As a public classical school, Cincinnati Classical Academy is unique in the region’s educational landscape. It’s a school that teaches virtue and moral character, yet it’s public, with no religious affiliation. It has the rigor and appearance of an elite private school, yet it’s tuition-free. It uses an “innovative” educational model, yet students still write in cursive with paper and pencil. And perhaps most oddly, in today’s world of Big Education, Big Finance, and Big Everything, it was founded through a home-grown, grass-roots effort of thousands of hours of volunteer labor, without financial backing from any school network, non-profit organization, or private wealth fund.
But why? What motivated the school’s founding, and why is this particular kind of school needed in today’s world? The answer is quite simple: because the best education available should be the education that is available to all. This may be obvious as a necessity to build a strong civic society and preserve our nation’s unique egalitarian character. Yet it may not be apparent, with the progressive and almost imperceptible shift in culture over the last half century, how far we have drifted from this ideal – and why public classical schools offer a solution.
Foundations Razed
Numerous best-selling authors have sounded the alarm on the decline of education in America. E.D. Hirsch, Jr. wrote several titles, beginning with Cultural Literacy (1987), highlighting the need for content-rich curricula to establish common, shared knowledge and cultural reference points that are needed for a healthy civic society. In the same year, Allan Bloom railed against the rise of moral relativism and lack of critical thinking in higher education in The Closing of the American Mind. Thomas Sowell, with Inside American Education (1993), wrote a seminal critique that exposed indoctrination, grade inflation, bureaucracy, and much more. And with the zeal of a Marine Corps officer, Terrence O. Moore detailed in The Story-Killers (2013) how culturally foundational stories in history and literature have been stripped from school curricula.
The common theme among these remonstrances is that the educational enterprise has largely abandoned the seriousness and depth of purpose that it once had. Curricula have been stripped of time-tested, meaningful content to the point that an eighth grader reader from a century ago holds more wisdom and challenge than many high schools, or even colleges, offer today. Schools don’t teach logic, philosophy, music, Latin, or European history, much less require them. It has gotten so bad that even phonics – yes, teaching the sounds that letters make – has been prohibited in a majority of public schools. Such a degree of malpractice is not easily dismissed as simple negligence or innocent folly.
What once aimed at developing moral and mental vigor is increasingly replaced with entertainment, activities, technology, premature specialization, and experimentation masquerading as innovation. The result is that many students can now make it through high school without actually having to read a book or write an essay. Today’s is a world of choose-your-own-adventure in education, a journey in creating the subjective truth of the self. It is a scramble to attract more students; it is a race to outpace the future.
Too Big To Succeed
Higher education has led the way in setting these trends. Colleges and universities no longer aim toward wisdom and virtue, much less understand the meaning of their own venerable Latin mottos – e.g., veritas. Intoxicated by their own prestige, whether realized by gridiron glory, brand recognition, political influence, grant dollars, or shear size, they have drifted from their well-articulated founding missions. Instead, they have become obsessed with growth and market share – more students, larger endowments, more sprawling campuses. To achieve such growth, to appeal to every potential student, to every potential donor and interest, they must by necessity abandon their unique identities and particular missions. When this happens, schools do not become too big to fail; they become too big to succeed. When all missions are served, there is no longer a mission.
Colleges fumble over themselves to become universities. Core curriculum requirements get replaced with a panoply of electives. Libraries and study lounges are replaced by technology labs and “innovation space.” Humanities programs get shuttered even as more majors and courses of study are added. Professors get replaced with adjunct faculty and online content. Research is prioritized over teaching. The liberal arts become illiberal, as we, as a culture, forget what the “liberal arts” are. It is no wonder, when higher education itself forgets. And eventually, as the fish rots from the head, it all trickles down to K-12.
The Counterexample
A handful of institutions offer counterexamples, and one is Hillsdale College. Remarkably, Hillsdale’s modern history is as impressive as its founding in 1844, seventeen years before the Civil War, as the first college in America to not discriminate in admissions based on race or sex. Today, it is led by Dr. Larry Arnn, who initially had no interest in accepting the presidency. He then found, in the school’s original charter, a “deliberate statement of what (the college) is about,” and it read that “…friends of education, grateful to God for the prevalence in the land of civil and religious freedom and intelligent piety, and believing that sound learning is necessary to the perpetuation of these blessings, hereby endow and found a college at Hillsdale, Michigan.” Protecting this purpose above all, and establishing his leadership, Dr. Arnn told the board that he would accept the presidency if they promised to let him do what was in the charter and not get in his way.
