Five ideas that distingiuish Classical education from conventional:
- A unifying principle that orders all learning, thus an integrated, proportioned course of learning
- Recognition of the transforming power of ideas, thus an emphasis on training students to contemplate ideas rather than merely retain content or master processes
- Virtue as the end of education, rather than mere application, thus a concerted and rigorous effort to cultiavate every human faculty in every student
- Recogntion of the need for mentors, models, examples, etc. who are masters of their area of knowledge and who are the kinds of people we hope the students will grow up to become. In a word: honor and recognition to genuine authority.
- Endless emphasis on reality over mere appearance, thus the recognition that perception is powerful, but it is not necessarily reality. When one is taught that perception is reality, accountability and the need to grow are either relativized, trivialized, or removed altogether.
