Poetic Education

Rooted in the Catholic tradition, the Academy raises boys in the intellectual, moral, and physical virtues, emphasizing the formative power of liturgy, music, creation, and the humanities.  

Great poets and artists have the gift of seeing things with fresh eyes, of experiencing them as they really are. We believe that everyone has this ability, but it tends to become crusted over, especially in our artificial, technological world. Take, for example, your experience of the ocean. You may have seen it many times. You read about it, see it on TV, refer to it casually in conversation, and you think you know what it is. Then one day you go to the ocean and see it as if you’ve never seen it before. It has become wonderfully strange to you, and your heart leaps up in praise for such an awesome creature. This can happen with many things: an apple, an old song, a beloved face.When it happens, we feel that we have been given a precious gift.

At our school, we want students to experience “the dearest freshness deep down things” as much as possible. That’s why we limit their use of technology, but more importantly, put them in contact with primary things. Instead of listening to recorded music, they learn to sing for themselves. Instead of dissecting dead frogs, they go out and find them living in ponds. Instead of reading some textbook’s retelling of Virgil, they read the great man himself. Following this guiding principle, we give a high place to the unfathomable mystery of creation and the need to continually renew our knowledge by returning to things themselves.