Colin Redemer

Aristocratic Education and the American Tradition – Leader’s Day Panel

At this panel, key signers of the AGOGE statement engage with Matthew Freeman’s provocative essay, Toward a Classical Counter-Elite, exploring its implications for the classical education movement in America. Freeman’s call for an education that forms a new aristocracy—rooted in Greek and Roman vision of virtue—raises questions about the role of classical education in shaping a nation’s future.

Is this vision compatible with the American tradition? How can classical educators balance the ideals of hierarchy and civic virtue with America’s historical commitments to democratic self-government? Can classical schools serve as the training grounds for a counter-elite capable of restoring cultural and political order?

This panel will discuss these themes, addressing both the challenges and opportunities of integrating Freeman’s ideas into classical education today. Panelists will offer insights on how classical institutions can foster a generation of leaders prepared to navigate and reshape the modern world without compromising the core of the American experiment.

Colin Redemer (Ph.D., University of Aberdeen) is Director of Education at American Reformer, Managing Director at Beck & Stone, and a professor at St. Mary’s College of California. He also serves as a Fellow of the Henning Institute and a board member at the Classical Learning Test. Formerly he was Executive Director of the Davenant Institute and co-founder of Davenant Hall. His writing has appeared in Ad Fontes Journal, American Mind, First Things, Mere Orthodoxy, and The Lamp, among others; most recently his book returning the Protestant philosopher poet Thomas Traherne to his rightful place among virtue ethicists, Made Like the Maker.