Why ‘The Park’?

For shorthand you could call it a school — but it was nothing like the schools we know today.

It wasn’t a classroom of stone walls but a park filled with olive trees where young minds could move, play and learn under the open sky.

And no, they weren’t just sitting around stroking their beards and thinking deep thoughts. Plato’s model mixed physical exercise, mathematics and critical thinking — training body and brain together.

Plato founded the Academy Park to pass on what he’d learned from Socrates, the father of critical thinking.

Plato taught Aristotle at The Academy Park, who went on to teach Alexander the Great — not a bad alumni list.