Transcript of a talk by Mr. William C. Michael, Headmaster of the Classical Liberal Arts Academy, recorded October 10, 2026.
Today is October 10th, 2026, and I’m William Michael, the headmaster of the Classical Liberal Arts Academy.
In this generation, we face challenges that are not new, but are greater than they were in past generations. When I was a kid, we were sent to school. The schools were poor then, just as they are today. I would say they’re worse today, but they were also poor when I went to school. And it was very clear that everything, academically, was concerned with grades and scores and results, and students who could figure out how to cheat and beat the system were rewarded for it.
We could make moral arguments and say that cheaters never win, and all sorts of nice sayings like that. But those of us who were in the systems knew that cheaters always win. In fact, the system almost seems designed for cheaters. And I would argue that, while that wasn’t done intentionally, the whole idea of compulsory education makes any kind of standards or serious assessment impossible. It’s just not possible.
When we go back into history, there were no compulsory education laws. Education was optional. It wasn’t considered necessary. Reading wasn’t considered necessary. Most people lived and worked around their family home. They worked in fields, they worked in shops; women and girls usually worked around the house doing domestic duties. Life was simple and the village was self-sufficient.
But as society developed — as the Industrial Revolution came, as transportation and communication rapidly changed in the 19th and 20th centuries — all of a sudden there was much more international and intra-national business, communication, activity and so on, which allowed people to move out from the village and go elsewhere. My grandparents, for example, were farmers in West Virginia who in the 1930s or ’40s moved from West Virginia up to central New Jersey, and they worked in warehouses and factories doing mechanical work and so on. So they represent this industrializing shift from the local farms, the local villages, to modern industrialized cities.
And through that same time period — really starting in the 1850s and developing through the early 1900s — the whole idea of public education and compulsory education developed. That was all a new idea, a political strategy, an invention. And we had no idea whether it would actually work. And time has shown us that it has not worked. The idea of making education — making schooling, I should say, because this isn’t really about education, it’s about schooling — making schooling mandatory for all people had some fatal flaws built into it.
Before industrialization, as I said, few people went to schools. And so for a teacher to supervise students wasn’t very difficult. First of all, the people who sent children to schools were normally wealthy people who provided for the needs of those who taught — tutors and so on, some small schools. But the teachers were able to supervise the work of their students. They knew their students personally, they knew their families, and they were able to assess their studies personally and directly. And they did so primarily through face-to-face oral examinations. They simply asked the students questions, asked the students to do things, and watched the student demonstrate, or fail to demonstrate, his knowledge and skill. It was very simple; it was impossible to cheat. And this was done for centuries upon centuries.
But compulsory education put 25 or 30 students in a classroom with one teacher. And that teacher had to manage to not only lead students through content, but also assess that content. Students came and went between different schools, and so things needed to be standardized. But there was no way to conduct assessment in any kind of personal manner, and certainly not in any oral manner. And so schools began turning to written work: written assignments, written essays, written quizzes, written tests and exams. And then, when I was in school, we were introduced to Scantrons and automatically scored answer keys for exams.
And so, because of the size of the schools, the size of the classes, teachers had to rely on assessment methods that made cheating easy, and students learned how to cheat. We learned what we could do and what we couldn’t do. We learned how to cheat on written quizzes. We learned how to make cheat sheets. We learned all different kinds of methods. We learned which teachers paid attention, which teachers didn’t pay attention. We learned how to help one another. We knew how to share information between classes with our friends. We learned to cheat the system, and the system really made no effort to prevent us from cheating.
Now, we might try to avoid cheating because we were afraid of getting caught. But the fear of getting a bad grade often outweighed the fear of getting caught — especially if getting a bad grade could cost you a spot on the football team, or would get you in trouble at home and possibly have your parents decide to not allow you to participate in activities you were hoping to participate in. So the fear of getting low grades was greater than the fear of getting caught cheating. And so we were tempted to cheat, and we cheated. And that was in the 1990s, as I said.
