How Classical Schools are Solving the Civics Crisis

A fast-growing network is intent on shaping thoughtful citizens and leaders.

Editor’s Note:

Advancing a positive culture that elevates our shared humanity is core to the Prohuman mission. Our programs, including a K-12 curriculum, teach character strengths that lift up people and whole communities.

The Great Hearts Classical Charter Network has, for years, been empowering students with the educational habits of heart and mind that Frederick Douglass might attribute to the process of ‘[uplifting] the soul of man into the glorious light of truth’—the very light that has guided America’s enduring trial in pluralistic self-governance.

Today we share an article by Carol McNamara, director of the Great Hearts Institute, on the classical approach to ‘solving the civics crisis,’ in anticipation of the institute’s National Symposium for Classical Education. The Symposium takes place in Tempe Arizona from February 19 to 21. We’ll be there. Tickets are still available and we hope you’ll join us.

See the full Symposium program, here.

How Classical Schools are Solving the Civics Crisis

By Carol McNamara

Public education in the United States is suffering a crisis of seriousness. Much like the population of Ray Bradbury’s dystopian society in Fahrenheit 451, American children are often no longer required to read the great books of history, philosophy and literature that form thoughtful human beings who can sort through the big (and small) human questions for themselves, in a way that prepares them to become responsible, self-governing individuals and leaders the country needs.

The appeal of K-12 classical education is growing simply because many parents want academic excellence to be the standard for education. Parents want their children to love school and to acquire the foundational skills of the mind and habits of heart that prepare them for clear reasoning, strong writing, and the ability to express themselves well in the robust exchange of ideas.

The Discovery Institute reports that between 2019 and 2023, 264 new classical schools were established in the United States, reflecting an average annual growth rate of 4.8%. This expansion increased the number of U.S. classical schools to an estimated 1,000 in 2024.

Growth has also occurred within existing classical schools. In a sample of 84 schools surveyed, total enrollment grew from 9,692 to 16,448 students between the 2018–19 and 2022–23 academic years. One forecast suggests that 1.4 million K-12 students—2.4% of the total U.S. K-12 population—will be enrolled in a classical school by 2035.

With this growing interest in classical education and the liberal arts, many wonder what it is, and what support it might provide for the necessary renewal of a civic education that provides students with the knowledge and dispositions that prepare them to be thoughtful participants in American civic life. Classical liberal arts education is conducted through the close reading, study, and discussion of texts and ideas across the curriculum–including the humane letters (literature, philosophy, and history), mathematics, science, the arts, and classical and modern languages, to which students are introduced in an order that corresponds with the natural stages of learning.

In The Lost Tools of Learning, Dorothy Sayers, calling for a revival of the medieval “Trivium” of “grammar, dialectic, and rhetoric,” argues that we should dedicate the first stages of learning–what we would call K-12 education—to inculcating the “tools” of learning. Sayers’ argument (in 1947) is that education had become formulaic and value neutral: we teach children to read, and about the facts of “subjects,” without teaching them how to learn, how to think through a problem and formulate their thoughts into a sustained argument. Sayers explains that education begins with the fact accumulation and memorization that young children find so easy and pleasurable. It proceeds to an argumentative, competitive and dialectical stage, ultimately leading to what she calls the “Poetic Age,” a challenging and restless period of youth, characterized by an obsessive desire to possess and synthesize knowledge into a whole.

This order of learning becomes a classical liberal arts education when it is paired with a curriculum that corresponds to the child’s stage of development. Great Hearts kindergarten students read Little Bear, Mr. Popper’s Penguins; third graders begin the Narnia series; by fifth grade, the students have embarked on Shakespeare; and in high school, they tackle the great epics, novels, and philosophic texts of the Western tradition, among them the works of the American Founding, U.S. literature, rhetoric, and political thought that form them into thoughtful participants in the American experiment. Along the way, they learn how to take up a text on their own and together with others in Socratic seminars.

The pattern of education characteristic of the Great Hearts classical charter network, and other classical schools, was introduced to ensure that students encounter the greatest ideas available across the curriculum. The result of such an education should be that students are unwilling to rest content with the unexamined opinions and conventions of our times, and instead become determined to think through all the serious alternatives for themselves in pursuit of the truth.

Perhaps that shouldn’t be radical, but it is always radical to have an independent mind. We want students to possess the skills and knowledge to challenge convention, not for its own sake, or even to be on the “right side of history,” but to take seriously the alternatives in front of us and proceed on the basis of prudence. This disposition to learn and judge wisely is the one students will need to become thoughtful American citizens and leaders in a world that is throwing at them the greatest challenges.

A version of this article was originally published by The Jack Miller Center.

Opinions expressed by guest authors do not necessarily reflect those of the Prohuman Foundation. We value diverse perspectives and invite submissions from those who can enrich our understanding of topics close to our mission: to promote the foundational truth that we are all unique individuals, united by our shared humanity.