They would receive training in gymnastics and domestic arts to enable them to manage households, to bear and raise children, and to please and be obedient to their husbands. Since citizenship would extend only to the aristocracy, which included rulers, soldiers, and priests, education would be given exclusively to this group. The farmer, laborer, merchant, and slave would be trained in whatever specific skills were required of them. Training in industrial arts or vocational skills is not education. Education is that which liberates man, enabling him to live his leisured existence according to his full potentialities.
Education is therefore a practical means to the end of achieving the acme of man's nature.
Education must not serve any mean or vocational activity. These activities are the functions of slaves. The subject material must train the future rulers in the use of reason. Future rulers must learn obedience and responsibility before they rule. Aristotle emphasized the natural sciences of astronomy, biology, physiology, zoology, chemistry and physics.