In Rhetoric School students learn how to express what they know in winsome and persuasive ways. Each day begins at 8:00 a.m. and ends just before 3:00 p.m. 

Veritas Academy and classical Christian education changes its approach to students during the Rhetoric years because students grow and change during these years. In Grammar School students love singing songs, chanting chants and learning by memory. In Logic School students love to argue. While students continue to learn facts and argue in Rhetoric School, they start to desire to present themselves well and to demonstrate that they are no longer children, but young adults. So, at Veritas Academy we teach them to present themselves well in person, in speech and in written work.

The focus of these years is on the study of rhetoric. Students take a year of formal rhetoric in which they sharpen their ability to speak and write. They also study Christian apologetics and learn to defend the Christian faith. They produce two thesis papers—one during their junior year and the other during their senior year. This Senior Thesis is the culmination of a student’s work at Veritas Academy. Students produce a 35-page paper for this class and have to defend this paper before an assembled gathering of faculty members and experts from across the country.  The following are this year's examples:

    2009-2010 Senior Theses

       

        Grace Jackson: The Creative Process

        Marianna Bewersdorff: The Gifts of the Holy Spirit

        Christina Bewersdorff: Christian Pacifism

        Ellie Hoover: Japan and Christianity

        Annie Hoover: Christianity and the Civil Rights Movement

        Jacob Martin: The Individual Will and God's Providence

These students polish their rhetoric. The art of rhetoric is simply learning to present yourself and your argument well.

Here is some of what students learn in Rhetoric School at Veritas Academy:

Students at Veritas Academy continue their Omnibus course that was started in Dialectic School. Omnibus is a Latin term meaning “everything.” This unique approach encourages students to think through the great issues that have faced Western civilization. In Rhetoric School, students dig into the depths of glory, as Pericles gives his funeral oration during Thucydides’ Peloponnesian War. Reading The Divine Comedy, they trek along with Dante, Virgil and Beatrice from hell to heaven as they consider justice, mercy and “the Love that moves the sun and other stars.” They grapple with villains like Ahab, Marx and Nietzsche. They applaud heroes like Augustine, Calvin and Aeneas.    

Students also complete studies in chemistry and physics during the Rhetoric years.

In language studies, students are required to complete two more years of language studies. Students can complete this work by learning modern foreign language or continued study in classical language. 

In math, students are required to complete a year of trigonometry. Most students continue on through at least Calculus I. More than half of our graduates have completed Calculus II by the time they leave Veritas Academy.

Students also start taking more electives during these years. This might mean a drama elective or an elective in genetics or the rhetoric of film. 

All of these classes challenge the students to express their thinking clearly—whether they are writing a thesis and defending it before a panel of faculty members experts.