Guiding Students Toward Goodness | Jeff Brown

On this episode of Anchored, Soren is joined by Jeff Brown, Headmaster of Hunter Classical Christian School in Richmond, Virginia. They discuss Jeff’s journey to discovering classical education, and Hunter Classical’s commitment to cultivating character before transcripts. They examine the CLT as a valuable standard for what an ideal student should aspire to learn and an exemplary school should aspire to teach. They conclude by talking about the future of Hunter Classical, including their first class of ninth graders starting this fall. 

Transcript

Soren Schwab - CLT (00:00.952)
Welcome back to the Anchored Podcast, the official podcast of the Classic Learning Test. My name is Soren Schwab, VP of Partnerships here at CLT, and today we're joined by Jeff Brown. Jeffrey Brown holds a BS in English from the US Naval Academy and an MA in English from Middlebury College in Oxford University. A former naval aviator with over 1500 hours in tactical jets and helicopters, he later served as Administrative Master and English Master at Woodbury Forest School.

and head of the upper school at St. Anne's Belfield School in Charlottesville, Virginia. Brown also worked in various federal and state government roles focused on education and workforce development, including stints under the governor of Virginia. Jeff currently serves as the headmaster of Hunter Classical Christian School in Richmond, Virginia. He was previously on the board of Hunter Classical from 2016-2019, much of that time as board chair. A strong advocate of classical Christian education,

Jeff brings extensive institutional knowledge and independent school experience and is committed to Hunter's mission and growth. And he is also an esteemed member of CLT's academic board. And we're so delighted to have him join us today. Welcome, Jeff.

Jeffrey Brown (01:09.873)
So happy to be here, thanks.

Soren Schwab - CLT (01:11.928)
I was just saying before we started recording that it's just wonderful that I get to have a conversation with a friend and then we turn it into a podcast and it's just the best job ever. Wonderful. Well, we always start the Anchored Podcast by talking about our guests own educational background. so talk to us a little bit about your K-12 experience. What was that like?

Jeffrey Brown (01:20.904)
Couldn't agree more.

Jeffrey Brown (01:35.494)
Yeah, wow. So I was actually very lucky and I don't know that there are many folks who had a similar experience to mine, but my dad was in the army and so we were stationed all over the world. And I will never forget my kindergarten teacher. We were living in Honolulu at the time. Her name is Miss Date. And so I would trundle off to kindergarten every day and

What she would do in the morning is that she would count how many boys and how many girls were in the class. And then she'd draw these stick figures on the chalkboard and I love that, right? I thought this is so cool. And I think now looking back on it and I loved it because she was telling us this amazing truth, right? There's this many boys and this many girls. And I thought, OK, that's neat. Like I'm learning this.

very objective reality in this wonderful, winsome way. And so, you know, from kindergarten on, those kind of education experiences were the kinds that I sort of thrived in. And I was fortunate enough to be able to, as my dad moved around and as a family moved around, meet teachers who just were incredible influences on me. And each influence was one where I would find some new truth.

Right? So this whole idea of being exposed to and being confronted with the truth was so intriguing to me. And it happened all the way through school. went to a, and when I was in high school, I went to high school in a place called Baltimore Polytechnic Institute, which is still around today. Back when I went there, back in the 1700s, it was an engineering and science school. And I decided, oh,

That's what I want to do. I really want to go to the Naval Academy when I go to college. So I'm going to go to this engineering and science school to get a leg up. Well, I was never any good at any of that, right? But every day I would meet these teachers who would, again, expose me to these amazing truths, these wonderful sort of eye-opening truths, one of which was the truth that I was no good at math or science. And then I really would end up

Jeffrey Brown (03:56.122)
being an English major, which was a wonderful truth to have. But I also learned about organic chemistry and about thermodynamics and about this, it's just incredible sort of the grammar of the world, which I didn't realize I was learning at the time, right?

Soren Schwab - CLT (04:10.904)
So what was that, was that Jeff, what was that conversation like in high school when you told your army father that, that, that you want to go to the Naval Academy?

