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We recently featured a story about Gregory the Great Academy, a new, private, boys� boarding school founded by Sean Fitzpatrick (�02) and Luke Culley (�94). That school is now the subject of an article Mr. Fitzpatrick has written for Crisis � , which discusses GGA�s �radical� policy of shielding students from digital distraction.

Writes Mr. Fitzpatrick:

�Students at Gregory the Great Academy are required to embrace a life of �technological poverty,� which means relinquishing cell phones, iPods, computers, and the like; arriving at school with only the essentials for a �disconnected� life. The pedagogy at work here is simply to free students from distraction and to allow them to focus on the important things in life: growth in virtue, cultivation of friendship, and contemplation of the Divine. �

�The results are surprising. Deprived of the usual modes of diversion, students quickly adopt healthy alternatives to sex-steeped music, inane literature, and mindless entertainment. Without iTunes, boys tend to learn to play the guitar well enough to accompany folk songs. Without television, students enjoy reading aloud to one another round fires. In an environment of �technological poverty,� students actually eat together, pray together, play together, and learn together.�

The ultimate goal of this policy, Mr. Fitzpatrick adds, is to enable students �to make contact with the real � which removes barriers to the world as God made it.