Moral vision: How a classical education broadens your worldview

Classical education is the bedrock of PHC's distinctive High Academic Rigor. This educational model has seen a resurgence in recent years.  Classical education creates intellectual fortitude in students, inoculates them against indoctrination, and broadens their worldviews. Read on to find out more!

Six months ago, Free Press intern and program Fellow Julia Steinburg investigated a curious resurgence in classical education. As Steinburg discovered through her careful interviews, classical education creates intellectual agility, reduces technological dependence, and immunizes the mind against indoctrination and deception. 

Steinburg notes the impressive rates of growth in classical education programs over the past several years. While this may come as no surprise to our readers, the highlights are worth mentioning. Aided by the pandemic’s effects on school closures, the number of classical schools rose by 4.8% per year from 2019-2023. Jewish, Catholic, and Protestant charter schools have all seen steady increases in enrollment, and Steinburg mentions a few that are especially noteworthy. Great Hearts Academies grew by almost 10,000 students in the past five years. South Bronx Charter Schools has grown its network to four locations and boasts a waiting list of 7,000. And in tiny Kenai, Alaska, the classical school there has mushroomed to 42 students from its starting class of nine in 2019.

While pleased at the challenge to educational orthodoxy, Steinburg isn’t sure that a classical curriculum won't lead to more prejudice and indoctrination. However, classical education does not encourage students to hold unexamined prejudices. Rather, adherence to the Socratic tradition forces students to discover inconsistency and bias in themselves first, before locating it in others.

“We want to produce morally flourishing and happy individuals that will be great fathers, husbands, wives, and great friends,” said Dan Scoggins, co-founder of Great Hearts Academies.

Classical education prevents students from becoming dependent on mind-numbing technological shortcuts such as generative AI or even internet searching. Other than the notable exception of medicine, the vast majority of technological inventions are labor-saving devices. Labor-saving devices are incredibly beneficial in reducing time spent on onerous and repetitive tasks, freeing up time for more meaningful and leisurely activities. But what happens when labor-saving devices are unleashed upon the learning process itself? Chat GPT and related inventions are the main focus here, but even things as benign as computers may pose a threat to the brain’s process of information retention. To create engagement and reduce learning loss, students at Chesterton write out all their papers by hand “unless they’re super long.” While it can be a grueling process, this method has improved some students’ learning dramatically. Writing by hand is one of the most effective routes to retained learning. This is why PHC’s introductory literature classes include the medieval tradition of commonplace books.  

By broadening the range of ideas encountered in the classroom, classical education also protects young minds from falsehood. Steinburg quotes W. Martin Bloomer, a classicist at Notre Dame, that a classical education gives “not just skills of language or interpretation but a "habit of sympathy," which listens to both sides of the story. This creates a professional class of listeners who make war upon their own prejudices on a daily basis.

Morality without truth is merely a tool for tyrants and thieves.  Classical education, in contrast, invests students in the love of truth and compassion. Properly taught, Classical Education removes indoctrination and replaces it with curiosity and moral conviction.

And that’s the most liberating thing of all.

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  Patrick Henry College exists to glorify God by challenging the status quo in higher education, lifting high both faith and reason within a rigorous academic environment; thereby preserving for posterity the ideals behind the "noble experiment in ordered liberty" that is the foundation of America.