Our Philosophy of Education
The Spiritual health of the home is key to private and public prosperity of all
kinds. Consequently, Veritas is committed to helping families establish
meaningful, bible-based study and worship led by fathers where possible. The
school will not offer itself as a substitute for parents in this or any other
divinely-ordained role related to their children, and all its programs will be
designed to safeguard meaningful family traditions and devotional settings.
Our weekday schedule will be much shorter and more compact than is typical, in
order to leave room for essential home and self study, and to promote the real
business of schooling more efficiently. We believe that it is the
responsibility of parents to train their children to read, think, write and
speak well, and to become astute in their observations of "nature and nature's
God," guided by the Holy Scriptures, the traditions of the Church, and the
traditions of the West.
Our classes will focus on sound methods (teaching students how to learn) as
well as sound content (teaching them what they need to learn). The classical
method of grammar, dialectic, and rhetoric following the three basic stages of
child development will be applied to all subject areas from History to Poetry
to Biology. The formal study of Latin and Logic, will help students master
languages and test the validity of arguments. Of crucial concern to our
survival as a free people, History and the Humanities -- the study of man's
civilized doings classified under the titles Antiquity, Christendom, America,
and Modernity -- will be required not just as a one-time, one-year course, but
as something to be reflected upon and wrestled with each and every year of
one's formal education.
We believe this approach -- the creation of an academically-serious Christian
community of learning, centered in the prerogatives of the family -- will
accomplish what all other approaches, public and private, seem unable to
accomplish. First, it gives our children a chance to receive something like the
quality of education that our forebears received; and second, it "turns," in
the words of the prophet, "the hearts of the fathers to the children, and the
hearts of the children to their fathers," by giving the home the time and
occasion it needs to fulfill its sacred promise.
As the Lord leads, seminars and discussion groups will be encouraged to assist fathers in their spiritual leadership in the home. We will learn how Christian fathers have fulfilled their roles in the past, how to teach our children Biblical truth, and how to lead our families in worship.
A committee of parents and volunteers will oversee activities and, where possible, may include other homeschool organizations in these activities which might include, but not be limited to, recitals, drama, music, sports, art and academic quiz teams.
At this early stage, the focus is on learning and memorizing fundamental facts related to the primary disciplines. In addition to acquiring basic reading, writing and mathematical skills, grammar students should be learning a time-line for history and essential concepts in science. Veritas recommends this stage be accomplished primarily in the home and offers no supplemental classes at this level.
Students begin to take facts learned in the Grammar stage and explore relationships between these facts. We believe that a combination of teaching at Veritas two days per week and homeschooling three days per week is ideal for parent/teacher input, proper growth and understanding at these age levels.
In the rhetorical stage, students learn to express acquired knowledge more effectively and persuasively. Interaction with peers and teachers also helps them organize their thoughts and conclusions more clearly. Due to the higher academic level of learning and specialization required at this level, Veritas offers a three day per week school with an intensive self-study program at home.