Jeffrey Brown (04:17.382)
Yeah, I'll never forget that moment. That was a moment. So I get called to the principal's office after applying to Naval Academy, going through the whole process, which is a process, right? Getting in, I get called to the principal's office in school. And of course, when you get called to the principal's office in school, right, everybody around you goes, you know. So off I go to the principal's office and he said, Jeff, I want to congratulate you.

You've been admitted at the Naval Academy. Well done. Well, it was a great moment because it's what I really, really wanted more than anything. But I have to tell you, Soren, I was one of three kids who were admitted in my high school. So it's no... mean, these guys were just better students than I was. It's so much more capable. There was another guy that was going to West Point. So we kind of were thinking, well, this is just what you do when you go to this high school. So I get home and I'm telling my...

I'm waiting for my father to come home from work. He worked, you know, maybe about a 45 minute drive from home. He walked through the door. He's had a rough day. He's tired. And I said, Dad, you're not gonna believe what just happened to me today. We did it. I got in. Soren, he looked at me. Remember, this is my dad, an army officer, right? Who'd done the whole army route. He looked at me and he said, what do I tell my friends? And then he shook his head and walked away.

I said, dad, it's not like I'm telling you that I'm selling drugs or anything like that. I I think you'd be happy. And he just sulked. And then he, you know, it was obviously he was delighted. But he had to sort of give me that little dig, you know. And it's been that way ever since we've had this sort of, you know, very avuncular rivalry between the two of us.

Soren Schwab - CLT (05:44.884)
No way.

Soren Schwab - CLT (05:49.762)
Right.

Soren Schwab - CLT (06:06.264)
Right, and I'm sure it extends to the annual football games and military bowls.

Jeffrey Brown (06:10.521)
Without question. Yes. Yeah.

Soren Schwab - CLT (06:13.806)
That is absolutely fantastic. you're going to the Naval Academy and you're pursuing English and Bachelor of Science in English. Yeah, yeah. At first I thought, wait, is that a type? No, everyone at the Naval Academy is getting a Bachelor of Science. And so it was still a liberal arts education that you were taking a plethora of core classes, both in the humanities and the sciences.

Jeffrey Brown (06:20.591)
Bachelor of Science in English. Yeah.

Exactly.

Jeffrey Brown (06:38.085)
Yes, in fact, I was the first ever, this is me bragging on myself, which I'm never going to do after this moment. I was the first ever winner of something called the Wilson Heflin Award, which is the award at the Naval Academy that's given for leadership in the humanities. And the reason why I won that award, I was the first ever one to get it, they've given it every year since I graduated. The reason why I won that award is because the Naval Academy, which is an amazing place.

Soren Schwab - CLT (06:44.642)
You

Jeffrey Brown (07:05.453)
If I could have figured out a way to have a 20 year Navy career just being at the Naval Academy, I certainly would have done that. But they figured out, you know, much to their credit that graduating students with aerospace engineering degrees was great and that they should do that. But also graduating students with humanities degrees was great too because of this discussion that you and I are having about truth, right? It's so important to have people who...

can not only discern truth through their experiences with literature or through their work in humanities, but also articulate truth, right? And so that's why it was such an incredible experience to be an English major at the Naval Academy where the objectives are perhaps somewhat different than they might be at Oberlin or at Stanford.

Soren Schwab - CLT (07:54.83)
Sure, sure. for listeners that don't know, CLT is headquartered in Annapolis, and so we're, of course, towards the Naval Academy. And actually, I moved from Colorado Springs, which of course is the home of the Air Force Academy, but I'm all about Navy now.

Jeffrey Brown (08:00.548)
the center of the universe.

Jeffrey Brown (08:08.064)
Yeah. Well, Annapolis is the center of the universe, right?

Soren Schwab - CLT (08:15.238)
It's that town that's referred to as a swamp 45 minutes west of us. No, it is Annapolis. Now you go on to get degrees from Middlebury and Oxford, more known for their humanities. But then you have a career in the military. But then you also get into K-12 education.

Jeffrey Brown (08:33.453)
Absolutely.

