In pursuing the virtues, a scholar learns to ask, “What kind of person should I be?”  This then helps them define, “What should I do?”  The order of this questioning is important.  The former question must be asked first.  Virtues enable scholars to pursue an ideal, not a mindless checklist of rules.  Below is a list of our pillars with links to recent research affirming the importance of each in achieving success in life.  These virtues are then developed through learning and practice at school, including the Habits of Classical Prep.

Classical education, liberal education, has a method of teaching developed and honed for over two thousand years in the West. Without knowing the things around us, the things that brought us here, the words and structure of language through which we express these things—animals, plants, elements, rivers, cities, Presidents, poems, nouns, verbs, adjectives—we cannot think at all.

The greatest genius of the age, in learning a foreign tongue, would still have to begin with the rudiments of the language. For a young mind to become ready for thought it must pursue a massive importation and organization of basic facts: the bricks for building the edifice. To this end, learning in the early grades, what some call the “grammar stage,” consists largely in mastering facts and strengthening the power of the mighty memory to recall these facts on demand.