“Curriculum” comes from the Latin currere, meaning “to run.” The curriculum for your school is the course or path the students, parents, and teachers run to attain fullness of self: that is to say, they attain the true virtue.

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“Virtue” stems from the Latin virtus, meaning excellence or strength of character. In the classical tradition, the course set before us (the curriculum) fosters humanity, developing the runner into the unique manifestation of humanness they were created to embody.

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The reader accustomed to the framework of our modern age might easily confuse these statements. Please note, the classical tradition did not romanticize each student, claiming that education set the student free to “be themselves,” as though they were already the ideal that needed only liberation to manifest. It also did not speak of virtue as a list of things ontologically other than mankind that we may or may not exhibit. Virtus does not exist except as a quality of mankind; it is the human fully alive, fully himself, fully expressed.

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When selecting the course we must run, we do not then begin with the external: What job, accolades, or comfort would we like? Instead, we begin with the person. What is the fullness of man? What is the virtus of man? The modern age cannot answer this question, as it does not believe man has a nature. Rather than contemplating the universal qualities of mankind, it would respond that we cannot know the fullness of each individual person, and therefore the goal of education is to help each individual person discover his own self. Or even more daunting, the post-modern response demands the individual not discover himself but define himself, transforming him into a would-be-demigod without his consent: a weight none can bear.

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What a relief to know the virtus of man is made manifest and imitable in Christ; we run this course to become like Christ. The tradition has understood this to mean: we become like the Good, True, and Beautiful; we are free persons, note enslaved to our passions or the world; we honor the profound dignity of mankind, we are pious and respectful toward the tradition; and we seek God in all creation rather than to become gods over it.

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To these ends, the classical tradition has always studied the seven liberal arts. Likewise, the CiRCE Village School should study the seven liberal arts, structuring their school not on isolated subjects but on these integrated arts. Both the teachers and students should follow this curriculum, studying all seven to mastery (as one is able).

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In addition to the seven liberal arts, students should learn fine art (drawing as you see, not self-expression), gymnastics (mastery of the body, including dance, health, sports, etc.), gardening, and common arts like sewing, carpentry, etc.