In partnership with Classical Academic Press and the Society for Classical Learning, Taylor University is offering a new graduate program for classical teaching.
This classical teacher certification is a graduate level course, but doesn’t confer a degree, Provost Jewerl Maxwell said. The program is designed to help someone transition from a previous career, or from teaching in a traditional educational setting to teaching in classical education.
The program offers a track of seven courses, according to its online webpage, and is self-paced. Participants have four months to finish each class.
Classical Academic Press provides curriculum through Classical U, their teacher training site, Jolie Hodge, president of Classical Academic Press, said. The Society for Classical Learning provides teachers who have finished the program with a certification, and Taylor University provides the resources to house the program, she said.
The classical teacher certification came about because leaders in the classical movement saw success at Taylor, Maxwell said.
“This materialized because various leaders in the classical movement have acknowledged some of the success that we're having at Taylor,” he said. “They value Christian liberal arts institutions. We would be one of those institutions that they feel like …has a lot of credibility.”
Taylor also has a similar transition to teaching program for traditional education, so it made sense for Taylor to offer this program, Maxwell said.
More and more families are choosing Christian classical education for their children, Maxwell said. Taylor’s history as a Christ-centered liberal arts school aligns significantly with classical education. The school hopes to support the good work of the Christian classical education movement while encouraging graduates of classical high schools to attend Taylor, he said.
Classical education has grown significantly over the past couple of years. According to an article published in Forbes, over 677,500 students were enrolled in 1,551 institutions during the 2023-2024 school year. Projections suggested the figure could reach 1.4 million by 2035.
Classical education views learning from a different perspective, Hodge said. Classical education recognizes that education shapes a person’s loves. The goal is to teach students the transcendental questions, or asking what is true, good, beautiful and holy.
“When you are educated about something, your loves are shaped,” she said. “You either come to know and appreciate it and love it more, or you've come to understand that it is not a good or a true or a beautiful thing, and you begin to understand that it's a vice of some kind, right?”
Classical education asks the transcendental questions to all subjects, including math, science, philosophy and language.
“Those are training someone to look at the world and not just see education sort of siloed into different individual compartments, but asking some of those three lined questions, that’s a different way of seeing,” she said. “It’s a different way of understanding how education is knit together and how the world is knit together.”
