Educating Our Youngest Next Gen Leaders

April 2025

Even in the best of times, one of the biggest challenges for working parents with young school-age kids is to ensure their children receive the best education possible while the parents themselves are busy solving the world’s problems.

One of the most challenging times for working parents in recent memory was during the COVID pandemic, when most of our nation’s public schools were forced to shut down “to stop the spread.”  While teachers did the best they could to educate young students over Zoom for weeks on end, many working parents had little choice but to have one parent or other family member stay home to oversee the instruction of the children until schools reopened.

One shocking result was that parents unexpectedly discovered that some of their children’s state-mandated public-school textbooks and instructional materials contained appallingly vulgar content.  Parents who had never considered alternatives to public education before suddenly had good reason to explore other options.  Tuition-free “classical” charter schools became the point of refuge for many.

While the concept of public charter schools originated in the early 1970s, Minnesota became the first state to establish a public charter school in 1991. By 2021, public charter schools were approved in 46 states. According to Pew Research, during the 2022 – 2023 school year, public charter schools enrolled nearly 10 times the number of new students as traditional district schools.

I have published numerous articles in praise of one classical charter school in Jacksonville, Florida, the Cornerstone Classical Academy. Their tenets are “Learn the truth. Do the good. Love the beautiful.”

In case you aren’t familiar with classical education, Cornerstone explains it this way: 

Classical education is a content-rich, time-tested educational model that is systematic and comprehensive. It focuses on the liberal arts and sciences, moral character, and civic virtue. Classical education focuses on valuing knowledge for its own sake, and teaching children how to learn. Students will learn about historical events, characters, stories, fables, myths, scientific facts, and mathematical proofs. They will read whole books in great depth and learn to approach books both with moderation to learn and courage to question. Classical education aims to bring out the best in every person by teaching young people to think for themselves.     

Ever since they opened in the fall of 2020, I’ve been so impressed by Cornerstone’s mission to sharpen the minds and cultivate the hearts of students through a content-rich classical education, I’ve routinely invited civic and business leaders of all stripes to tour the school. Seeing is believing!

My goal in doing so is to ensure that our nation’s leaders are aware and supportive of the valiant efforts underway within our community to ensure that America will continue to be in good hands for years to come — thanks to remarkable public classical schools like Cornerstone that are dedicated to educating and preparing our next generation of leaders.     

That said, not every school that claims to provide classical education can boast the same impressive results. As with every business, it all boils down to Wow Factor leadership who create and maintain best place to work (and learn) cultures.

If you or your family members are evaluating educational alternatives for a young student in your life, I highly encourage you to observe and compare classes at various kinds of schools. Assess the quality of the materials and instructional methodologies used to stimulate learning. Assess the creativity, passion for teaching and professionalism of the staff and administrators before deciding which environment will truly be the best match for each child. Once enrolled, participate in the child’s class every now and then. Sometimes adjustments are in order. The only way to know is to be involved.

I’ll share an example. When members of my family toured the Cornerstone Classical Academy, they immediately wanted to enroll their children in the classical school in their own community. Unfortunately, being every bit as popular as Cornerstone, that school also had a long waiting list of students anxiously waiting to get in. The administrator there suggested the children might, in the meantime, enroll in an (unaffiliated) online classical school until seats became available in the classical academy classrooms.

The online program turned out to be drastically different than the classroom versions. It had an abbreviated schedule, just three hours a day / four days a week, versus the standard 8:00 am to 3:00 pm / 5 days-per-week classroom-based programs. When I alerted the founders of Cornerstone about my family’s predicament, they frantically exclaimed, “Oh no! Online school is the antithesis of classical education!”

Wanting to better appreciate the difference, I took the opportunity to observe my young family members attending some of their online school sessions. The differences were glaringly apparent.  

Aside from the obvious differences one would expect from a Zoom-style session versus an in-classroom setting, I found it exceedingly difficult to read the materials presented by the teacher on my young family member’s Tablet PC. I could only imagine how difficult it must be for a teacher to observe the nuanced facial expressions of 30 young students, displayed in tiny windows, when they aren’t quite grasping the concepts being taught. It was clearly incumbent upon the confused students to electronically “raise their hand” to request assistance.   

Occasionally, the teacher would ask the students to enter their answers to a question in the online chat box. If anyone answered incorrectly, the teacher would immediately stop class to personally tutor those individuals. Meanwhile, the students who entered the correct answers got bored and wandered offscreen. Unfortunately, the teacher then had no way to re-corral the now missing students. 

The lack of professionalism displayed by the online teachers was startling. One returned from a 40-minute recess break eating a bowl of cereal and petting the family cat. I’ve certainly never seen a teacher in a classroom do that. Another teacher responded to some students’ seemingly unrelated questions by telling them there was no time to discuss lessons from a prior week. It was not clear to me how such students would ever get help from the teacher ex post facto.

Engagement is key to success. Regardless of the school’s format, students should leave class feeling prepared and eager to learn more. The online teachers I observed failed to foster or accommodate the kind of interaction needed by students who were struggling, frustrated, or bored.  Perhaps a parent or guardian should be involved during online sessions, as with traditional homeschooling, to keep younger students engaged.

While my observations may not be representative of all online school experiences, my overall impression underscored the sentiments of the Cornerstone founders: Online school is the antithesis of classical education — a time-honored approach that expands the mind, cultivates excellence, and teaches young people to think for themselves.

Based on this experience, I firmly believe the most effective way to educate and prepare younger students to become our next generation of leaders is in a classical classroom environment, with teacher and student both in-person, even if “school” is at home.