SCALE HOW SCHOOL

What Is Arete?

Arete Honors Living Science is Scale How School’s weekly science tutorial for Latter-day Saint homeschool students in grades 2–10. Most classes meet Mondays from 1:00–3:00 p.m. in South Kaysville, Utah. The Honors Chemistry tutorial time is to be determined. The first day of the 2026–2027 school year is Monday, August 24, 2026. Arete does not meet on federal holidays and observes winter and spring breaks.

Enrollment is selective and each class is limited to seven students. Upper School applicants may be asked to complete a readiness assessment. Students are expected to come prepared, participate fully, work diligently, and follow the Student Code of Conduct and Host-Home Agreement. Parents should be prepared to actively support the challenge of Arete. Payment is requested only after a student is accepted and a seat is confirmed.

The oldest meaning of the word arete is “courtly morality with warlike valour.”¹ It was the quintessence of early Greek aristocratic education, an education fit for a prince. It was impossible for the Greeks to dissociate leadership and arete. Seen as the real attribute of the nobleman, central to Greek culture, the concept of arete was sustained by the idea that surpassed strength and prowess were the natural basis of leadership.

Beyond the ideals of aristocracy, arete was also in common use by the Greeks to describe “not only human merit but excellence”² in all things. It encapsulates honor, duty, intellectual ability, courage, piety, and nobility. To be noble means, “worthy of honor, and respect.” In Spenser’s, The Faerie Queene, the word noble is another word for free. It is only the noble man who is truly free, for he governs himself; he is liberated from the shackles of sin and debauchery. The old motto, taken from Homer, which classical teachers once ingrained into their students was, “Always strive for excellence and prevail over others.”³ In that one sentence the poet, “condensed the whole outlook of the nobility.”⁴ As faithful Latter-day Saints, we add humility to the qualities that determine true nobility, for we know that by the power of His word, “man was created of the dust of the earth” (Mormon 9:17). We aspire to excel in all our doings not to receive glory and honor for ourselves, but to further the Kingdom of God. Thus, this transforms the motto of the poet into a new motto we hope to instill in our Arete students: “Always strive for excellence and let God prevail.”

Nobility requires excellence for nobility wants virtue, and virtue is the fruit of the classical tradition that promotes a spirit of inquiry, focused on the development of style and conscience. Scale How School strives to teach our Arete students that consumerism and materialism are not the goals of science, but rather the goal of science is to get to know God more. We now live in a post-Christian era, a time when the world is under attack by relativist barbarians who think “the only truth is that which can be proved by the physical sciences.”⁵ We aim to prepare our students through the gift of the Holy Ghost with knowledge, understanding, and wisdom, to help them combat the world’s narrow and corrupt version of truth. The education of our students pertains not only to this mortal world, but also for time spent in the eternities; therefore we must train them up to be joint-heirs with Jesus Christ, for “whatever principle of intelligence we attain unto this life, it will rise with us in the resurrection” (Doctrine and Covenants 130:18).