Jeffrey Brown (08:41.387)
Yeah.

Soren Schwab - CLT (08:41.934)
What was kind of that post-graduation life for you and how did you find your way into K-12 education?

Jeffrey Brown (08:50.072)
Yeah, such a great question. mean, when I was at Annapolis, there's two things I wanted to do. One was to fly fast jets, and I was able to do that and it was amazing. And the other thing I wanted to do was teach Shakespeare. My mom was a lifelong educator. My dad was an educator. It was sort of a family tradition to have your nose in a book all the time. And I loved Shakespeare, which is why I went to Middlebury and Oxford, which I did concurrently, by the way.

And it was kind of in my heart, right? I really wanted to do that. So when I quit flying airplanes and got out of the Navy, I immediately started looking for ways to get into schools. And I took a rather circuitous route to schools because I wanted to teach, but I also had an inkling that I might also want to be an administrator as well. And so that's how I sort of

you know, moved around to try to find that educational sweet spot. And it was soaring difficult to find. I mean, I loved being at Woodbury. It was incredible. Woodbury Forest School just outside of Charlottesville, Virginia. Beautiful, amazing, wonderful school. Not a classical school. And I was always, again, looking for environments where I could encounter truth. And I...

I don't want to say that that didn't happen at Woodbury Forest, but that was not the top priority, nor was the pursuit of beauty or goodness. I was always looking for that, and I never was able to quite quantify it until I saw it. I went from Woodbury Forest to St. Anne's-Belfield, and that same kind of experience. Again, wonderful schools. Then when my wife and I moved to Richmond, we'd

We'd been in Richmond, I was doing some work here in education as well. And we came back to Richmond and I ran into this woman who I go to church with who said, hey, just, know, a couple of years ago, I just started this school and it's called the Hunter School. She called it Hunter Classical Christian School. She said, I know your background, Jeff, you can't hide. So I want you on my board. For some reason, I found myself saying, well, yeah.

Jeffrey Brown (11:16.331)
I'd love to see what you're doing. And so that was my first encounter, to be honest with you, with a bona fide classical Christian environment. And it was what I had been looking for, right? That was what I had been searching for. And so I literally stumbled into it after a very magnanimous request from a friend at church.

Soren Schwab - CLT (11:28.408)
Yeah.

Soren Schwab - CLT (11:38.222)
Wow, so until then, and we talked about, know, at the Naval Academy, and I'm assuming at Middlebury and Oxford as well, you received or you knew about liberal arts education. Was the term classical education, was that something you were familiar with or truly was when you heard about Hunter Classical Christian was the first time you were even exposed to that term?

Jeffrey Brown (11:49.717)
That's right.

Jeffrey Brown (11:53.943)
Not at all.

Jeffrey Brown (12:00.363)
Yeah, that's precisely right, Soran. I had been educated in that way, right? I was telling you about Miss Date and all the way up. I'd been educated in that way and I didn't know it until somebody said, no, this is what this is. Now, I wasn't educated in a classical Christian environment, but I absolutely was classically educated because I kept looking for goodness, for beauty, for truth, right? And there it was at this place called Hunter Classical Christian.

Soren Schwab - CLT (12:05.304)
Yeah. Yeah.

Jeffrey Brown (12:27.746)
And simultaneously my wife discovered this other school across town who will go on. I'm not going to mention them, you know there you know there. Yeah, they're. They're they're lovely, but we're not going to talk about them, but you know my wife went to work for them and both of us. It was amazing. Both of us kind of discovered. Oh my goodness, this is this is what education is. This is what it should be and and it was everything that I had hoped for. So I said, you know, I joined the board at Hunter and.

Soren Schwab - CLT (12:33.966)
Keith Nix has a big enough head as it is. He doesn't need another shower.

Jeffrey Brown (12:57.791)
You sort of worked in the vineyard there.

