I. POLITICAL
II. SCIENTIFIC
III. VOCATIONAL
IV. SOCIOLOGICAL
V. THE SCIENTIFIC ORGANIZATION OF EDUCATION
CONCLUSION: THE FUTURE
LIST OF PLATES
1. THE CLOISTERS OF A MONASTERY, NEAR FLORENCE, ITALY
2. THE LIBRARY OF THE CHURCH OF SAINT WALLBERG, AT ZUTPHEN, HOLLAND
3. SAINT THOMAS AQUINAS
4. A LECTURE ON THEOLOGY BY ALBERTUS MAGNUS
5. STRATFORD-ON-AVON GRAMMAR SCHOOL
6. EDUCATIONAL LEADERS IN PROTESTANT GERMANY
7. THE FREE SCHOOL AT HARROW
8. MAP SHOWING THE SPREAD OF JESUIT SCHOOLS IN NORTHERN TERRITORY BY THE
YEAR 1725
9. TWO TABLETS ON THE WEST GATEWAY AT HARVARD UNIVERSITY
10. JOHN AMOS COMENIUS (1592-1670)
11. JOHANN HEINRICH PESTALOZZI
12. FELLENBERG'S INSTITUTE AT HOFWYL
13. TWO LEADERS IN THE REGENERATION OF PRUSSIA
14. FRANCOIS PIERRE GUILLAUME GUIZOT (1787-1874)
15. JOHN POUNDS' RAGGED SCHOOL AT PORTSMOUTH
16. AN ENGLISH VILLAGE VOLUNTARY SCHOOL
17. TWO LEADERS IN THE EDUCATIONAL AWAKENING IN THE UNITED STATES
18. TWO LEADERS IN THE REORGANIZATION OF EDUCATIONAL THEORY
LIST OF FIGURES
1. THE GREEK CONCEPTION OF THE WORLD
2. ANCIENT GREECE AND THE AEGEAN WORLD
3. THE CITY-STATE OF ATTICA
4. DISTRIBUTION OF THE POPULATION OF ATHENS AND ATTICA, ABOUT 430 B.C.
5. A GREEK BOY
6. AN ATHENIAN INSCRIPTION
7. GREEK WRITING-MATERIALS
8. A GREEK COUNTING-BOARD
9. AN ATHENIAN SCHOOL
10. GREEK SCHOOL LESSONS
11. GROUND-PLAN OF THE GYMNASIUM AT EPHESOS, IN ASIA MINOR
12. SOCRATES (469-399 B.C.)
13. EVOLUTION OF THE GREEK UNIVERSITY
14. THE GREEK UNIVERSITY WORLD
15. THE KNOWN WORLD ABOUT 150 A.D.
16. THE EARLY PEOPLES OF ITALY, AND THE EXTENSION OF THE ROMAN POWER
17. THE PRINCIPAL ROMAN ROADS
18. THE GREAT EXTENT OF THE ROMAN EMPIRE
19. A ROMAN FATHER INSTRUCTING HIS SON
20. CATO THE ELDER (234-148 B.C.)
21. ROMAN WRITING-MATERIALS
22. A ROMAN COUNTING-BOARD
23. A ROMAN PRIMARY SCHOOL
24. A ROMAN SCHOOL OF RHETORIC
25. THE ROMAN VOLUNTARY EDUCATIONAL SYSTEM, AS FINALLY EVOLVED
26. ORIGIN OF OUR ALPHABET
27. THE GROWTH OF CHRISTIANITY TO THE END OF THE FOURTH CENTURY
28. A BISHOP
29. A BENEDICTINE MONK, ABBOT, AND ABBESS
30. SHOWING THE FINAL DIVISION OF THE EMPIRE AND THE CHURCH
31. A BODYGUARD OF GERMANS
32. THE GERMAN MIGRATIONS
33. THE KNOWN WORLD IN 800
34. A GERMAN WAR CHIEF
35. ROMANS DESTROYING A GERMAN VILLAGE
36. A PAGE OF THE GOTHIC GOSPELS
37. A TYPICAL MONASTERY OF SOUTHERN EUROPE
38. BIRD'S-EYE VIEW OF A MEDIEVAL MONASTERY
39. INITIAL LETTER FROM AN OLD MANUSCRIPT
40. A MONK IN A SCRIPTORIUM
41. CHARLEMAGNE'S EMPIRE, AND THE IMPORTANT MONASTERIES OF THE TIME
42. WHERE THE DANES RAVAGED ENGLAND
43. AN OUTER MONASTIC SCHOOL
44. THE MEDIAEVAL SYSTEM OF EDUCATION SUMMARIZED
45. A SCHOOL: A LESSON IN GRAMMAR