But today, cheating is very different. And all of the problems that were present in seed form back then have now grown into just massive vines that are impossible to get around. If you’re a teacher or a parent, you know how discouraging it is to try and give your children an honest education, knowing that — it’s almost as if modern technology is being designed to undermine that. It’s very frustrating to give students quizzes and assignments and watch them make use of tools that are being developed fully aware of the potential misuse of those tools, and being handed to children, being made easily accessible to children.
So parents are faced with this dilemma, as are schools. Should we just lock everything down? Should we not let children use the internet? Should we not let children use electronic devices? Should we banish technology from the campus? Should we go back to — and this is sort of the funny irony of this — should we go back to written exams, blue book exams? Should we not even bother assigning homework, because the kids are just going to cheat on it? How should schools actually run? And we see all kinds of theories and ideas about what schools can do.
Why I said going back to the blue book was ironic is because the written assessments are the source of the problem. And so all you’re doing is moving from a worse situation today to a bad situation that existed yesterday. You’re not solving the problem. You’re not removing the occasion of sin, or the temptation, as it were. You’re not fixing the actual cause of the trouble. You’re just changing the form. You’re just making a lazy, superficial change to pretend that you’re concerned about academic honesty, when we all know that academic honesty was already compromised before smartphones were invented, before ChatGPT came around, and so on. So we’re not dealing with the real problem. We’re just pretending to deal with the problem — just doing enough to get a good reputation and look like we care about academic honesty.
Well, I, as a teacher directing the Classical Liberal Arts Academy and also managing the education of my own children, I am really at the end of my rope with all of this artificial intelligence, cheating, and so on. I don’t want to — I don’t blame the children, because the situation that they’re presented with, the conditions that they’ve been placed in, I think, are too much to ask of them. I think it’s too much to ask them not to cheat. It almost makes no sense. The situation, if you put yourself into their shoes, is just so ridiculous.
On one side, you have the whole modern educational world telling them that the whole benefit of education and modern society and science and math is to further technology. And then the same school that is preaching to them this gospel of technology is yelling at them not to use any of that technology because it’s bad for them. So it’s just — it’s all ridiculous. And the kids just roll their eyes at it and don’t even pay attention anymore. And they know that while the parents have this obligation to say the right things, and teachers have this obligation to fuss about things and complain and pretend to be upset, nobody actually cares.
And so the kids just nod, or they promise not to do it, or they say they’re not going to use it anymore. But then, as soon as there’s a high-stakes exam or test or quiz, and they see that getting a low grade — the way the schools are designed, the way their parents make rules, and so on — getting a low grade is more dangerous than taking a risk of getting caught, they’re going to cheat. And that’s just a fact. And anyone who pretends that that’s not true is just naive, or pretending to have this honor code with respect to studies. That’s just not prudent.
Now, as a father still with kids at home studying — as I said, I’m at the end of my rope with this attempt to try and continue to play the game that we’re going to use written assessments and we’re going to use online assessments to hold our children accountable for necessary studies. I’m not even taking that seriously anymore. When I see my kids — when I walk into the room and they’re studying — I’ll always see little signs of them up to something naughty. I’ll see them switch screens or change their posture, and I just say to them, “Don’t bother pretending that you’re not doing this or that. I know you’re doing it. Everyone is doing it. I’m just telling you that in the long run, cheating on your studies is only going to cheat yourself.” And I know that this is the normal blah, blah, blah message from the adults, but it’s true. Cheating on your studies is only going to cheat yourself in the long run. “And I advise you to study honestly, and to not worry about your grades as much as what you’re learning.”
I check the box, I do my part as the adult, but I know that I’m not doing my part as the adult. I’ve got to solve this problem. And moving from one bad situation to another bad situation can’t be accepted. It’s not realistic. It’s not serious.
