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Burke to Kirk
The first course in the Lyceum’s core sequence: what conservatism has actually claimed, from Burke’s Reflections to Kirk’s canon, critics included.
New this term. Reviews from students and parents appear here once families have taken it.
Conservatism is not one idea, and this course refuses to pretend otherwise. Students read Burke against Paine, Hayek against the planners, Kirk against the libertarians, and Sowell against a good deal of everyone, and are asked each week to say which argument actually survived the objection.
This is the entry point to the Lyceum’s core sequence, and completing it earns credit redeemable toward mainstream academic classes elsewhere in the catalog.
This course accumulates. The class reads the same pages at the same pace and each meeting picks up the argument where the last one left it, so joining halfway means joining an argument already in progress.
Because there is a whole body of work at the end of it, this one is graded (letter) and can be carried to a transcript. Enroll before the second meeting.
Weeks 1–3
Reflections on the Revolution in France, prescription, prejudice, and the little platoons, read alongside Paine’s reply.
Weeks 4–6
Natural law, the American appropriation of Burke, and what "ordered" is doing in the phrase.
Weeks 7–9
The knowledge problem, spontaneous order, and the classical liberal case, with the standard objections put fairly.
Weeks 10–12
The Conservative Mind, the six canons, and the fusionist quarrel with the libertarians.
Weeks 13–14
A Conflict of Visions: constrained and unconstrained visions as an analytical tool, applied to current disputes.
Weeks 15–16
Each student argues the case against the thinker they found most persuasive.
Reflections on the Revolution in France (selections)
Edmund Burke
Provided as an annotated PDF.
A Conflict of Visions
Thomas Sowell
Families purchase; used copies are widely available.
Openly sympathetic to the tradition and openly honest about it. Every thinker is paired with a critic, and students are graded on the accuracy of their opponents’ arguments as much as their own.
Read our academic philosophyMeetings are recorded and released to enrolled families for fourteen days. Recordings capture the instructor and shared materials; student video is not published.
Full refund up to seven days before the first meeting; inside seven days, everything paid is credited to your Lyceum balance. No refunds or credits once the class has begun. Cancel any section from your parent account.
These describe how this instructor has been trained, reviewed with educators and accessibility specialists. They are not a diagnosis and not a marketing claim.
Students and parents review separately, on different questions, and the two aggregates are never blended. Every review is verified and moderated.
No parent reviews for this class yet.
Reviews from students are published as “Student, age 13”, never with a full name. Photo and short video reviews are supported and moderated before they appear.
Great Books
The year-long seminar · Ages 15–18
A full year inside Tocqueville: both volumes, forty pages a week, discussed live every Tuesday with twelve other students.
Dr. Alan HaleNew this term
Reviews appear once families have taken it.
$8/wk
$56 in total
$22.40 for add’l siblings
Conservative Thought
Argument, media, and contemporary conservatism
His intellectual influences, his arguments, his media career, his strengths, his critics, and his place in the conservatism of the last decade.
Dr. Alan HaleNew this term
Reviews appear once families have taken it.
$8/wk
$48 in total
$19.20 for add’l siblings
Conservative Thought
Campus argument and the young right
The folding table, the microphone, and the queue of students waiting to disagree. What Kirk built on American campuses, why the format spread, and what it is good and bad at.
Dr. Alan HaleNew this term
Reviews appear once families have taken it.
$8/wk
$48 in total
$19.20 for add’l siblings
