What is classical catholic education?
In short classical education continues a long liberal arts tradition in education that dates back to classical Greece and Rome. By liberal arts we do not mean an education in the Humanities which is bereft of scientific training. The “Liberal arts” historically refers, rather, to the seven liberal arts of the medieval curriculum (grammar, logic, rhetoric, arithmetic, geometry, astronomy and music) of which science and math play an important part. The liberal arts tradition has, through out the centuries, taken on various forms but it has always distinguished itself—as it does within the landscape of 20th century American education—by an insistence that the primary goal of education is the cultivation of human freedom. Education is not, then, primarily concerned to offer vocational training nor is it unduly focused on citizenship. As persons human beings are distinguished within the created order precisely by their transcendental abilities; animals and insects have “tasks” and “societie
