The object of education is to teach us to love what is beautiful.
— Plato, Republic, Book III
We are living through a quiet revolution. You won’t hear it shouted from the rooftops. You’ll find it in a room where a child is reading Homer aloud. You’ll glimpse it in a teacher guiding students through a Socratic dialogue. You’ll feel it in schools where poetry still matters, where words are loved, and where truth is not an embarrassment. Across the world, and here in Australia, the classical education movement is gaining momentum.
Last year, at the annual Christopher Dawson Centre Symposium in Hobart, I spoke of how Australia is standing at a cultural crossroads. The values that have long underpinned our nation are not merely being questioned but, in many quarters, outright rejected. Yet, amid the disquiet and uncertainty, there remains a glimmer of hope - a hope that lies not in a blind clinging to the past, but in a thoughtful reaffirmation of our faith in Australia and the values that have shaped our shared history. Education once sought not just to inform students but to form them. That vision is returning, and Australia is helping to lead the way.
At the heart of this revival stands the Australian Classical Education Society (ACES). Born during the lockdown years, when the fragility of modern education was laid bare, ACES has become a rallying point for families, teachers, and thinkers seeking something enduring. Through conferences, curriculum work, and the cultivation of community, ACES is quietly rebuilding an education of substance.
The classical education movement has deep Christian roots. From the earliest monastic schools to the great medieval universities, classical education was shaped by Catholic thought. It sought to harmonise faith and reason, scripture and Cicero, theology and the Trivium. Anselm’s fides quaerens intellectum - faith seeking understanding - was not just a slogan but a vocation. The aim was to form the whole person: intellect, character, and soul.
What began in Catholic schools has now found fertile ground across a wide landscape. Orthodox and Protestant communities have embraced it. Jewish schools are teaching Hebrew grammar and Greek logic alongside sacred texts. Even non-religious schools, longing for meaning, for clarity and order, are joining the renaissance. The best of the classical tradition transcends creed: it teaches students to read well, reason clearly, and live purposefully.
The results of the classical education movement are already visible. Campion College, Australia’s only tertiary liberal arts institution, continues to form graduates who thrive in law, medicine, the priesthood, and the public square. New classical schools such as Hartford College in Sydney and the soon-to-open St John Henry Newman College in Brisbane are offering families what modern education has forgotten: an education anchored in wisdom, not fashion.
Globally, classical education is flourishing - from the dozens of Hillsdale-backed charter schools in the United States to independent academies in the UK, Uganda, and Brazil. They do not promise gadgets or gimmicks. They promise character formation and sometimes, Latin homework (I can hear the sighs).
As classical education spreads at the school level, higher education remains the next great frontier. If we are forming students in the disciplines of logic, grammar, rhetoric, ethics, and natural philosophy, where will they go next?
Campion College has shown the way. Its success proves that a liberal arts university - rooted in classical principles - can thrive in Australia. But one college cannot serve a continent. We must begin to imagine what a broader classical tertiary landscape could look like. Perhaps a new honours program embedded within existing universities? Perhaps a federation of classical teacher-training colleges? Perhaps a new academic journal, or a graduate institute drawing talent from the Christian and secular worlds alike?
Whatever the form, we must ensure that students educated in the classical tradition do not find themselves marooned in a dreary postmodern university culture that denies the very truths they’ve been taught to seek. They deserve institutions as serious, humane, and grounded as their schooling.
Yes, the classical movement is still a minority. But so was the early Church. Its strength lies not in numbers, but in depth. It dares to ask children to do difficult things - to memorise, to reason, to wonder. And they rise to the occasion. They always have. In an age of immediacy, classical education teaches patience. In a time of identity politics, it teaches character. In a culture of noise, it focuses attention back on our strongest cultural roots.
As T.S. Eliot wrote in Little Gidding,
We shall not cease from exploration
And the end of all our exploring
Will be to arrive where we started
And know the place for the first time.
The world is turning classical. Not everywhere. Not all at once. But unmistakably - and just in time.
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Bio Notes: Steven Schwartz is the former vice chancellor of Murdoch University, Macquarie University and Brunel University of London. He writes on faith, education, and wisdom in his newsletter: Wiser Every Day.