So today I announced in the Classical Liberal Arts Academy that I’m going to be making a very significant change in how the Academy operates. I’ve been wrestling with this really for years, but very intensely I’ve been wrestling with this for weeks — laying in bed at night, literally praying and begging God to help me see a solution to this problem, because it’s so important. If I can solve this problem, if I can find a solution for this problem — and I’m not talking about solving it for the whole world and all that, the usual moral nonsense people talk about; I’m talking about my own children and students in the Classical Liberal Arts Academy — I’ve been praying and begging God to help me.
I’ve been thinking through all different scenarios, things I could do. I’ve tried all different methods and gimmicks and different tools and plug-ins and things that I could try to collect time, and use AI testing tools and all this, and just none of it works. None of it works. And as I’ve thought about it, my mind always comes back to oral examinations. And I’ve been thinking about this for a long time, but I’ve always said to myself that there’s just no practical way to do that. There’s just no practical way to give oral examinations to students in the Classical Liberal Arts Academy, along with my own children. There’s no way for me to do that practically, because it’s just so time-consuming, and I don’t know how I can possibly manage something like that.
And then last night — Friday night — I was up at two o’clock in the morning just racking my brain over this problem, and the solution just started to come to me. And I locked on to a certain train of thought I was having, and it was leading me to ask some interesting questions, and I started to see progress being made. I started to see some of the problems being solved. The more I followed that path, or went down that path, the more I saw start to come together, until by maybe quarter after three in the morning, the full solution was written out and ready to put to use.
So last night I developed a plan for oral examinations in the Classical Liberal Arts Academy. I organized a plan to restore old-fashioned oral examinations using all of the tools available because of modern technology. So rather than bad-mouth modern technology, rather than suggest that modern technology is the problem or the cause of the problem — it’s not. Compulsory education is the cause of the problem. I chose to think creatively about how available technology could be used for these examinations, and I came up with a very clear plan how to do so.
And I put together an article last night, and I used artificial intelligence tools to help me, because there’s so much work that has to be done to organize this. And I started to dictate the solution and ask Claude to help me to draft it out, to frame it all out, and put together a practical plan for how to implement what I was thinking of. And as I said, by three o’clock in the morning or so, I had a plan worked out. And I published that page last night. It’s on the Academy website. If you look under the Curriculum link at the top menu, you’ll see a link to Course Examinations. And if you click on that link, it’ll open a page which explains the plan for examinations — oral examinations in the Classical Liberal Arts Academy — and how I’m going to conduct this.
My concern, to be honest, was that there just wouldn’t be enough time to prepare examinations, administer those examinations, and provide valuable evaluations and feedback to students, whether they passed or didn’t pass — because assessment is only valuable if there’s feedback. And so I was concerned about how the process would actually work. I didn’t want to have to make a decision on the spot when I was examining a student. And I didn’t necessarily want to make that decision all on my own, even though I’ll be the one taking the student for the examination. I wanted to be able to invite others to participate and help me — to share their opinions, to share their insights — in these examinations. And finding a way to build that system, that’s what I saw as being the solution that was necessary.
So I worked out the solution last night. It just came together, and I went to bed and woke up, and I couldn’t wait to get to work, because I had the vision clear in mind and I wanted to put it into practice. I announced it to Academy families this afternoon — what will be happening. And I’d like to explain what I’m going to be doing in the Academy in more practical terms than I explained in the simple announcement that I published. And I hope that Academy families listen to this, because it will help them to prepare for exams, and I think it will radically improve their ability to educate their children, whether those children are being taught at home as homeschool students or whether they’re in schools.
And again, I’m also promoting a model of education that’s called Parent-Directed Private Education, which I also recommend reading about on the Academy website. So what I’m recommending with respect to that Parent-Directed Private Education is a balance between homeschooling and private schooling. I don’t think, as I said — I don’t think K–12 schooling is a solution for education. The whole idea, the whole financial model, everything about it is the cause of the modern crisis. Making large groups of students accountable to a teacher who’s responsible for assessment, relying on written assessments, quizzes, and so on, creates the whole environment that makes all of this academic dishonesty not only possible, but preferable for students, because it’s rewarded.
