The author started in the Ph.D. program in comparative literature at Princeton in 1992, a year after she graduated from college. She fell in love with mythology and the classical traditions and find herself teaching literature. In the remainder of her time at Princeton, she precepted for four or five more classes, got the chance to join the…

At a New Jersey school, students spend one year studying each of three time periods: ancient Egypt in fourth grade; Greece in fifth grade; and Rome and the Middle Ages in sixth grade. The history curriculum becomes the focal point for other areas (art, music, drama, language arts, science, geography, and math). Teachers use primary sources and…

The modern character education movement emerged in the 1980s as a consequence of growing parental and public concern for moral drift, or what sociologist James Davison Hunter referred to as "the death of character." This public anomie was captured in these words from Sanford McDonnell, chairman emeritus of McDonnell Douglas and chair of…