Yesterday my students and I discussed the opening book of The Iliad in the 11th-grade humane letters class I teach at Chandler Preparatory School in Arizona. The public charter school is part of Great Hearts, the largest classical school network in the world. In our device-free roundtable conversation, which we hold daily, one student said Achilles sabotaged his fellow Greeks by deciding not to fight with them. Another suggested Achilles helped the Greeks by exposing the flaws in Agamemnon. A third student mused that Nestor, the wise elder statesman who tries to make peace, was acting as more of a leader than either Achilles or Agamemnon. Today, a student said Odysseus was the real leader, because in Book 2 he does whatever it takes to unify the Greeks. The students were digging in the text for evidence and having a conversation about what it means to be a leader.

My students’ insights exemplify how classical education—an approach centered on the Western liberal arts tradition, Socratic teaching of the great books, and big questions about the nature of truth, beauty, goodness, and justice—supports civic learning in a democratic society. Why?

In well-functioning democracies, citizens use their freedom to work together to create an ordered and harmonious society that promotes productivity, justice, and human flourishing, while respecting each other’s rights. This is hard work. It requires citizens to think about the common good, agree on institutions to mediate their interactions, engage in an ongoing civic discourse, and sometimes sacrifice their self-interests. As de Tocqueville observed in Democracy in America, a free society only works when citizens eschew detached individualism and come together voluntarily in associations.

But instilling the habit of associational life requires education in fundamental democratic principles: the rights and obligations of citizens, the virtues of limited government, and the purpose of and appropriate limits on free speech. For citizens to be effective in self-rule, their education must also include the nature and value of democratic institutions: the division of power among the branches and tiers of government, the electoral process, and the free press. However, a society cannot agree on how to formulate its civic education without a shared vision of good citizenship—which requires agreement on what it means to live a good life.

Classical education is especially suited to the task of developing a common understanding of the highest good. It teaches about virtue not only in the abstract but through great stories and works of art of Western civilization. Taken together, these provide a common cultural narrative and vocabulary linking past generations with the present and giving direction to future citizens. Classical education also aims to produce a citizenry that is broad-minded and capable of nuanced comparisons of conflicting views. And it encourages students to express their own views while willingly and carefully considering the views of others.

I see the virtues of classical education unfold in my humane letters class, in my rhetoric students as they write their speeches, and among the seniors who come by to see me in the writing center after school to discuss thesis ideas. In short, civic education is a quintessential feature of the Tocquevillian ideal of life in a democracy, and classical education provides a foundation on which civic ideals can be built.

Robert C. Thornett teaches humane letters and rhetoric at Chandler Prep, a Great Hearts classical school in Arizona.