Podcast Summary: Leading Cincinnati Classical Academy

Podcast: Hillsdale College K-12 Classical Education Podcast
Episode Title: Leading Cincinnati Classical Academy
Release Date: October 9, 2025
Host: Scott Bertram
Guest/Speaker: Headmaster of Cincinnati Classical Academy
Duration: ~20 mins

Overview

This episode features a compelling address by the Headmaster of Cincinnati Classical Academy delivered at a Hoagland Center for Teacher Excellence Seminar. Through a passionate and eloquent reflection, the headmaster explores what it means to lead a classical school in the 21st century—contrasting the enduring values of classical education with the prevailing trends of modern educational philosophy. The talk serves as both a defense and a celebration of a curriculum anchored in the great works and virtues of Western civilization. Key topics include the necessity of preserving cultural inheritance, the formative power of the liberal arts, and the distinctive pedagogical practices that shape students’ intellect, character, and citizenship.

Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. The Role and Challenge of Leading a Classical School Today

• Metaphor for Classical Education: Leading a classical school is likened to being “a monastic scribe scratching away in the flickering candlelight while a hundred printing presses thunder in the distance,” (02:10) emphasizing the perceived anachronism of classical methods in a digital, fast-paced world.
• Relevance in the Modern Era: Despite technological advancements and modern trends in education, the speaker champions the value of teaching Latin, logic, and the classics, insisting, “These are not relics of an irrelevant past. These are the living roots of civilization itself, roots that must be tended and must be nourished.” (03:27)

2. The Imperative to Preserve Cultural and Intellectual Heritage

• The “Great Forgetting”: The headmaster warns against a widespread “great forgetting” and the superficiality of skills-based education:
  • “You see it in the dull eyes of a child who has never been made to memorize a poem, in the hunched shoulders of a student so burdened by the jargon of pedagogy that he has lost all sense of the sublime.” (03:55)
• Historical Parallels: Utilizing historical examples—including Rome, Alexandria, Byzantium, and the Renaissance—the speaker illustrates how civilizations decline when they fail to cherish and transmit their inheritance.
  • “Again and again we see that when a culture ceases to value its own highest achievements...it begins the slow, inevitable slide into oblivion.” (05:50)

3. Classical Education as Resistance and Stewardship

• Purposeful Curriculum: Teaching canonical works and enduring values is described as an act of “resistance” and “sacred duty:”
  • “It’s a conscious decision to stand before a class of students and say, you’re not consumers, you’re not data points...you are heirs.” (06:40)
• Transmission of Inheritance: If students are not made to “know it, to love it, to make it your own, then it will be lost and you will be set aimlessly adrift.” (07:02)

4. Pedagogical Practices and the Formation of Mind and Character

• Writing by Hand & Cursive: The value of handwriting is emphasized for its capacity to slow thought and anchor intellect to the body.
  • “To write by hand is to think deliberately, to tether thought to the body, to slow down and dwell in language… The hand shaped by the mind becomes the perfect instrument to articulate the delicate balance of beauty and purpose.” (07:15)
• Memorization, Recitation, and Traditional Grammar: Memorizing and reciting poetry and practicing sentence diagramming are framed as acts of restoration and engagement with deep meaning:
  • “We ask our students to engage with the world in ways that demand both introspection and outward vision.” (08:30)
  • “Diagramming sentences...are acts of reclaiming the power of language to convey truth.” (09:35)
• Close Reading: Students are taught to read classic works slowly and deliberately as “urgent voices speaking to us across time.” (09:57)

5. Breadth of the Classical Curriculum

• Logic Across Disciplines: The logic of language, mathematics, and the sciences is taught not only in dedicated classes, but as an underlying principle throughout the curriculum.
  • “We also teach the logic of Latin, of mathematics, of geometry and astronomy...Each discipline sharpens the mind, forms a habit of thought, and prepares our students not for passive existence, but for active participation in a world that demands clarity, truth and reason.” (11:00)
• Rhetoric, Arts, and Music: Arts and music are not treated as ornament but as means of understanding order and participating in the “long, unbroken conversation of the arts.” (12:20)

6. Knowledge, Wisdom, and the Perils of Modernity

• Distinction between Information and Wisdom:
  • “The answer, of course, is that knowledge is not wisdom, that information is not understanding. To consult a search engine is not to know the restless spirit of Augustine, nor the tragic vision of Sophocles...it is rather to mistake the map for the journey.” (13:53)
• Counteracting the Mechanization of Learning: The headmaster stresses the danger of mechanized, bureaucratic objectives flattening the imagination and soul of students. (14:31)