46. AN ANGLO-SAXON MAP OF THE WORLD
47. AN EARLY CHURCH MUSICIAN
48. A SQUIRE BEING KNIGHTED
49. A KNIGHT OF THE TIME OF THE FIRST CRUSADE
50. EVOLUTION OF EDUCATION DURING THE EARLY MIDDLE AGES
51. SHOWING CENTERS OF MOSLEM LEARNING
52. ARISTOTLE
53. THE CATHEDRAL OF NOTRE DAME, AT PARIS
54. THE CITY-STATES OF NORTHERN ITALY
55. FRAGMENT FROM THE RECOVERED "DIGEST" OF JUSTINIAN
56. THE FATHER OF MEDICINE, HIPPOCRATES OF COS
57. A PILGRIM OF THE MIDDLE AGES
58. A TYPICAL MEDIAEVAL TOWN (PRUSSIAN)
59. THE EDUCATIONAL PYRAMID
60. TRADE ROUTES AND COMMERCIAL CITIES
61. SHOWING LOCATION OF THE CHIEF UNIVERSITIES FOUNDED BEFORE 1600
62. SEAL OF A DOCTOR, UNIVERSITY OF PARIS
63. NEW COLLEGE, AT OXFORD
64. A LECTURE ON CIVIL LAW BY GUILLAUME BENEDICTI
65. LIBRARY OF THE UNIVERSITY OF LEYDEN, IN HOLLAND
66. A UNIVERSITY DISPUTATION
67. A UNIVERSITY LECTURE AND LECTURE ROOM
68. PETRARCH (1304-74)
69. BOCCACCIO (1313-75)
70. DEMETRIUS CHALCONDYLES (1424-1511)
71. BOOKCASE AND DESK IN THE MEDICEAN LIBRARY AT FLORENCE
72. TWO EARLY NORTHERN HUMANISTS
73. AN EARLY SIXTEENTH-CENTURY PRESS
74. AN EARLY SPECIMEN OF CAXTON'S PRINTING
75. THE WORLD AS KNOWN TO CHRISTIAN EUROPE BEFORE COLUMBUS
76. SAINT ANTONINUS AND HIS SCHOLARS
77. TWO EARLY ITALIAN HUMANIST EDUCATORS
78. GUILLAUME BUDAEUS (1467-1540)
79. COLLÈGE DE FRANCE
80. JOHANN REUCHLIN (1455-1522)
81. JOHANN STURM (1507-89)
82. DESIDERIUS ERASMUS (1467-1536)
83. SAINT PAUL'S SCHOOL, LONDON
84. GIGGLESWICK GRAMMAR SCHOOL
85. THE EVOLUTION OF MODERN STUDIES
86. JOHN WYCLIFFE (1320?-84)
87. RELIGIOUS WARFARE IN BOHEMIA
88. SHOWING THE RESULTS OF THE PROTESTANT REVOLTS
89. HULDREICH ZWINGLI (1487-1531)
90. JOHN CALVIN (1509-64)
91. A FRENCH PROTESTANT (c. 1600)
92. TWO EARLY VERNACULAR SCHOOLS
93. THE FIRST PAGE OF WYCLIFFE'S BIBLE
94. LUTHER GIVING INSTRUCTION
95. JOHANNES BUGENHAGEN (1485-1558)
96. EVOLUTION OF GERMAN STATE SCHOOL CONTROL
97. A CHAINED BIBLE
98. A FRENCH SCHOOL OF THE SEVENTEENTH CENTURY
99. A DUTCH VILLAGE SCHOOL
100. JOHN KNOX (1505?-72)
101. IGNATIUS DE LOYOLA (1491-1556)
102. PLAN OF A JESUIT SCHOOLROOM
103. AN URSULINE
104. A SCHOOL OF LA SALLE AT PARIS, 1688
105. THE BROTHERS OF THE CHRISTIAN SCHOOLS BY 1792
106. TENDENCIES IN EDUCATIONAL DEVELOPMENT IN EUROPE, 1500 TO 1700
107. MAP SHOWING THE RELIGIOUS SETTLEMENTS IN AMERICA
108. HOMES OF THE PILGRIMS, AND THEIR ROUTE TO AMERICA
109. NEW ENGLAND SETTLEMENTS, 1660
110. THE BOSTON LATIN GRAMMAR SCHOOL
111. WHERE YALE COLLEGE WAS FOUNDED
112. AN OLD QUAKER MEETING-HOUSE AND SCHOOL AT LAMPETER, PENNSYLVANIA
113. NICHOLAS KOPERNIK (COPERNICUS) (1473-1543)
114. TYCHO BRAKE (1546-1601)
115. GALILEO GALILEI (1564-1642)
