Andrew Ellison to Speak at 2027 Symposium

Great Hearts Institute is thrilled to announce Andrew Ellison as a keynote speaker for the 2027 Great Hearts National Symposium for Classical Education, taking place February 24–26 at the Tempe Mission Palms Hotel in Tempe, Ariz.

Ellison will join previously announced keynote speaker Zena Hitz, along with educators, scholars, and leaders from across the country for Great Hearts Institute’s annual “big tent” gathering celebrating and advancing classical education.

The theme year is Recovering Reading and Reason in a Distracted Age. During the Friday morning session at the Symposium, Ellison will approach the theme of reading, sustained attention, and civic life, in his address titled, “Help me, print literacy—you’re my only hope!”

In his keynote address description, Ellison writes, “It is said that when Ben Franklin was walking out of the just-completed Constitutional Convention, he was asked by an excited bystander what kind of government the new nation would have. ‘A republic, he answered—”if you can keep it.’ What does it take to ‘keep’ a republic? What kind(s) of culture and mental life can and cannot sustain a regime of ordered liberty under law? Have digital media and our shattered attention made self-government impossible? The answer is unambiguous…ALMOST.”

“We are thrilled that Andrew Ellison, an important voice in the founding of Great Hearts Classical Academies, will return to the National Symposium as the concluding keynote speaker,” said Great Hearts Institute Director, Carol McNamara. “He will address the vital importance of classical liberal arts education and literacy broadly understood to investigating and sustaining the ideas and conversations that inform Western Civilization and the instruction of the self-governing citizens and civic leaders in the United States, who are the inheritors of that history.”

Ellison has been active in the classical education movement at all levels for nearly 30 years in Arizona and Texas. He has been a teacher, a founding headmaster, an assistant superintendent, a vice president at the University of Dallas, and currently serves as executive director for Great Hearts in North Texas. A prolific writer and speaker in the movement, his content can be read on LinkedIn, with Cana Academy, on ClassicalEd Review, and for the Great Hearts Institute’s ON Classical.

The Great Hearts Institute invites you to join them at the Great Hearts National Symposium for Classical Education in February 2027. Register today to take advantage of special “early bird” pricing before it expires.

REGISTER NOW FOR 2027 SYMPOSIUM

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