Why Choose A Classical & Christian Education?

British author Dorothy Sayers wrote an essay in the 1940’s entitled “The Lost Tools of Learning” which she delivered as a lecture at Oxford University.  In her lecture, she called not only for a return to the application of the seven liberal arts of ancient classical education which was prevalent in the Middle Ages, but also connected the first three of those elements with the natural stages of a child’s development.

Intrigued by Sayers’ concepts as articulated in Doug Wilson’s Recovering the Lost Tools of Learning, the founding board members of Heritage School established Heritage School to provide an education for their children and others in the Texas Hill Country which would manifest excellence, a clear dedication to truth, beauty, and goodness, and give students the tools to think and reason clearly and biblically.  They wanted to establish an environment which would nurture strong Christian character and a heart for serving others, and which would emphasize good habits and inspire a love for learning.

 

Thus, Heritage Family School was founded in 1994 with an eye toward creating an aesthetically pleasing and congenial environment that would embrace the best classic and time-tested literature and primary sources available, and establish a school with Christ as its center, integrating the truths of the Bible within every subject. 

 

Heritage School is a community of students, parents, staff, and trustees which works together as partners to develop in students the truest and best education possible, one in which they will grow in knowledge, understanding, and wisdom—a  classical and Christ-centered education.   

 

Though the approach to which Ms. Sayers refers was developed in the Middle Ages, its roots are in ancient Greece where vocational training was primarily for slaves while free citizens focused on development of the mind and soul, thus achieving a “liberal” (libera or “free”) education.   

 

Is such an education a dusty relic unnecessary in the 21st century?  We do not think so: classical education provided the excellent education that inspired our nation’s Founding Fathers and shaped great thinkers for centuries. Heritage School is a part of the fast-growing classical Christian education movement which has grown to 220 schools nationwide since 1981.

 

For the sole end of education is simply this: to teach men how to learn for themselves; and whatever instruction fails to do this is effort spent in vain.

~Dorothy Sayers, The Lost Tools of Learning


 

Knowledge is of two kinds. We know a subject ourselves, or we know where we can find information upon it.

~Samuel Johnson


 

The bracing atmosphere of truth and sincerity should be perceived in every school; and here again the common pursuit of knowledge by teacher and class comes to our aid and creates a current of fresh air perceptible even to the chance visitor, who sees the glow of intellectual life and the moral health on the faces of teachers and children alike.

~Charlotte Mason


 

An Excellent Classical & Christian Education