Announcing our Mascot
Greetings, SOCA families!
Amidst all of our training and preparing for the first day of school, we are excited to announce that we have chosen our mascot.
When they walk through our doors on August 21, every student and every teacher will officially be a Pioneer.
Southeast Ohio is, of course, proud to have been on the frontier during the early days of our Republic. It was Ohio that became the home of Ephraim Cutler, Johnny Appleseed, and Simon Kenton. It was in towns like Marietta and Belpre where the Republic first expanded, and every resident of Athens can find the oldest University in the Northwest Territory in their backyard. In various ways, Ohio served as a template for many of the States that came to join the Union. And that is a legacy which we want to honor.
But blazed trails are made to be followed, and those who follow new paths deserve the name of “pioneer” as well. The Ohio territory was filled by brave and scrappy men, women, and children who came from all across North America, and who immigrated from around the Atlantic world. The distinctive patterns of their settlements are still around us in the styles of buildings, the shapes of farms, and the cultures of local cities and towns. Ohio still bears the marks of our first settled residents.1 Many of the names of those pioneers can be found in old records, on historical markers, or in the stories of their descendants, but many have been lost to time. By virtue of the world they made, they are forgotten, but they are not gone. In our name, we hope to preserve their memory.
When we say that Ohio was “filled,” the term is only comparative: it has been a very long time since Ohio was truly empty. When the first citizens of the United States of America crossed the Ohio River, the territory was already home to forts, trading posts, and several distinct Native American tribes. Ohio’s first pioneers came not from the East, but from the West. Yet it is still worth our while to call the first American settlers “pioneers.” To be in every way unprecedented is to be primitive, not pioneering. Pioneers come from somewhere, building on an inheritance as they take it in new directions. It is tradition that makes innovation meaningful, and innovation that keeps tradition alive. At SOCA, we are grateful for the pioneers of many stripes who came before us. We are grateful to live in the world which they built, to receive the heritage through which they continue to shape us, and to learn from the good and bad examples and paths which they have left us.
All of the above raises the question: in what sense can we and our children be considered pioneers? Perhaps some of them will clear trees and plant a farm, but not most. And Ohio is a much fuller region than it was in 1788. The start towards an answer can be found in our curriculum: the only book we currently have with “pioneers” in the title is “Black Pioneers of Science and Invention.” Pioneers are not limited to geography: any of those who push forward into the unknown, unstable, and incomplete are worthy of the title. And they are needed. In 2024, one could choose to be lazy and to live off of the inheritance handed down by former pioneers. This would be easy and perhaps gratifying in the short term. But the traditional word for such an attitude is “decadence” and the wise have warned that it is neither satisfying nor sustainable.
The alternative to decadence is to follow the example of the pioneers who came before us. One of our core virtues is courage, which we define as “moving forward with steadfast purpose and perseverance in the face of fear, pain, obstacles, or evil.” As much as we honor the past and the world that has emerged from it, we must not consider the task to be finished. There is work that remains to be done, and there are things that need to be undone. Perhaps, if human nature can bear it, there will one day be nothing left to discover, build, write, grow, or fix. When that day comes–and only then–we can close the frontiers of human experience and call off the pioneers. But if that day is not the end of time itself, then it will be a day in which we build more tombs than houses. For now, we intend to keep building houses.
If you have come alongside us in the trailblazing effort to bring a Classical school to Southeast Ohio, the spirit of the pioneers lives in you, too. And we are glad to be on this journey together. With you, we will strive to train up a new generation of pioneers and to leave good tracks for them to follow.
See the fascinating study by Timothy Anderson, “Selective Migration and the Production of Ohio’s Regional Cultural Landscapes” in Settling Ohio (Athens: Ohio University Press, 2023).