But reacting by running in the opposite direction, and homeschooling, and having a do-it-yourself approach to education is also not productive. And that may surprise you to hear me say that, but I’m convinced — with 18 years working with homeschool families, looking at what is accomplished in the name of homeschooling — I think we have to be honest and say that it does not allow Catholic children to advance in classical Catholic studies sufficiently to put them in a position, at age 18, where they’re well prepared for the decisions that they need to make.
Yes, we can give our kids high school diplomas. Yes, our kids can get admitted into colleges. Yes, our kids can get jobs. No one’s denying that, but that is not the standard of Catholic education. And that do-it-yourself attitude in homeschooling — I talked about this in a recent talk on why homeschool programs are not sustainable — it’s just not realistic. It’s not honest. We’re not honestly addressing historic or philosophical standards in education that we should be aimed at.
And if we have our sights set on the right goals in education, any program or plan that doesn’t serve them should be considered to be not an option for us. And we’re not doing that. We’re considering options that cannot bring us to satisfy the goals that we should be aiming for. We’re just accepting failure, because in our generation, educational failure is normal. And so we’re content to fail, because failing is normal. And my argument is that we have to stop doing this. We have to stop making excuses for failure in education because everyone is failing. We can’t settle for what’s normal.
If normal was good, we could just send our kids to school and let them get the normal. We don’t believe that normal is good, which is why we choose to homeschool. And then the results that we produce are normal, and we act as if we have succeeded. It doesn’t make any sense. The only plan that we can accept is a plan that actually serves our goals. And do-it-yourself homeschooling does not serve the goals of real Catholic education. We’re not imitating saints. We’re not studying what saints studied. We’re not raising religious vocations. We’re not exposing our children to religious vocations. We’re not achieving the levels of study that are needed by our children as they enter young adulthood, when they have the biggest decisions of their lives to make. We’re not educating them sufficiently for those decisions. That is the failure. And it doesn’t matter if it’s normal.
So the first thing that we’ve got to do is we’ve got to recalibrate our standards. We’ve got to raise the ladder, as it were, so that it actually gets us to the window that we need to get into. We’re not doing that. We’ve got to get to the 20th floor, and our ladder is set to put us into a ninth-floor window. And we’ve got to stop. We’ve got to pull that ladder down, and we’ve got to build a ladder that can get us up to the 20th floor. So that’s the challenge.
We’ve got to pursue classical liberal arts education. That’s the education of the saints. Anyone who says otherwise is just denying Catholic history, just denying reality. We’ve got to restore the classical liberal arts. We’ve got to introduce our children to classical philosophy. We’ve got to introduce our children to Scholastic theology. And we’ve also got to satisfy modern school standards, because that’s the culture we live in. We’ve got to do all of these things. And if we don’t have a plan that allows us to do that, we just don’t have a plan.
So in the Classical Liberal Arts Academy, what I’ve done is I’ve built that ladder. I have in the Academy the program that gets us to the 20th floor. The problem is that no one gets there. And there are many reasons why. I can say honestly that in eighteen years I’ve had one student who I would say has fulfilled the vision for classical Catholic education. And in God’s providence, I just had the opportunity to have a lengthy Zoom call with him the other night. He’s a priest now. But we were talking about studies and culture and how things are going, and talking to him, I just realized how different students were. Because even though he was an extraordinary individual, I could look back and say, you know what, there were actually a number of students who were very good in studies, who accomplished a lot — not as much as he did, they weren’t as good as he was, but they accomplished a lot.
And when I look at students today — kids who are 10, 11, 12, 13 years old today — the standards are much lower. The standards are much lower. The technology, the social media, the distractions — not just in the kids’ lives, but in their parents’ lives. I don’t think parents acknowledge how distracted parents are, and how that negatively affects the children. When I worked with homeschool parents fifteen years ago — homeschooling parents then, let’s say around 2010 — they were much sharper, much better organized, much more engaged with studies than parents are today. I don’t think parents recognize how distracted they are by the stuff that they complain about in their children’s lives. I think they’re insensitive to their own distraction.
