He didn’t have to. Certainly not back then, when teachers ruled with absolute and even violent authority.

Yet Montaigne’s teacher understood. He understood that the curriculum was boring his bright young student. In a time when books were expensive and censorship commonplace, this teacher understood that Montaigne’s curiosity could not be satisfied by the school syllabus.

So, as we tell the story in Wisdom Takes Work (which is out October 21, 2025—order it here!), Montaigne and his teacher came to an agreement: As long as Montaigne could keep up with the school’s assignments, he was free to explore on his own. In fact, the teacher would even lend him books from his own library. “Pretending to see nothing,” Montaigne said gratefully, “he whetted my appetite, letting me gorge myself with these books only in secret.” It was a brilliant stroke too, for Montaigne watched as so many of his fellow students came away from school hating to read. But not Montaigne—he was hooked, for life.

We can all think of adults like this in our lives, who put aside the rules or convention and saw us for who we were and what we needed. We are in the debt of teachers and grandparents and mentors who didn’t treat us as the average but as the extraordinary individual we were and thus gave us individual treatment. It was from this that we felt seen, that we were challenged, that we were introduced to whole new worlds.

Don’t your kids deserve that, too?

As we’ve said before, each of our kids is unique and has a unique destiny. It’s our job to treat them accordingly.

Ryan Holiday’s new book, Wisdom Takes Work, the much-anticipated final installment in the Stoic Virtues Series, hits shelves on October 21, 2025. If you’re reading this before then, we have a limited number of signed first-editions you can preorder here. (And to thank you for preordering, we’ve put together some exciting bonuses for you.)

Head over to dailystoic.com/wisdom to learn more and place your order today!