On the High School Education of a Pithecanthropus Erectus

This article examines our modern ways of schooling youth in light of philosophic and personal narrative accounts of “the Dionysian” aspect – a term the author uses to understand his own experiences and aspirations as a high school English teacher. Having articulated the meaning of this term, he goes on to point out how schools today are largely “anti-Dionysian” in character. Next, drawing upon the work of Plato alongside pop-cultural references, he offers readers some ideas about what value a truly “Dionysian education” might have, what it might look like at the high school level, and he discusses some of the problems with instituting such an education in schools today.