A Gymnopoetic Classical Education

Students will read the Baltimore Catechism, cover to cover. The teacher will make frequent use of the current, universal Catechism of the Church to develop the shorter answers the Baltimore Catechism gives to questions. While not the primary focus of the course, the teacher will occasionally challenge certain assertions of the Catechism and ask students to use the “tools” previously acquired in the Catechism to answer the objections or resolve the difficulties given by the teacher. This aspect of the course will be students' brief introduction to apologetics.

Students will begin reading the story of Salvation History, and the teacher will help the students see the story of Scripture through the eyes of God's faithful at the time in which that aspect of the story was given. While the course will focus on the Pentateuch and the subsequent historical Old Testament books, selections from the major and minor prophets will also be read. Certain persons, sacred edifices and objects, etc. will be noted as being of recurring importance.

Having completed the Old Testament, students will discover the significance of the Incarnation, the Ministry, the Death, and Resurrection of the God-man, Jesus Christ, through the Synoptic Gospels, the Book of Acts, and the Pauline Epistles. Recurring themes will be highlighted so that students will better understand the salvific message Christ gives to the disciples, not just in antiquity, but also today.

In the Prophets semester we return to the Old Testament where we encounter the major and minor Prophets, as well as the books of Tobit, Judith, and Esther. The Prophets prompt us to consider the Covenant and how we are living it as a community and as individuals. The Prophets illuminate the life and ministry of Christ while also aiding us in gaining a deeper understanding of right relationship with ourselves, others, and God.

In the Wisdom semester we prayerfully study the Psalms and Wisdom Literature of the Old Testament, the Catholic Epistles, John's Gospel and Letters, and the Book of Revelation. Here we will be diving into the deepest parts of scripture, planning to read and appreciate these texts as guides for right living, for prayer, and for Christological reflection. A special focus will be on the Church Fathers' interpretation of these works, providing students with paradigms and resources by which they can faithfully and accurately interpret these writings and other biblical texts.

In this part of the Theology track, students move beyond the Scriptures, focusing on the lives and spiritual writings of the saints and doctors of the church. There is a great depth to the spiritual life, and through these works the boys can reflect on that depth. Special attention will be paid to the writings of St. Francis de Sales, St. Benedict, and the Carmelite mystics (e.g. St. Teresa of Avila, St. John of the Cross, etc.).

There is a great difficulty in “doing” Theology instead of merely reading Theology. The Science of Theology is a difficult one but essential to understand so we do not get trapped into confusing theological inquiry with catechetical truth. In this course the boys learn how Theology is done (and not done) by considering various Theological issues through the writings of various theologians from Church Fathers to ancient heretics. By the end of the course they will understand the legitimate diversity of thought that exists in the doctors of the church and understand how one should approach a Theological question.

The Ancient Year in History spans from the creation of the world to the political victory of Christianity with the Edict of Milan. The true developments of pagan antiquity will be examined, as well as the shortcomings of the ancients, all in preparation for the Incarnation of the Son of God. This course will include notable stories including Akhenaten's Egyptian Monotheism, the Bronze Age Collapse, Tiglath-Pileser III's conquests, the Persian and Peloponnesian Wars, the Punic Wars, the Incarnation, and the saints of the Early Church.

This study of the medieval world will especially manifest the depths of culture and community under the direction of the Gospel, displaying how the Church “took gold from Egypt,” absorbing and Christianizing truth, goodness, and beauty from Roman, Greek, and Germanic traditions. It advanced the cause of human dignity, curbed warfare, elevated women, protected the weak, and abolished slavery for the first time in human history. Students will develop in themselves something of this great “medieval synthesis” as well as something of the patience of the Church that knows that lasting and meaningful change is only achieved slowly.

The destruction of Christendom came from three main events: the Protestant Revolution, the Enlightenment, and the Industrial Revolution. Rejecting the unity of faith and reason, church and state, man and work, these events created profound imbalances in Western society. In this course we go through these events, and how men tried to fill these vacuums in many unsuccessful ways, causing great destruction to Europe. In response to these calamities, great men have risen up time and time again to hold onto the good and oppose its destruction.

Students will first be led through a brief survey of Western Political thought to understand the basics of Political Philosophy in the Western Tradition. This begins with the pagans Plato and Aristotle, moves into our Christian tradition with considerations of writings of the early Church Fathers and the wisdom of Saints Augustine and Thomas, and finally leads to the brilliant yet destructive developments of Enlightenment thought leading up to the American Revolution.

