Portsmouth Abbey School has chosen a different path. Study of classical languages, literature and history provides students an excellent opportunity to engage and measure themselves against fundamental truths, beliefs, and texts that have challenged every generation since the ancient world. The powerful endurance of classical literature and thought over the centuries is testimony to their perennial relevance and importance. Our curriculum is designed to foster greater fluency in the written language while creating a shared historical sense among students. To that end, all Third Form students study Christian Doctrine, English, Latin, Ancient History and Mathematics, and choose two electives from offerings in Art or Music, Science, and Modern Languages.
Students continue to take several required core courses in subsequent years.
This approach is grounded in the belief that the study of a classical language and the development of a solid historical sense give students the most effective foundation on which to build further learning, both at Portsmouth Abbey and beyond. It is no coincidence that this curriculum is being offered at a school founded and operated by monks of the English Benedictine Congregation. Valuing the word, both sacred and secular, is a means of valuing truth and is an elemental part of the Judeo-Christian tradition. It is also an explicit part of Benedictine tradition, where a love of the word has always been connected to a love of learning. In the Middle Ages, Benedictine monks saved vast stores of knowledge from destruction in their active preservation of manuscripts.