NATIONAL INSTITUTE FOR CLASSICAL EDUCATION
Founded 2000 AD

The National Institute for Classical Education was founded and incorporated in 2000 A.D. to promote authentic classical education (liberal education). In the face of a world and order of society that is rapidly distancing itself from all morals and devolving into chaos and confusion, many parents, intellectuals, politicians, and people of faith today are searching for ways to educate and raise their children to prevent their drowning in the toxic ocean of denigrated culture in which they and their children are immersed. In seeking a healthy education, they are at once confronted with the reality that most of education today not only reflects the culture but also is the leading instigator, co-conspirator, and accelerator of what is now an exponential devolvement of culture writ large.

In the search for answers to this pressing issue, parents are seeking programs offering a “classical education”. Accordingly, many schools, programs, and institutions have developed programs that are self-described as classical. Even a cursory survey, however, of literature and websites describing these “classical” education programs reveals a stunning lack of consistency in the definition, curricula, pedagogy, structure, textbooks, order, and content of what is described as a “classical” education. Indeed, a review of the many “classical” program offerings reveals that the term “classical” often has no more meaning than the phrase “new and improved” found on grocery product labels which are neither.

The National Institute for Classical Education exists to accredit and certify that institutions and programs offering a “classical education” have a program of studies that authentically include ten integral elements that have consistently been present over the last 2,300 years in classical education. Throughout the last twenty-three centuries “classical education” has developed, been adjusted, and revisited but never omitted these ten common integral elements. They therefore provide a valid measure to assess whether classical offerings in today’s culture are historically authentic and truly classical. The National Institute for Classical Education accreditation means that programs offering a classical education truly incorporate the ten essential elements of classical education, and provides a basis to evaluate any program that self-describes as a classical education.

Accreditation involves the assessment of the various aspects of an educational organization or program. The following list indicates ten (10) areas assessed for accreditation as authentically classical education:

THE TEN ACCREDITATION CRITERIA

  1. Great Books as the principal textbooks of classical education. The term “Great Books” is used rather than the “classics” as it includes more recent great books, up to the present.
  2. Early study of the Great Books beginning as soon student capabilities permit – at about age 14 – following primary-level studies in the trivium, allowing four years of study of approximately 100 of the great masterpieces of Western civilization (a minimum of two years study – c. 60 great books) in secondary education.
  3. Reading and discussion of the Great Books in the “Order of Discovery” in sufficient number to cover the entire “Great Conversation” as it has occurred in the last 2,800 years, to the present, without significant chronological gaps.
  4. Searching out and Socratically discussing the Great Ideas (the ancient Greek “commonplaces”) found in the Great Books (the reading of the Great Books is not just nor only a literature course).
  5. Employment of all three methods of classical pedagogy: didactic, coaching, Socratic discussion.
  6. Emphasis on poetic knowledge (gained through sensory-emotional-memory-imaginative experience) of reality, such as music, nature, physical exercise, poetry, plays, the fine arts).
  7. Studies integrated and studied in hierarchical order – knowledge gained, learned, and understood holistically in an integrated fashion revealing and utilizing the hierarchical levels of knowledge. Authentic “classical education” is not moving from one class period to the next class period studying different subjects in isolation from others, for 50 minutes each until the bell rings to move to the next classroom to study yet another isolated subject, with each class having its own factoid-driven textbook, often written by lower-tier scholars—textbooks that distill and dis-integrate concepts, thoughts, and discreet facts – framed in accord with popular cultural thinking (conventional “wisdom” or worse). Classical education in ever ascending, in graduated steps (gradus-grades). which, however, are not barriers to higher education, but are organized to guide the student ever higher.
  8. Polymathy (or generalist education) meaning that education is to be universal extending to knowledge in every field of study. Students should study not to become experts in a specialized field of knowledge but to develop a general understanding of all knowledge applicable to any circumstance.
  9. Education in the liberal arts (trivium [as expended over time, but originally: grammar, dialectic, rhetoric] and quadrivium [as expended over time, but originally: arithmetic, music theory, geometry, astronomy]. The liberal arts equip the students to read the the Great Books, to listen to and participate in the Great Conversation, and to discuss and understand the “Great Ideas” contained therein,
  10. Education with a transcendent end — education must have an aim —classical education aims to inspire emulation of the true, the good, and the beautiful, leading to the choice to live virtuously in this life (ethics/moral philosophy) and to aspire to an even fuller life, now and hereafter. The Greek word used for education is paideia which translates as “culture” or the upbringing of children; later translated by the Romans as “humanitas”- the essence of being human (the “humanities” of present-day universities stem from this term in a limited way), which pointed to transcendent principles.

