Socrates showed us how to engage in meaningful conversations by asking good questions about living ideas. For example, in Plato’s dialogue, Theatatus, he models for us how to have a civil conversation about the nature of knowledge. In this dialogue, the “living idea” is the discussion about the nature of knowledge. Living ideas provide good and beautiful ideas to play with, observe, contemplate, communicate, and remember.  We prioritize encounters through conversations rooted in living ideas, not a pedagogy encouraging the acquisition of information.

Freedom to seek knowledge and virtue is at the heart of the liberal arts. Classical education is more properly called a liberal education, from the Latin word liber, meaning “free,” since the pursuit of Truth, Goodness, and Beauty sets the soul of the student free from ignorance and the passions of our weak wills.  

• Freedom in Virtue: We guide students towards virtue by giving them opportunities to express kindness and generosity so that good habits can overcome bad habits. It allows them to shake off the dust of selfishness and embrace their natural need to love and be loved, to give, to serve, and help. This is very liberating to a child.
• Freedom in Knowledge: We equip our students by giving them opportunities to engage in active learning through their instincts—to communicate, to ask questions, to dance, to sing, to construct. This is what it means to experience the freeing arts.  

We accomplish the freeing arts through a mode of instruction rooted in language. This is traditionally understood through the seven liberal arts, which consist of the Trivium’s three ways of language through word (grammar, logic, and rhetoric) and the Quadrivium’s four ways of language through number (arithmetic, geometry, astronomy, and music). 

The trivium is the foundation of learning communication skills. It is therefore the foundation of all learning in all subjects (including the sciences). In their traditional forms, the trivium was the central mode of intellection in the ancient and medieval schools. All subjects require a pedagogy rooted in language. Therefore, each new concept (regardless of the subject) is learned through grammar by recognizing signs, imitating, exploring, gathering, playing, singing, and memorizing beautiful ideas. The concept is then internalized and categorized through logic/dialects by examining, questioning, and reasoning. Finally, the concept is refined through rhetoric by preserving virtue primarily through oral narratives and proofs in order to communicate wisely and eloquently. 

By way of the trivium, students are encountering the modes of thinking, listening, and communicating.  The trivium is the foundation of the freeing arts (liberal arts) since the ability to communicate well is essential to a life that is truly liberating.

Mimetic instruction is a Platonic and Aristotelian mode of instruction in the tradition of classical education. Its roots are in the Greek term, mimesis, which refers to the ideas of imitation and mimicry. Simply translated, mimesis means “imitation.” Mimetic instruction forms the foundation for teaching and learning every subject in a classical school. During a classical mimetic lesson, a holistic and intellectual experience allows students to incarnate truth from excellent models. This highly engaging process awakens and stimulates action towards the cultivation of virtue. The mimetic process commands both mind and soul; it coalesces into habit formation and shapes the affections to learn and recognize beauty. While mimesis starts by imitation, the result of mimetic activities is that the student is influenced and transformed. Aristotle regarded all transformation as mimetic. The imitation of good things is not just about copying something, but about emulating beauty and learning to live a noble life. According to the classical tradition, it is therefore necessary to expose children to things worth imitating as a way of shaping the affections to the Good, True, and Beautiful.

As a traditional framework for classical education, truth, goodness, and beauty are referred to as transcendentals or realms of being that direct us upward, beyond the physical world. The Greek philosophers (as well as many church fathers) had a lot to say about this! Traditionally, truth reveals reality, goodness informs our ethics, and beauty awakens wonder. Together these three create a harmonious atmosphere that creates a synergy focused on helping one another strive towards becoming the best we can be. Through the curriculum and pedagogy, these aspects create an atmosphere that reflects and illumines us towards rightly ordered affections. Our pedagogy motivates students to do what is GOOD, to love and experience what is BEAUTIFUL, and to know what is TRUE. 

• Development of both intellectual and personal habits​
• Active reading of great books​
• Dialectic interaction between teacher & students​
• Furnishing the mind with beauty in the form of the humanities​
• Rhetorical training that focus on expression in truth, goodness, & beauty​