What the classical education revival is missing

The gains made in classical education in recent years are truly encouraging. Students are once again learning great names and great stories, and they are encountering primary texts that invite them to participate rather than be passive observers.

But while the classical academic program is teaching our children the names of virtues long out of fashion, we should ask whether we have created the conditions in which those virtues can truly take root and flourish.

Students need raw contact with nature so that virtue is exercised with cold hands and aching backs, not merely batted around the seminar table as an abstraction.

In the “Cyropaedia,” Xenophon’s account of Cyrus’ formation and adventures before he ascended to Persia’s throne, Xenophon describes the paideia, or the process of formation whereby