Bringing Preppy Back

Last Thursday night, I attended the Mesa Prep Seniors' Dinner for my eldest son, Austin.  And while I was excited about his graduation from high school (and even more excited that he will be leaving home for college in 2 months, 15 days and 6 hours ... but who's counting?), I wasn't as excited to attend yet another banquet.  I attend dozens of banquets each year.  Furthermore, this particular banquet was missing the one thing that makes those other events bearable -- someone handing me a check afterwards for giving the after-dinner speech.  In this case, I had actually paid to be bored; or so I thought.

The after-dinner program consisted of the teachers giving short speeches about each of the 26 graduating seniors.  I envisioned spending the next two hours listening to rambling speeches about the time that Wendy put in extra hours of practice to make the softball team or the time that Jimmy stayed after school for an entire month to learn all of the elements on the Periodic Table, including that tricky potassium (the symbol for which is K ... go figure!).

My worst fears were initially confirmed when one teacher started her talk by commenting on the wonderful penmanship of her student.  Apparently, the student wrote with such neatness that it was difficult to discern her handwritten papers from those typed by other students.  In fact, the teacher suggested that the student could duplicate the other aspects of sans serif fonts, such as italicization.  I couldn't help but to think that, unless this student also had the ability to create a time machine to take her back to pre-Gutenberg days, she was going to be spend most of her future saying, "Would you like fries with that?"

However, as this teacher continued her talk, she began to weave a theme about the student and her "font" -- the meticulous way that she went about living her life.  The teacher demonstrated the time and care that the student took with her schoolwork, her extracurricular activities and most importantly, her fellow students.  In just a few minutes it became clear that this student had quite a bright future ahead of her; one that history would record in a font almost as beautiful as her own.  I was almost moved to tears but I held them back ... for the moment.

The subject of the next speech was Austin.  As the teacher began to paint a wonderful picture of our beloved son, my wife turned to me and whispered, "Don't you even start with the tears!"  However, her warning came far too late as I was already into full-Boehner mode at that point.  In fact, the tears continued to stream down my face through the next four or five speeches (and twice while writing this blog post).  Over the next two hours, I was transformed into a teenage girl in that I alternated between fits of laughter and tears and answered each one of my wife's requests to stop embarrassing her by saying, "Whatever!"

I was also transformed for the better.  When I left the banquet hall that evening, I was inspired to try to become more like those 26 wonderful young people.  Specifically, I made two resolutions: (1) to finally see a mental health professional about my apparent emotional instability; and (2) to bring preppy back to CLE.

Mesa Prep is a truly special place because it does not prepare its students for college (although 98% of the students continue on to 4-year colleges and universities).  According to its mission statement, it prepares them "for the life-long pursuit of Truth, Goodness, and Beauty."  In other words, this wonderful institution isn't just trying to cram random names and dates into a student's head (facts that will be forgotten shortly after the SAT, if not before).  It is trying to instill higher values into the student's heart that will last a lifetime.

Mesa Prep is reaching towards the true goal of education -- paideia.  Now for those of you who went to public schools like me, paideia is not the new apple turnover-like desert at Taco Bell (that's the Caramel Apple Empanada, and it's delicious).  Paideia is the classical form of Greek education that was not meant to train their young men in a particular skill or art (that was called banausos), but rather to train them for liberty and nobility so that they would be capable citizens, or even kings.  Given the prominent role that lawyers often play in society, should we expect anything less of continuing legal education?  Shouldn't we bring preppy back to CLE?

For instance, a banausos CLE will remind lawyers of their obligations of candor towards the tribunal.  It might even provide loopholes to help lawyers avoid this obligation whenever possible.  However, Preppy CLE would go further and remind lawyers of the "Truth, Goodness and Beauty" that underlies the candor obligation.  In doing so, it would give lawyers a reverence for their roles as officers of the court so that that, ideally, they wouldn't dream of tarnishing the reputation of our honored profession or defiling our "sacred" courtrooms with acts of dishonesty (or acts of incivility, self-dealing, fraud and the like).

And if you think that this is another one of my empanada-in-the-sky ideals that won't work in the real world, I only need to point you to the 2012 graduating class of Mesa Prep.  From what I've observed over the last five years, every one of these young men and women is more honest, loving and respectful than I can even pretend to be.  This is despite the fact that I have much more schooling and should know better.  However, they've been educated to be better.  And this is why we need to bring preppy back to CLE because we will only create better lawyers after we first create better people.  Much like making me cry uncontrollably at a banquet, it's really that easy.