Physical Education

Wheeling toward the Future

When I originally introduced Montana Classical College, I said that there would be an emphasis on fitness because reading and thinking are not enough. Seeing as we don’t have a physical campus yet, MCC remains a disembodied online school; as such, my attention has been on trying to understand Homer rather than on thinking through the logistics of physical exertion.

I was pulled back onto the soil that feeds us all when I read William Wheelwright’s letter to Peter Thiel that outlined his idea for a school for boys (aged 12-18). He calls attention to how computers and the internet have a tendency to dislocate us from the physical world. In his words,

“the internet, pornography, the soon-to-be metaverse etc. — [seem] more real than the wind and the soil and the waters. This false understanding then comes to occupy the individual’s consciousness. Immersed in these man-made alternate realities, the young man thinks to himself, “I can be whoever and whatever I want to be. I am unlimited by the impositions of my biology and the manner of my upbringing.” In the real world, the acceptance of these limits is the prerequisite of their transcendence.”

If most of one’s time is spent immersing their mind and soul in the internet, it will undoubtedly have unintended downstream effects. The world appears to shrink before our eyes on the internet—suddenly, Ukraine and Israel dominate our concerns more than our own country’s border. Ukraine, in our minds, is an abstraction; if any of us actually saw or even dared to lay hands on the charred corpses there, we would probably hope that Western countries would stop cruelly using Ukraine as a proxy to fight Russia. Most who wish for the war to persist only have the stomach for it because Ukraine is understood through the medium of abstraction—a tendency exacerbated by the internet. The abstraction is in our mind and so is within us and hence very close—unlike the physical reality of the country.

I digress, but you get the point: the internet makes us forget about physical space, distance, and limits.

I have wavered back and forth on how organized the physical part of the education should be (in the same way that I wavered on how many required courses the core curriculum should have). Should there be mandatory exercise in the mornings? At first, I thought, of course there should be! But, then, I thought, many men have differing visions for how they want their bodies to turn out as well as how they wish to allocate their limited time. And, men take to things more eagerly when those things match their own inclination. You might think I’m conceding something to lame progressive pieties and am therefore too soft to impose rigorous physical strictures on the students. So allow me to put this in a slightly different way.

The men who come to Montana Classical College love freedom. They have endured the yoke of fake and arbitrary rules that diminish their vitality and which instill servility their entire lives. Never let it be said that MCC will impose the same shackles!

Then, while reading William’s essay I found a wonderful formulation that embodies what I think the right ethos of the college toward physical education should be:

“Students enter at different heights and weights, and so the only uniform expectation we can impose upon them is that they are becoming stronger all the time. This we impose without reservation.”

The same is true of MCC—different types of men will walk through our halls, but all of them will be expected to get stronger all the time. Men will find friends of similar inclination and together will follow different paths toward strength. There will be a gym; organized calisthenics will be available; weekend hikes will be encouraged; and light fun will be poked at you if you get too lazy.

Only men of great ambition who already have a self-starting flame would dare to attend a parallel school that will never offer a government endorsed credential. Federal standards are not our standards. Men of this calibre don’t need the college to hector and scold them for not being ready for morning exercises; they are the kind of men who are already looking for an environment that will help the flame in their soul grow brighter.