Plutarch, bust from the museum of Delphi.
The brief treatise On the Education of Children (De liberis educandis) is the very first text in the collected works of the Greek author Plutarch (photo), but it was probably not written by the Sage of Chaeronea. Nevertheless, it is interesting -albeit slightly disorganized- and humane. The author offers some commonsensical advise, and a lot of it is in fact, quite appropriately, about educating fathers:
Fathers ought above all, by not misbehaving and by doing as they ought to do, to make themselves a manifest example to their children, so that the latter, by looking at their fathers’ lives as at a mirror, may be deterred from disgraceful deeds and words.
In our age, we might add the mothers as well, but let’s face it: what else is there to be said about education?
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