5th, you know what kind of encouraging and engaging day it is.

 

Speakers from the LCS community join speakers from other charter schools and nationally-renowned speakers in their fields to provide a luxurious day of marinating in rich content, philosophy, discussion, and beautiful (free) student and adult performances, as well as (free) breakfast and lunch. It is a day which leaves the participant refreshed and emboldened to re-engage in the great task of educating the next generation's deep thinkers. 

 

Unless you don’t go. 

 

For an intellectual community can be neither if its members shirk their thinking and gathering-together duties. From Belden C. Lane’s 2019 book, The Great Conversation: Nature and the Care of the Soul:

 

“We’re surrounded by a world that talks, but we don’t listen. We’re part of a community engaged in a vast conversation, but we deny our role in it. We haven’t the courage to acknowledge our deep need for what we can’t explain. The soul feeds on what takes us to the edge, but we don’t go there willingly.”

 

Festival of Ideas is free, not because its value is low, but because Liberty decision-makers want it available to all. It grows and strengthens our unique community. The lack of a price tag, considering the value of the product, is a gift to the members of this great community: parents, grandparents, teachers, administrators, and friends alike.

 

As an introverted, Saturdays-are-for-home-type human myself, I fully appreciate the desire for a quiet, unhurried Saturday. But, in my middle-aged-ness, I have come to appreciate how, as each day closes, I fall into an “I’m glad I did” or an “I wish I had” attitude about the day. When I commit to participating in this LCS intellectual community, my head always hits the pillow repeating, “I’m glad I did.” Over my eleven years being a part of the Liberty community as parent, part-time teacher, full-time teacher, and now assistant principal, my circle of friends has grown in number and depth, my opinions have been shaped and sometimes altered for the better, and my feelings of belonging and community have blossomed. I have been shaped by this thoughtful community and I am glad for it.

 

When we invest in our community, we bring to it the gifts we have, our enthusiasm, and our presence. But what we get in return is the gifts, enthusiasm, and presence of all its members. Friends, that is an impressive ROI! And the members of this LCS community have so much to share.

 

We are all blessed to be part of this dynamic intellectual community where we share common goals such as: it is the right and responsibility of parents to direct the education and upbringing of their children, it is the right of children to receive a content-rich education taught by experts in their field, the opportunity to know right from wrong and to teach those values to the children in our care, and we don’t stop learning until we are in the grave. 

 

The African proverb says, 

“If you want to go quickly, go alone. If you want to go far, go together.”

 

Our community desires to go far, so let’s do it together. 

 

The next (free) Festival of Ideas will take place on Saturday, October 4, 2025, and I very much look forward to seeing you there.

 

Upcoming ways you can join in the Great Conversation: