From the Greek paideia, meaning "education" or "child-rearing" (from paidos meaning "child"), FreedomPedia aims to educate others, children or adults, about freedom (eleutheria, in case you were wondering) and a variety of freedom-related topics. The main goal is to document how the Voluntary Society has worked in the past, works in the present and will continue to work and generally benefit all its participants in the future. A secondary objective is to contrast how the Coerced Society fails to benefit but a few of its members.
Today's Featured Article
- John Stuart Mill:
John Stuart Mill (1806-1873), English philosopher and economist, son of James Mill, was born on 20 May 1806 in his father's house in Pentonville, London. He was educated exclusively by his father, who was a strict disciplinarian, and at the age of three was taught the Greek alphabet and long lists of Greek words with their English equivalents. By his eighth year he had read Aesop's Fables, Xenophon's Anabasis, and the whole of Herodotus, and was acquainted with Lucian, Diogenes Laërtius, Isocrates and six dialogues of Plato (see his Autobiography). He had also read a great deal of history in English—Robertson's histories, Hume, Gibbon, Robert Watson's Philip II and Philip III, Hooke's Roman History, part of a translation of Rollin's Ancient History, Langhorne's Plutarch, Burnet's History of My Own Times, thirty volumes of the Annual Register, Millar's Historical View of the English Government, Mosheim's Ecclesiastical History, M'Crie's Knox and two histories of the Quakers. A contemporary record of Mill's studies from eight to thirteen is published in Bain's sketch of his life. It shows that the Autobiography rather understates the amount of work done. At the age of eight he began Latin, Euclid and algebra, and was appointed schoolmaster to the younger children of the family. His main reading was still history, but he went through all the Latin and Greek authors commonly read in the schools and universities, besides several that are not commonly read by undergraduates. He was not taught to compose either in Latin or in Greek, and he was never an exact scholar; it was for the subject matter that he was required to read, and by the age of ten he could read Plato and Demosthenes with ease. His father's History of India was published in 1818; immediately thereafter, about the age of twelve, John began a thorough study of the scholastic logic, at the same time reading Aristotle's logical treatises in the original. In the following year he was introduced to political economy and studied Adam Smith and Ricardo with his father.