A school is not only a curriculum. It is a community of people who have decided to read the same books, ask the same questions, and aim at the same goods. Any serious school sooner or later needs a place to think out loud — a place where the faculty, the founders, and the friends of the school can write down what they are learning, so that other families can learn alongside them. That is what this blog is for.
Virtualis is a Christian classical academy delivered online through our partnership with Great Hearts Online. The classical tradition we belong to is old, slow, and very much alive. It is old because it is the same tradition Augustine and Aquinas and Newman belonged to. It is slow because real formation takes years. And it is alive because every generation has to receive it and make it their own.
What we will write about
Four things, mostly. The first is the classical tradition itself — the Trivium, the Great Books, Latin, the liberal arts, and the history of how Western education was handed down from Athens through Jerusalem through the medieval universities to the families reading this page. The second is Christian formation — virtue, prayer, the moral imagination, the life of the Church as the teacher of the human soul. The third is family life — parents as primary educators, reading aloud, the dinner table, the rhythms of the school year, and what it looks like to raise children for eternity. The fourth is what we are calling the examined life — the slow, deliberate work of learning to see clearly in a noisy age.
The unexamined life is not worth living. — Socrates, in Plato’s Apology 38a
Socrates said that at his trial, shortly before he drank the hemlock. He meant it. We think he was right.
Who will write
Most essays will come from Virtualis faculty and from our founders, Zeus and Dr. Dana Rodriguez. Occasionally we will publish a piece from a partner — a Great Hearts colleague, a classical scholar we admire, a parent who wrote something we think other parents should read. We will cite sources carefully. We will not write puff pieces. We will not write marketing copy disguised as essays. If we ever have nothing worth saying, we will say nothing and wait until we do.
How to read it
You do not have to read every post. Subscribe to the newsletter and we will send you new essays as they go out. Browse by category if a particular topic concerns you. Tell us when we are wrong — we would rather learn in public than be wrong quietly.
The first real essays are being written now. Thank you for reading. We are glad you are here.