Having established students in the strong grounding of the Western tradition, the course will then consider our American founding and government, reading through the Declaration of Independence, excerpts of the Federalist Papers, the Constitution and Bill of Rights, the reflections of Alexis de Tocqueville in his Democracy in America, and selections from Presidents and other great political figures throughout American history.

This course covers the fundamentals of literature, what Dr. John Senior would say everyone should first read when they are young and then re-read throughout the rest of their lives: Fairy Tales from Lang's Collections, Fables from Aesop, Nursery Rhymes such as those of Mother Goose, and tales from 1001 Arabian Nights. These works will focus on shaping the interior senses of imagination and memory which are indispensable for later courses in which students will encounter greater works (i.e. books with scope). The attributes and roles of various gods and goddesses and mythical creatures, along with several Mother Goose nursery rhymes and poems, will be committed to memory.

This course will cover works such as Tolkien's Hobbit, Stevenson's Treasure Island, and Pyle's King Arthur, paying special attention to the conspicuous growth protagonists undergo throughout the course of their perilous journeys. Students, who are themselves on the great and dangerous adventure of life, will draw vitally important inspiration from the fortitude, the quick-thinking, and even the responsiveness to divine or otherwise benevolent promptings of the various characters.

Having ventured boldly into the wide world in the last semester, students in this course will consider the effects of original sin in the human experience. Reading through Norse myths and Anglo-Saxon poetry gives a grounding experience of the transient nature of the fallen world and of man's life in it. Gothic literature, including poetry and short stories from Hawthorne, Poe, and Coleridge, as well as Marlowe's Doctor Faustus and Robert Louis Stevenson's Jekyll and Hyde, will demonstrate the reality of moral evil and how it contributes to the corruption and collapse of human life and culture. This will serve to balance the enthusiasm of the previous semester, all the while it anticipates the following semester's focus on heroism as response to evil.

If the previous semester emphasized the fallenness of our world and the reality of evil, this semester considers the reaction one should have towards the evil of the world. Works such as Mark Twain's Tom Sawyer and Joan of Arc, the Anabasis, the Song of Roland, and the Lay of Beowulf will remind students that God often chooses to defend the often frail light and warmth of human civilization by the strong backs, bold hearts, and quick wits of heroes. Special emphasis will be placed on the Lives of the Martyrs as we pass their feasts in the year, and the comparison of the respective heroics of the martyrs and the heroes of our stories will provide material for the semester's writing assignments.

The heroism considered in the previous semester is now observed as it becomes an entire way of life guided and enriched by the Faith: Chivalry. Chivalry will be the central focus of this course, and students will read both earnest and light-hearted works which concern themselves with Christendom's code. The course's exploration of heroic characters will note that they are more noble than many of the individuals from earlier stories but that they are also not quite the demigods which will be essential to the epics soon to be studied in senior year. In a word, the magnanimity of these dutiful, mortal men will help students capture the essence of the knight and his ways.

The literary focus this semester is the interior life of man, pairing well with the “Devout Life” course in the Theology track. Jane Austen, Dostoevsky, Ovid, Dickens, and others will be the students' guides as they travel through the depths of the soul.

This course concerns itself with the great epics of the canon of Western Literature, with works like the Iliad, Odyssey, the Divine Comedy, and Shakespeare's plays enjoying pride of place. Themes from all previous courses will be woven together both by the teacher and by the authors who perfectly understand the gravity and place of the created world's facets.

Wonder is the root of the natural sciences. This course is an introduction to the natural sciences, putting the students into direct contact with the local natural environment. They will be having immediate experiences with geological formations, fauna, flora, and the heavens. Their perception of the natural world will be sharpened as they learn to notice and understand the distinctions in the natural world around them and learn practical tools of sketchwork. Students will be spending much of the class outdoors, drawing and recording data in their sketchbooks, and memorizing distinctions in the natural world.

What distinguishes dead and inorganic matter from the living? How do biological systems utilize energy and molecular building blocks to grow, reproduce, and maintain homeostasis? How are creatures organized and distinguished from each other? These questions and more are the focus of our Biology course. Through phenomenological observations, dissections, and reading source texts, students are expected to develop a solid grasp of biological concepts, theories, and laboratory techniques.

