Classical education has been in retreat for decades. Our schools and colleges increasingly emphasize courses that prepare students for occupations, and they replace the courses that leftists abhor with intellectual junk food such as critical race theory.

Classical education may be down, but it’s not out, as Josh Herring explains in today’s Martin Center article. He writes, specifically, about “John Senior schools”:

This story looks back to a specific moment for inspiration: John Senior’s Integrated Humanities Program at the University of Kansas. This program did not last long, but it has produced significant fruit. While this essay focuses on specific college programs that illustrate a direct connection to Senior’s project, it is worth noting that enough K-12 schools have now been founded in a similar vein that Crisis Magazine classifies a genre of “John Senior Schools” as part of the growing educational renaissance in American K-12 education.

Senior, a professor at the University of Kansas in the late 1960s, envisioned an Integrated Humanities Program. His program was popular with students, but eventually the university ditched it. Fortunately, some of Senior’s students carried his ideas with them to other schools.

Herring concludes,

Aristotle told us years ago that ‘man is by nature a creature designed to know.’ Students want to learn; they want to do hard things. This tradition itself is beautiful, perplexing, wonderful, inviting. Rather than starting new professional majors (e.g., a BS in AI-Prompt Engineering), it’s time to look ad fontes. Let them be born in wonder; let hiring committees bring in faculty who are entranced with the beauty of their subjects and who long to inspire students to see that beauty. Programs following Senior’s example are bursting with applicants. When colleges recover their telos, they will once again find students who long to learn.