A Letter from the Headmaster
Greetings KCA Families,
My name is Ed Kaitz and I am the Headmaster of Kootenai Classical Academy. KCA started out as a dream during a kitchen table discussion over five years ago, and just last week the painters were out at the site applying the exterior colors to the building. It’s quite remarkable to say the least, and our dream could not have happened without so many wonderful families in our community who have supported us along the way. We’re very excited about starting school on September 5!
Beyond KCA’s Founding Board of Directors, and our Director of Operations Mr. Conrad Woodall, I have a very long list of people to thank for helping to establish KCA, and I plan on highlighting those individuals and organizations in the coming months, the most important of which is Hillsdale College, since without Hillsdale’s desire to bring classical education to public K-12 charter schools across the country there would have been nothing to which we could tie our own dreams and efforts. Hillsdale’s example, curriculum, support, and guidance all played a part in our many successes thus far. In short, it was truly a team effort as well as a lesson in what can be accomplished when individuals have ardent faith in a very profound mission and vision.
I have been teaching for about thirty years in colleges and universities in the U.S. and abroad, including stints at the University of Colorado at Boulder, the University of San Francisco, and the Institute for International Relations in Hanoi, Vietnam. I have earned B.A., M.A. and Ph.D. degrees, and my primary areas of interest include philosophy, religion, literature, and the history of ideas in both the Western and Eastern traditions. As my teaching career progressed, I grew more and more concerned about the lack of preparation of my entering students. Fewer and fewer hands would rise when I asked the students if they had read any of the Federalist Papers, Aristotle, John Locke, Edmund Burke, or Alexis de Tocqueville (all crucial texts for understanding America’s unique experiment and fate). I can count on one hand the number of students who have even heard of Adam Smith or his Wealth of Nations and Theory of Moral Sentiments. It was Aristotle who famously said (Politics, Book V) that a nation whose citizens are not educated in their Constitution will be condemned to lose it.
KCA is an American Classical Education and our mission is to bring to life in our classrooms the very best of the liberal arts and sciences and to cultivate the high standards of moral conduct contained in many of these great texts. Italo Calvino remarks in his well-known essay “Why Read the Classics?” that “every reading of a classic is as much a voyage of discovery as the first reading” and “a classic is a book that has never finished saying what it has to say.” Imagine, KCA parents, your children in classrooms with expert teachers who will introduce these great texts and concepts in the arts and sciences in a way that will constitute a lifelong adventure in learning, self-discovery, and revelations of truth.
For example, one of the most enduring teachings to come out of the ancient world is the notion that human character can be considered a combination of three parts: Reason, Spirit, and Appetite. This is as true in ancient Greece as it was in classical Hindu thought. Socrates represented these three parts in a famous chariot analogy with the reason serving as the charioteer, the spirit serving as the “noble” horse, and the appetite serving as the “ignoble” horse. Socrates utilized this understanding of human nature whenever he helped to expertly guide his young disciples through their many youthful challenges and toward more worthy choices in life. The charioteer must restrain the lower “ignoble” appetites in order to set the chariot free in ways that help our reason direct our “noble” passions to an objective order of universal standards. Plato wrote down close to 2,000 pages of these Socratic wisdom teachings, and they are life-changing, especially for young students lucky enough to gain entry.
In the mid-20th century C.S. Lewis considered the classical human nature teaching above in light of what he thought were some extremely disturbing trends. More and more educators in schools were either discarding or actively “debunking” any notion of an objective order. In his The Abolition of Man (1944) Lewis sounded an alarm when more and more high school textbooks simply dispensed with the objective truth argument altogether in favor of relativism, thereby leaving a student, as he says, “conditioned to take one side in a controversy which he has never recognized as a controversy at all.” When objective truth disappears according to Lewis, the “noble” horse or spirit disappears in our very human nature, leaving human beings a combination of intelligence and lower appetites – a very nasty combination if not regulated by a passionate dedication to truth.
As a Hillsdale College Curriculum School, KCA will introduce Socrates, Plato, Aristotle and many, many other great thinkers in the elementary grades, and the knowledge of these great teachers will both deepen and ascend as they move into middle and high school. When students consider Lewis’s The Abolition of Man during their junior year they will understand that there is indeed a “controversy” with very, very much at stake.
And while these very sound and worthy set of teachings and skills will pervade a KCA student’s experience in literature, economics, math, science, music, art, history, government, and philosophy, Socrates also had a great sense of humor (see Xenophon’s Memorabilia), was an accomplished warrior, and famously said that music and sports should help provide the foundation for a great education. With that in mind, KCA plans to be a fun, exciting place to learn that also offers a great competitive sports program, clubs and activities, musical performance, and deep and lasting connections with our parents and the greater community.
It will be a pleasure for me to embark on this great adventure with all of you.
Go Kodiaks!
Dr. Kaitz