Vision
Ascent Classical Academy develops within its students the moral and intellectual skills, habits, and virtues upon which independent, responsible, and joyful lives are built, in the firm belief that such lives are the basis for a free and flourishing republic
Mission
This is achieved by always working to train the minds and improve the hearts of young people through a classical, content-rich education in the liberal arts and sciences, with instruction in the principles of moral character and civic virtue in an orderly and disciplined environment.
Extended Mission
The following ‘extended mission’ is adapted from a speech delivered in June 2014 by Professor Joseph Garnjobst, Hillsdale College’s Chair of Classical Studies Department and Associate Professor of Classical Studies.
“We believe that we are the heirs and the stewards of the Western Tradition and the fruits of civil and religious freedom. As such, we believe that the diffusion of learning is essential to the perpetuity of this legacy, our aim is to provide a liberal education, an education suitable for a free citizen, not geared toward a specific trade or profession, but one that aims at understanding the highest matters and the deepest questions of Truth, Justice, Virtue, Right, and Character. We believe that we must engage those ideas and those principles in the original language in which they were written and passed down in the tradition, as they have both intrinsic worth and intrinsic beauty and are worthy of study and contemplation in and of themselves. We also find the clearest expression of this legacy both in the founding documents of our American nation as an experiment of self-government under law and in the literary and scientific education of the founders themselves. As they sought to avoid the problems of democracy as seen in Athens and of a republic that gave way to a monarchy in Rome, we too must engage in those ideas and the influences upon those ideas in order to have a citizenry worthy of the legacy of our Founders and the continuation of our American experiment. We do this through a rigorous classical, great-books curriculum designed to engage the student in the ideas and principles of our founding.”