Classical education in the presence of God at Coram Deo Academy includes academics or the liberal arts, athletics and the fine arts as a proportionately integrated whole. The liberal arts lead in priority supported by and integrated with athletics and the arts. The liberal arts give the Academy its reason to exist because no other Christian school in the region provides the same kind of superlative academic preparation with a genuine academy – family collaboration. However, absent the fine arts and athletics the student's preparation lacks the appropriate symmetry, soul and physicality. That is why we exhort every student into physical conditioning, at least one sport and one or more of the visual, musical or oral arts. Achieving appropriate proportionality in academic, athletic and artistic pursuits will prepare the whole student for a whole life rather than part of the student for part of life.

 

Replete with reliable ethics and the time-tested tools of learning, a Christian liberal arts education will provide the best defense against unemployment for the next generation of Americans. Twenty-first century workers will require the intellectual agility to change careers five times and the ethical strength to define their relativistic work environments. They will need to think, decide and act under pressure and find solutions to the rapidly changing array of socio-economic, scientific-technological and political challenges that open before them while advancing the Lordship of Jesus Christ in every arena of life. The fully scoped and sequenced thirteen-year Coram Deo classical – Christian curriculum prepares students to succeed in this environment by teaching them to think for themselves and then to act wisely. They gain tools to learn for a lifetime so they can make a lifetime of difference in their own families, vocations and communities. Those who invest this education in their children will secure its blessings for them and leave transforming power to the mid-twenty first century and beyond. 

Today, while delving into a Means and Ends of Education graduate course by reading Plato's Republic Book VII, the Cave Dialogue, I finally discovered the greatness of the Questia on-line library service provided to all families and staff of CDA. Mrs. Jessica Seekamp has led the Coram Deo effort to provide web-based library services to the 540 enrolled metro-wide families and the faculty with great success. To date, she has provided us with a writing filter to assure academic honesty, and Encyclopedia Britannica, Questia and Proquest. Since I just authorized the expenditure, I know that soon high school students will have on-line Advanced Placement Course helps at no extra charge. Additionally, next year Trigonometry and Calculus will use the next generation of textbooks on-line to test our plans for providing all of high school mathematics both in the classroom and on-line. Just click on the Library Services tab on line to take full advantage of these new benefits. Back to Plato…

This current admission season marks 10 years that Coram Deo Academy has promoted our unique classical education in a historic Christian worldview. In 1999, we opened our doors at Christ Presbyterian Church in Flower Mound to 57 students in grades six through 10. Today, CDA serves 911 students in grades pre-K to 12 from 600 families who attend 200 different churches and live in scores of different DFW municipalities. At all three Academy locations surging interest in admission will require facility expansion by 2009.

When Lorraine ran from our sixth grade classroom crying into the arms of her mother, I knew something dreadful had happened. It was 1967 and Lorraine’s Dad was at war an ocean away. Upon arrival at home, mother described how Platoon Captain Martz had died saving a draftee caught in enemy fire behind the lines. He raced his jeep straight into withering fire scooped up his fallen subordinate took shrapnel and died shortly after delivering the eighteen year old soldier to safety amongst his comrades in arms. 

This week the College of Humanities and Sciences of Harrison Middleton University admitted me to their Doctor of Education program. 60 credits from now (240 credits earned over the years) someone might greet me as they did Livingstone, the missionary to Africa, “Dr. Marshall, I presume.” I suppose if we bump into each other in the jungle, this would be appropriate, but Rodney is still fine with me. Besides, I am just beginning. To my delight, this Great Books based education will include readings from and about Moses, Plato, Aristotle, the Gospels and Epistles of the New Testament, Cicero and Quintilian, St. Augustine, Boethius, St. Patrick, Jerome, St. Aquinas, Groote and the Brothers of the Common Life, Bonaventure, Alfred the Great, Luther, Calvin, Kuyper, Dabney, Rushdoony, Pope John Paul and more. Really, this simply organizes intellectual pursuit and places me under fine tutors and mentors in order to bring back benefits to the future of Coram Deo Academy, its faculty, staff, parents, and students. Much thanks to God for the opportunity.