Soren Schwab - CLT (13:00.27)
Yeah, well that's fascinating because I think when people hear about Woodbury Forest or St. Anne's, Belfield, some people would refer to them as elite schools, right? And we're at a time where we're kind of redefining a little bit, are Ivy League schools really elite and what does that mean? But usually when we've referred to, they're elite schools, the focus is a lot on the academics, right? Like they're producing

Jeffrey Brown (13:13.01)
I agree.

Jeffrey Brown (13:20.885)
precisely.

Jeffrey Brown (13:26.684)
Thank you.

Soren Schwab - CLT (13:28.074)
intelligent students that go on to some elite universities. And then you go into 100 classical Christian, which is a newer school, a smaller school and doesn't have that quote unquote elite label. What would you say were kind of when you stumbled into it and you got on the board, what were some of the things that struck you as just major differences apart from being a Christian school versus a secular school? there things that you saw that you noticed that just blew you away?

Jeffrey Brown (13:39.496)
Absolutely.

Jeffrey Brown (13:53.747)
from it.

Jeffrey Brown (13:57.447)
Absolutely, I mean, and that's I love what you just said about being blown away because I was right. I thought, OK, this is a holy grail. I'm never going to find and I'll tell you the first thing that struck me that impressed me so much was that there was not an obsession and there was an obsession at Woodbury Forest and at Saint Ann's and in other places I've been with college getting in right that that was everything you know, starting around the 7th grade and.

That ethos, which is relentless and implacable, right? That ethos permeated everything about the elite schools that I had been a part of. I loved teaching and I loved being in the classroom with the kids, but I also knew that every moment that we talked about English literature was a moment that they were thinking about their transcripts. And that was...

That does not exist at Hunter. It does not exist at Veritas. It does not exist in these classical Christian schools. just doesn't because it's so refreshing because the idea is to cultivate the intellect. And if you cultivate the intellect and you cultivate the character, everything else falls in place. And as elite as these other schools were, they had it backward, right? They would work to cultivate the transcript with the hope and maybe prayer.

that they were also cultivating character, right? And no, it didn't necessarily happen that way.

Soren Schwab - CLT (15:30.19)
Wow, that's really, really powerful statement, Jeff. And I think it's inextricably linked to kind of the CLT story, because that's exactly what Jeremy and I and most people that work in K-12 education saw. But when you're teaching Shakespeare and learning Shakespeare, you're thinking about your transcript, right? Or you don't even want to take Shakespeare classes because it's not going to give you a higher GPA or a 500 AP class, right?

Jeffrey Brown (15:53.416)
example.

Jeffrey Brown (15:57.599)
Precisely.

Soren Schwab - CLT (15:58.476)
And so that cultivation of truth and goodness are not the ultimate ends in many of these schools, unfortunately.

Jeffrey Brown (16:05.834)
Well, I mean, that was my experience, it was absolutely my lived experience. And as fine as these schools were, and I'm not bashing them at all because just wonderful experiences, but I was looking for something different. And that's how, you know, again, complete serendipity, Hunter arrived on the scene and I thought, my goodness, this is it, this is it, this is what I've been looking for.

Soren Schwab - CLT (16:29.848)
So you were on the board for a while and you mentioned before we started recording that you were thinking about doing another term on the board, but all of sudden found yourself as the headmaster in about 2021. What was that conversation like? How did that happen?

Jeffrey Brown (16:45.104)
my word. So first thing that conversation happened on zoom, which I abhor, just horrible platform. I don't like it, but we had been, all of us in the whole world had gotten used to doing interacting, you know, and doing business on zoom. and so, the, that was the one, the first crazy thing was so anti-classical, right? To be on zoom having this, this call.

But I come back on the board, I'd been on maybe for a month or two or maybe three and the founding head left the school. And so we had an interim head, but everybody said, good grief, we need to find a head of school as soon as we can because the founding head had really got some wonderful momentum going. But we found ourselves in the middle of COVID. We also found ourselves looking for a new place to actually house the school.

because of the growth of the school. And we found ourselves, remember this is also in Virginia, and just before I had sort of reconnected with Hunter, we had this big election for governor, perhaps the key issue during that election was parents and schools, right? Remember? And so there was this, my word, there was this remarkable sort cultural energy.

