Mission Statement

Teaching covenant children through classical means, in partnership with their parents, to love and pursue Knowledge, Wisdom, Goodness, and Beauty, in accordance with Biblical Truth for the glory of God.

Explaining Our Mission

Some elements of our mission statement are self-explanatory and thus need no further comment. Other elements, however, might be less so. We provide below a brief clarification of the elements that we think are likely to fall into the latter category.

Teaching Covenant Children:

Our central goal at Veritas Classical Academy is to teach children "to love and pursue knowledge, wisdom, goodness, and beauty, in accordance with Biblical Truth for the glory of God." Another way of saying this is that we want to help cultivate a Christian world-view in our students. Thus, we insist that at least one parent of any child admitted to Veritas be a professing believer, meaning that the parent claims a Christian identity and embraces the foundational doctrines of the faith outlined by the Nicene Creed. This minimum standard satisfies what we mean by "covenant children" — i.e., children who are subject, through their families, to the blessings and responsibilities of God's covenantal relationship with His Church. If we did not operate with such basic criteria, we would put the teachers and the students at Veritas in unnecessarily complicated situations, and we could even encourage hypocrisy among students, all of which would undermine what we are trying to accomplish.

By Classical Means:

Modern education theory and practice have produced in our nation an educational deficit of profound proportions. But the desire to educate effectively is not a product of the modern era. We believe that the best way to educate children is to recognize the strengths of time-honored methods of cultivating minds, rather than adopting fashionable new trends that reflect the secular worldviews of postmodern thinkers. The philosophical foundations of much of the modern educational establishment are antithetical to Biblical truths about human nature and the rest of creation, and thus any edifice built upon these foundations is doomed to fail. These beliefs have led the founders of Veritas to adopt a classical approach to education.

The classical approach recognizes the stages of normal intellectual development and adapts curricular elements around these stages. For example, the grammar school curriculum emphasizes mastery of the basic facts and rules (the grammar) of each subject, consistent with the proclivities of the grammar school age. The middle school curriculum adds logical analysis to basic knowledge mastery, teaching children to use what they learn to pursue greater understanding and discovery (what middle school child doesn't like to argue? Would we not all benefit if they could think more clearly when they argue?). The high school curriculum emphasizes the ability to express clear thinking in writing and oration and to apply one's knowledge to solve new problems.

Each stage is not considered to be completely independent of or insulated from the others. For instance, grammar is always taught within every subject as new ideas are introduced, even in high school. But central to the model is the recognition of the strengths and proclivities of different ages, and the classical model takes advantage of these proclivities within a rigorous and challenging curriculum. For more details on the classical approach, see Dorothy Sayers' essay, The Lost Tools of Learning.

In Partnership with Parents:

We believe that parents are given the mandate to see to the education of their children — to bring them up in the knowledge and fear of the Lord. But this mandate does not necessitate that parents do all of the teaching of children themselves. As noted above, we want to help instill a Christian worldview in our students, particularly with regard to the nature and purpose of God's creation. We see this goal being met effectively only insofar as we are cooperating with parents, and they with us. The unique model of Veritas Classical Academy reflects these values, enabling parents to be intimately involved in the details of their children's education, without forcing them to reinvent the wheel by designing and implementing their own curricula. Of course, this model brings its own unique challenges as well, but our belief is that as parents and teachers work in tandem to achieve the goal of educating children, everyone benefits.