Education: Philadelphia Junto

Last week Philadelphia revived Benjamin Franklin's famed Junto, 174 years dead. The sight would have startled old Ben; the cozy little study club he founded in a tavern with eleven convivial companions in 1727 has a mammoth reincarnation. Two thousand Philadelphians trooped into the Academy of Music for the new Junto's first meeting, and at week's end fresh hordes were still coming. It was the biggest cultural revival in many a Philadelphia year.

When Franklin started the Junto (council), a mutual self-improvement society, among his "ingenious acquaintances," he was a stripling of 21,...