Soren Schwab - CLT (18:01.718)
That's right. That's All the school board meetings and yeah.

Jeffrey Brown (18:10.919)
around schools. People were really focused on what should schools be, know, what are they about? And we were having that conversation right on the ground, right here in Virginia. That's when I came back on the board. And so there was this among the other board members, there's this feeling of good grief, we need to find someone quickly so we can sustain what's happening on the board. And Sorin, again, I've had my moments in my life where I thought, good grief, what are you doing?

I found myself, I could hear myself saying on this Zoom call, I'll do it. And then immediately thinking, what have I just said? Like, what have I done? Well, it was funny. The board chairman said, we're gonna put you on hold for a second and we'll get right back to you. And immediately I get, you know, cut off of the Zoom thing. They went into executive session and I sat there for about 10 minutes and they came back and they said, you're on. We would love to have you.

comma board. And so that's how it happened.

Soren Schwab - CLT (19:14.508)
No take backsies there, Jeff. No take backsies. Well, you mentioned how the school is different from other schools. that's, of course, not just from schools like Woodbury or St. Anne's, but from most schools. How do you, and especially now in your leadership role, how do you cultivate? And in class, we talk a lot about cultivating wisdom and virtue and not just making it about college and career readiness.

Jeffrey Brown (19:16.408)
No take that since no. No.

Soren Schwab - CLT (19:43.906)
posing students to truth, goodness, and beauty. So many of these classical Christian schools seem very intentional in doing that. What are some ways that you and your faculty, when you talk to parents, cultivate that wisdom and virtue in your students?

Jeffrey Brown (19:51.197)
Yeah.

Jeffrey Brown (19:57.938)
wow, I mean that's what it's all about. Just that's like that's all we do. I actually love and applaud CLT because we're able to look at what the standard should be or or or at least what an exemplar should be and I find that having an outfit like CLT that actually has a document that that says you know says OK, this is what we're looking for in our students.

is very, very helpful. And what I mean by that, Sorin, is that at least for me, I start with the end. What sort of person do I want to graduate from this school that I happen to have the great privilege of running? What kind of people do they need to be? And one of the nice things about classical Christian schools that I actually didn't have in my sort classical upbringing, know, the classical Christian school, there are

some pretty good guidelines about what kind of people we should be. And so, for us, we think about Christ's summary of the law. You're living in the 33 BC and you have all these laws around you about how you should behave and how you should act. Maybe even have a little bit of a nod to...

Plato or Aristotle who also said, hey, this is how we should behave and how we should act. And Christ says, hmm, okay, well, why don't we summarize it this way? Love God and love your neighbor, right? In other words, be a good person. And so you start from there and then you ask yourself, well, what does that mean? And when you ask that question, then you very clearly begin to figure out, okay, well, this is what we need to cultivate, right?

This is how we need to, the seeds we need to plant, and this is how we need to nurture our students so they can get to this end state, right? Which is one, to love God, two, to love the people around them. And by loving the people around them, I don't just mean saying, I like you, or I love you, or I care for you. It's actually acting in a way that manifests that idea, right? Behaving in a way that does that. That means...

Jeffrey Brown (22:16.539)
that academics have to be really, really strong because knowledge is truly power. And then that also means that character development has to be equally as strong because I always tell my students that integrity is who you are when nobody's looking. So character is a really important thing there. And then the other thing is this ability that classical Christian education gives students.

to be able to talk to other people about goodness, beauty and truth in their lives, right? To be able to say, no, that's beautiful there, or that's good over there. And that takes time, right? I'm sure you know sort of about Catherine Burbasinghe who runs the Michaela School over in England. And she's brilliant by the way, and incredible, sort of followed her career. But, and I think she got this from Edie Hirsch, but she always says, look,

People always talk about the best schools not teaching students what to think, but how to think. And she utterly disagrees with that, as do I. No, you actually do have to teach people what to think, right? You do. You do have to say to them, you know, this is addition. This is how you do addition, right? Or, no, we actually do have this political system in America and it looks like three branches. Those are things they must know.

but you must simultaneously also teach them what they think about it. So that idea of how to think is part and parcel of this sort of an education. And all of that is tied up in character, strong academics, and a belief in something perhaps bigger than yourself.

