In order to express and understand complex ideas, a person must have a working knowledge of facts, ideas, and references known to all in a given social and political order. This is cultural literacy, and we believe it is essential to a nation’s identity. Students, over their years in school, will be expected to learn information, to apply it, and as they get older, to extrapolate from it. Livingston Classical Academy will be content-rich. As someone once said, “in order to think, one has to have something to think about.”

We seek to uphold a standard of excellence. To be “classical” means that. In upholding that standard, it does not mean that we do not recognize that different students have different abilities. We know that they will learn at different speeds. Livingston Classical Academy will offer various remedial courses to encourage students in their academic struggles, but excellence will always be the goal.

We will insist on moral virtue as far as it relates to the school from our administrators down to our students. At Livingston Classical Academy, we leave questions of faith to the students and their parents, but we will foster an environment where all of us will be expected to behave in a morally virtuous manner. Expectations will be high: all students must be attentive and polite. They may sometimes differ with their teachers or administrators on a particular issue, but the “differing” must be expressed in a respectful manner. In literature and history, the students will be exposed to the great stories of self-command and self-sacrifice, of inner conflicts between right and wrong. We will encourage them to follow the higher path.

We will seek to prepare our students to assume their places as responsible citizens in the political order of the United States. To do that in an intelligent manner, they will be taught our nation’s founding principles. Founding documents such as the Declaration of Independence, the Constitution, and some of the Federalist Papers along with letters and/or essays written by members of our early government will be studied. Ideas will be discussed such as: What is true freedom? What is limited, balanced, federal, and accountable government? What are the rights of a citizen? What are not rights? How do state rights balance federal rights? How do they work in conjunction with a citizen’s private rights? What about a citizen’s duties to fellow citizens, to their various governments?