VOL. 4 FALL 2011 GreatHearts classical education, revolutionary schools The Fate of Learning in the Digital Age The Year of the Senior Pulchritude Building a Home for the Tradition GreatHearts classical education, revolutionary schools Anthem Peoria Scottsdale Glendale 17 101 51 101 Phoenix Goodyear EST. 2010 Mesa 10 Tempe MESA PREPARATORY ACADEMY 60 EST 2006 Avondale 10 Gilbert Chandler Great Hearts Academies Glendale Preparatory Academy Archway Classical Academy – Lead Office 7151 West Beardsley Road Chandler 444 North 44th Street Glendale, Arizona 85308 1951 North Alma School Road Suite 100 623-889-0822 Chandler, Arizona 85224 Phoenix, Arizona 85008 Established: 2007 480-855-6474 602-438-7045 Established: 2009 Scottsdale Preparatory Academy ACADEMIES 16537 North 92nd Street Trivium Preparatory Academy Scottsdale, Arizona 85260 Archway Classical Academy – Veritas Preparatory Academy 480-776-1970 EST. 2010 Trivium 2131 East Lincoln Drive Established: 2007 14140 West McDowell Road Phoenix, Arizona 85016 Goodyear, Arizona 85395 602-263-1128 Teleos Preparatory Academy 623-414-4883 Established: 2002 1401 East Jefferson Street Established: 2010 Phoenix, Arizona 85034 Chandler Preparatory Academy 602-275-5455 Archway Classical Academy – 1951 North Alma School Road Established: 2008 Scottsdale Chandler, Arizona 85224 7496 East Tierra Buena Lane 480-855-5410 Anthem Preparatory Academy Scottsdale, Arizona 85260 Established: 2004 42101 North 41st Drive 480-776-0413 Suite C-101 Established: 2010 MESA Mesa Preparatory Academy PREPARATORY ACADEMY Phoenix, Arizona 85086 1303 South Lindsay Road 623-465-4776 Archway Classical Academy – EST 2006 Mesa, Arizona 85204 Established: 2009 Veritas 480-222-4233 3102 North 56th Street Established: 2006 Phoenix, Arizona 85018 602-489-7341 Established: 2010 Contents Board of Directors Great Hearts 2 Letter from the CEO 28 Essay: Is Google Making Us Management Team Jay Heiler 4 Student Profi le: John Rossi Stupid? by Nicholas Carr President Dr. Daniel Scoggin Arizona Board of Regents Chief Executive Offi cer 6 Great Hearts Academy Life 32 Alumnus Profi le: Jasson Parham Barbara Ralston Dr. Peter Bezanson Vice President Chief Academic Offi cer 14 Academic Results 34 Graduation 2011 President and CEO, Fresh Kiann Robinson Mapes 16 New Academies 36 Family Profi le: The Ayala Family Start Women’s Foundation Chief Talent Offi cer Athletic Highlights Robert Mulhern Paul Perialas 18 38 Building a Home for The Tradition Co-Treasurer Chief Financial Offi cer 22 Pulchritude: Helen Hayes 40 Great Hearts Contributors Managing Director, Jeff Van Brunt Colliers International Chief Development Offi cer 24 Teacher Profi le: Stacia Denhart 46 Financial Report Daniel Sauer 26 The Great Hearts Teacher 48 Senior Thesis Co-Treasurer Headmasters President, Educational Andrew Ellison Sales Company Senior Headmaster Karrin Kunasek Taylor Veritas Preparatory Secretary Academy Executive Vice President, Helen Hayes DMB Chandler Preparatory Maria Baier Academy Arizona State Land Robert Wagner Commissioner Mesa Preparatory Academy Clint Bolick C. Diane Bishop Director, Goldwater Scottsdale Preparatory Institute’s Scharf-Norton Academy Center for Constitutional Litigation David Williams Glendale Preparatory Kurt Davis Academy President, FirstStrategic; Former President, State Mac Esau Board for Charter Schools Teleos Preparatory Academy (Interim) Dr. Jack X. Evans Professor Emeritus, ASU Bryan Smith Anthem Preparatory Derrick Hall Academy President and CEO, Arizona Diamondbacks Leanne Fawcett Archway Classical Academy Hugh Hewitt – Chandler Nationally Syndicated Radio Host Dave Beskar Trivium Preparatory Bob Lanier Academy and NBA Ambassador Archway Classical Academy John Lock – Trivium President, Kaplan Robby Kuhlman Virtual Education Archway Classical Academy Robert McConnell – Scottsdale Vice President, Armor Erik Twist Designs, Inc. Archway Classical Academy Reed Porter – Veritas President, Trend Homes Tucker Quayle Investment Advisor Don Ulrich Chairman, RSI Enterprises, Inc. Stephen J. Zabilski Executive Director, Society of St. Vincent de Paul Letter from the CEO Dr. Daniel Scoggin The Year of the Senior One could aptly name this year at Of course, we wish our graduates Great Hearts the year of the senior. every success in college and Five of the academies are graduating beyond. We have no doubt that they seniors this year, three for the fi rst time. will do us proud. Some will rise to In total, 185 great-hearted young men academic, professional, and political and women will graduate at the end of accomplishment at the highest level, Othe 2011-2012 school year. and will play no small part, we believe, in redeeming the next chapter in This milestone in the growth of our American culture. organization, and this achievement of hard work and dedication on the part But above all, we wish our graduates of the Seniors and their parents and peace. We hope that they leave Great teachers, leads me to refl ect again on Hearts and their homes for college with what characterizes a Great Hearts man a deep and refl ective