The paidotribes was in charge of gymnastics training. The emphasis was mainly on individual and not group sports: for instance competitive running, long jump, javelin and discus, wrestling and boxing. The pupil did his gymnastics in the public gymnasium: this building was of great importance in socializing the boy, being also a place of meeting and getting together. As an institution the gymnasium embodied the classical ideal of physical beauty and healthy mind; and was the foundation cultivating the soul.

In classical Athens, music lessons included dancing and learning an instrument such as the kithara or the pipe. It was frequently experimental, and did not call for the use of a written score. This cannot have been too difficult, since Hellenic music was not polyphonic.

The aim of elementary education in classical Athens was to prepare young men, irrespective of social class, for their entries into the political and social life of the polis. The classical ethic can be summed up in the motto "kalos k'agathos" (aesthetically pleasing and socially serviceable), implying the dominant values of the time, values to which young men were expected to respond.

In classical Athens there was no institutionalized higher education beyond elementary education. But the new political and social conditions after the Persian wars created a need for it. This need was met, in the latter half of the fifth century B.C., by the Sophists. The effect of their teaching on the young of the aristocratic class was substantial. Their pupils traipsed after them from city to city, attending their public lectures.