Kelsey

From one of our first students…If it’s anybody’s fault that I’m doing this crazy PhD thing now, it’s you – Great Books opened the lid of my world and set me on fire. I’m forever grateful for the program and the education I received from it; it is one of the greatest gifts I have ever received, and one that continually bears fruit and enriches my life in new and beautiful ways. I can never repay you for believing that 15-year-olds are capable of reading as much as graduate students! In a way my serious relationship to the Western canon began 15 years ago, in your classroom. This led to my place now, as a sort of professional bookworm. My life as it stands is pretty great, and I owe a lot of where I am now to you. Thank you so much for teaching. Pax, Kelsey B.

Dr. Adler and Mrs. Adler meeting Pope Paul VI

Dr. & Mrs. Adler meeting Pope Paul VI

THE PURPOSE OF THE GREAT BOOKS PROGRAM
Mortimer J. Adler, the philosopher and educator who did so much to create the Great Books program of learning, spent much of his life  championing the notion, propounded by Plato, Aristotle and St. Thomas Aquinas, that truth and values are absolute and unchanging. ”The fundamental ideas and concepts upon which education should be based are not merely the mores and beliefs which happen to be current in America,” he once wrote. ”They are universal truths about what constitutes a good education for all men at all times and places simply because they are men.” To promote that education, he helped devise the Great Books program, a course of study in classic Western literary and philosophical texts.

SheridanCoatofArms

The Angelicum Academy, founded in 2000 A.D., is officially recognized by the Church as a Catholic home school program. See official recognition letter HERE, pursuant to the Code of Canon Law, Canon 803 § 1.

“Thank you for all your help and for providing excellent resources for Catholic homeschool families. I am so grateful for your loyalty to the magisterium and for your excellence in education. Thank you! ” Laurice S.

THE ANGELICUM ACADEMY HOMESCHOOL PROGRAM is a nursery-12th grade curriculum for home education. It is complete – including all subjects, books, guides and tests needed, for all grades. Optional services for enrolled students include grading, transcript maintenance, online literature discussion classes and the finest online resources. Our Great Books Program may be taken for high school, college credit, or both.

TA LogoTHE ANGELICUM ACADEMY & HOMESCHOOL PROGRAM is easy to follow. Because it is complete, it is a one-stop home education provider. The 12 courses (subjects) allow parents to offer their children more options than any private school offers. Because it is flexible it allows parents to select only those courses they wish, when they wish, and to take as long (or as little) as they wish to complete a course. Most of our students are doing six or seven subjects, in two or three different grade levels – they have excelled in some, taken more time in others – this is a common sense approach to education, not a one-pace-fits-all approach to unique human beings.

 “The purpose of learning is growth, and our minds, unlike our bodies, can continue growing as long as we live.” – Mortimer Adler

We offer many courses. This is because some parents want to emphasize, for example, art instead of music, or science instead of philosophy, etc. That is a parental decision. But we do not recommend that any student take more than six or seven subjects at any one time. If one compares costs for any six of our courses with other homeschool programs, one will find that the Angelicum Homeschool Program is either less expensive or comparable in cost, and, we believe, superior in content and quality. We strive to offer only the very best educational books and materials, including particularly, the great classics of Western civilization.

Dr. Mortimer Adler [sitting] at his last Great Books Discussion Group, (2000 A.D.), with the initial online Great Books Program directors [standing, left to right] Steve Bertucci, Pat Carmack, Tom Orr

Our entire curriculum – consisting of books, lesson plans and tests for each course, and Great Books study guides

[for high school and college levels] – are organized in our bookstore. Only books used in our courses are carried by our bookstore (with a few exceptions for parental books). What one sees in the bookstore is our entire curriculum. We have available free placement tests we can email for optional guidance in selecting grade levels, for each course. Testing may be done using our optional quarterly tests, or parents may grade as they wish (parentally-provided grading is accepted, and is simply footnoted as such on the transcript).Our nursery through 8th grade curriculum is conventionally organized, with a superb classics literature base (such as Aesop’s Fables, Mother Goose, the Little House books, Little Women, Robinson Crusoe, Tom Sawyer, David Copperfield, etc.), but is far more challenging than public school curricula and exceeds the academic standards of private and parochial schools as well. Being oriented to home education, it allows the parents to set the pace. The literature component was carefully selected for integration with the entire curriculum, good moral example including in the supplemental lives of the Saints offered, and to prepare students, in graduated steps, to read the world’s finest and most influential literature in several fields collected in our Great Books program.

Our 9th-12th grade integrated-literature program was designed primarily by the late Dr. Mortimer Adler (with minor changes) who called these works the Great Books. Having learned the arts of learning (i.e., the liberal arts: grammar, reading, writing, calculating, etc.) in the elementary levels, students here begin to study the substance of a liberal education – the works of the great authors of Western civilization – masterpieces by Homer, Plato, Aristotle, St. John, St. Augustine, Ven. Bede, St. Thomas Aquinas, Dante, Chaucer, Shakespeare and many others, in literature, poetry, drama, history, science and philosophy. These works constitute an on-going dialogue about the truths of man’s nature and his relationship with the rest of reality, called the Great Conversation. In giving your children the opportunity to grasp this wisdom from the past, they cannot help but be led to a greater appreciation and understanding of virtue and the wonder and beauty of life, and the ability to participate in the intellectual life of the Church and their culture. The American Council on Education’s College Credit Recommendation Service (ACE CREDIT) evaluated and recommended college credit for 8 courses (totaling 48 credit hours – 6 per semester) of the our Great Books Program, which may be taken for either high school or college credit, or both (the amount of work and time involved varies with that choice).

AAIbannerOur Great Books Program moderators are all Fellows of the Adler-Aquinas Institute.

Our view is that we are here to help parents and students by reviewing, selecting, organizing, assembling and in some cases publishing, the very best materials and curriculum organization for the finest educational experience possible. This program allows parents and students to establish their own individuals schedules and course selections. This website has hundreds of pages of additional information, and articles to view, then enjoy your visit to our Bookstore/Curriculum. All you need to begin is to select the books and materials you wish. Anyone may purchase our materials. Enrollment, online classes and enrollment services are optional. Welcome to the Angelicum Homeschool Program!

The video below is Mortimer Adler addressing the National Press Club. 

Congratulations to our Great Books student, Hunter Gill, on his award winning video Liberal Arts: A Strategy for Saving the Nation.  Hunter’s videos won 3rd place with C-SPAN two years in a row!

Thank you to our Great Books student, Marshall Harmon, for making this excellent video presentation on the Great Books!