116. SIR ISAAC NEWTON (1642-1727)
117. WILLIAM HARVEY (1578-1657)
118. FRANCIS BACON (1561-1626)
119. THE LOSS AND RECOVERY OF THE SCIENCES
120. RENÉ DESCARTES (1596-1650)
121. FRANCOIS RABELAIS (1483-1553)
122. JOHN MILTON (1608-74)
123. MICHEL DE MONTAIGNE (1533-92)
124. JOHN LOCKE (1632-1704)
125. AN ACADEMIE DES ARMES
126. A SAMPLE PAGE FROM THE "ORBIS PICTUS"
127. PART OF A PAGE FROM A LATIN-ENGLISH EDITION OF THE "VESTIBULUM"
128. AUGUSTUS HERMANN FRANCKE (1663-1727)
129. A FRENCH SCHOOL BEFORE THE REVOLUTION
130. A HORN BOOK
131. THE WESTMINSTER CATECHISM
132. THOMAS DILWORTH (?-1780)
133. FRONTISPIECE TO NOAH WEBSTER'S "AMERICAN SPELLING BOOK"
134. TITLE-PAGE OF HODDER'S ARITHMETIC
135. A "CHRISTIAN BROTHERS" SCHOOL
136. AN ENGLISH DAME SCHOOL
137. GRAVEL LANE CHARITY-SCHOOL, SOUTHWARK
138. A CHARITY-SCHOOL GIRL IN UNIFORM
139. A CHARITY-SCHOOL BOY IN UNIFORM
140. ADVERTISEMENT FOR A TEACHER TO LET
141. A SCHOOL WHIPPING-POST
142. AN EIGHTEENTH-CENTURY GERMAN SCHOOL
143. CHILDREN AS MINIATURE ADULTS
144. A PENNSYLVANIA ACADEMY
145. FREDERICK THE GREAT
146. MARIA THERESA
147. MONTESQUIEU (1689-1755)
148. TURGOT (1727-81)
149. VOLTAIRE (1694-1778)
150. DIDEROT (1713-84)
151. JOHN WESLEY (1707-82)
152. NATIONALITY OF THE WHITE POPULATION, AS SHOWN BY THE FAMILY NAMES
IN THE CENSUS OF 1790
153. THE STATES-GENERAL IN SESSION AT VERSAILLES
154. ROUSSEAU (1712-78)
155. LA CHALOTAIS (1701-83)
156. ROLLAND (1734-93)
157. COUNT DE MIRABEAU (1749-91)
158. TALLEYRAND (1758-1838)
159. CONDORCET (1743-94)
160. THE INSTITUTE OF FRANCE
161. LAKANAL (1762-1845)
162. THOMAS JEFFERSON (1743-1826)
163. THE ROUSSEAU MONUMENT AT GENEVA
164. BASEDOW (1723-90)
165. IMMANUEL KANT (1724-1804)
166. THE SCENE OF PESTALOZZI'S LABORS
167. FELLENBERG (1771-1844)
168. THE SCHOOL OF A HANDWORKER
169. THE KINGDOM OF PRUSSIA, 1740-86
170. A GERMAN LATE EIGHTEENTH-CENTURY SCHOOL
171. DINTER (1760-1831)
172. DIESTERWEG (1790-1866)
173. THE PRUSSIAN STATE SCHOOL SYSTEM CREATED
174. AN OLD FOUNDATION TRANSFORMED
175. COUNT DE FOURCROY (1755-1809)
176. VICTOR COUSIN (1792-1867)
177. OUTLINE OF THE MAIN FEATURES OF THE FRENCH STATE SCHOOL SYSTEM
178. EUROPE IN 1810
179. THE UNIFICATION OF ITALY, SINCE 1848
180. COUNT OF CAVOUR (1810-61)
181. OUTLINE OF THE MAIN FEATURES OF THE ITALIAN STATE SCHOOL SYSTEM
182. A RAGGED-SCHOOL PUPIL
183. ADAM SMITH (1723-90)
184. THE REVEREND T. R. MALTHUS (1766-1834)
185. THE CREATORS OF THE MONITORIAL SYSTEM
186. THE LANCASTRIAN MODEL SCHOOL IN BOROUGH ROAD, SOUTH-WARE, LONDON
187. MONITORS TEACHING READING AT "STATIONS"
188. PROPER MONITORIAL-SCHOOL POSITIONS
189. ROBERT OWEN (1771-1858)
190. LORD BROUGHAM (1778-1868)
191. AN ENGLISH VILLAGE SCHOOL IN 1840
