The “Persian” schools are apparently open, free of charge, to any boy whose father chooses to send him. For the only expense which the parents are mentioned as incurring is the loss of any wages which their son might have been earning if set to a trade instead of being sent to school. Xenophon thus institutes free education without compulsion. Pupils may be withdrawn at any age; if they or their families have enough private means to enable them to live in leisure all their lives they can rise through the various stages to the highest offices of the State, provided that they are not rejected as unfit during their upward passage. Theoretically the educational ladder is open to all; practically it is closed to all but those who are well-to-do and fairly capable to boot. But the education provided is not a general culture, intellectually and morally good for all children, nor yet utilitarian knowledge, such as arithmetic or writing, which will serve as a useful, or even necessary, basis for a trade or profession: it is a strictly technical education in the work of War and Government. Few parents, therefore, would send their boys to Xenophon’s schools, at any rate for a longer period than would be required for learning just the rudiments of national law and morality, unless they designed them for a public career.
Thus Xenophon, like his beloved Spartans, has made war the main object of education, and, like the Romans, uses law as the chief instrument of instruction. But he has seen the demerits of the Spartan “Mess-clubs,” and his boys take their meals and sleep, as a rule, at home; only the epheboi, as in Crete, dine and sleep always in the agora. His chief merit is that he recognised that an educational atmosphere, εὐκοσμία τῶν πεπαιδευμένων [eukosmia tôn pepaideumenôn], free from the associations of money-making, is essential to an educational establishment.
After this deeply interesting sketch of Xenophon’s educational ideals, the _Education of Kuros_ becomes a historical novel with a purpose, an idealised Kuros acting as example throughout. In Book i. there is the description of him as the model boy, courteous to his elders, quick and eager to learn, brave, impetuous, loved by all, but rather a prig. The description is full of improving anecdotes and little sermons. The book concludes with a lecture on the duties of a general, dealing with tactics and the best means of training the army and providing supplies. Xenophon puts all his personal experience into this, and there is plenty of adventure to make the book palatable to his young readers.