BOOKS AND LETTERS Podcast
Over the last three videos, I’ve been making a case for education that I believe with all my heart. In the first video: modern education, with its watertight bulkheads, teaches students subjects but fails to teach them how to think. They learn everything except the art of learning. In the second video: there is a better road to education, the road the West always regarded as self-evident. The Great Conversation. Six years, one cohort, reading the primary texts of the Western tradition in chronological order as living voices, organized around the six great ideas: Truth, Goodness, Beauty, Liberty, Equality, and Justice. In the third video: how it works. Two ninety-minute Socratic seminars each week. Thirty-two weeks a year. Four high school credits per year—twenty-four credits over six years—covering literature, history, philosophy, theology, geography, civics, economics, art, music, architecture, logic, writing, and rhetoric, all integrated, the way reality itself is integrated. You add physical education, math and lab science. The rest is here. Today, I simply want to invite you! This fall, I am opening The Great Conversation to its founding cohort: twelve to sixteen students, ages twelve to thirteen. These students will begin with Genesis and Homer in year one, and six years later they will finish with Lewis, Tolkien, and Solzhenitsyn — having read the whole arc of the Western tradition together, in order, as one community. The tuition is $3,000 per year—$18,000 across the full six years—and that rate is locked when you enroll. It will NOT increase for your family, EVER, regardless of what future cohorts pay. Plus, you can pay annually or monthly interest-free. Let me put that figure in perspective. Three thousand dollars a year, for four high school credits, works out to $750 per credit for live instruction, twice a week, in a seminar capped at sixteen students, taught by a PhD who has given his career to this tradition. Families routinely pay more than that for a single online course with a fraction of this scope. And a classical Christian day school, where the humanities block would be one part of a much larger tuition, typically runs many times this amount each year. I’ve priced the course this way deliberately, because I want it filled with the right students. I’m not running an elite prep-school for students of the wealthiest families. As Hutchins frequently argued, the education of “the best” is the best education for all. Now, I want to be candid with you about how enrollment works, because it is different from anything else you’ve probably encountered. Because of its six-year continuity, this cohort enrolls only once. And then it closes. That’s just the nature of this kind of course. There is no joining it in year two or year three. The depth of the conversation in year five depends entirely on what these same students argued about in year two, for example. A student who wasn’t there for Achilles can’t fully answer for Aeneas. The cohort is not a feature of the course. The cohort is the course. So when these twelve to sixteen seats are filled, the door closes, not until next fall, but for six years. If you have a child who is twelve or thirteen years old, this is the moment! Not because I say so, but because arithmetic says so: a six-year course that begins at twelve must begin at twelve. There is an old proverb I’ve shared with my readers before: the best time to plant a tree is twenty years ago. The second best time is today. Math is math. Next Steps Here is your next step. Below this video you’ll find a link to an interest form. It takes about two minutes to fill it out. Tell me about your child: who they are, what they love, where they are in their education. I will personally follow up with every family. We’ll have a real conversation where you can ask me anything; and together we’ll discern whether this course is the right fit for your child. No pressure, and no obligation. If it isn’t the right fit, I’ll tell you so, and I’ll gladly point you toward what is. But if it is the right fit—if you have one of those young people who is hungry for something real—then I would count it a privilege to spend the next six years introducing your child to Homer and Moses, to Plato and Paul, to Augustine and Dante, to Shakespeare and Milton, to Dostoevsky and Lewis and Tolkien. The Great Conversation has been going on for three thousand years. It has never ended. It is waiting for your child to join it. Fill out the interest form today, and let’s talk about your child’s seat at the table. I hope to meet your family soon. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.scottpostma.net/subscribe [https://www.scottpostma.net/subscribe?utm_medium=podcast&utm_campaign=CTA_2]
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