The Hilton Scholars College is BG’s version of a collegiate honors program. Members of the College are part of a special cohort of students who participate in a series of courses reserved exclusively for them while also integrating into the greater school community through access to advanced honors- and AP-level coursework. The HSC is not only inspired by the principles of classical education — which emphasizes knowledge of core texts, an interdisciplinary approach, and moral education — but also takes advantage of the best of contemporary practices. Scholars are immersed in an intellectually stimulating environment that will help them to grow as human beings and will prepare them for the demands of elite higher education.

Named in honor of Br. Mark Hilton — the Superior General of the Brothers of the Sacred Heart — the Hilton Scholars College at Bishop Guertin High School is a four-year program designed to challenge, motivate, and inspire our most curious and capable students. Students who are invited to participate in the program will be presented with a rigorous, carefully selected sequence of courses that will invite them to make deep connections between different disciplines and ways of knowing.

The HSC course of study is inspired by classical models that prioritize the knowledge of core cultural texts and seek to build meaning through the intentional construction of a sequence of interrelated classes. As a result, participants in the HSC will take a prescribed series of classes throughout their four years at BG, some of which will be exclusively reserved for Hilton Scholars. Members of the College will exist as a tight cohort while simultaneously making strong connections with other groups of students in the building.

The ultimate aim of the HSC is to produce students who are virtuous and wise. Our hope is that students who complete the program will be the most prepared to adapt to the challenges of university education, the most prepared to learn new things, and the most prepared to be leaders in their families and communities.

What Is Classical Education?

The HSC draws inspiration from classical education, a method of education that possesses the following characteristics:

1. Its primary goal is to produce human beings who are virtuous and wise. Because we believe that our students have a high and noble calling, we ask them to live up to that potential.

2. It presents a picture of the universe that is coherent and knowable by human beings. Our goal is to cultivate students who are interested in understanding the world around them in all its complexity.

3. It takes its role as a guardian of tradition seriously, but not uncritically. HSC students should be expected to wrestle with the great works of the Western intellectual tradition, those books out of which other books are made.

4. It emphasizes the centrality of language and mathematics in achieving these goals.

There is often confusion around classical education and the role of the liberal arts. In our modern world, the liberal arts and the natural sciences are often opposed to each other. A classical education does not make this distinction; students in the Hilton Scholars College will be taking advanced math and science courses in addition to Latin and literature.

Curriculum

The Hilton Scholars College curriculum is tightly prescribed and is designed to be interdisciplinary. It is logocentric, that is, centered on the word. This is understood in the following three ways:

1. Focused on the written word. Students will be expected to engage deeply with written texts across the curriculum. These texts have been selected not only because of their deep cultural importance but also because they provide models of human behavior especially worthy of emulation. We will use the written word as a means of understanding the true, the good, and the beautiful.

2. Focused on meaning. The Greek word logos does not only mean “word” but also “reason, account, or explanation”. Proceeding from an understanding that the cosmos is orderly and patterned, students will be encouraged to consider not only what things are but what they mean. This means that an interdisciplinary approach is necessary in order to understand the universe correctly. The Hilton Scholars College encourages that conversation throughout the disciplines.

3. Focused on the Logos. St. John famously refers to Christ as the Logos. The HSC exists within the context of a school run by the Brothers of the Sacred Heart, and so the formative and vocational elements of that educational philosophy permeate the curriculum. The larger questions of human existence are never far from mind in any class throughout the HSC.