192. EXPENDITURE FROM THE EDUCATION GRANTS, 1839-70
193. LORD T. B. MACAULAY (1800-59)
194. WORK OF THE SCHOOL BOARDS IN PROVIDING SCHOOL ACCOMMODATIONS
195. THE ENGLISH EDUCATIONAL SYSTEM AS FINALLY EVOLVED
196. THE FIRST SCHOOLHOUSE BUILT BY THE FREE SCHOOL SOCIETY IN NEW YORK
CITY
197. "MODEL" SCHOOL BUILDING OF THE PUBLIC SCHOOL SOCIETY
198. EVOLUTION OF THE ESSENTIAL FEATURES OF THE AMERICAN PUBLIC SCHOOL
SYSTEM
199. DATES OF THE GRANTING OF FULL MANHOOD SUFFRAGE
200. THE FIRST FREE PUBLIC SCHOOL IN DETROIT
201. THE PENNSYLVANIA SCHOOL ELECTIONS OF 1835
202. THE NEW YORK REFERENDUM OF 1850
203. STATUS OF SCHOOL SUPERVISION IN THE UNITED STATES BY 1861
204. A TYPICAL NEW ENGLAND ACADEMY
205. THE DEVELOPMENT OF SECONDARY SCHOOLS IN THE UNITED STATES
206. THE FIRST HIGH SCHOOL IN THE UNITED STATES
207. HIGH SCHOOLS IN THE UNITED STATES BY 1860
208. COLLEGES AND UNIVERSITIES ESTABLISHED BY 1860
209. THE AMERICAN EDUCATIONAL LADDER
210. THE SCHOOL SYSTEM OF DENMARK
211. THE PROGRESS OF LITERACY IN EUROPE BY THE CLOSE OF THE NINETEENTH
CENTURY
212. THE SCHOOL SYSTEM OF THE ARGENTINE REPUBLIC
213. THE JAPANESE TWO-CLASS SCHOOL SYSTEM
214. THE CHINESE EDUCATIONAL LADDER
215. BARON JUSTUS VON LIEBIG (1803-73)
216. CHARLES DARWIN (1809-82)
217. LOUIS PASTEUR (1822-95)
218. MAN POWER BEFORE THE DAYS OF STEAM
219. THRESHING WHEAT A CENTURY AGO
220. A CITY WATER-SUPPLY, ABOUT 1830
221. THE GREAT TRADE ROUTES OF THE MODERN WORLD
222. AN EXAMPLE OF THE SHIFTING OF OCCUPATIONS
223. THE PHILIPPINE SCHOOL SYSTEM
224. THE FIRST MODERN NORMAL SCHOOL
225. TEACHER-TRAINING IN THE UNITED STATES BY 1860
226. EVOLUTION OF THE ELEMENTARY-SCHOOL CURRICULUM, AND OF METHODS OF
TEACHING
227. AN "USHER" AND HIS CLASS
228. REDIRECTED MANUAL TRAINING
229. HERBERT SPENCER (1820-1903)
230. THOMAS H. HUXLEY (1825-95)
231. A REORGANIZED KINDERGARTEN
232. THE PEKING UNION MEDICAL COLLEGE
233. THE DESTRUCTION OF THE TRADES IN MODERN INDUSTRY
234. SCHOOL ATTENDANCE OF AMERICAN CHILDREN, FOURTEEN TO TWENTY YEARS OF
AGE
235. ABBÉ DE L'ÉPÉE (1712-89)
236. THE REVEREND THOMAS H. GALLAUDET TEACHING THE DEAF AND DUMB
237. EDUCATIONAL INSTITUTIONS MAINTAINED BY THE STATE
238. KARL GEORG VON RAUMER (1783-1865)
239. THE ESTABLISHED AND EXPERIMENTAL NATIONS OF EUROPE
240. THE EDUCATIONAL PROBLEMS OF THE FUTURE
GENERAL BIBLIOGRAPHY
In addition to the List of Readings and the Supplemental References given
in the chapter bibliographies, the following works, not cited in the
chapter bibliographies, will be found in most libraries and may be
consulted, on all points to which they are likely to apply, for additional
material:
I. GENERAL HISTORIES OF EDUCATION
