Classical Education

Classical VS Conventional

Specific Differences

What is “Classical” Education?

“Christian education should be an initiation into a universal spiritual society – the community of the civitas Dei” 

– Christopher Dawson 

A classical education is one rooted in the sources of the Western Tradition, with the goal of pursuing of an integrated vision by way of the 7 liberal arts. The word “classical” originally designated a recovery of the works and art of the Classical Age of Ancient Greece and Rome. The Church’s work in the West has greatly developed this inheritance from the Ancient World. Thus, to be fully classical, a school must also be fully Catholic, fully immersed in the Faith and work of the Church, which has formed Catholic cultures in the West and developed a rich tradition of thought.

Classical Education at St. Thomas

In pursuit of the horizons – the horizontal things – have you failed to raise your eyes and mind and heart up to the stars, to the reasons for things, and beyond, as Dante says at the top of the tower of his poem: “To the love which moves the sun / And all the other stars?”

-John Senior 

At St. Thomas, we seek to form your child through the liberal arts, the Trivium (Grammar, Logic, and Rhetoric) and the Quadrivium (Arithmetic, Geometry, Music, and Astronomy). These are not simply “subjects,” but the basic ways within the various subjects by which your child is formed to see and love what is True, Good, and Beautiful. They are like so many rungs of a ladder by which your child can ascend to a higher and more integrated vision of reality. As the motive power of this ascent is love, we want your child to be a lover; the formation of the mind and the formation of the heart necessarily go together.

Classical and Catholic

“The fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom” 

-Proverbs 9:10

St. Thomas the Apostle School exists for the glory of God and the salvation of our students’ souls. We bind ourselves to teach your child the Faith as it has been handed on in the Tradition of the one, true Church of Christ. The worship and love of Jesus Christ in fidelity to the Church’s Tradition is the true heart of our school. Within that heart, our students’ studies point to Wisdom, to a transformative contemplation of and union with Jesus Christ, Who is the Wisdom of God, the Logos.