These ten integral elements that characterize authentic “classical education” of the last 23 centuries did not arrive as a whole at one precise moment in history but rather gradually developed over a period of about 400 years finally maturing into a formative whole towards the end of the 3rd century B.C.. In the immediate centuries that followed, “classical education” embodying the ten integral elements mentioned above, spread in nearly identical form throughout first the Hellenic empire and then the entire Roman Empire which ultimately – in modern times – offered state-endorsed and state-financed education of all. By the time of Christ, “classical education” had been operating in its penultimate form with all ten integral elements for over 300 years. Since the time of Christ, authentic classical education persisted in every century as seen in many renaissances: of the 6th, 7th, 8th, 9th, 11th and 12th centuries as well as in medieval universities of the 13th century through to those of the high Renaissance in the 15th and 16th centuries.

Accreditation by the National Institute for Classical signifies institutional and/or program integrity and a strong commitment to a pedagogy involving the interdisciplinary study of the humanities with the ten integrated elements listed above. Part of the institutional and/or program integrity required of National Institute for Classical Education-accredited institutions and programs is the intellectual docility of the faculty requisite for any institution or program effectively to teach or guide students in the study of the great classics, since it is assumed by the offering of them that they must be worthy of serious study, by everyone, and hence of teaching the teachers as well as the students. The absence of a faculty docile to the wisdom of the authors of the classics of our civilization would defeat, in large measure, the purpose of such study.

Accreditation by the National Institute for Classical Education authorizes the accredited institution or program to display the National Institute for Classical Education logo. Accreditation certifies that the institution or program meets or exceeds the Institute’s Standards for Accreditation. These standards require students to complete rigorous, interdisciplinary, dialectical studies in the greatest classics of Western civilization, sometimes referred to generically as the Great Books. The National Institute for Classical Education Standards for Accreditation provide parents and prospective students with a clear means of identifying colleges, schools, on-ground and online programs and distance education courses, at all levels. The Institute may accredit institutions and programs worldwide that meet or exceed its standards.

Accreditation is a non-governmental review process. It is a self-governing accountability to identify and verify the integrity, purpose, and good faith of a school or program and its faculty. The National Institute for Classical Education is not a Title IV accreditor.

COLLEGES/SCHOOLS/PROGRAMS WITH INTERDISCIPLINARY GREAT BOOKS PROGRAMS

(listing here is informational only and does not imply accreditation or membership)

Colleges with 4-year Great Books programs (B.A.):

  • St. John’s College, Annapolis, MD & Santa Fe, NM
  • Thomas Aquinas College, Santa Paula, CA
  • Gutenberg College, Eugene, OR Online College-level 4-year Great Books Program
  • The Great Books Academy*
  • The Angelicum Academy*

Colleges with 3-year Great Books-based Programs

  • Mercer University, Macon, GA
  • Shimer College, Waukegan, IL
  • U. of Notre Dame, S. Bend, IN
  • Colleges with 2-year Great Books-based programs
  • St. Olaf College, Northfield, MN

Colleges with some form of Great Books courses

  • Biola University, La Mirada, CA
  • Boston University, MS
  • Brock University, St. Catherines, Ontario
  • Carleton University, Ottawa, Ontario
  • Concordia University, Montreal, Quebec
  • Central Washington U., Ellensburg, WA
  • College of St. Thomas More, Ft. Worth, TX
  • Columbia College, Columbia U., NY, NY
  • Kentucky State U., Frankfort, KY
  • Lawrence U., Appleton, WI
  • Lynchburg College, Lynchburg, VA
  • Malaspina College-University, Nanaimo, B.C.
  • North Park College, Chicago, IL
  • Northwestern State U., Natchitoches, LA
  • Rose Hill College, Aiken, SC
  • Seaver College, Pepperdine U., Malibu, CA
  • S. Virginia College, Buena Vista, VA
  • St. Anselm College, Manchester, NH
  • St. Mary’s College
  • Temple U., Philadelphia, PA
  • U. of Chicago Center for Continuing Studies, IL
  • University of King’s College, Halifax, N.S.
  • U. of N. Texas, Denton, TX
  • U. of Dallas, Irving, TX
  • U. of Oklahoma, Honors Program, Norman, OK
  • U. of Wisconsin-Milwaukee, WI
  • Wesleyan U., Middleton, CN
  • Whitman College, Walla Walla, WA

*Accredited by the National Institute for Classical Education

For more information contact: NICEaccreditation@gmail.com