Paideia Institute 2023 Annual Report
Letter from the President
DEAR FRIENDS,
Our goal is that students, after their first experience of Paideia, find many more opportunities to continue their classical journey with us. For example, a student on a travel program to Greece, inspired by the experience of reading Plato on site in Athens, may continue with an online course on Greek philosophy once home. An adult who takes a Latin poetry course online may then enroll in a Rome program the following year to actually experience Latin in the Forum.
We believe that offering a breadth of complementary initiatives—in-school, travel and online—is all the more important given the decline in our country’s infrastructure for classical learning. No one can deny that opportunities to study the classics are less available than they were even 10 years ago, with Latin and Greek courses continuing to close across the nation.
This stark reality was an impetus for the creation of our new online curriculum, Living Latin, that we think will rewrite the paradigm of who gets to learn Latin, and how. The program teaches the entire Latin language, from the start, in a self-paced curriculum informed by our decades of experience with Latin pedagogy and enriched by engaging videos and diverse characters. Next up, a similar course for Ancient Greek!
We remain, as always, grateful for your continued support of Paideia. Thank you for believing in our vision of a future where anyone who wishes can enjoy the benefits of classical wisdom.
Ex Animo,
Travel Programs Return
Travel Programs Return
From the time of our founding, Paideia has introduced students to classical subjects in the places they happened. Students in our travel programs encounter classical texts in Rome or Greece, many for the first time, in the very places these texts describe. These once-in-a-lifetime experiences have inspired many of our students to further study and even pursue careers as teachers of Classics.
The pandemic, of course, changed our schedule for a while, but we are back! Our adult programs, Living Greek in Greece and Living Latin in Rome, ran with a full roster of participants, many of whom had discovered Paideia through online classes during the pandemic. These programs are now centered around a specific theme or offering, giving participants the opportunity to repeat them in future years. In summer 2022, Living Greek in Greece students read Lucian’s True History and Living Latin in Rome students read the poetry of Catullus.
For students from middle school through college, we partner with their schools to coordinate Classics-themed travel throughout Europe. Our Rome Fellows and staff plan and lead high quality, adventurous programming that help students encounter ancient languages and cultures in a new way. Upon their return to the US, Paideia travel partners now also receive early access to pilot our curricula in the classroom.