The Heights School

The Heights School is a private, independent, preparatory school for boys, grades three to twelve. Our mission is to assist parents in the intellectual, moral, physical, and spiritual education of their sons, with dedicated teachers training boys rigorously in the liberal arts. This formation in virtue fosters respect for every person, a desire to serve God and others, and an optimistic attitude towards life’s challenges.

As you will learn while perusing this site, The Heights offers a traditional liberal arts education that focuses on the development of intellectual virtues, helping to foster the practice of concentrated study and a sincere interest in the abundant goodness of the world. Its curriculum is strongly grounded in the classic texts of western civilization. Its students achieve impressive results on recognized standards of excellence such as Advanced Placement and SAT exams, and many of its graduates go on to the best colleges in the nation.

At The Heights, parents are helped to form their sons into the type of men they would want their daughters to marry—men who will be great fathers. The faculty encourage the boys to be true Christian gentleman, striving to do the ordinary things of life extraordinarily well for the love of God and in the service of others. All student programs take place in the context of a personal approach to education where cheerfulness goes hand-in-hand with hard work and a striving to conquer oneself.

The Heights School provides a traditional liberal arts curriculum grounded in the western canon, the body of learning on which western civilization rests. By incorporating the many noble aspirations and developments of the modern world into this classical context, The Heights School strives to achieve the goal of the full human development of each student. The school motto, Crescite, is the Latin translation of the Creator’s first words to man, increase and grow. Indeed that divine command is the foundation of our mission: to assist parents in the intellectual, moral, physical, and spiritual education of their sons.

A liberal arts curriculum is essential to this mission. The liberal arts have been traditionally grouped into two broad disciplines: the trivium, consisting of grammar, logic, and rhetoric; and the quadrivium, consisting of astronomy, music, geometry, and arithmetic. At The Heights, these disciplines are represented by a core of courses in ten academic departments: English, Mathematics, Classics, History, Religion, Science, Spanish, Art, Computers, and Music. While a liberal arts education is an excellent preparation for many professions, its chief value is not its practical utility but that it contributes to living a more noble human life. A liberal arts education enables a student to rise above his own cultural situation to contemplate the great human realities that matter most in our lives: the meaning of suffering, the possibility of authentic Love, Truth, Beauty, and eternity. A liberal arts education would properly be pursued for its own sake even if it were not useful for another end.

Because the chief reason to pursue a liberal arts education is for its human and formative value, The Heights School seeks to enter into a partnership with families who share this vision of education. We rely on parents who are active primary educators to pass on the riches of a liberal education to the next generation. It is impossible for even the best school to accomplish this by itself without the support of parents working to establish a home where such an education can be fostered as well. Our dedication to the traditional liberal arts and to the faculty-parent partnership exists in the Lower, Middle, and Upper Schools.

The primary focus of a liberal arts education is the development of true freedom that will enable one to live a more complete human life, as opposed to the mere attainment of some technical skills or knowledge. The root of the word “liberal” is the Latin word “liber,” meaning “free.” A liberal arts education increases one’s freedom, understood as the ability to embrace the Good, wherever it is truly recognized. It imparts the freedom necessary to join with the great minds of history, rising above one’s current situation and culture, to appreciate what is deepest in our human condition: the meaning of love, suffering, sacrifice, death, and generous service to others. Acquiring a liberal arts education is a life-long process; The Heights School strives to form life-long learners who have what educator and philosopher John Henry Cardinal Newman called a “habit of mind” in pursuit of intellectual excellence and the contemplative life.

Liberal arts teach, among other things, a respect for the proper and responsible use of words, the sincere asking of questions, the recognition and appreciation of the Good, the True, and the Beautiful. A liberal arts education also opens the door to many professional opportunities. The fruits of a liberal arts education – a broad understanding of reality, clarity in thought, excellence in writing, and effective speaking skills – are very important in many professions, especially for those in positions of leadership.