And I have a very difficult time, because the parents just don’t engage. For example, I offered to have free weekly parent meetings every Wednesday night. I said, “I will be available. My wife will join me. And we’ll be online in a Zoom meeting room at nine o’clock, and we’ll stay on as long as discussion continues. So just bring any questions you have, any concerns, any problems. Bring them to this free support meeting on Wednesday nights, and you can get answers and assistance straight from the founder and director of the program.” That’s a valuable service. It doesn’t cost anyone anything. So people who are working to homeschool their kids, who have interests in classical education — free consultation available every week — and no one shows up. Three people. Those who show up don’t even ask any questions; they’re just listening.
And it just wasn’t like that fifteen years ago. Fifteen years ago, we didn’t have Zoom meetings, but we had forums, and the forums were buzzing constantly — parents asking questions, sharing things, asking for help about things, talking with one another. There was so much active engagement among parents. Parents themselves were so sharp. And today the parents just don’t show up. And they could be around for five years and they’re still trying to get started. And you just see that there’s no traction in their work and education. They’re just always spinning their tires, always starting over. And I think it’s because they’re just so distracted. There’s so much stuff. They’ve got no principles. They’re just shopping, like everyone else shops — no principles, no clear goals, no ability to evaluate things, to make choices based on principles and so on. And they’re just lost in this ocean of educational stuff, of social and informational stuff. And I can feel it. I can feel how different the conversations are to my own personal life.
And it affects the kids. So the kids can never make progress, and we’re just never making progress. And I try to circumvent the parents and say, look, I don’t want the parents’ faults to punish the kids. So I want to build a system that allows the kids to work even if the parents can’t help them. I want the kids to still be able to get things done. And yet, with unsupervised internet access — they’re not supervised — unsupervised internet access, access to social media, access to these AI tools, kids just cheat all day long. They submit assignments that are copied and pasted off AI platforms like ChatGPT, and they’re not even trying to hide it. It’s blatant and obvious. And the whole situation is bad.
Now, the solution is easy, as I said. All we need to do is have oral examinations, and all of that goes away. The challenge is the practical working out of the details of how those examinations can be conducted. And that’s what I’ve shrunk back from, but I have figured out how to manage.
So what I’m going to do is reverse-engineer the program. And I think this is much more just and much more motivating. And I think it will be helpful to the parents, because it makes all of this study concrete. It puts it all in perspective and gives it a focus. In order to get any credit for formal studies completed in the Academy, a student is going to have to pass an oral examination.
So let’s say a student is studying World History. If he wants to put World History from the Classical Liberal Arts Academy on his transcript, he’s going to need to pass an oral examination in World History. I’m going to provide him with a study guide that explains what’s going to be covered — the topics and content on the exam, what’s going to be covered. He’s going to be able to look at his study guide. His parents can look at his study guide. And Academy courses will serve that study guide. So if a student uses our World History courses, completes the studies, does the readings, follows the instructions on how to study, completes the quizzes and so on, he’ll be pretty well prepared for an oral examination, and he should do well if he works honestly and completes those activities.
So the study guide explains what the content of the exam will consist of. The student has as much time as he wants to prepare for the examination. But when he comes to the point when he wants to put that course — or that subject — on his transcript and claim the credit for it, he needs to pass an oral examination. So he’ll meet with me in a Zoom meeting. We’ll schedule an hour for the meeting. And I will follow a script that I prepare for that course examination, and I will go through it with him.
And here’s one of the keys: I will go through that examination with him in that hour of time that we have, and we will finish the examination, and there will be no judgment at that time. That examination session, which will be in a Zoom meeting, will be recorded. After the meeting, that Zoom meeting will be reviewed and shared with others to review. And we will then make a decision whether the student passes or does not pass the examination, and gets the credit or does not get the credit for that course.
