June 23: Greek Scholar at Three (Vol. 25, pp. 9-20)

James Mill, the father of John Stuart Mill, died this day in 1836. In this selection from his autobiography, John Stuart Mill tells how his father taught him Greek and Latin when he was three. Young John also got plenty of arithmetic and copious amounts of history and philosophy — Gibbon, Plutarch, Hume and the like.

That's plenty of heavy lifting for a toddler, but he loved it, took to it, and his unusual early education enabled him to start writing books at age 12. It is certainly a convincing argument for home schooling.