What Cubbyed Teaches — and Why We Are Honest About It

Most education products today either pretend to be neutral and aren't, or teach with a hidden agenda no one asked them to bring into the home. We take a different approach. Cubbyed teaches the classical Western canon and the American founding tradition. We are open about that position because parents deserve to know what their children are being taught. Parents who want this self-select. Parents who don't, don't. We think that is a feature, not a flaw.

Our Position, in One Page

Cubbyed is a classical education app for K–12, modeled on the trivium structure (grammar stage, logic stage, rhetoric stage) and grounded in the works that shaped Western civilization. We teach Latin, Greek roots, formal logic, classical rhetoric, the great books, the American founding documents, mathematics through calculus, the sciences, and the practical arts that earlier generations received and most kids no longer get — including cursive, home economics, personal finance, and workshop skills.

Our editorial position is traditional and classical, not partisan. We draw from Plato, Aristotle, Cicero, Augustine, Aquinas, Shakespeare, the Bible (taught as a foundational text of Western literature and law, not as devotional content), the Constitution, the Federalist Papers, Adam Smith, Edmund Burke, Lincoln, Frederick Douglass, Tocqueville. Where these thinkers disagreed with each other — and they often did — we present the disagreement honestly.

We do not editorialize on contemporary political controversies. Where a student needs to understand a current issue (immigration, climate, taxation, public health) we present the strongest version of each major side, name the named sources we drew from, and stop there. Forming political opinions is the job of the family, not the curriculum.

Hard Rules We Enforce Across All Content

These rules apply to every lesson Cubbyed publishes — whether written by our staff, generated by AI and reviewed by humans, or contributed by teachers through the Marketplace.

1. Every claim must cite a source.

No "trust me" assertions in any lesson. Claims of historical fact must cite a primary source or a scholarly secondary source. Claims about science must cite peer-reviewed work or established consensus. Claims about religion are labeled as religious teaching, not objective fact. Sources appear at the bottom of every lesson.

2. Primary sources are preferred over paraphrase.

When a lesson references Aristotle, we quote Aristotle. When it references Lincoln, we quote Lincoln. Students should encounter the actual voices of the figures they study, in the actual words those figures used. Paraphrase is a teaching aid, not a substitute.

3. Contemporary political figures are discussed only with named sources from multiple sides.

If a lesson must reference a living politician or contemporary controversy, it presents the strongest version of each major view and names the publications or scholars who hold each view. We do not endorse or attack living politicians.

4. Religious content is labeled.

Cubbyed teaches the religious figures who shaped Western thought — Augustine, Aquinas, the King James Bible as a literary and linguistic monument, the world's major religious traditions in history class. When we teach Augustine, we label him as a Christian theologian. We do not present religious teaching as objective philosophy, and we do not proselytize. Families add devotional content at home as they see fit.

5. No personal attacks on living people.

Lesson content evaluates ideas, not personalities. Living individuals referenced in lessons are described neutrally with named sources. Snark, insults, and ad hominem are out.

6. Standards-aligned where standards exist.

Math lessons cite Common Core standards codes. English Language Arts references CCSS. Science references NGSS. SAT/ACT prep references College Board and ACT Inc. standards. Personal finance references the Jump$tart and Council for Economic Education standards. Standards alignment is not the goal — accurate teaching is — but standards give us a public yardstick.

What This Means in Practice

History & Civics

We teach the American founding as a remarkable achievement and a continuing argument. The Declaration, the Constitution, the Federalist Papers, and the Anti-Federalists are all read in the original. Frederick Douglass and Abraham Lincoln are taught alongside Jefferson and Hamilton. The Civil War is taught as the moral and constitutional crisis it was. The 20th-century world wars and Cold War are taught with primary sources and named historians from multiple schools of interpretation.

Literature

We teach the Western canon — Homer, Shakespeare, Austen, Dickens, Twain, the Brontës, Tolstoy, Dostoevsky, Achebe, Morrison. Children's literature includes classics that have outlasted their authors. We do not exclude difficult or uncomfortable works; we read them carefully and in their original context.

Science

Science is taught as the disciplined method for testing claims about the natural world. We teach evolutionary biology, modern cosmology, and the consensus on the age of the universe. We teach the scientific method as the most powerful tool humans have ever developed for distinguishing true claims from false ones, and we teach where the open questions in each field actually are.

Personal Finance & Home Economics & Practical Arts

We restore subjects schools dropped: compound interest, budgeting, credit, saving, investing, cooking with real techniques, sewing, mending, basic carpentry, workshop safety, gardening. These were once standard in American schools and produced more capable adults. We teach them again because the skills are valuable and because their absence is itself a kind of bias against the household.

AI-Generated Content

Some Cubbyed lessons are generated by AI (currently Claude by Anthropic) and then reviewed by a human before publishing. AI-generated content is held to the SAME editorial standards as human-written content. Every AI lesson is grounded in cited sources, fact-checked by a second AI pass, and reviewed by a teacher or parent before any student sees it. The "Adult Approved" badge on every approved lesson is real, not marketing.

The Marketplace

Cubbyed has a marketplace where verified teachers can submit lessons for sale. Marketplace lessons are subject to the SAME editorial rules as everything else: cited sources, named author, no personal attacks, no contemporary partisan editorializing. Lessons that violate the rules are removed. Lessons that receive consistently low ratings or high flag rates from parents are demoted or hidden through an automated quality system. We never let "popular" override "accurate" — but we trust parents and students to recognize quality when they see it.

Why We Are Honest About This

A school is never neutral. If you do not know what it teaches, you have not been told the truth about what it teaches. — Adapted from G.K. Chesterton

Every curriculum makes choices. Which books are read. Which historical figures are honored. Which questions are asked. Which are left out. These choices add up to a worldview whether the curriculum admits it or not. Cubbyed admits it. We think the classical Western tradition is worth passing on, not because it is the only tradition worth knowing, but because it is the foundation of the civilization our students will inherit. Knowing it gives them roots. What they do with those roots is their own business.

If you are a parent who shares this view, Cubbyed is built for you. If you don't, you should pick a different app — and we mean that. Education that respects parents starts with telling them the truth about itself.