
Parents Across America Are Rejecting LGBT Propaganda And Flocking To Classical Education
Mark Bauerlein
The real draw is the curriculum: Reading Great Books, memorizing poetry, learning Latin, and studying the fine arts.
The growth of classical education schools is astonishing. The numbers keep rising; there is no sign that the movement is beginning to plateau. Schools open, networks are created, charters are authorized, and kids fill the seats. One would think that as more spaces are available the (supposedly) small number of parents who favor the classical way would be satisfied and demand would diminish. How many Americans want their children to study Latin, read the Old and New Testaments, and appreciate the High Art of the Renaissance? Couldn’t be too many, say intellectuals and educators on the left. Those enlightened practitioners can’t help assuming that a classical curriculum should turn people off, given the half-century of multiculturalist criticism of Western Civilization and American Exceptionalism, but apparently the long campaign to kill respect for the old lineage hasn’t succeeded.
A prime example: Valor Education is a network of five schools in Texas. The first one opened in Austin in 2018, a charter school squarely in the classical mode. Two years later, school leaders saw enough local interest to open another school in Austin, then in 2022 a school in Kyle, and in 2023 schools in Leander and San Antonio. The numbers now: 4,200 enrolled in the five campuses and 5,500 on the waitlists.
Part of the attraction of Valor campuses is the free tuition, to be sure, but public schools are free too. Valor doesn’t screen students for background or ability, so anyone can apply and have an equal chance of admission. The real draw, however, is the curriculum, which is certainly not geared to a no-child-left-behind attitude that ends up lowering standards so that, indeed, no child is left behind. Valor speaks forthrightly of Great Books. It requires students to memorize poetry, learn Latin, and study the fine arts. In 8th grade, students read Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, Tom Sawyer, and The Merchant of Venice. Two years before, they read William Shakespeare’s Julius Caesar. In 12th grade, it’s Dante and Fyodor Dostoevsky.
Another example is Alberta Classical Academy in Calgary, which was authorized as a charter school in January 2022 and started in August of that year. Caylan Ford, one of the founders, says that they had to pass out fliers, circulate at the Calgary Stampede, and reach out to local churches in order to recruit because the idea of a charter classical school was unknown in the region. The building could handle 280 kids, and in the spring Ford worried that they wouldn’t reach nearly that number.