Core Virtues

Great Hearts’ Core Purpose is “to cultivate the minds and hearts of our students in the pursuit of truth, goodness, and beauty.” We believe that it is not enough for a school to merely educate the mind of its students; we believe that authentic education involves the whole person—mind, body, and heart. In partnership with parents, it is not only the privilege but the duty of our teachers to cultivate in our scholars knowledge and intellectual excellence, of course, but also bodily excellence, and—perhaps most importantly—moral excellence.

Great Hearts does not employ an explicit “character curriculum.” Instead, conversations about moral choices, virtue, and vice are woven throughout our curriculum and integrated organically and holistically into our instruction, conversations about student behavior, and, indeed, our entire school day.

Great Hearts has chosen nine core virtues from the classical tradition which are particularly useful in facilitating conversations about moral excellence with young children. Each virtue is displayed in our classrooms and referenced frequently during class discussions of characters in our “Classics to Keep” books, figures in history, and our students’ choices and actions as well. From time to time we may communicate with parents about a particular virtue that their child displayed during the course of the day, or perhaps one which the scholar struggled to show. We encourage all our families to continue the conversation about virtue at home.

You can find more on each virtue and how it is incorporated into our instruction below.