St. Anselm's Abbey School, where students are known, respected, and cared for by faculty, staff, and peers were exploring ideas and loving learning are the norm where contentment and challenge walk hand-in-hand where leadership and extracurricular opportunities abound and where the presence of the Benedictine monastic community stamps a profound and lasting influence on the educational experience of our young scholars.
At St. Anselm's, a Roman Catholic, independent School for talented, motivated, and inquisitive young men in grades 6-12, each student is a valued and integral part of a joyful and inspiring campus. In this enclave, he can find pitch-perfect harmony in serving others while walking, with utter confidence, alongside the beam of light God intends for him to discover, explore, and, ultimately, pursue. An ever-inclusive community in the spirit of Saint Benedict, we welcome and respect students of all faiths, races, nationalities, and circumstances.
Centered in equal and complementary parts around a rigorous classical education (truly unparalleled city-wide) and the rich heritage of the 1,500-year-old Benedictine educational tradition, St. Anselm's has been shepherding and shaping academically gifted boys who are eager to work to their capacity for over 75 years now. Coming of age as a member of the St. Anselm's student body means that a boy will be exposed to a superior academic program that encourages balance in mind, body, and spirit.
While the School's track record of strong AP participation and results, high levels of National Merit recognition, and impressive college matriculation lists are all elements of St. Anselm's experience of which we are rightly proud. In part known for, it is on the intangible or "unmeasurable" side of the ledger where our students shine all the more brightly, for every St. Anselm's graduate, to a man, is thoughtful, kind, reflective, of good cheer, inventive, team-centered, generous, determined, and independent.
Founded in 1942, we remain committed to the traditional view that the essential discipline is imposed by a demanding and enriching curriculum, focused on a balanced and thorough exposure to the major academic disciplines. Over these past 75 years, our curriculum has been dramatically expanded to offer more science, technology, language, music, and fine arts to meet our student body's diverse needs and interests. Yet we still have a very challenging educational program designed for students of above-average abilities.
St. Anselm's Abbey School gives academically gifted young men a rigorous classical education in a Benedictine monastery's sacred space. We aim to educate our students to become moral persons, intellectually, and spiritually prepared for life in an ever-changing world.
A monastic school is an exercise in the community. We try to help every student understand his importance and dignity as a member of this community. Our code of behavior is a firm one but that at the same time possesses a certain Benedictine gentleness. We hope that we may introduce to our young men something of the spirit of monastic life in the twenty-first century, to put them in touch with the tradition of dedication, service, prayer, and scholarship that has been the bedrock of Benedictine stability for the last 1,500 years. As an educational institution, we try to foster Saint Benedict's notion of ora et labora, prayer, and work, as the essential means of achieving peace and understanding.
We believe that the Rule of Saint Benedict is an essential and enduring educational text that has successfully guided many schools and universities across the vast chasm of time, from the ancient world of the sixth century to the dawn of the twenty-first. The concepts of stability, perseverance, mutual support, hard work, and prayer presented in the Rule have withstood the real test of time. Our patron, Saint Anselm, was Archbishop of Canterbury, the foremost educator of his day, and is considered the Father of Scholasticism. At St. Anselm's Abbey School, we continue to emulate his drive for academic excellence. Anselm understood the monastic charism to be provocative and empowering. In a Benedictine school, one finds the same potent energy. This peculiarly transformative power allows a student to develop his talents in a community free from conflict through this Pax in Sapientia. A monastic school allows one to seek a life of truth in a fraternity of integrity as the minds of students, teachers, and monks intertwine.
Our monastic community is a fraternity, a group of people linked by a common purpose. But Benedict offers a shrewd twist on the concept he believed that a well-run "school of the Lord's service" should be something elite, an institution that not everyone can join. These dual concepts of "eliteness" and "fraternity" have been essential keys to the Benedictines' staying power and continuing success over the centuries. In the context of our community, the terms elite and fraternity do not convey negative images of snobbery and exclusivity, but they do contain very positive and powerful organizational lessons. Likewise, students in a monastic school belong to an elite communal brotherhood. They choose to be focused and use the talents that God has given them—not just for themselves, but for the benefit of those around them. And our students choose daily to begin anew, to start over now and forever—to develop the gifts of their minds, bodies, and spirits to their full strengths.
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