Hillsdale College Hosts Tele-Townhall on Classical K-12 Education
Hillsdale College Hosts Tele-Townhall on Classical K-12 Education
HILLSDALE, Mich. — Hillsdale College President Larry P. Arnn, nationally-syndicated radio personality Hugh Hewitt, and Assistant Provost for K-12 Education at Hillsdale College Kathleen O’Toole hosted a tele-townhall event on K-12 education on Nov. 30. More than 10,000 attendees called in to the virtual event, which was titled “Reviving American Classical K-12 Education.”
The discussion focused on Hillsdale’s efforts to restore excellence to K-12 education in the United States, specifically through the establishment of classical charter schools around the nation and the development of The Hillsdale 1776 Curriculum.
“Classical education is just liberal education. It’s well-rounded education,” said O’Toole. “It’s an education in all of the subjects that someone ought to know about in order to understand the human world and the natural world. In other words, classical education helps students make sense of being human.”
The college’s work in K-12 education began with Hillsdale Academy in 1990. In 2010, the college established the Barney Charter School Initiative, which has helped to found more than 20 public charter schools across the country. Since 2010, the Hillsdale College K-12 Education Office has begun providing curricular and instructional support to public and private schools, as well as homeschool families and groups. There are now more than 70 schools across 27 states affiliated with Hillsdale College.
“We teach schools and prospective school founders how to bring American classical education to their communities,” said O’Toole. “We have shepherded dozens of charter and private schools through the founding process. We provide teacher training for those schools, we provide curriculum, and we provide conferences for their board members and for their principals.”
The Hillsdale 1776 Curriculum was released in 2021. It covers topics in American history, civics, government, and politics, including the British Colonies of North America, the American Founding, the Civil War era, the Declaration of Independence, the Constitution, and American principles. It provides comprehensive lesson plans, homework assignments, quizzes, tests, study guides, and supplementary primary and secondary resource recommendations for teacher and student use.
“America is a beautiful story,” said Arnn. “It’s a human story. Of course, there are failures in it, and so you have to talk about those. You have to explain them. You have to explain the standard by which you understand them to be failures. That standard would be found in the Declaration of Independence.”
This is the seventh year Hillsdale College has hosted its classical education tele-townhall. To watch a recording of the tele-townhall, click here.
For a high-resolution copy of the Hillsdale College clocktower logo, click here.