We arrived at school this morning to find all the Upper Schoolers on the back parking lot in a large circle. My son, Grant, informed me that there was a book burning taking place. Weird? Well, here is an article written last year by our Upper School Dean, Brandon Booth, explaining this practice.
"Last semester the upper school instituted a new tradition at Providence: The Black Book. The name is intentionally scary. In substance, it is simply a black notebook sitting in my office. In practice, it is a running record of all the minor wrongs students commit over the course of a semester.
"Chew gum in class, run in the hallway, violate the dress code and you are likely to get a discipline citation. Get one of those and you have to visit my office and inscribe your name and the details of the infraction in The Black Book. It's not a pleasant experience. And what's worse is that if you get 5 citations you find yourself with an automatic office visit. Then you have to explain why there is an indisputable record of your misdeeds. Your own handwriting literally condemns you.
"Now, before you get too worried about the strictness of this system, let me tell you about another tradition we instituted this year. The Burning of the Black Book. Yep, you read that right. The entire upper school body went out to the parking lot one day during the last week of classes and set the notebook to flame.
"Now, should anyone come and ask me for some student's record of last semester's misdeeds, I can truly say that no such record exists. In fact, stop by and ask me - I'll deny its existence with a great big smile!
"The parallels should be obvious. As we burned The Black Book we read Psalm 103 (...as far as the east is from the west, so far has he removed our trangressions from us...) and Romans 8 (There is therefore now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus. For the law of the Spirit of life has set you free in Christ Jesus from the law of sin and death...)
"God, in his grace, keeps no record of wrongs done. That is a fantastic promise and a wonderful gift of freedom. The Black Book will be a continual object lesson. Something the students can look forward to at the end of every semester. Each time they see it burn, they will experience in a small way God's gracious forgiveness which works in a big way.
"So, despite the scary sounding name, The Black Book is really just another little way that students at Providence can experience the grace of Jesus Christ."
Kind of a neat tradition, if you ask me.
2 comments:
Your title certainly grabbed my attention. I think it is a great tradition, and I plan to share your description with the principal at my kids' school. Their system doesn't incorporate a black book, but ius otherwise similar. Perhaps our principal could put all his copies of demerits into a notebook and they could burn that! Anyway, I like the idea.
Neat tradition!
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