If the student passes, then he will get the credit. If he does not pass, he’ll have the opportunity to review and test again. So it won’t be high-stakes. The punishment for not being prepared will be inconvenience. It won’t be some catastrophic result — that’s what I think motivates cheating, one of the things. But it will be oral, and it will be conversational, and it will be personal. And it will be easy to manage.
And then the evaluation will take place, and the student will be provided with a decision on his exam, and feedback. So if he doesn’t pass — which I don’t expect to be common, because I would discourage students from scheduling an examination until they were ready — but if he doesn’t pass, he’ll have to wait 30 days to retest or re-examine. And he’ll have feedback that identifies what he needs to work on before his reattempt at the examination. This will make the Classical Liberal Arts Academy an AI-proof school program.
Now, what’s good about this — there’s a number of things that are good about this, and this is what I got excited about, because I saw the details coming together. First of all, if a student studies independently — if he’s not even in the Classical Liberal Arts Academy — and masters a subject, he can still take an exam and obtain credit for a subject from the Classical Liberal Arts Academy by passing one of our exams. It doesn’t make any rules about how the students study. So when parents talk to me and say, “We wish the kids could work offline. We wish they could do assignments by hand. We wish they didn’t have to sit on the computer all day” — that’s all perfectly fine. It has nothing to do with the oral examination.
It makes things much more flexible. I think it makes schooling much more just, because anyone who studies can get credit. Anyone who has studied can get credit. You don’t have to sit through an expensive enrollment, or sit through an expensive course, to get the credit if you already know the content. So I think it’s more just. It’s better than having to go through whole courses to get credits for things you already know before you take the course. It’s more flexible in allowing students to study really however they decide to study, because preparing for the exam is the measure of the effectiveness of their studies. So it’s more just, it’s more flexible.
And I think it takes pressure off parents. It takes pressure off all of us, because these tools — these AI tools, the technology and stuff — it can help the kids, and it’s not going to help them pass an oral examination. They can use it to help them study. If there’s something that they’re studying or reading that they don’t understand, they can hop on ChatGPT or Google or any of the AI platforms, and they can ask for some explanations. They can ask for resources or examples. They can ask for help. And these tools can all be very helpful. When the time comes to take the examination, those tools will not be accessible. So they can be helpful in preparing, but they cannot be sources of cheating, because we’re not leaving kids to compose answers in private and then having to deal with the chaos of trying to guess who’s cheating and who’s not cheating — which I hate.
So the examinations are going to be an end result of studies. There’s going to be an objective end to studies. And I think the kids will appreciate that. They can look forward to it and say, “I’m going to sit for an examination, and I’m going to be able to show off what I’ve studied. And when I’m finished, I’m going to get credit for this subject on my transcript, and then I’m going to move on to the next study.” And I think that that will be motivating to good students. Bad students will hate it, obviously. But hopefully it will motivate them to become good students, to become honest students. And they’ll learn to appreciate their studies.
And it will allow kids to move more quickly through subjects, because when they’re ready for the exam, they can take it and move forward. Whereas now they tend to get into these courses and they just spin their tires forever, and they make no forward progress. And I see this so often. And the parents just don’t seem to keep the kids moving forward. And then what do they do? They start over again. They’re constantly backing up and starting over, and it just makes no sense. So I think the oral exams will be helpful.
Now, the policy is going to be that if a student is enrolled as an Academy student, his first exam in a subject is free. It’s included in his tuition. But if he needs to retest, then parents, if they choose to retest, are going to have to pay for a second examination. So there is a consequence to not passing. I can’t offer endless re-examinations for free. If you just do the math, it won’t be possible. So the first examination — which I’ll try to delay so the kids can prepare — first examination will be free, and hopefully the kids will pass it on their first attempt. But if they don’t, then they’ll be given an evaluation. They’ll be given feedback on why they didn’t pass, and they’ll be given a month to go back and review and try to prepare for re-examination. And hopefully, at the very worst, they’ll pass on their second attempt.
