Velutinas

Quercus velutina, the “velvety oak,” has two seemingly contradictory distinctives. First, black oaks can’t be transplanted, which means you rarely find them in cultivated landscapes. The reason: their taproots want to go deep from day one.

What’s true for black oaks is also true for sophomores. If Charlotte Mason is right that “Our business [as educators] is to give children the great ideas of life,” the soul of sophomores are taproots searching for deep waters, and we owe them an education that takes them deeper.

While black oaks resist domestication, they seem to be able to spread far and wide all by themselves. Of the oak varieties that occur in our state, most are regionally bound either to Western or Eastern PA. This is the black oak’s second distinctive: it has managed to blanket Pennsylvania.

The black oak reminds us that deep and wide are not at odds; a sophomore is ready, able, and willing to do both given the chance. Charlotte Mason reminds us that this was the norm in the Renaissance era: “When great things were done, great pictures painted, great buildings raised, great discoveries made, the same man was a painter, an architect, a goldsmith, and a master of much knowledge besides; and all that he did he did well, all that he knew was part of his daily enjoyment.”

Year 2 of high school is a year of building Renaissance men and women—students with wide-ranging experience, exposure, and interests. Sophomores are not potential seniors or future adults, they are persons now—with all the appetite for stories, problem-solving, building, artistry, music, philosophy, science, and so on that we would expect to find in any well-rounded human being.

And as black oaks, sophomores have the potential to surprise. Nineteenth-century painters discovered that the bark of a black oak could be ground up into quercitron, a yellow dye perfect for capturing the luminosity of sunlight. Who knew such delicate light was hiding beneath that rough, dark exterior? Give the sophomore an education deep and wide—who knows hidden beauty might emerge.