Miami public school adopts classical education model championed by conservatives

MIAMI — Families in Miami-Dade seem increasingly interested in having their children study the classics — think Socrates, Plato and Aristotle.

As classical education charter schools like True North move into communities, amassing waitlists of potential students, Miami-Dade County Public Schools has decided to gradually implement a classical curriculum at a district-run neighborhood school.

“We have to be very competitive. We are in a world of choice,” said Miami-Dade schools superintendent Jose Dotres, who said he was inspired to take this new approach after touring True North.

Village Green, a K–5 elementary school in southwest Miami-Dade, located not far from a True North Classical Academy, is slowly transitioning some of its classrooms from traditional curriculum to the classical model. This year, the school introduced the program in a kindergarten and first-grade classroom, and next year it plans to add second- and third-grade classrooms.

The curriculum focuses on “exploring the ideas that shaped Western Civilization,” according to the school website, with an emphasis on grammar, dialectics and rhetoric. Lessons often connect across multiple subjects, so students can see how ideas fit together. The classical academy is advertised to parents as “Timeless Education for a Modern World,” and the school website offers tours for interested families.

To make the shift, Miami-Dade partnered with the University of Florida’s Hamilton School of Classical and Civic Education, which helped Village Green design the curriculum and train its first cohort of teachers. District leaders say the goal is to offer a classical option within a traditional public school while still meeting all state academic standards.

Inside a classical education classroom in Miami-Dade

Classical education is a model that varies by school, but the district’s chief academic officer, Lourdes Diaz, says, “It is more a pedagogy with a strong focus on liberal arts, on core subjects like language arts, history, literature, and a study of the great books of Greek and Western Greek and Roman texts.”

The traditional public school curriculum is more focused on standardized textbooks and teacher-led lessons, with less emphasis on grammar, logic and rhetoric.

Students start their day with an assembly focused on a virtue such as wisdom or “civic understanding.”

Inside Geraldine Cameron’s kindergarten classroom, there is not a computer in sight. Instead, students sit at grouped desks and listen as their teacher reads them a story.

On the walls, there are photos of students wearing pharaoh headdresses they made out of paper while learning about Egypt. Cameron, whose class of 23 students is made up largely of English as a Second Language learners, transitions back and forth between Spanish and English, encouraging students to answer questions in English.

Classical education is divided into three stages: grammar for younger students, then logic, and finally rhetoric. Although students at Village Green will still follow Florida standards, they will do less individual work and more group work, and teachers will use songs to help them memorize things such as multiplication tables and U.S. presidents.

In a recent kindergarten class, students sang a song with the lyrics: “Work while you work. Play while you play. One thing each time, that is the way. All that you do, do with your might. Things done by halves are not done right.”

On the wall of their classroom, there are posters defining virtues including “reverence,” “courage,” “respect” and “gratitude.”

How Hamilton helped

Cameron, who has been a teacher for 13 years, has attended workshops at the school directed by the Hamilton Center at the University of Florida, where she has learned about classical education and tools for teaching it.

The Hamilton Center is an undergraduate liberal arts school at UF that focuses on classical education, offering two majors: Philosophy, Politics, Economics, and Law and Great Books and Ideas. The curriculum aims to help students understand America’s founding principles and the foundational ideals of Western civilization. The center defines its approach as free thought, free expression and free from a political agenda.

Some critics characterize the Hamilton Center as a conservative project tied to Gov. Ron DeSantis’ education agenda and part of his effort to purge universities of “wokeness,” though supporters say its focus on Western civilization and civic education is academically grounded rather than partisan.

The school district worked with the Hamilton School to develop the classical curriculum, while emphasizing that students still learn the same Florida state standards and take all state assessments.

Classical education has risen in popularity in recent years. The Hamilton School alone has grown from just 11 faculty members two years ago to 48 today.

Aaron Alexander Zubia, an assistant professor of humanities at the Hamilton School, says classical education focuses on the foundations of Western and American civilization. Although classical education is widely associated with conservative political ideology, Zubia says it does not fit into the “contemporary partisan divide.”

“Great books and great ideas transcend; they speak to the universe of human nature,” he said.

Benjamin Boyce, director of civic outreach and strategic partnerships at the Hamilton School said classical teaching relies on clear routines and rich content rather than a specific canon alone.

“Teachers use clear, structured lessons, rich stories and content, and plenty of discussion to help young students develop habits like asking good questions, listening attentively, speaking in complete sentences and writing and organizing their thoughts clearly,” Boyce said.

He added that frequent checks for understanding and strong parent engagement help extend learning at home and support students from diverse backgrounds.

Boyce also emphasized that classical education is designed to keep screen time limited in the early grades to build language and attention, while digital literacy is introduced gradually as students get older and begin meeting district technology requirements.

Classical education growing around the state

Statewide, there has been a broader push for classical education.

The Florida Department of Education now offers a Classical Education Teaching Certificate, and a test known as the Classical Learning Test offers an alternative to the SAT and ACT. Governor Ron DeSantis has signed a bill requiring state schools to accept the CLT as an alternative college entrance exam. Private classical education schools that center their curriculum around the Bible are popping up all around the state, while classical charter school companies focused on civics are gaining steam.

Last month, Florida state Rep. Mike Redondo, R-Miami, presented Village Green Elementary with a ceremonial check for $500,000 from the legislature.

Erika Donalds, a former Collier County school board member turned classical charter school executive and school choice advocate, says there has been tremendous demand statewide for classical education.

Donalds defines classical education as a more traditional method of learning that focuses on “the great books that have stood the test of time.”

Many of these books include authors like Homer, Shakespeare and Dostoyevsky. There are few female authors; when asked about this, Donalds said she has never been asked a question by parents about the gender of the authors they teach.

When asked about the focus on Western Civilization, which critics say can prove challenging for students from diverse backgrounds, she said that it is important to teach Western civilization because “people who immigrate to America are expecting and seeking the benefits of Western civilization, and that one of the issues that we have in America, in upholding the traditions that this country was founded on, is the lack of teaching of Western civilization in our schools.”

Back in Cameron’s kindergarten classroom, the students look at a wall covered with hand-painted American flags and a poster that reads “scholars are patriotic.”

Ms. Cameron was brought to tears during an interview with the Miami Herald about implementing the new curriculum. She says she loves the method and has really enjoyed teaching the poems and being able to focus on stories as opposed to reading shorter excerpts to her students.

“The focus is on how to learn, not what to learn,” she said.