This is going to be available for all subject areas. Notice I’m saying subject areas and not courses. There are many courses in the Academy that combine under one subject area. For example, English in high school consists of grammar, literature, and composition. Those three courses together make a high school English program. So an exam for, let’s say, Freshman English will combine literature, composition, and grammar. So students will study those three courses to prepare for the exam, and then the exam, when passed, will allow us to put that course on their transcript, and students will get certificates when they pass an exam.
So this is the plan to make the Classical Liberal Arts Academy — to make classical Catholic education — AI-proof. We’re not anti-technology. We’re not anti–artificial intelligence. It’s very, very useful, and students should make use of it. They should do so critically, but they should make regular use of it. It’s an incredibly useful technology. But it’s not going to help them earn credits for their transcript. It’s not going to help them complete their studies, because they’re going to have to sit for an oral examination, and there’s just going to be no way around that. They’re going to be looking into the camera. They’re going to be asked questions that they can’t predict, they can’t prepare for. And if there’s any suspicion of cheating at all, the examination is just going to end, and they’re going to have to schedule a re-examination. So we’re going to AI-proof classical Catholic education.
And I’ve already developed the policy documents — all of the principles that I want to follow, all of the practices. I’ve gone through them, cleaned them up. I’m going to begin testing them on my own children, who I want to get through their high school studies — my last three who remain at home. I want to get them through their studies, so I’m going to be working on that. And as I work on that, I’m going to be opening it up to more students who are completing courses and requesting examination.
And this is going to build a certificate system for the Classical Liberal Arts Academy. And as we move forward in the AI age — when the accomplishments of students are called into question, doubted, when kids are all assumed to be cheating — the Classical Liberal Arts Academy is going to be one place where students can say, “I’m not cheating. I have to sit for oral examinations. I have to prove my studies, and I have done so. I have certificates that I earned by sitting for oral examinations.” And you know what? If a college wanted evidence of the student’s mastery of a subject, they could request a copy of the examination video and see the student demonstrating his knowledge of the subject.
So all of that is going to allow the Classical Liberal Arts Academy to give our students the opportunity to prove their academic honesty. It’s going to motivate academic honesty. It’s going to reward academic honesty. And it’s going to make a transcript or a diploma from the Classical Liberal Arts Academy incredible, and different from others. And that’s going to be the greatest benefit we can give our students: a meaningful credential at the end of their studies.
So I recommend you take a look at the article that I published this morning. If you go to classicalliberalarts.com/exams, it’ll take you to that page, and you can read the full statement of the policy. I’m working now to prepare the study guides and the actual exams that I will follow as I test the children. And then hopefully this year — the end of this year — we’ll start administering these oral examinations. Once my schedule starts to fill up, I’ll bring in some help to help with examinations. And we should be able to change the intellectual culture in the Classical Liberal Arts Academy, at least, by restoring the ancient and necessary practice of oral examinations in school.
So I hope that that’s a helpful explanation of the problem, what solution is needed, and how we’re going to solve that in the Classical Liberal Arts Academy. If you’ve got further questions, please get in touch and let me know. You can expect examinations to be available this upcoming summer, and they’ll be developing, moving into subsequent years. And it’s really going to change the intellectual culture in the Classical Liberal Arts Academy, because the cheaters — they’ll know that they’re not going to get away with that cheating. And the students who actually do their work, they’re going to be rewarded and recognized. And I’ll make sure they’re recognized, having passing results published and made known to the academic community.
I’m looking forward to examinations. My concerns — what was holding me back from moving forward with it — have been resolved. And I now have a very clear and practicable plan for how to go about assessing student work and making the Classical Liberal Arts Academy AI-proof. I hope that’s helpful. God bless.
Mr. William C. Michael, OP
Headmaster
Classical Liberal Arts Academy