COLUMBIA — The room went silent as seven middle school girls considered the question: What distinguishes intellectual virtues from moral virtues in Aristotle’s “Nicomachean Ethics”?
If that sounds much more difficult than a typical middle school civics course, that’s because it is. The question was one of 20 similar questions the seven would go on to answer as part of a statewide civics championship, some of which stumped even former Gov. David Beasley, who moderated.
“I started thinking, ‘Sure glad I’m not up there,’” Beasley said. “I don’t know if any members of the U.S. Senate, the U.S. House, the White House could answer a lot of these questions.”…