Why should you send your children to Ascent?
Consider what a graduating student from Ascent will have studied and how he or she will have grown in the years from kindergarten to twelfth grade.
She is strong in the fundamentals. She has studied the core subjects of reading, writing, and mathematics using a content-rich curriculum. Under the guidance of caring teachers, she has learned, memorized, and recited classic and beautiful poems every week. She has studied history – American history, western history, and world history – for 13 years. Her understanding of natural sciences, including life science, physical science, and earth science, rotated through its key subjects. She knows how to read, how to spell, the rules of English grammar, the arts of composition and rhetoric, the Greek and Latin roots of English, and classical Latin.
In high school, she has read, discussed, and written about many of the greatest literary, historical, and philosophical works of all time – Homer, Virgil, Dante, and Milton, as well as Plato, the Bible, Shakespeare, and Jefferson. She knows why the United States has a constitution, what our constitution means, and why it is unique in human history. In short, she has learned the True.
Our graduating senior has grown in character and virtue. Every day, from Kindergarten to 12th grade, he read examples of courage, moderation, prudence, wisdom, justice, responsibility, friendship, and wonder. In a community of learners, he discussed these themes in history, science, literature, and math. He has had the freedom to make mistakes, academically and behaviorally, and after being corrected, he remembers that he hasn’t been judged for them.
Being coached in class, in clubs, and on the field in responsible self-government, he has risen to its noble call. Through class presentations and school-wide recitations, not to mention defending his senior thesis, he has practiced the skills of public speaking. Surrounded by models of honorable conduct at the school, he learned to emulate them. He has been given the gift of freedom through self-discipline: the freedom to ignore the appeal of vice and the freedom to do the Good.
Our graduating senior’s growth in character is due largely to the shaping of her desire for true beauty. Since kindergarten, her spirit has been nurtured on examples of musical order, harmony, and rhythm. In art, she learned to appreciate order, contrast, and shape in their due order. Reading and meditating on stories of heroism, sacrifice, friendship, love, and devotion to higher goods has led her to seek these things in her own life. By memorizing and dwelling in great speeches and poetry, she made these patterns of sound words her own.
She knows to revere what she ought: the American flag and its defenders, the nobility of human freedom, the demands of duty. Rhyme and reason draw her; discord, chaos, and dissonance repel her. Her mature, informed tastes seek after these goods everywhere she goes. She loves the beautiful.
Our graduate is ready for life. Nurtured on timeless truths and virtues, he stands ready for what lies before him. Whether college, military service, a career, or parenthood, he has been fortified mentally, morally, and spiritually to be able to live well.