HIGH SCHOOL ENGLISH COURSES

Rhetoric

This course instructs students on how to write well-crafted essays and speeches in the following disciplines: descriptive, expository and persuasive. Students will learn about the three modes of persuasion - Ethos, Pathos, and Logos.  They will learn about the five canons of rhetoric - invention, organization, style, memory, and delivery. Students will also learn about the three kinds of rhetoric - deliberative, epideictic, and judicial. 

Formal Logic

This course is a deep dive into Traditional Logic. Topic discussions include the following elements: simple apprehension, judgment, deductive inference, terminological and quantitative rules for categorical syllogisms, figure and mood in syllogisms, arguments in ordinary language, hypothetical syllogisms, complex syllogisms, and the logic of relations.

Ancient Literature

Students study several full texts from the ancients including The Iliad, The Odyssey, Oedipus Rex, Antigone, Sophocles, The Aeneid, and Julius Caesar.

British Literature

Students study several British authors including the following full texts: Beowulf, Canterbury Tales, Macbeth, Tale of Two Cities, Paradise Lost, Pride and Prejudice, as well as Elements of Style.

Moral Philosophy I

This course introduces students to major themes in moral and political thought through a study of literature.  Its emphasis on dystopian literature allows students to consider the greatest problems and dangers confronting the modern world.  Students will study the ways in which various modern developments - including the rise of ideology and Utopianism, the unleashing of scientific and technological progress, and the spread of moral relativism - could contribute to tyranny, totalitarianism, and the degradation of the human soul.  Students should leave the course with a deep appreciation of the importance of both philosophy and politics.  They should see why we, as a society, must believe in the truth of morals and a deep relationship with our Heavenly Father by exploring the following texts: Darkness at Noon, 1984, Brave New World, Gulliver's Travels, and C.S. Lewis's The Abolition of Man.

American Literature

Students study several American authors including Nathaniel Hawthorne, Ernest Hemingway, Herman Melville, Walt Whitman, Emily Dickinson, Robert Frost, T. S. Elliot, Mark Twain, and Henry Wadsworth Longfellow.

Moral Philosophy II

The works selected for this course raise some of the most fundamental philosophical questions that high school students can engage with thoughtfully.  The study of these works is both intrinsically worthwhile and contributes to the moral and civic education of young citizens.  The works include Aristotle, Machiavelli, Locke, Hobbes, and Rousseau.

Modern Literature

In this course students will dive into such rich texts as Crime and Punishment, Hamlet, Heart of Darkness, and The Metamorphosis.

Capstone English

In this course students will prepare their Senior Exit Project. This is a yearlong intensive project made up of five elements which include thorough research into the students career of choice.