Strict Uniforms. Ancient Philosophy. Can a Public School Cure Our Toxic Politics?

Mr. Traub reported from Minneapolis. He is the author of “The Cradle of Citizenship: How Schools Can Help Save Our Democracy.”

This spring, I sat in the back of a ninth-grade class at Eagle Ridge Academy, a classical charter school in the suburbs of Minneapolis. The students were talking about the part of Virgil’s “Aeneid” in which Aeneas tells Queen Dido of Carthage the story of the Trojan War and the travails that had brought him to her shore. Their teacher, Jeremiah Lemon, asked if Aeneas was telling the truth or shaping the tale to his own advantage, as Odysseus had done in “The Odyssey.”

“I........

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