English Mrs. Jackie Greenfield "Let me open my lips and make reply." (Job 32:20) These words of Elihu are words that should be on the lips of every boy at Cistercian. Blessed with the opportunity to develop his talents in the fecund environment shaped by the Cistercian fathers and lay faculty, a CPS student should be a confident and able shaper of his community and his world. The English teachers at Cistercian recognize that much of what they teach concerning the art of rhetoric, literary analysis, and fluid, thoughtful composition must prepare the student for his ultimate responsibilities. Participles and nominative absolutes, not in themselves an end, are, as integral parts of the art of writing, conduits for understanding. Provocative discussions that contrast Macbeth and Oedipus or Huck Finn and Holden Caulfield draw the student, eventually, to the opportunity to clarify his own motive and character. Slipping out of a dark robe of ignorance, the student is then able to say, "I too will speak my part." Dr. Tom Pruit, former long-time chairman of the English Department, says, “In at least one way our English curriculum at Cistercian is, perhaps, rather unusual: throughout both the Middle and Upper school courses there is an emphasis on the journey of the hero, on both the glorious adventure as well as the risk and peril which he must undergo. From Lewis’s Chronicles of Narnia in Form I to Dante’s Inferno in Form VIII, the boys at Cistercian encounter not only significant works of our common literary heritage but also many important "life lessons" that such a study can provide: the power of courage and the other virtues, the means by which evil can be combated, the importance of community and friendship, the proper view of death. By the time the young man graduates from Cistercian, he will have had to confront, in the vital world of his imagination, many of the "monsters" he will have to face as he journeys into the world beyond the threshold of his own home. For more information, please see the CPS curriculum guide