This course intends to introduce students to the intricacies of the atom, properties of material substances, under what conditions substantial change takes place, and the associated effects of such changes. The course places a significant emphasis on real-world examples with many experiments, and an understanding of the historical development of our understanding of the atom. Chemistry problems require an orderly method, attention to detail, and patience; developing these skills is a good in itself, but also builds up a boy's critical thinking faculties in general.

In this Physics course we focus on the fundamentals of physics through real-world examples. This allows students to pick up on the patterns of the natural world, resulting in a strong conceptual understanding. This understanding is primarily a good in its own right but also allows for students to make accurate predictions about the behavior of the physical world. A strong emphasis is placed on developing analytical and problem-solving skills.

Students will complete Book I of the Elements of Euclid as their introduction to one of the four arts of the Quadrivium: Geometry. Students will memorize its definitions, postulates, and common notions, discuss the nature of first principles, and encounter the logic of one of antiquity's greatest mathematicians by demonstrating each of the propositions. Occasionally, students will attempt to develop alternate proofs to see how concise Euclid's proofs are. Careful attention will be given to help the students see the proofs not as a series of more or less complicated assertions temporarily stored in short-term memory but rather as beautiful necessary conclusions to previous demonstrations.

This course integrates the essential skills of Algebra 1 and Algebra 2 through application-based geometry problems that help students understand why algebra works, not just how to perform algorithms. Students will explore linear and quadratic relationships, systems of equations, functions, polynomials, and exponential models, all within the context of real-world geometric situations, including measurement, scaling, surface area, volume, trigonometry, and spatial reasoning. The course leverages our students' logic background from Euclid to teach college algebra as a conceptual framework for problem-solving. By using geometry as the foundation for problem-solving, students develop deeper conceptual understanding, stronger reasoning skills, and the ability to connect multiple areas of mathematics in meaningful and practical ways.

Discrete Math offers students a fresh perspective on mathematics by focusing on patterns, structures, and decision-making processes that unfold in clear, discrete steps rather than continuous change. This application-driven course highlights the beauty, symmetry, and logical design found throughout mathematics while demonstrating its real-world relevance in business, technology, government, and everyday problem-solving. Students explore engaging questions — such as how barcodes encode information, how to design the most efficient delivery route, how probability affects decisions like buying a lottery ticket, and what it means to divide resources fairly in complex situations. Along the way, they learn key concepts from voting theory, fair division, graph theory, networks, algorithms, counting, probability, coding, and digital systems. By the end of the course, students are equipped with practical tools and mathematical habits of mind that help them understand the structured patterns underlying the modern world.

Students will develop an understanding of scientific methodology and how this methodology has developed to its present form. Most notably, they will consider how the scientific method has come to be shaped by developments in mathematics, corresponding to deduction and induction. Inductive reasoning finds its mathematical expression in probability and statistics. Students learn the essential role of probabilistic reasoning in science, the degree of certainty that can be based on such arguments, and how these arguments are different from but compatible with the reasoning we employ in other disciplines. The successful student will learn to utilize probability and statistics to empirically test hypotheses and weigh scientific evidence; interpret data from scientific experiments; design simple scientific experiments; identify the characteristics of legitimate scientific reasoning that distinguish it from pseudoscience; and understand the historical roots of the modern scientific method and the philosophical and epistemological basis of scientific reasoning.

The first two semesters aim to give students familiarity and proficiency with simple Latin. Students will be able to read simple Latin texts independently and make useful conversation comfortably. The course will work through the first third of Ørberg's Familia Romana and make use of Ørberg's other materials (especially Colloquia Latina and Fabellae Latinae).

The second two semesters aim to lead students into intermediate Latin. Students will continue to work through Ørberg's works and have a special focus on primary texts (especially the Vulgate and the Roman Missal). Readings of the Vulgate will be planned to correspond with readings in the Scripture course.

The third two semesters aim to bring students through the upper levels of intermediate Latin into more advanced Latin. Students will be able to engage with more difficult Latin texts, working through more primary materials and making more complex conversation. In the Junior year, other classes — including History, Arts, Literature, and Scripture — will have specified “Latin class days” where all or some of those class periods will be conducted in Latin. This course will work through the rest of Ørberg's Familia Romana, Colloquia Latina, and Fabellae Latinae, in addition to continuing studies of the Roman Missal and the Vulgate.

During senior year students will read more advanced texts from both Classical and Medieval authors and begin to converse fluently in Latin. This course will work through Ørberg's Roma Aeterna, the connected Fabulae Syrae, and selections from primary texts such as the Aeneid, Caesar's Gallic Wars, and Livy's Ab Urbe Condita (which will reiterate stories covered in Freshman history).