7. Education for Citizenship and National Preservation

• The Seven “C’s” of Education: A classical education deliberately cultivates:
  • Curiosity, Competency, Creativity, Culture, Compassion, Content-rich Learning, and above all, Character.
  • “Each one is a definite rebuke to the mechanization of the mind, each one a means of restoring the purpose of education itself.” (15:35)
• Civic Formation: The formation of citizens who understand their history and value virtue is presented as essential to a nation’s survival:
  • “When people disconnect from their history, they don’t become forward thinking pioneers, they become castaways. They drift through institutions they no longer understand, guided by leaders who value efficiency over wisdom and quick fixes over lasting solutions.” (16:41)

8. A Final Call to Remembrance and Action

• Education as Stewardship:
  • “To surrender, to acquiesce, to allow the tide of forgetting to wash away even one more fragment of our inheritance, would be, quite simply, unconscionable.” (18:03)

Notable Quotes with Timestamps

• On classical education as resistance:

  “It’s a conscious decision to stand before a class of students and say, you’re not consumers, you’re not data points...you are heirs. H E I R S heirs. You are the children of Athens and Rome, of Jerusalem and Florence, of Shakespeare’s England and Abraham’s America.” — Headmaster, 06:40

• On the dangers of forgetting:

  “History, in fact, is littered with the wreckage of cultures that forgot themselves...as civic duty gave way to decadence...their destruction not only an act of conquest, but a sign of a civilization that no longer knew how to guard its own inheritance.” — Headmaster, 04:51

• On deep reading:

  “We teach students to read slowly, deliberately, carefully. Not as passive consumers of text, but as seekers of truth, as analysts, as interpreters of what lies beneath the surface of every word.” — Headmaster, 09:35

• On information versus wisdom:

  “Knowledge is not wisdom, that information is not understanding. To consult a search engine is not to know the restless spirit of Augustine, nor the tragic vision of Sophocles...it is rather to mistake the map for the journey.” — Headmaster, 13:53

• On the ultimate purpose of education:

  “Education is not a formless pursuit of modern trends, but a timeless endeavor to shape minds and souls in the pursuit of of goodness, beauty and truth.” — Headmaster, 15:00

• On the necessity of remembering our inheritance:

  “A nation unmoored from its inheritance cannot stand, cannot summon even the ghost of its former strength.” — Headmaster, 17:13

• Closing call to duty:

  “To surrender, to acquiesce, to allow the tide of forgetting to wash away even one more fragment of our inheritance, would be, quite simply, unconscionable.” — Headmaster, 18:03

Timestamps for Key Segments

| Timestamp | Segment Description | |-----------|-----------------------------------------------------------------------| | 02:10 | Opening metaphor: monastic scribe and modern education | | 03:10 | The “truths that must be known”; value of classics in education | | 03:55 | The “great forgetting” and critique of skills/competency focus | | 04:51 | Historical warnings: Rome, Alexandria, Byzantium, Renaissance | | 06:40 | The act of educational resistance; calling students “heirs” | | 07:15 | The practice and value of writing by hand and memorization | | 09:35 | Traditional grammar and close reading | | 10:56 | Logic and rhetoric across subjects | | 13:53 | Difference between wisdom and information; why classics still matter | | 15:10 | The Seven “C’s” of classical education | | 16:41 | The importance of historical knowledge for citizenship | | 18:03 | Final call: the unconscionable nature of cultural surrender |

Tone and Language

The majority of the episode is delivered in a lyrical, almost sermonic tone, rich with metaphors and classical references. The speaker’s language is elevated but urgent, conveying both deep reverence for the classical tradition and an impassioned warning against cultural amnesia.

Conclusion

This episode serves as an articulate and moving articulation of why classical education remains indispensable in contemporary society. Through narrative, metaphor, and passionate advocacy, the Headmaster of Cincinnati Classical Academy contends that true education is not merely about equipping students for employment but about shaping souls for citizenship, stewardship, and participation in the ongoing story of civilization.

Listeners are left with the challenge: to resist the pressures of forgetting, to fight for the inheritance of the past, and to cultivate minds and characters that can bear the weight and wonder of their civilization.