Hillsdale College K-12 Curriculum: A Classical Approach to Education

Hillsdale College's K-12 curriculum offers a robust, content-rich liberal arts and sciences education rooted in the Western tradition. This curriculum aims to cultivate intellectual, moral, and civic virtue in students through a classical education setting. The curriculum emphasizes a well-rounded course of study, integrating subjects to provide a cohesive learning experience.

Core Principles of the Hillsdale Curriculum

The Hillsdale College K-12 curriculum is built upon several core principles:

Content-Rich Education: The curriculum is comprehensive and covers a wide range of subjects, ensuring students acquire a broad base of knowledge.
Emphasis on Literacy: In the early grades, the curriculum prioritizes literacy, ensuring that students learn to read effectively.
Classical Education: The curriculum adheres to the classical way of educating children in the Western tradition of study.
Moral and Civic Virtue: The curriculum aims to instill intellectual, moral, and civic virtue in students.
Integrated Learning: The curriculum emphasizes the integration of subjects, connecting history with art, music, and literature, and science with mathematics, history, and music.
Focus on Western Tradition: The curriculum focuses on the history and literature of Western Civilization, believing it is important to pass that tradition on to the next generation.

Key Components

The Hillsdale College K-12 curriculum includes several key components:

K-12 Program Guide: This comprehensive guide details what should be taught in each subject and grade throughout a student’s K-12 journey. The K-12 Program Guide is the basis from which all Hillsdale-affiliated schools plan their instruction.
Emphasis on Core Disciplines: The curriculum places emphasis upon the four core disciplines of math, science, literature, and history, with attention to music, art, physical education, and foreign languages.
Study of Latin: Students start learning Greek and Latin roots in fourth grade and ultimately complete four years of Latin study starting in sixth grade.
Fine Arts and Physical Education: Art, music, and physical education are core components of the curriculum.
History and Geography: Students begin history and geography in the lower grades before diving deeper into ancient, European, and American history in the upper school.

Curriculum Structure and Content

The Hillsdale College K-12 curriculum is designed to be vertically and horizontally integrated. This means that learning is connected between subjects and across grade levels. The curriculum covers a range of subjects, including:

Math

Using the Singapore Math Curriculum, students begin with memorization and practice on math facts in kindergarten. Students are also introduced to ten-based mathematics using conceptual methods like grouping and re-grouping pictorial representations of numbers. Then students move on to written horizontal and vertical numeric expressions. This encourages an active thinking process and an understanding of mathematical concepts on a conceptual level.

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Science

The curriculum uses Core Knowledge Foundation’s Science Curriculum in which children build concrete foundations of knowledge, starting in the early grades when they are most receptive, and continuing through high school. Students relate such principles to current issues such as diet and health, extinction and habitat loss, genetic modification of people and other organisms, and the emergence of novel diseases, among others. The curriculum also covers the nature of empirical scientific methodology and the strengths and limitations of science as a way of knowing in the context of a liberal education. Students consider the implications of the “big ideas” of chemistry and the evidence for them-the atomic nature of matter, bonding, intermolecular forces, structure and shape, chemical reactions, and transfer of energy-and the relationship of fundamental principles of chemistry to current and emerging global issues. Learn how life evolves and adapts in continually changing environments.

History

The curriculum includes a planned progression of specific knowledge of history, including the rise and fall of civilizations, and studying relevant cultures including their languages, religions, governments, and economics. Students who study using this curriculum learn about American history from the colonies through the Civil War at four different times during their K-12 years, each time increasing in depth. Students acquire a mature love for America, one which appreciates our unprecedented founding, a product of reflection and choice, and measures the health of our republic in light of the standards set forth in our founding documents.

Language Skills

Students are taught to read using deliberate, coherent, and direct instruction of the five scientifically proven literacy domains: phonics, phonemic awareness, fluency, comprehension, and vocabulary. Grammar and cursive are taught from the early grades to further develop the students’ language capacity. Generally, whole word memorization and ‘picture-cue’ approaches that rely on memorizing or guessing how a word sounds will not be a strategy of instruction at the Academy.

Economics

In the tradition of Milton Friedman and Friedrich August von Hayek, Upper School studens will learn about free market Capitalism and its underpinnings, liberty, voluntary cooperation and voluntary exchange. Other economic systems and their political underpinnings, like socialism and communism are studied, compared, and contrasted to free-market economics.

Literature, Philosophy, Theology, and Fine Arts

Together, they follow a journey through literature, philosophy, theology, history, the fine arts, and the natural sciences, and begin to see the world as a cohesive whole. The Hillsdale core considers the spiritual and intellectual inheritance of the Western Tradition, and provides a fuller perspective on the world and its workings. Receive a general overview of the history of philosophical development in the West from its inception with the Pre-Socratic philosophers of ancient Greece to the 20th century Anglo-American and Continental traditions. Receive an introduction to early American political thought and its crowning political achievement, the United States Constitution.

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Benefits of a Classical Education

A classical education, as provided by the Hillsdale College K-12 curriculum, offers numerous benefits:

Liberation from Ignorance: It frees us from ignorance and confusion, from prejudice and delusion, and from the wild passions and fanciful hopes that can degrade and destroy us.
Rationality: It liberates by making us more fully rational, allowing us to see the world clearly and honestly.
Moral Education: Rather than do violence to human nature in a vain attempt to remake it, a classical education cultivates human nature so it can grow properly and flourish.
Understanding of Civilization: The serious pursuit of a classical education shows us that the life of the mind and the existence of education itself depend on the existence of civilization-not to mention political order, security, and freedom of thought.
Deep Understanding of America's Founding Principles: You want your students to have a deep understanding of America’s founding principles, pivotal events, and enduring ideas.

Hillsdale-Affiliated Schools

Hillsdale College licenses the K-12 Program Guide to schools who share the College’s objective of leading students towards intellectual, moral, and civic virtue in a traditional education setting. License holders are designated as a Hillsdale College Member School or a Hillsdale College Curriculum School. Tulsa Classical Academy and Cheyenne Classical Academy are examples of schools that utilize the Hillsdale College K-12 Curriculum. Cheyenne Classical Academy staff members will be trained in this provided curriculum.

Accessing the Curriculum

The K-12 Program Guide is available to Hillsdale’s affiliated schools. Like all of Hillsdale College’s work in K-12 education, curriculum licenses are granted free of charge. While the K-12 Program Guide is available at no cost, it contains book and curricular recommendations which schools will have to purchase.

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