Soren Schwab - CLT (24:02.446)
Transcendental. Yeah, I love that so many classical Christian schools when you go on the website, they share kind of the portrait of a graduate. Right. And that's what you mentioned, right? This is what we want our students to look like as human beings and never has the portrait of a graduate at these schools be like, well, we want them to get this test score and we want them to get this. know, this is the kind of human, you know, we want to to want to develop. And that's in that.

Jeffrey Brown (24:11.471)
Yes. Yes. Yes.

Jeffrey Brown (24:26.914)
Exactly right.

Jeffrey Brown (24:31.675)
I mean, there was a time in the life of academia when we would talk about the humane letters, writing those things that helped to define us as human beings and helped to define us as, at least in my school, helped to define us as image bearers of God, right? And so those things are always underneath the surface, even as we're teaching kids about addition.

Soren Schwab - CLT (24:32.568)
really special.

Soren Schwab - CLT (24:39.246)
Yeah.

Jeffrey Brown (24:57.677)
right? Or, you know, doing Socratic method or whatever it might happen to be. Those things are foundational things.

Soren Schwab - CLT (25:04.91)
Right. Yeah, I I loved your comment about, think some of those are buzzwords, right, like critical thinking. And of course, we want our students to think critically, but and that's going back to Hirsch, right? Without knowledge, without an understanding of, let's say, the French Revolution, if you don't know about the French Revolution, any knowledge, how are you going to critically think about the French Revolution? Right? I mean, it's that point, it's just empty. And so I love that you're

Jeffrey Brown (25:11.515)
And then.

Jeffrey Brown (25:23.407)
Yes.

Jeffrey Brown (25:28.347)
process.

Yes.

Soren Schwab - CLT (25:33.346)
You're having the foundation of knowledge, you're shaping their thinking. And then yes, of course, you want them to be able to reflect and critically think about some of these, but it has to be ordered. Exactly, exactly. Well, tell me about what's the enrollment of the school currently and what's kind of next? What's kind of your vision for the next few years?

Jeffrey Brown (25:43.759)
Yeah, they have to go hand in hand.

Jeffrey Brown (25:52.88)
Yeah.

Jeffrey Brown (25:59.139)
Okay, so this part is where I hope you have like three hours so I can lay out all the gory details. okay, well, I'll do my best. But so when I arrived as the chief executive of the school, we have 56 kids in the school. 56 wonderful kids in the school. And then we moved to a new location and over the course of the summer before we moved.

Soren Schwab - CLT (26:03.776)
Got three minutes, close.

Jeffrey Brown (26:26.99)
We were able to increase the enrollment of the school to 86 kids. And we started with that amount in my first semester as head. And then since then, I've very deliberately grown the school. I mean the word deliberate, literally. Like we've been very contemplative about how the growth needs to take place. There is so much soreness, so much demand for schools like mine, so much.

And I, you know, it's just such a blessing. But it's also important for us to make sure that students come with the appropriate understanding of what their experience will be. So we're very, very deliberate. So we're trying to go to school about 30 kids a year, something like that. We'll open our fall semester here in the next couple of weeks with around 175 students, 170 students or so.

With that slow, deliberate growth from kindergarten and first grade all the way up, right? That's sort of organic growth. So my prayer is that this time, six, seven years from now, will be around 400 students in the school. 420, something like that. We will, by necessity, have to accelerate the growth once our rhetoric school or our high school is in place.

Soren Schwab - CLT (27:49.348)
huh.

Jeffrey Brown (27:51.404)
We will open this fall with our first class of ninth graders, which is unreal and so exciting. We call them third formers. go kindergarten through sixth grade in the lower school and first through sixth form in the upper school. It's little approach that I learned when I was in England. So I love that. And so we have our very first group of third formers, ninth graders.

Soren Schwab - CLT (27:58.7)
amazing.

