Saint Constantine School

Houston was in the midst of an early November heat wave when I visited the Saint Constantine School. My day began with the two hundred or more lower-school children. Gathered outside in the warm sunshine, they recited the Pledge of Allegiance, listened as school president John Mark Reynolds reflected on what it means to be made in the image of God, and recited the morning office in accord with the liturgy of the Antiochian Orthodox tradition.

The lower grades of the Saint Constantine School operate on a 3/2 schedule. Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays focus on academic subjects. Tuesdays and ­Thursdays are dedicated to sports, crafts, and other hands-on activities. My visit was on a Tuesday, and after morning prayer, the kids happily dashed off. Some gathered in the garden to dig in the dirt. A class of fourth-grade girls took up their crochet hooks as they sang “Angels We Have Heard on High,” breaking into four-part harmony for the second stanza.

Reynolds describes the school’s approach as “in harmony with the Eastern Orthodox Church,” making for an educational philosophy that is broadly Christian and unapologetically classical. Great Books anchor the curriculum for the middle and upper schools. The educational structure of the trivium and quadrivium informs the instruction. Biblical knowledge and theological study are emphasized.

The school does not lead with culture-war issues. The stated goal of the school is student formation in the Christian tradition combined with academic excellence, knowledge of Western culture, and love of beauty. But these days, a forthright affirmation of the differences between boys and girls requires an institution to take a stand, which the school is not afraid to do. At the high school level, boys and girls go on separate quarterly retreats. Boys discuss the virtue of manliness; girls ponder what it means to be a woman.

In recent years, there has been a great upsurge in Christian classical schools. But the Saint Constantine School, established in 2015, stands out. Atop the pre-K through twelfth-grade program sits a four-year college that offers intimate seminars and weekly one-on-one tutorials, culminating in a BA in English or Orthodox Studies.

Although still in its early stages of growth (twenty students are currently enrolled), the four-year BA is not an add-on. Saint Constantine’s founding faculty members are former university-level teachers and administrators. From the outset, the ambition of the school has been to build an integrated intellectual culture that emphasizes the vocation of teaching. Everyone teaches. And everyone who teaches does so for the whole school, not at this-or-that grade level. The upper-school biology teacher, who has a PhD, offers seminars at the college level. At times, Reynolds (PhD in philosophy and longtime denizen of academia) teaches middle-school students.

As someone who spent twenty years teaching undergraduates, I found this commitment to teaching at all levels refreshing. Today, universities are filled with faculty who imagine that their research is more important than classroom instruction. The greatest ambition of the typical university professor is to attain a perch that allows him to avoid teaching altogether. This mentality misjudges the vocation of the intellectual. Yes, there are contributions to be made in publication. But more often than not, a person with an advanced degree makes lasting contributions to the life of the mind when he sparks in young people a love of his subject matter. I’ll never write anything of lasting significance about a great figure such as St. Augustine. But I can introduce students to his genius, and in that way contribute to and sustain the Great Conversation, which is the life-blood of a living culture.

The financial model—educational excellence with modest fees—marks another remarkable feature of the Saint Constantine School. The college charges an astonishing $10,500 annual tuition. Fees for lower, middle, and upper schools are in the same range. It’s amazing what can be done at a reasonable cost when one forgoes the country-club amenities of today’s universities—and requires faculty to administer and administrators to teach.

We know that our mainstream system is broken. The educational culture at most universities is toxic. The great works have been abandoned. Fees are ­ridiculously high and students graduate with burdensome debt. Fortunately, there are alternative institutions, many of which advertise in our pages.

We need more institutions to replace those that have betrayed our educational traditions. This is why I left the Saint Constantine School cheered. It provides a model for growing the Christian classical counterculture, not just for pre-K through twelfth grade, but for undergraduates as well. Indeed, John Mark Reynolds is scheming as I write. A branch campus will open in Pittsburgh in 2024. Launch committees have been formed in Denver and Dallas. May they meet with every success!