For centuries, the Church has proposed and warmly recommended Gregorian chant as a formator of souls, a liturgical norm, and even a method of prayer, yet the most frequent experience today is that chant is secondary to other forms of music or even an afterthought. This initial course in the arts sequence confronts this problem by presuming that, much like a backpacking journey in the mountains can awaken a latent love of nature, so a loving immersion in Gregorian chant can stir up students' hearts not merely to be competent in but even to gain a degree of love for chant as a way of uniting music and worship handed down to us by so many fathers in faith. Accordingly, students will sing simple and intermediate Gregorian compositions as well as grow in understanding of the theory and spirituality of Gregorian chant, including through composing their own melodies.

This course intends to open a door into the world of poetry. By writing and reading massive amounts of simple and enjoyable verse, students will gain the experience necessary to (1) write in verse with facility; (2) understand the technical elements of poetry and recognize them at work on the page; and (3) turn to reading and writing poetry for enjoyment and expression. Students will also, incidentally, become well acquainted with many of our great English poets, at least in their most accessible moments.

Students will learn the basics of several traditional dances, whether partner-oriented or group-oriented (e.g. the waltz, contra dancing, etc.). In learning the basics, students will find their posture and movements both in and out of the class become more intentional, coordinated, and graceful. For this course we will be inviting female siblings and friends to join the boys in learning how to dance.

Students will contemplate the buildings of different historical periods and geographic locations in the West as well as the vision of the architects who built them. The teacher will emphasize the tradition that gradually develops and that can, in the best examples, be built on even in our own day. Sacred edifices, even those of pagan antiquity, will be given pride of place over the most beautiful of their secular counterparts. As often as possible, students will view buildings without any technological medium during trips, but, in most cases, the teacher will have recourse to media (e.g. pictures in books) to represent the buildings. The course will not just consider the emotional impact of the works, but will also deal with mathematical concepts (e.g. proportion). During this course students will learn how to create some simple architectural designs and draw with proper proportion and perspective.

In an age in which most people's handwriting has become illegible, students will learn writing techniques (beginning with cursive) to ensure their words can not just be read but also be edifying in their appearance. In learning to write beautifully, students will find themselves considering their words more carefully in terms of their meaning, their order, and their memorability.

As all sacred art is iconographic in nature, students will study various windows into heaven and learn their characteristics well. How are they similar to or different from merely veristic artwork? How do holy individuals or events differ from wicked or mundane ones? Why does the early Church feel the need to defend icons so vigorously? These and other questions will be entertained, all while students learn to implement the visual art techniques they have learned in other classes to create their own icons.

This course provides a historical survey of select periods of art and training in the technical elements of drawing. Moving beyond the focus on iconography, the historical narrative of art continues through a study of the great works of Western painting, with lectures and seminar discussions devoted to the themes of the naturalism, humanism, and realism of the Renaissance and Baroque period, and to the dissolution of these realist forms in the 19th and 20th centuries. Lessons on art history are punctuated with lessons on composition, artistic ratios, spatial zones, and other techniques as students view examples of them in the artistic tradition.

In our day, souls are inundated with music in a manner unprecedented in history. While most people have an intuition that some of this music is better and other music worse, issues arise in clarifying legitimate preferences versus objective worth. This course presumes that, much like understanding a forest ecosystem begins with taking stock of the varieties of life inhabiting the area, so making sense of modern man's musical experience ought to be founded upon taking stock of the music man has made through millennia and striving to see what man's music-making tells us both about man and about music. Accordingly, students will listen to musical works from ancient times through the modern day and consider them deeply through the lens that, just as the books we read and write or the structures we build and inhabit both reveal aspects of man and form man, so music teaches us about God's design of our souls and forms us to fulfill His plans.

A gymnastic contact with reality, in which the boys press and push against real (as opposed to virtual) things and allow the natural world to speak to them. This is why carpentry is at the core of our trades program.

By persevering through adversity to see a beautiful project through to completion, boys will learn a skill that will reverberate elsewhere in their lives.

A “rite of passage” element of doing adult work with adults. When they are apprenticed by workmen in the community, they get to see how their mettle stacks up against reality in a clearer way than any contrived test.

A boy can grow up able to do the “basic” house maintenance that was common 50 years ago. This also gives boys confidence that they can achieve things, which bolsters their confidence in the classroom.