#5: The Classics connect us to our stories.
Each culture is different because it has different shared stories. Different stories define each family, each religion, each nation. And members of each connect themselves with the stories--they make the stories part of their personal story.
Can you imagine the Jews without the stories of Moses, the Maccabees, or the Holocaust? Or Americans without stories of Paul Revere, George Washington, and Abraham Lincoln? Learn the stories of a culture, and you will come to understand that culture.
That is why I think it is such a tragedy that the current generation of American youth are mostly growing up without the stories of the Declaration of Independence, Daniel in the Lion's Den, Patrick Henry, Sitting Bull or Daniel Webster. The classics are the ark, the preserver, of stories which unite the cultures and the generations.
In addition to cultural, national and family stories, we each have individual stories. We all have a personal canon, a set of stories which we hang onto and believe in and base our lives around; and great classics are the best canon. A canon is the set of books we consider to be the standard of truth. Since the purpose of reading, of gaining education, is to become good, our most important task is to choose the right books.
Our personal set of stories, our canon, shapes our lives. I believe it is a law of the universe that we will not rise above our canon. Our canon is part of us, deeply, subconsciously. And the characters and teachings in our canon shape our characters--good, evil, mediocre, or great.
Why Classics? 
