Oliver DeMille
Oliver DeMille is the founder and former president of George Wythe University, a founding partner of The Center for Social Leadership, and the author of A Thomas Jefferson Education: Teaching a Generation of Leaders for the 21st Century.
As a university student, Oliver went on a search for a truly great education — experiencing private and public universities, technical and religious schools, corporate and international educational institutions, prestigious colleges and worthless diploma mills; he literally sampled the best and the worst that modern education has to offer, and virtually everything in between.
As a result, he found a small Bible school where he worked closely with mentors and studied the Bible and the great classics in many fields. Although Coral Ridge Baptist University was not regionally accredited, he was so excited by the quality of his studies that he left a large, well-respected university to focus full time on his classical education. He earned the B.A. in Biblical Studies (May 1992), M.A. in Christian Political Science (December 1992), and Ph.D. in Religious Education (May 1994) at Coral Ridge Baptist University.
He has written and spoken extensively about the traditional education system versus his intense mentored-classical experience with Coral Ridge and his mentor–Dr. W. Cleon Skousen. After his Coral Ridge studies, he returned to Brigham Young University and completed the B.A. in International Relations with a minor in Aerospace Studies, graduating Magna cum Laude (1994). He then devoted his time to refining the educational design and curriculum of the liberal arts school he founded, George Wythe College (now University).
Oliver is a popular author, keynote speaker, and business consultant. Presently, he devotes a majority of his time to writing. He and his wife Rachel are raising their 8 children in southern Utah.
“Since the purpose of reading, of education, is to become good, our most important task is to choose the right books. Our personal set of stories, our canon, shapes our lives. I believe it is a law of the universe that we will not rise above our canon. Our canon is part of us, deeply, subconsciously. And the characters and teachings in our canon shape our characters--good, evil, mediocre, or great.”
“Education occurs when students set out to educate themselves… the student will only learn, can only learn, what he chooses to learn…(An) advantage of not pushing is an innate sense (his) education is (his) responsibility and reward.”
“The myth is that it is possible for one human being to educate another”
“Books are better than television, the internet, or the computer for educating and maintaining freedom.Books matter because they state ideas and then attempt to thoroughly prove them. They have an advantage precisely because they slow down the process, allowing the reader to internalize, respond, react and transform. The ideas in books matter because time is taken to establish truth, and because the reader must take the time to consider each idea and either accept it or, if he rejects it, to think through sound reasons for doing so. A nation of people who write and read is a nation with the attention span to earn an education and free society if they choose.”
“Still reading but learning a lot about true education and the process of guiding our children in their educational pursuits.”