Welcome from the Headmaster

Welcome to Cincinnati Classical Academy (also known locally as CLASSICAL), and thank you for choosing this place among the many schooling options you have. The mission of CLASSICAL is to develop the minds and nourish the hearts of our students through a content-rich curriculum in the classical liberal arts and sciences, with instruction in moral character and civic virtue. It is a high calling and a difficult one. But it is a calling that can be realized if we are clear in our aims and joined together by common purpose.

Parents, in choosing classical education for your child, you have chosen a challenging path, but one that brings great rewards for those who travel it well. CLASSICAL hopes not merely to care for our students but to help them fill their minds with knowledge. Our methods are the tried and true—we diagram sentences, we read the great and difficult books, we memorize and recite poetry, we do mathematical proofs. We do things the hard way because we know that there are no shortcuts when it comes to understanding and because we believe that the things we study are worth the effort. 

At CLASSICAL, we believe that a liberal education in the sciences and humanities is inherently good—something worth having apart from the many good things that can come from it. Schools like ours often produce impressive students, graduating seniors with high SAT scores, excellent college applications, and the opportunity to be doctors or lawyers once they finish college. We hope that our first graduates will be impressive as well, but we do not think that making them merely impressive is the primary mission of our school. 

Sure, we want our students to receive the highest academic accolades, but we also believe that our work is to help our students learn to be good, to teach them to be men and women with sound minds and well-formed characters. We hope to help them become thoughtful judges of their own happiness and forces for what is right in the world. Classical liberal education, education that is good for its own sake, is the education that makes human beings free—free to consider the world as it is and endeavor to understand it over time. Our school motto, scientia est libertas (knowledge is freedom) reflects this. 

In choosing Cincinnati Classical Academy, you have chosen a very particular kind of place. To honor the choice that you have made, we promise to treat your children’s education as an end in itself. We promise to help them learn to be virtuous, not just credentialed. We promise to educate them to be thinkers, not merely to train them for a particular profession. We promise to challenge them to help them see what they are capable of. We promise to help your students know themselves, and to help them cultivate their minds and their characters in accordance with virtue.

We ask that you support our school in the community and to your children. This important and difficult education relies upon a close partnership between parent and teacher. Because a classical school aims for more than just supervising students, or training them for careers, we cannot go about our work without you. We ask that you get to know us, and get to know classical education. We encourage you to learn about our curriculum and the mission of our school by visiting our website and participating in the school’s academic activities. 

When you have questions about something your student is learning or a method used by a teacher, we hope you will ask us. because, generally speaking, we do things for a logical reason. We hope you will display to your students the core virtues we teach—courage, gratitude, justice, humility, perseverance, prudence, and compassion. Help us teach them to develop the good habits that lead to moral virtue. Above all, help us demonstrate to them that learning is not just for young people. Show them through example that curiosity about the world along with the good judgment to understand it well is the truest and best source of human happiness. 

I thank you for your support of our school, and I look forward to an excellent school year.

Sincerely,

Michael Rose

Headmaster
Cincinnati Classical Academy