What do Cicero, St. Augustine, St. Hildegard, Leonardo da Vinci, William Shakespeare, Sir Isaac Newton, George Washington, Jane Austen, Abraham Lincoln, J.R.R. Tolkein, C.S. Lewis, and the vast majority of educated people before 1920 have in common?

They were all students in what is today called the Classical or Liberal Arts Tradition, an educational model having its origins in the ancient Greeks and Romans, particularly Plato and Cicero, and further developed and implemented by the Church especially as the foundation of learning in medieval universities. Indeed, one can say with confidence that Classical Education was the educational model and method of the Church, educating many of its great saints like St. Augustine and St. Thomas Aquinas. Liberal Arts Education flourished during the Renaissance, in fact, getting its name, “The Humanities”, in this era under the auspices of great thinkers and writers like Erasmus and St. Thomas More. Furthermore, when they were busy debating about and eventually creating our Republic, the Founding Fathers were doing so using intellectual resources derived from their classical formation; they were steeped in ancient languages, (the likes of Madison, Franklin, and Jefferson could read those ancient sources in their original languages), ancient history, and ancient ideas. Even though Washington had no formal schooling, his mind, imagination, and heart were shaped by great books and the virtuous heroes of the past. Similarly, Lincoln was self-educated, inculcating in himself the Bible and the other great works of Western literature, and then subsequently producing some of the most sublime, poetic speeches in American history. This is all to say that the model of Classical Education has its origins in Western Civilization, the ideals, ideas, and beliefs of which we, as Americans, are the inheritors. Influential ideas like natural law and natural rights, democracy, republic, individuality, human freedom, justice, truth, virtue, beauty, patriotism, and civic responsibility as well as the famous fairy tales from the Brothers Grimm or the great books like the Iliad and the Odyssey, Dante’s Divine Comedy, Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales, and much poetry over time have their source in the Western Tradition. There is now a renewed interest in this “old” model of education in many sectors of education today: homeschooling (which has generally embraced the model of classical education for the last few decades), charter schools, private schools, and many Catholic schools.

But what is Classical Education and what makes it an attractive alternative to conventional, modern or progressive school models prevalent in public schools today? One quick answer comes from the educational philosopher Matthew Arnold who famously said that Classical Education is putting students in contact with “the best that has been thought and said”. However, Classical Liberal Arts Education is difficult to define because it is not one but many things: it is good and great books, the Socratic Method, immersion in nature, memorizing of poetry, debate, arguments, narrating literature, mimicking the writing of great authors, art, music, dance, learning the “why” of math and science, not just the “how”, classical languages like Greek and Latin, the dialogue of faith and reason, the synthesis of truth from different subject areas, and the integration of mind, body, and spirit. It is all these things but most of all Classical Education teaches based on the nature of the human person as a rational, communal creature. Its educational goals are not primarily utilitarian or tied exclusively to economic outcomes (i.e., going to college and getting a job) although it certainly produces students who are successful by such measures. Instead, the purpose of Classical Education is learning for learning’s sake, seeking truth for truth’s sake, and helping students become life-long lovers of learning. Teachers in this model strive to help students achieve their God-given potential through the uniquely human activity of rational thought, so that their learning and contact with the truth is transformative of themselves and leads them to be leaven in society. In this way it goes hand in hand with the overall education and formation goals of Catholic education as well as the evangelizing mission of Catholic schools. As the Church teaches, “Education is not given for the purpose of gaining power but as an aid toward a fuller understanding of, and communion with man, events and things. Knowledge is not to be considered as a means of material prosperity and success, but as a call to serve and to be responsible for others” (The Sacred Congregation for Catholic Education, 1977, #78). It is at its heart a moral education, learning directed toward the cultivation of virtue where knowledge becomes wisdom and human excellence is achieved in service to the common good of the community. There is a “heart quality” to classical education, meaning, to follow the famous Greek philosopher, Plato, that all education is one of informing the desires of the student, of imbuing the students with the love of the Good, the True, and the Beautiful. As the author, David V. Hicks, explains, “The greatest part of education is instilling in the young the desire to be good: a desire that sharpens and shapes their understanding, that motivates and sustains their curiosity, and that imbues their studies with transcendent value” (Ibid). And similarly, paraphrasing the renowned educator, Charolette Mason, true education is not as much about how much students learn but rather how much they care about what they have learned; it is not as much about what students do with the information but rather what the information does to the students.

There are three pedagogical stages to the Classical Education model: Grammar (K-5), Logic (6-8), and Rhetoric (9-12), called collectively The Trivium. Each stage corresponds to the appropriate developmental characteristics of the learner. The Grammar stage, as the name suggests, is when the essential skills of literacy are imbued in the student. This stage could also be called the Absorbent stage in which the child is inclined to easily and joyfully absorb information about the world. It is a time in the child’s educational formation when he is willing and able to memorize a great amount of content with enthusiasm. And it is a time of inherent desire to know, a phase of exploration in which the wonder and curiosity of the child enable him to become enchanted with learning. It is a critical period when the teacher ensures this natural attraction to discovery and learning can grow with the child into adulthood. The Logic stage may also be called the Argumentative stage when the grown child seeks to make connections between the various subjects and ask critical questions about them by judging and weighing the value and meaning of what he has learned. Students learn the rules of logic and solid argument through the art of debate and discussion and acquire the skill of identifying logical fallacies. The Trivium culminates in the Rhetoric stage or what may be called the Creative or Synthesis stage. Students are matured enough in their development and education to synthesize their learning through creative connections so that they then begin to move beyond imitation to produce new and original works and internalize and express eloquently new ideas. It is important to note that each of these stages are not mutually exclusive from one another but are fluid, elements of each interconnected and working within the framework of the other: for instance, the Grammar stage also involves the Logic stage with students eagerly asking “why” and it includes the Rhetoric stage with students making connections between subject matter as they are exposed to a broad, content rich curriculum.

Of course, much more can and has been said about Classical Liberal Arts Education but ultimately the goal of this model is what is most important: the student’s exercise of true freedom through virtue. Classical Education is Liberal in the sense that the student is liberated from ignorance and free to fully engage his gifts, talents, and potential for the glory of God. It is a gradual process that continues for a lifetime, the groundwork laid in sacred seeds early in youth that then bear fruit in the maturing of the student. The celebrated Russian novelist, Fyodor Dostoevsky, captured the essence of this type of education when he wrote, “You must know that there is nothing higher and stronger and more wholesome and good for life in the future than some good memory, especially a memory of childhood, of home. People talk to you a great deal about your education, but some good, sacred memory, preserved from childhood, is perhaps the best education. If a man carries many such memories with him into life, he is safe to the end of his days, and if one has only one good memory left in one's heart, even that may sometime be the means of saving us” (The Brothers Karamozov). Sowing sacred memories that students will draw upon for a lifetime is the great work of St. James the Less Academy.