Classical Education
Cultivating wisdom and virtue through the liberal arts.
The Classical Model
Time-tested and as relevant as ever.
Our model has been tested in the laboratory of time and has a long track record of producing human flourishing. Though the model is old, its benefits are as relevant as ever, producing alumni who possess mental dexterity, intellectual, social, and emotional adaptability, resilience, emotional intelligence, cultural sophistication, grit, virtue, and wisdom.
Through our teaching methods, the three ways of learning (Trivium) of Grammar, Logic, and Rhetoric, integrated study of the liberal arts, reading of Great Books, and school habits and traditions that shape a joyfully wise and virtuous community, Capstone provides its students with a distinctively robust Christian education that draws upon the best of the Western liberal arts tradition and the historic scholastic habits of the Church that gave birth to our best universities.
Our students move beyond simple knowledge of facts to critical thinking and the art of winsome persuasion. They study virtue and beauty in literature, sport, math, science, and the arts. Biblical studies inform their understanding of meaning and purpose within all of their studies and activities. They understand truth as the foundation for knowledge and the source of wisdom, while understanding that wisdom requires the complementary treasure of virtue, which governs right use of knowledge. For Capstone students, success is measured in the character with which they exercise their knowledge.
Curriculum
The classical curriculum is content-rich, rigorous in depth and scope, and utilizes great works of literature and art across all content areas. Students spend a great deal of time in the Great Books of Western Civilization and in primary sources. It includes often neglected but invaluable subjects of study such as logic, rhetoric, grammar, Latin, philosophy, and theology.
Campus Life
We shape campus life through habits, traditions, social, artistic, and athletic activities that create robust community in a festive, joyful pursuit of civic virtue and the blessing of classmates and of the greater Capstone community through leadership and service.
Heart-Shaping Habits
Visitors to Capstone note the remarkable culture of our student body. The culture is not by accident. The faculty weaves instruction and practice in manners, etiquette, and decorum, and the school year is full of traditions, both big and small, that shape a culture of mutual respect, virtue, and civic duty.
Virtues
Both the curriculum and campus life initiatives are designed to cultivate rightly ordered affections in the hearts and minds of our students. These virtues are taught didactically in the classroom but are acquired through practice throughout the Capstone experience.
Houses
The House Program at Capstone is a distinctive feature of the school, weaving together academics, social, athletic, artistic, and spiritual pursuits through student citizenship in one of seven Houses that compete annually for the House Cup, which goes to the House that best lives out the ideals of the academy.