Classical Education Holds the Keys to America’s Future

 The goal is to create not just good students but students who are good.

Kevin Roberts  |  October 16, 2025  |  Modern Age

Euclid with students, detail from Raphael, The School of Athens (Joseph Sohm/Getty Images

Ten years ago this month, I announced that Wyoming Catholic College—where I was then serving as president—had made the deliberate decision to forgo participation in federal student loan and grant programs. Our reason was simple: We believed that accepting federal dollars might compromise our mission to “immerse students in the Great Books (the Western canon), the Good Book (the Bible), and God’s First Book (nature).” In other words, we chose to reject federal funds for the sake of defending classical education.

What a difference a decade makes. Today, classical education is no longer something to simply be defended—it is ascendant, popular, and on the verge of becoming mainstream. According to multiple reports, America’s service academies are poised to announce any day now that they will begin accepting the classic learning test (CLT) this admissions cycle.

The resurgence of classical education and its renewed use in classrooms and homes across the country is excellent news, not only for the revival of a warrior ethos in America’s officer corps but for the future of every American citizen. A new Golden Age will require strong families and good schools, and classical education is essential to revitalizing both institutions.

First and foremost, classical education restores a true anthropology—a true vision of the human person. Whereas most schools today treat students like data points or “human capital”—faceless future workers to be plugged into a failing bureaucracy—classical education considers each child a gift from God, made in His image, and capable of living a good and virtuous life.

That distinct view of education’s primary subject leads naturally to a different end goal. Classical education does not aim to fill a students’ heads with contemporary information, but to form the whole person—mind, body, and soul—toward virtue by introducing them to the treasures of the Western tradition.

The goal is not merely to produce good students but to cultivate students who are good. Naturally, this means that parents can’t watch from the sidelines. John Witherspoon called family the “seminary of the state; the first school of instruction, wherein we have our tempers formed to virtue or vice.” Classical education calls parents to reclaim this sacred duty: first by filling that seminary with children, and second by becoming the primary influences in their formation.

The good news is that more and more parents are answering the call. The number of classical schools has doubled over the past ten years, and enrollment has surged since the COVID-19 pandemic. On the current trajectory, nearly 1.4 million students will be enrolled in classical schools by 2035.

One reason these schools appeal to so many families is that they not only challenge parents but also assist them in passing down their wisdom and values. By giving students the opportunity to read what the poet Matthew Arnold called “the best that has been thought and said”—instead of the latest critical race theory and Marxist-influenced fads that the College Board deems worthy—classical education makes it possible for parents and children to share a moral and intellectual life.

When students encounter the Bible, Aristotle, Augustine, Aquinas, and the American Founders, they come to see themselves not as isolated individuals but as heirs to a great tradition. Great books like these don’t glorify “finding yourself,” but they reveal the beauty of giving yourself. Confronted with the weight of this civilizational inheritance, students come to respect their elders and desire to pass down that inheritance to a new generation.

That last point is essential. For all its focus on recovering the past, the classical education movement is fundamentally about the future. As I write in Dawn’s Early Light:

We are going to reclaim the promise of our patrimony in order to secure a vibrant future for our posterity. We will remember who we are in order to manifest a bright American tomorrow, one full of children, prosperity, community, growth, faith, virtue, and liberty.

That remains our mission. And as America approaches its 250th birthday, now is the time to consolidate our momentum and go on offense—for the sake of our children and the Republic they will inherit.

Kevin Roberts is the president of the Heritage Foundation.