UPPER SCHOOL
Living a good life
KEVIN MYKEL // DEAN OF UPPER SCHOOL, HUMANITIES TEACHER For 25 years, seniors at Wichita Collegiate School have shared a significant culminating experience: the writing of the Good Life paper. More than just another paper, the Good Life project requires students to examine challenging ideas and consider new perspectives, and then meld these with their own experiences and beliefs to craft a personal statement on the nature of a good life. The curriculum of the Senior Humanities Seminar course is designed both to widen student perspectives and to develop focus in student thinking and writing. The reading materials in the course are intended to provoke thought and to expose students to a range of philosophical concepts, relating to life in general and to the experiences and concerns of the seniors themselves. From Plato’s “Analogy of the Cave” to Cicero’s emphasis on “wisdom, temperance, and justice,” students consider philosophical viewpoints that are both distinctly different and yet remarkably consistent. The story of the Good Life paper begins with a happy accident during the 1993-94 school year. As a final writing assignment for second semester, seniors were assigned a major paper that would provide an opportunity to synthesize the main ideas from Humanities to address the concept of “living a good life.” Students were to compare and contrast the differing perspectives on a good life presented by the authors we studied in class. However, at the end of the assignment, we added a coda: we asked seniors to include a brief discussion of their conception of a good life. The minimum length for this
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first Good Life assignment was fifteen pages, and we expected that most students would produce twelve to thirteen pages of “compare and contrast” and two or three pages of personal thoughts. The actual result was surprising. Most of the papers submitted exceeded twenty pages in length, with the personal section constituting over half of the text. Clearly, something in the assignment struck a chord with the seniors.
becomes a discussion, with both teachers and the student actively participating. From the beginning, the resonance of the Good Life assignment has been obvious. As they approach graduation, our seniors are ready to think deeply about the stages of their lives and about how their relationships and experiences have shaped their goals and values. Given the opportunity to articulate these thoughts, they have responded with
"As they approach graduation, our seniors are ready to think deeply about the stages of their lives and about how their relationships and experiences have shaped their goals and values." Beginning with the next school year, the curriculum of the Humanities course began evolving, a process that has continued to the present. The goal of these changes was to increase the relevance of the course materials to the experience and concerns of our seniors. Some readings have been dropped from the curriculum. Others have been added. The curriculum has been shaped to focus, in as many ways as possible, on the question, “What does it mean to live a good life?” The second major component of the Good Life project is the defense. Beginning immediately after spring break, each student meets with two or three faculty members for a fortyfive minute discussion of his or her paper. While the defense begins with questions from the faculty, the meeting typically
written work that is reflective, articulate, and personal. The defenses usually provoke some anticipatory nerves, but, once the questioning begins, the time flies, and many of our alumni have referenced the defense as one of their best preparations for college. To date, over 1,650 Good Life papers have been written and defended, accounting for over 32,000 pages of text. The opportunity to be part of this grand project from its beginning has been one of the most rewarding aspects of my career at WCS. Every year, when the defenses are complete, I feel tremendous pride in the abilities of our students and deep appreciation for an educational community that supports projects like this which affirm the special nature of Wichita Collegiate School.