Jeffrey Brown (28:21.048)
this year. We're also, you know, answer your question about like what's next. A couple amazing things have happened to us this year. We got accredited this year by ACCS, which was a big deal and wonderful. And then we, with God's help, will close on a property here in Richmond at the end of August or somewhere thereabouts.

Soren Schwab - CLT (28:33.196)
Yes, congratulations.

Jeffrey Brown (28:50.457)
It's about 118 acres right on the James River. Just this beautiful, pristine, forested plot of land that we will hopefully be able to enact our 100-year vision for the school on. So that's what's happening. Nothing big.

Soren Schwab - CLT (29:07.186)
That is incredible. Yeah, not much. You probably had a slow summer. Yeah, not much going on. Well, Jeff, I hope we get invited to the groundbreaking if God willing everything goes through.

Jeffrey Brown (29:11.832)
Yeah.

Jeffrey Brown (29:19.125)
without question. And when you guys get invited is also when we officially start CLT as part of what we do in the school. Maybe we can even do that like a couple years before, right? And then we just put our sign in the...

Soren Schwab - CLT (29:29.23)
Thanks.

Soren Schwab - CLT (29:33.878)
Yeah, hopefully, Adam Rode, our Christian school director, he's the most incredible, incredible human. Of course, he's like, Hunter, we got to work with Hunter. They're going through accreditation right now. It's really hard to change instruments when you're in the middle of accreditation. Once that is done, I'm pretty sure we can make some moves with Jeff. We're grateful for your support, of course.

Jeffrey Brown (29:51.103)
Jeffrey Brown (29:57.354)
And Soren, Soren, you don't have to work on Hunter. You're already in, you're already in. We love you guys.

Soren Schwab - CLT (30:01.326)
my goodness. Well, this has been such a delightful conversation, Jeff. I do have one more question, the one I ask at the end of every episode. The easiest one to answer, I'm sure. But Jeff, there been one text or one book that you can recommend to our listeners that just has had a big impact on your own life and why?

Jeffrey Brown (30:14.008)
Yeah.

Jeffrey Brown (30:24.973)
So you asked this question to an English major. Yeah. Wow. Yeah, I mean, I think an easy answer is the Bible, obviously, but that's not going to be my answer. Obviously, the Bible has been profoundly impactful. And there's been some other books as well, pretty much everything Shakespeare ever wrote. But the book that I would choose is a rather obscure book written by John Irving.

Soren Schwab - CLT (30:27.428)
I know.

Jeffrey Brown (30:54.36)
called A Prayer for Owen Meany. I read that book in high school and it utterly changed my life. You the way some people talk about Karoak, right, or, you know, Bronte, reading this book, A Prayer for Owen Meany, it just blew me away. And the reason why is because the, well, the book takes place, most of the book takes place in a boarding school, right? So.

Obviously, I had some affinity there. But it's the main character, and Meanie, is a person who lives in the world but isn't of the world. You guys have all heard that cliche, right? He lives in the world but he's not of the world. And it's the story of the way he navigates through a world that is frankly alien to him and he's alien to it. And it's just a wonderful story about fortitude.

individuality, it's sort of erudition, guess, know, this ability to manipulate the world through intellect, you know, and then heroism all combined into a quirky little New England story that I have no idea where it came from, know, where Irving thought of it, but it's a remarkable little book. if you have

people listen to this podcast and you haven't read A Prayer for Oimini, please do. Don't watch, there's been a couple of movies. Don't do that. Don't watch. Read the books.

Soren Schwab - CLT (32:29.71)
Gotcha. That's always a good book. And I have not read it, so that's going to be on my reading list. Thank you for sharing, Jeff. And again, thanks for all you do. Everyone, we're here with Jeff Brown, the headmaster of Hunter Classical Christian School in Richmond, Virginia. Jeff, this was delightful. We appreciate you. God bless you. And hope you have a good rest of your summer.

Jeffrey Brown (32:35.126)
of the

Jeffrey Brown (32:39.756)
Yeah.

Jeffrey Brown (32:55.013)
thank you so much, Soren. Take care of yourself.