Spring enrollment is open · See the catalog
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.
New this term. Reviews from students and parents appear here once families have taken it.
This is not a course about Democracy in America. It is a course in which students read Democracy in America: both volumes, unabridged, at roughly forty pages a week across two terms. There is no textbook, no summary, and no substitute for having done the reading.
Each meeting opens with a passage on the screen and a question nobody has an easy answer to. Students are expected to bring the text, mark it, and quote from it. By spring, a sixteen-year-old who has done the work can tell you what Tocqueville feared about equality, why he thought associations mattered more than laws, and where he was simply wrong.
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 1–4
Author’s introduction, the point of departure, the physical and social condition of the Anglo-Americans.
Weeks 5–10
Townships, local government, the judiciary, the federal Constitution, and why Tocqueville thought habits mattered more than structures.
Weeks 11–16
Parties, the press, the omnipotence of the majority, and the famous chapter on the tyranny it makes possible.
Weeks 17–22
Philosophical method, religion, individualism, and the strange restlessness of a democratic people.
Weeks 23–27
Equality of condition, women, honor, and the softening of manners.
Weeks 28–30
The final chapters, the administrative state Tocqueville imagined, and a closing debate on whether he was right.
Democracy in America
Alexis de Tocqueville
Mansfield & Winthrop translation, University of Chicago Press. Families purchase directly; a scholarship copy is available on request.
Seminar reader
Odysseus Lyceum
Supplementary primary sources supplied as PDFs at no cost.
Tocqueville is treated as a friendly critic of democracy, not as a partisan asset. Students read his admiration and his alarm with equal seriousness, and spend the final three weeks on the case that he misread the American future.
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.
Conservative Thought
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.
Dr. Alan HaleNew this term
Reviews appear once families have taken it.
$10/wk
$70 in total
$28 for add’l siblings
Great Books
A whole-book seminar
Douglass in his own words: the Narrative read whole, plus the Fourth of July speech, with attention to how a man argued his way into freedom.
Ms. Imani BellNew this term
Reviews appear once families have taken it.
$8/wk
$56 in total
$22.40 for add’l siblings
Great Books
A whole book in six weeks · Three mornings a week
Homer’s Odyssey read whole across one summer, Monday, Wednesday and Friday at the same hour. Meeting three times a week is what makes finishing it possible.
Mr. James OkadaNew this term
Reviews appear once families have taken it.
$24/wk
$144 in total
$57.60 for add’l siblings
