The Institute is named for Francis Daniel Pastorius, the 17th Century polymath and founder of Germantown, Pennsylvania. Pastorius moved to Pennsylvania in 1683 and built a small cabin on which he inscribed a line from Virgil: “Parva Domus sed Amica Bonis, Procul o Procul Este Profani” (a small house, but a friend to the Good; keep far away impious men). He filled his notebooks with quotations in Greek and Latin and wrote on everything from beekeeping to religion, while working as a headmaster and lawyer, serving in public office, and campaigning against slavery. He turned to classical literature, especially Virgil’s Aeneid, as a guide for how to live in the New World.
In 1787 Thomas Jefferson wrote to a friend: “Ours are the only farmers in the world who read Homer.” Since the beginning of our country, Americans have found ways to reconcile the active life and the life of the mind, the intellectual and the commercial. This is the tradition we draw from in our mission to advance American education by recruiting and equipping the next generation of educational entrepreneurs.
If you want to create something new in education, we want to help you. Email info @ this website.
Executive Director
Donald Antenen is the founder and lead instructor of The Fairhaven Program, where teenagers do extraordinary things like read Homer in Greek, recite Dante and Virgil from memory, and explore the mysteries of non-Euclidean geometry, while they start businesses and lead active lives in sports, theater, church, and scouting. Every week he sees firsthand the power of education that is small-scale, free from digital distractions, and focused on the living ideas in great literature, art, music, and mathematics.
Board
Matt Frost
Michael Radocchia
Staci Hetzel