A Classical Catholic Education for Children at Holy Family Classical School

A For some, it brings images of antiquity, or for others, a vague sense of “traditional.” However, here at Holy Family Classical School, the only Catholic classical school in Oklahoma, the word has a specific meaning.

“Most people see classical education to be this boutique interest,” says our Headmaster, Dr. Marcel Brown. “I’m trying to build this out as something radically different from that, something more vibrant and dynamic.”

Our school — founded 120 years ago by the classically-educated St. Katharine Drexel — has a rich history throughout the generations. Last year, our direction shifted slightly, going back to our roots, in a certain sense.

“Classical education starts with a different view of the person,” Dr. Brown says.

“St. Thomas Aquinas says that man is an ‘embodied spirit,’ a body-soul composite. People nowadays tend to educate just the mind of a person without educating the will and without forming the emotions. A lot of education in the Our school community celebrates All Saints Day. 20 th and 21 st century disintegrates the person.”

“We begin with a proper anthropology and that makes all the difference in the world in the formation of children,” he adds. “We have a lot of very joyful students, and why are they so happy? This education we’re giving them is freeing them, and they know it because they live it every moment of every day.”

In educational circles, the “three Rs” often refers to the primary academic subjects of “Reading, ‘Riting, and ‘Rithmetic.” However, here at Holy Family Classical School, in addition to scholastic pursuits, we hope to form our students in our own set of “three Rs” — Reverence, Rigor and Relationship.

“We’re rewriting the ‘three Rs’ according to a classical vision of education,” Dr. Brown says.

Over the next three months, we will be highlighting each of these tenets, reflecting on their significance in our educational environment as we seek to form our young people into missionary disciples.

Dr. Brown begins this initiative with a focus on instilling a sense of true reverence within our students, as a “precondition for all learning.”

“Unless you have a degree of reverence toward those around you, towards your teacher, towards the material and towards reality itself, and towards the ultimate reality, God, you can’t get anywhere,” Dr. Brown says. “Once you have reverence, that is the predisposition for academic rigor.

“A lot of education is irreverent, first of all to God, because it shuts God out of the picture,” he adds. “A lot of education is also irreverent to the person.”

Dr. Brown hopes to re-instill a reverence for God at the heart of the school in a variety of different ways, from bringing the Blessed Sacrament into the center of the building, to praying the Liturgy of the Hours daily, with the teachers and staff in our chapel space. We also hope to emphasize reverence towards one another, and towards nature, with rules and routines being a fruit of respectful relationships.

“Classicism is known, especially in our historical and architectural traditions, as having a special regard for nature — that is to say, things have a nature, persons have a nature, nature has a nature,” Dr. Brown says. “Reverence is not just an act of prayerful worship or adoration to God, but also reverence or respect, to ‘look again’ at the world around us, and the mystery and beauty of it, and also artistic imitations of it.”

Dr. Brown encourages parents who find themselves intrigued by these priorities to consider the value of Catholic classical education for their children.

“Do some soul searching and ask yourself, ‘What is my highest and best desire for my children in this world and the next?’” Dr. Brown says. “You need a school that is intentionally trying to build all ‘three Rs’ — the reverence, the rigor and the relationship. If you don’t have that, then you’re not going to be able to really help your children realize their best hopes and dreams in this life, and the next.”

For more information on the mission of Holy Family Classical School, please visit our website at www.holyfamilyclassicalschool.org.