sense of who or woman at the point of departure. they are as human beings, an emerging awareness of their unique talents and gifts, and a solemn acknowledgement that they have a destiny — a call to action in this world that only they can accomplish. Their story is just starting to unfold, but they possess a strong foreshadowing that some great drama lies ahead. Peace then comes from the sense that they possess the character and talents to be the hero of their story. It won’t be easy, but they are gaining the confi dence for the role of a lifetime. We believe that a classical, liberal arts education provides the best launch from adolescence to adulthood. Our graduates have become philosophers of the human condition, refl ecting again and again on the conclusions drawn by their predecessors in the West over the last three millennia, fl ourishing in their practice of the arts and sciences, and settling into the conviction that to be a real student of human nature one must pay careful attention — one must read the right books diligently, 2 GreatHearts FALL 2011 But above all, we wish our graduates peace. We hope that they leave Great Hearts and their homes for college with a deep and refl ective sense of who they are as human beings, an emerging awareness of their unique talents and gifts, and a solemn acknowledgement that they have a destiny — a call to action in this world that only they can accomplish. converse openly, reason deeply, and the philosophical engagement of our At Great Hearts Academies, we will work really, really hard. Wisdom can’t upper school curriculum. But all skill preserve our place in the West as a be downloaded; it must be sought and and knowledge must eventually be place of deep reading, thinking, and earned over time with an open heart. ordered to serve human fl ourishing. refl ection. We will do so not because Liberal education puts fi rst things fi rst. we are monolithic and backward And isn’t this what every parent looking. Just the opposite. As American wishes most for his or her child? And in the last decade, liberal culture is buried in an avalanche of data I know I certainly do for my two education is put all the more at risk and surface learning, it will be the deep daughters — that as they blossom due to the centrality of the Internet and articulate thinkers — who can put into young ladies they fi nd noble in our culture. Digital technology can fi rst things fi rst — who will naturally be works and arts to love, that they be an asset to learning if kept in its called to sort, decipher, and lead for the naturally discover their unique talents proper place — we have the libraries surface learners. in relation to an art that resonates of the world at our fi ngertips. However, with their being — be it literature, as Nicholas Carr rightly argues, in his As a fi rst principle then, our graduates writing, painting, singing, science, recent book The Shallows: What the must fi nd the inner peace to lead mathematics, and even athletics — Internet is Doing to Our Brains, the with conviction. To better express and that they develop the serious Internet is compromising our ability what I mean and wish for each of our conviction to seek mastery for its own to think and read deeply, capacities graduates, I close with a quote from sake, out of love, and not due to me critical to liberal education. He quotes Aristotle from Book I, Chapter 10 of the or others just telling them they “have Richard Foreman: “I see within us all Nicomachean Ethics: to.” Don’t all parents wish for our (myself included) the replacement of a “ So what is sought will belong to the children to develop a sense of wonder complex inner density with a new kind happy person, who will be happy that begets a search for excellence? of self — evolving under the pressure throughout life, for such a person will For truth? of information overload and the always, or most of all people, be acting technology of the ‘instantly available’.” and contemplating the things that go All of this refl ecting, wondering, and Foreman warned that, as we are along with virtue, and will bear what searching is the essence of liberal separated from our “inner repertory fortune brings most beautifully and in education as Great Hearts knows it. of dense cultural inheritance,” we complete harmony in every instance, These forms of knowing take time risk turning into “‘pancake people’ — being in the true sense good and to grow in the souls of our students. spread wide and thin as we connect fl awlessly squarely centered.” Schooling in the classical sense is with the vast network of information about providing time and space for accessed by the mere touch of a What more could we hope for our introspection; schooling in the modern, button.” children? What more could we plan utilitarian sense, in contrast, is about for our culture? acquiring skills as quickly as possible, Our featured work in this magazine is an without considering their application to essay from Nicholas Carr that provides noble ends or the good of the person the central argument of his book.