Such integrity and intentionality are rare in education today, but they are abundant at Hillsdale, which is perhaps best known for having never accepted federal funding, lest its mission be infringed by undue influence. In 2020, breaking with nearly every other college and university, Hillsdale defended its historical record on racial equality and justice and, amidst nationwide riots and immense pressure, refused to offer virtue-signaling, performative statements or to institute discriminatory practices. In the same year, Hillsdale again stood on principle by exercising its constitutional rights and choosing to hold an in-person commencement ceremony, contravening the Michigan governor’s COVID lock-down orders. And today, with applications overflowing, Hillsdale resists enrollment expansion because too many students would alter the nature and purpose of the college. As Dr. Arnn reminds us, a collegium is a place for individuals to learn together in community. Strict adherence to such a simple definition explains why there is an upper limit on enrollment and why all Hillsdale students follow the same course of study in the first two years: students should know each other and have something in common to talk about. If that’s not possible, there is no college. And for the same reason, as Hillsdale undertakes new construction, it chose to build inward on campus, not outward.
This may seem quaint and anachronistic to some, but Hillsdale shines as a beacon for those who seek to restore integrity and thoughtful intention to education. In fidelity to the mission of a liberal arts education, Hillsdale adheres to a classical approach that aims to form the whole person in the context of citizenship. It is a rigorous approach that cultivates moral character and civic virtue as requisites for personal and political self-governance. Fortunately, Hillsdale also promotes this kind of learning at the K-12 level through its network of some 80 affiliated public and private schools.
The Ultimate Things
This approach to education goes beyond career training, the teaching of technical skills, and other such practical aims. It rather aims to provide essential nourishment for the soul, as a requisite for human flourishing. It cultivates a sense of belonging – in community, society, and history – through the rigorous study of our cultural heritage. It develops purpose – an understanding of what life is for – through classic literature that tells the human story in beautiful and memorable ways. It forges competence – personal self-worth and ability – through a challenging curriculum that uses primary sources for direct exposure to the greatest works. These combined lead to inspiration, that the soul is motivated to deliberate action, as guided by a sense of transcendence, the mystery and awe of connection with something greater than ourselves.
The word ‘education’ is derived from the Latin educare, meaning “to lead out.” It can be said that education leads one out of ignorance, but a more specific understanding is that, through education, one is “led out” of the limited and accidental circumstances of one’s own life to a circumspect view of the histories, forces, and ideas that give life meaning. That is, education is a leading out from the text of individual life to the full context of human being, and wisdom and virtue are the products. The child, for instance, before formation, may take a gift for granted –or worse, complain about it– due to ignorance of alternative circumstances. Similarly, an adult may condemn his country’s history without asking or knowing: as compared to what alternatives, either before or elsewhere? The hallmark of the educated is the ability to evaluate the texts of life in their fullest contexts. The classical liberal arts, as the study of the ultimate things, aim for this fullest contextual understanding.
A Matter of Justice
At its best, America is a classless society with social mobility, and the more perfect realization of this ideal is a goal that can unite all Americans. Education is the key to opportunity and mobility, and classical education in particular takes aims at unlocking the human potential of every student, regardless of background. Mortimer Adler, founder of the Great Books of the Western World program, was a strong advocate for “an educationally classless society.” The goal, he wrote, should be to make the best education available be the education that is available to all.
Unfortunately, as Charles Murray highlighted in Coming Apart (2012), our education system has been driving society in the opposite direction. Rising tuition costs make private education affordable for only a vanishingly small minority, who then socialize, marry, and build lives within this increasingly segregated class. Consider, for instance, that the median tuition cost for a private high school today is $19,000, a shocking 400% increase from the $3,800 cost (in today’s dollars) of 40 years ago. Meanwhile, median incomes in America have increased only a scant 42%, from $59,000 to $84,000 (in inflation-adjusted 2024 dollars), over the same 40-year period. The result is that private education has simply become outpriced. For most Americans, the only choice available is traditional public schools, a monolithic system with a virtual monopoly on tuition-free education.
Such fractionation is antithetical to America’s egalitarian character and democratic future, and correcting it is a matter of justice. The good news is that the tide has begun to turn in recent years, as states have achieved considerable success in passing school choice legislation. This includes more friendly charter school laws and more equitable funding that follows the student, whether to charter schools directly or to private schools though voucher programs. And the classical education model is also growing, with now more than 670,000 students receiving a classical education in over 1,000 classical schools throughout the country. Remarkably, this growth in classical education includes 125,000 students enrolled in tuition-free, public charter schools that are open equally to all students, regardless of aptitude or financial means – a promising advance toward Adler’s vision.
When one hears “classical education,” it may evoke notions of elitism or conjure images of Robin Williams at a New England boarding school, inspiring students to stand on their desks and recite Walt Whitman. And indeed, that is quite the point: an elite education, the best – rigorous, deep, and inspired. But to make this kind of education available to all – this is the restoration and more perfect realization of our nation’s founding legacy, a fortification of the foundations of our democratic society. This is the promise of public classical education, and this is why Cincinnati Classical Academy was founded and chartered as a public Hillsdale College Member School.
JED A. HARTINGS, PhD | Founder and Board President, Cincinnati Classical Academy. A graduate of St. Xavier H.S. and the University of Notre Dame, Dr. Hartings is a neuroscience professor who served eight years as a U.S. Army officer before joining the research faculty at the University of Cincinnati. As a life-long student aware of the omissions in his own formal education, he was inspired to found Cincinnati Classical Academy after discovering the classical model for K-12 education.
