What is a classical education?

If you’ve heard of “classical education,” you may think immediately of academic rigor, Latin, and memorization, or perhaps the trivium. These things have their place at ASA, but the primary and crucial meaning of “classical education” for us is education that aims much higher than any test or transcript. It is education that forms and feeds the humanity of our students through that which is good, true, and beautiful—in which they will recognize Christ, the Logos and the Holy Wisdom Who is our namesake. This is the why of classical education, without which nothing else matters.

In the service of that end, we do study grammar, Latin, logic, rhetoric, math, history, science, music, art, and more. We read what are often called the “Great Books” and engage with the “Great Conversation”—the canon of texts and the great ideas therein which begin in the ancient world, were brought to fulfillment by Christianity, and are our inheritance even today: the fruit of the best of the human experience. We build an impressive transcript, but not merely for the purpose of impressing; rather, this is how we shape and form our minds, hearts, souls, and even bodies to recognize and grasp that which is good, true, and beautiful.