A classical education means much more than the study of Greek and Latin. Its object of study is “the best that has been thought and said.” More and more, although your parents probably understand this better than you do, American education has deprived you, the ambitious student, of the traditional knowledge and the traditional intellectual skills that will make you understand the world better. Later in life, don’t you think you will see and hear more in modern plays or movies with Shakespeare in your memory? Don’t you think you’ll be better off as a law student with Latin under your belt or as a med student with Greek roots in your brain? Won’t you be a more clear-headed computer techie after confronting Euclid’s theorems and Newton’s calculus in high school? Won’t you communicate better in the work place with the usage rules from Harbrace and Strunk and White deep in your bones? Won’t you be a more persuasive speaker with Socrates examining your claims?
Above all, a classical education will push and keep wide open the two doors of higher learning: numbers and words. At Thomas Jefferson (TJ), you will learn Latin, Greek, and either French or Italian; you will read through and discuss a collection of books that are at once both timeless and timely; and you will write and face scrupulous line-editing almost every day, including while on vacations. On the other hand, you will also take an accelerated math sequence that culminates in AP calculus in either the junior or senior year. AP courses in science and history will also be required and will give you a head start on college. If you think you can’t do all this or if you think you have math anxiety or no imagination in reading, have faith! Practice and guidance will prepare you for pre-law or pre-med, history or computer science. We believe that you can do it, and we will help you through the hard parts. (We don’t pretend it’s not hard; we just think it’s necessary – and completely possible.)
We don’t want a previous weak and lopsided background in high school to decide which door in life you choose to open. We want you to be able to choose freely. Liberal education, after all, has as its root and end freedom – freedom of the most important kind, intellectual freedom based on a head well filled and well formed. The job market will always be looking for that, and the world will always be better off for it.
Finally, a classical education involves more than just the best books and study materials. It requires the active, patient, inspiring, demanding mentorship of well-educated adults who look for the best version of you. Plato needed Socrates, Alexander the Great Aristotle, and Thoreau Emerson. It requires a community of lively, motivated peers similarly engaged in the pursuit of the best and highest things. And it requires lofty goals to keep everyone looking up and ahead.