AND NOW FOR SOME GOOD EDUCATION NEWS: Classical ed — seen as ‘a white child’s education’ — is thriving in the Bronx.

Are the liberal arts conservative?, asks Emma Green in a New Yorker story about the revival of “classical education.” A growing number of classical-ed charter and private schools are offering “a traditional liberal-arts education, often focusing on the Western canon and the study of citizenship.”

Unlike many traditional public schools, “classical schools prize memory work, asking students to internalize math formulas and recite poems,” she writes.

Reading lists aren’t trendy. “One New York City public-high-school reading list includes graphic novels, Michelle Obama’s memoir, and a coming-of-age book about identity featuring characters named Aristotle and Dante,” writes Green. “In classical schools, high-school students read Aristotle and Dante.”

At Brilla, a charter-school network in the South Bronx, the middle school is calm and phone free, she writes.

“Classical education is often seen as a white child’s education,” says Stephanie Saroki de Garcia, who co-founded Brilla using the slogan: “This is what the elite get.”

Yet Brilla, located in the poorest neighborhood of the Bronx, is filled with English Learners from Central America and West Africa, writes Green. Nearly 90 percent of students come from lower-income black and Hispanic families.

Brilla students attend a daily character class, “where they talk about how to live out the different virtues reflected in the texts they read,” she writes. Most classical schools emphasize ethics, not just academics.

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