The Subversive Art of a Classical Education: Reclaiming the Mind in an Age of Speed, Screens, and Skill-Drills

by Michael S. Rose

Overview

The Subversive Art of a Classical Education is a bold call to reclaim traditional education as a radical act of cultural resistance, forming minds and souls for wisdom in an age of distraction and decline

In an age obsessed with screens, speed, and skills, The Subversive Art of a Classical Education delivers a bold, timely manifesto for reclaiming education as a deeply human pursuit. Veteran educator and bestselling author Michael S. Rose makes the compelling case that classical education is not just an academic alternative—but a revolutionary act of cultural defiance.

Drawing on over two decades of experience, Rose reveals how traditional practices—grammar, logic, rhetoric, memorization, handwriting, slow reading, and the liberal arts—foster attention, discernment, and wisdom in a distracted world. Each chapter explores how these time-honored disciplines develop intellectual and moral virtues now endangered by modern education’s utilitarian and technological focus.

The Subversive Art of a Classical Education calls on parents, teachers, and thinkers to reject the reduction of students into data points and rediscover the transformative power of real learning. This book is a rallying cry for those ready to resist the flattening forces of modernity and form souls capable of freedom, depth, and meaning.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781510786134
Publisher:	Skyhorse Publishing
Publication date:	01/27/2026
Sold by:	SIMON & SCHUSTER
Format:	eBook
Pages:	336

About the Author

Michael S. Rose, a veteran educator with twenty years of experience, currently serves as Headmaster at Cincinnati Classical Academy, a Hillsdale College K-12 Member School. He is the New York Times bestselling author of Goodbye, Good Men as well as a number of other books including The Art of Being Human, Benedict XVI, and Ugly As Sin. His articles have appeared in dozens of venues including The Wall Street Journal, Epoch Times, National Review, The Cincinnati Enquirer, and The Dallas Morning News. As a leader in the classical education movement in the U.S., Rose brings both practical leadership experience and philosophical depth to this examination of classical education as cultural resistance.

Editorial Reviews

“Reading The Subversive Art of a Classical Education, the first words that sprang to mind were Pope's: 'What oft was thought but ne'er so well expressed.' This is a book that should be read by every classical educator in the land, and every parent serious about their child's education. It explains what the classical education movement is trying to accomplish, its philosophy in the original sense of that word, and illustrates by its eloquence, poise, and moral gravitas the forma mentis of the classically educated gentleman. A pleasure to read.”—James Hankins, Professor of History, Harvard University

“Michael S. Rose is a revolutionary on a mission to liberate this generation from the cultural amnesia foisted on them by the educational status quo. By unleashing his classical vision, he demonstrates what it means to educate: to lead students to what they ought to know and ought to love. The Subversive Art of a Classical Education strikes one mighty blow after another for cultural anamnesis and signals a path to genuine educational renewal. Read it. Join his revolution. Subvert the fleeting with the permanent.”—Andrew J. Zwerneman, President, Cana Academy, History250 Writer & Narrator

“The most complete resource for classical education done well that I have ever seen! How Michael Rose managed to cover all the benefits of the form and content of this education in a single resource boggles my mind. He looks beyond the intellectual benefits—though that’s explained—to the virtuous formation of the human who is a student in this tradition in these ways. With many more resources listed in every chapter, this book is a college-level course for teachers, parents, and school founders for how to promote this movement beautifully. Whatever revolution Michael Rose is leading, I’m in!”—Jessica Hooten Wilson, Fletcher Jones Chair of Great Books at Pepperdine University, and author of The Scandal of Holiness and Reading for the Love of God

“Michael Rose, admirable in so many ways, writes from rich experience and deep wisdom to address the most pressing need of our day: the recovery of our humanity through the patient work of classical education. This work is indeed subversive, but that is because of a Zeitgeist hellbent on commodifying every facet of what ought to be an education. The Zeitgeist reduces knowledge to mere information mediated through devices, whereas a genuine classical education brings students into an unmediated encounter with the good, true, and beautiful. Rose’s careful work raises hope of a reversion, a recovery of time-tested ways of knowing, and a renewal of our culture.”—Jonathan J. Sanford, PhD, President of the University of Dallas

"Classical schools are one of the best things happening in education today, and this book by Michael S. Rose demonstrates why. He's a classical school leader and speaks with expertise and verve of how wonderfully subversive and ‘magnificently absurd’ it is to relish grammar and formal logic, to walk with Shakespeare, Augustine, and Dostoevsky, to set down the screen, drop current events, and go back to the mind of Madison and Cicero. Rose makes it fun.  New schools are opening or expanding all the time. This book is an intellectual map for the curriculum and pedagogy they devise."—Mark Bauerlein, Professor of English, Emory University, and author of The Dumbest Generation and The Dumbest Generation Grows Up

“Needle in a haystack? No problem, with a magnet in hand! Michael Rose gives us just the right tool – winsome, compelling and practical – to find the truly human style of education that most teachers want but which ‘the system’ has obscured with a giant stack of hay bureaucracies. If you are a teacher, principal or parent, please read this book. In the noise of countless options, this is THE ONE to read. In fact, buy it for the whole faculty, walk through it in your faculty meetings, short chapter by short chapter, discussing as you go. It will be the best professional development you ever encountered. 2500 years of distilled ‘best practices’ in one enjoyable read. This is a joyful and hopeful must for any teacher or school that is concerned about teaching children, not systems.”—Michael Van Hecke, President and Publisher, Catholic Textbook Project

"The arts described in this book constitute education done rightly. To recognize their subversiveness—from the Latin for “overturn”—is a secondary observation. The fact that they are subversive only demonstrates their necessity.  Michael S. Rose proposes a quintessentially American revolution in education: an overturning of the new tyrannical order in favor of the old means of freedom.”—Dr. Larry P. Arnn, President, Hillsdale College

"In this truly wonder-filled work, Michael Rose presents his readers with a remarkable array of insights to address what he aptly calls our ‘Great Forgetting’—the stunning and at times paralyzing truth that we have forgotten ourselves, losing sight of what makes us distinctly human and in the process allowing ourselves to become ever more passive and easily manipulated by educational and cultural trends that further dehumanize us. The remedy for the Great Forgetting is genuine anamnesis—not only bringing back to mind but also embodying the perfections of our nature that are fostered by means of an education that is fitted to our nature (and not one that attempts to refashion our nature according to a current ideology). As presented here, classical education is a form of resistance to such ubiquitous educational ills as the fragmentation of knowledge, the reduction of thinking to technical proficiency, and the ever-present obsession with speed, screens, and drills. Drawing upon his experience as the headmaster of a classical school, Rose offers both compelling evidence of the need for such ‘subversive’ arts, and a clear path to their recovery, one that provides excellent suggestions for further reading with every chapter. All those interested in a serious and substantive renewal of education in the United States should read this important book and keep it close by for ready reference. It is a handbook for restoring American education and thereby also renewing culture."—Dr. Jeffrey S. Lehman, Professor of Philosophy & Theology, Director, Master of Arts in Catholic Education, Augustine Institute Graduate School of Theology

From the Publisher