Classical Education (Teaching)

CCEP 100: Philosophical Anthropology

Participants will learn that the human person is the foundation for classical education (which seeks to form the human person towards the end of fulfilling that which is potential in all humans). Specific concepts include: the classical view of the soul, the moral imagination, and the role of norms in education. By the end of this course, participants should have a clear concept of the ends of education which align with the nature of the person.

CCEP 110: Classical Pedagogy

This course introduces participants to the teaching strategies employed by classical educators. It builds upon CCEP 100 but can also be taken out of sequence. Participants will learn how to apply the Trivium as a pedagogical model, the role of virtue formation in classical education, how to balance the needs of didactic teaching, academic coaching, and Socratic Seminar in a unit, and how to help students appreciate the whole of knowledge. By the end of this course, participants should have a clear conception of the classical ideal of virtue, specific habits of reading, dialogue, and synthesis that help cultivate the learner into someone whose mind and soul are fed on rich ideas.

CCEP 120: History of Education

This course focuses on major developments in the history of western education. Each meeting will consist of a seminar discussion of a core text, and brief lecture describing the major educational innovations and contributions of the civilization represented by the text for the following week’s discussion. Reading selections for Meetings 2-4 will come from Richard Gamble’s anthology of texts The Great Tradition; meeting 5 will focus on John Taylor Gatto’s Dumbing Us Down: The Hidden Curriculum of Compulsory Education. This course will enable participants to trace continuity and discontinuity in the field of education from antiquity through late modernity, increasing familiarity with various forms of education (cathedral school, one-room schoolhouse, district, independent school, etc), while seeing all as trying to achieve similar goals.

CCEP 130: Virtuous Leadership

This course begins with defining leadership in continuity with the classical tradition, and seeks to explore the connection between defined principles and virtuous actions resulting in the best possible outcome. Participants will begin with reading and discussing Alexandre Havard’s Virtuous Leadership: An Agenda for Personal Excellence. They will then explore Shakespeare’s King Lear, a selection from Plutarch’s Lives of the Noble Greeks and Romans, and conclude with Machiavelli’s The Prince. By the conclusion of this course, participants should have a clear understanding of authority, leadership, and the connection between virtue and flourishing. 

CCEP 140: Core Text – Humanities

This course identifies the primary goals of reading humanities texts within the classical curriculum and equips participants to recognize how these courses should be taught to equip students with wisdom. The classical approach will be contrasted with contemporary movements in humanities education (poststructuralism, historical revisionism, etc.). Participants will read selections from the Bible, Homer, Dante, and Gadamer in this course.

CCEP 150: Core Texts – Math and Science

This course explores both math and science from a foundation of wonder. Participants will explore connections between mathematics and natural beauty and see math as a function of a complex reality. Math as the study of numerical relations equips learners to understand reality itself. Science from a posture of wonder pushes against modernist views of science as a tool to control nature. A classical approach to science begins in wonder and views science an approach to comprehend beauty and wonder in reality.

CCEP 160: Classical Philosophy and Ethics

This course equips participants with an introduction to the core philosophical insights of Plato, Aristotle, Kant, Mill, and Kierkegaard. These authors will give participants a familiarity with the philosophical and ethical ideas that establish classical education. Participants will become familiar with Plato’s theory of forms and definition of justice, Aristotle’s doctrine of the mean and definitions of virtue and happiness, Kant’s idea of the categorical imperative and understanding of human dignity, Mills’ concept of utilitarian calculus, and Kierkegaard’s freedom of the human person.

CCEP 170: Writing for Leadership

This course is different from each of the prior courses; participants should, if at all possible, take this course as the final class in the certificate sequence. For each class meeting, participants will prepare a specific kind of writing to be shared with the class the following week. The goal is to connect the principles learned from previous courses to the kind of communication that occurs in the normal course of leading a school through the school year. Participants will have one book to work through in this course, but writing and discussing their writing will form the heart of this course. Potential assignments include: write a dialogue explaining the rationale for the dress code using classical principles; write a five minute faculty talk teaching faculty a key classical concept; write a response to a provided teacher-scenario and show how classical principles of leadership work themselves out in practice.