Aristotle’s Curriculum: 4 Subjects That Build Character

According to one of history’s most well-known philosophers, young people need to be instructed in only four subjects to prepare them for a well-lived life.

Biba Kayewich

The roots of educational theory in the West reach back to Plato and his pupil Aristotle in the fourth century B.C. Both of these foundational philosophers wrote about education, sketching out a theory of the proper purposes and methods of study.

In Book VIII of “Politics,” Aristotle proposed a program of study for young people with just four subject areas: reading and writing, gymnastic exercises, music, and drawing. Aristotle’s curriculum for young students strikes us with its simplicity, a simplicity that nevertheless contains a deep understanding of human nature and the ends of education.

To modern ears, this program of study sounds woefully inadequate. What about math and science? What about social studies and history? Or the ancient Greek equivalent of computer programming (sundial craftsmanship, no doubt)?

A student who only studied those four subjects wouldn’t even begin to be educated. Or would they?

To see the wisdom of Aristotle’s educational prescription, we have to understand the way he used each term and the reasoning behind his choice of subject areas. As we explore the subject areas within Aristotle’s curriculum, it’s helpful to keep in mind the larger framework of his educational theory.

As Lelouda Stamou, professor at the University of Macedonia, commented,

“Aristotle agrees with Plato’s definition of proper education as being the training to experience pleasure or pain properly, which means the development of an attitude of fondness for what is noble and good and distaste for what is immoral.”

With that in mind, let’s take the subjects one by one.

Reading and Writing

For Aristotle, the primary purpose of education wasn’t utilitarian. It wasn’t primarily about career training, political preparation, or acquiring skills to get ahead in life, although he acknowledged that those things are important, too. Instead, Aristotle asserted that some things should be studied for their own sake because they are ennobling, perfecting, and uplifting. Education is about character formation.

In “Politics,” he wrote, “It is evident, then, that there is a sort of education in which parents should train their sons, not as being useful or necessary, but because it is liberal or noble.”

Aristotle clearly distinguished between the two:

“There are branches of learning and education which we must study merely with a view to leisure spent in intellectual activity, and these are to be valued for their own sake; whereas those kinds of knowledge which are useful in business are to be deemed necessary, and exist for the sake of other things.”

The study of reading and writing falls into both categories, according to Aristotle. It has obvious practical use in transacting business or engaging in politics. But it can also be an end in itself when a person reads a great work for pleasure and instruction, directing their mind to higher things by means of the book. That reading isn’t done for any purpose other than the enriching and ennobling effect it has on the reader.

It’s important to note that the reading and writing Aristotle had in mind here included the study of poetry, according to Stamou. So the student’s work in language arts contained an imaginative and emotional thread alongside its practical purpose.

Gymnastics

When Aristotle used the term “gymnastics,” he wasn’t referring to a balance-beam routine (or at least, not just that). The term was much broader than that. As Stamou explained, “By gymnastics he means a whole system of physical training.”

The educator John Senior elaborated further, explaining that “gymnastics” meant the process by which a student learns to use their body, and, through it, comes into direct contact with the world. Senior wrote that traditionally, in Greek culture, the first level of education was “a vigorous training of the body in gymnastics, the purpose of which was not simply recreation and health but the acuity of sensing, as sight is sharpened and coordinated by archery.”

Surprisingly, Aristotle believed educators should focus on this type of training for several years before introducing anything else. Training the body and its senses prepares the way for future learning, according to Aristotle and Senior. “Gymnastics is the first ground of all learning,” Senior wrote. Nothing comes into the mind unless it first enters into a person’s sense perception. Aristotle argued that we begin as blank slates, and knowledge and understanding slowly enter into our minds, firstly through the senses. Only once we’ve seen a few trees, for example, can we extract the concept of a tree and begin to think more abstractly about trees. If a student’s body and senses aren’t well-trained to perceive and interact with the world, that student will lack some of the raw sense experience on which all other learning is built.

“Now it is clear,” Aristotle wrote, “that in education practice must be used before theory, and the body be trained before the mind.”

Drawing

Like gymnastics, drawing can refine the senses since it requires careful observation and attention. A good artist must carefully look at their subject to render it accurately on paper. Drawing helps train focus, attention to detail, and the student’s ability to acutely see the world around them. The drawing student begins to notice shapes, colors, forms, and curves with heightened attention.

Aristotle also believed that drawing could tune a student’s soul to the pitch of beauty in the world. For example, he wrote that drawing “makes [students] judges of the beauty of the human form.” Thus, drawing introduces a basic training in aesthetics into the curriculum.

Music

Where gymnastic education develops a student’s body and senses, the other three—reading and writing, music, and drawing—train the student’s emotions, imagination, and intellect. In his explanation of the academic subjects, Aristotle spent the most time explaining the role of music and how it acts on the student’s mind and heart. To him, music provided the clearest example of a subject studied for its own sake—because of the way it perfects the student.

In his analysis, Aristotle first reminded his reader of the ultimate educational prize: a mind and heart formed in virtue.

“Virtue consists in rejoicing and loving and hating aright,” he wrote, adding, “there is clearly nothing which we are so much concerned to acquire and to cultivate as the power of forming right judgments, and of taking delight in good dispositions and noble actions.”

With that established, Aristotle went on to explain music’s power to do just that. Its emotional appeal allows it to shape emotions and form character in accordance with right reason:

“Rhythm and melody supply imitations of anger and gentleness, and also of courage and temperance, and of all the qualities contrary to these, and of the other qualities of character, which hardly fall short of the actual affections, as we know from our own experience, for in listening to such strains our souls undergo a change. The habit of feeling pleasure or pain at mere representations is not far removed from the same feeling about realities.”

According to Aristotle, the controlled, guided emotional stimulation caused by music can train a student’s emotions to respond fittingly to the joys and sorrows they encounter in real life.

Leisure

In summary, Aristotle saw a clear structure in the education of children. It was founded on the physical, engaged the emotional, and built toward the rational. Stamou recaps: “The educational process must begin with the training of the body, proceed to the training of the appetite (taste for what is noble), and culminate in the training of reason.”

“To be always seeking after the useful does not become free and exalted souls,” Aristotle argued. The useful, the pragmatic, the monetary—these things are all pursued for the sake of something else. That something else, according to Aristotle, was leisure, which he argued could only be fully enjoyed by a virtuous person. Aristotle clearly envisioned a category of studies that go beyond the practical, aiming to form students in virtue and prepare them for the full experience of true leisure.

Aristotle believed leisure wasn’t a matter of mere amusement or recreation, but instead a profound and contemplative encounter with the goodness of reality itself.