Most high schools require about 5-6 hours of class time per day. It often includes considerable wasted time, but it takes a lot of time nonetheless: 25-30 hours or so of classroom time per week. If you view our curriculum charts HERE, you will observe that typical Greats students have about 6 hours of online, classroom time per week (including the weekly Great Books discussion and The Great Courses Plus/Wondrium lectures). Our curriculum works more like a college curriculum (particularly one with the tutorials, such as Oxford), with much less classroom time than high schools, and more time for independent reading and study.

In our experience at the Angelicum Academy–nearly two decades now–we have found that teens 14 and up are perfectly capable of such study, and in our nation’s history did so. Dr. Mortimer Adler’s experience over 80 years led him to conclude likewise (see Article on this point HERE).

To summarize: Greats students will be engaged in two-hours of Great Books discussions per week, plus an average of 8 lectures per week (usually ½ hour). That comes to 6 hours of online, weekly class time, plus the Great Book reading and occasional work on essays or quizzes. That is not an unreasonable load at all, for any teen, but it is a serious academic program of study, of the highest caliber using the very finest materials and teachers, meriting the name Honors program. It is neither too easy, and hence boring; nor too difficult, and hence discouraging.