1. Davidson, Thomas. _History of Education_. 292 pp. New York, 1900.
Good on the interpretation of the larger movements of history.
*2. Monroe, Paul. _Text Book in the History of Education_. 772 pp.
New York, 1905.
Our most complete and scholarly history of education. This volume
should be consulted freely. See analytical table of contents.
3. Munroe, Jas. P. _The Educational Ideal_. 262 pp. Boston, 1895.
Contains very good short chapters on the educational reformers.
*4. Graves, F. P. _A History of Education_. 3 vols. New York, 1909-
13. Vol. I. _Before the Middle Ages_. 304 pp. Vol. II. _During
the Middle Ages_. 314 pp. Vol. III. _In Modern Times_. 410 pp.
These volumes contain valuable supplementary material, and good
chapter bibliographies.
5. Hart, J. K. _Democracy in Education_. 418 pp. New York, 1918.
An interpretation of educational progress.
6. Quick, R. H. _Essays on Educational Reformers_. 508 pp. 2d ed.,
New York, 1890.
A series of well-written essays on the work of the theorists in
education since the time of the Renaissance.
*7. Parker, S. C. _The History of Modern Elementary Education_. 506
pp. Boston, 1912.
An excellent treatise on the development of the theory for our modern
elementary school, with some good descriptions of modern practice.
II. GENERAL BIBLIOGRAPHIES OF EDUCATION
1. Cubberley, E. P. _Syllabus of Lectures on the History of
Education_. 358 pp. New York. First ed., 1902; 2d ed., 1905.
Gives detailed and classified bibliographies for all phases of the
subject. Now out of print, but may be found in most normal school and
college libraries, and many public libraries.
III. CYCLOPAEDIAS
*1. Monroe, Paul, Editor. _Cyclopedia of Education_. 5 vols. New
York, 1911-13.
The most important Cyclopaedia of Education in print. Contains
excellent articles on all historical points and events, with good
selected bibliographies. A work that should be in all libraries, and
freely consulted in using this Text. Its historical articles are too
numerous to cite in the chapter bibliographies, but, due to the
alphabetical arrangement and good cross-referencing, they may be found
easily.
*2. _Encylopaedia Britannica_. 11th ed., 29 vols. Cambridge, 1910-11.
Contains numerous important articles on all types of historical
topics, and excellent biographical sketches. Should be consulted
freely in using this Text.
IV. MAGAZINES
*1. Barnard's _American Journal of Education_. Edited by Henry
Barnard. 31 vols. Hartford, 1855-81. Reprinted, Syracuse, 1902.
_Index_ to the 31 vols. published by the United States Bureau of
Education, Washington, 1892.
A wonderful mine of all kinds of historical and educational
information, and should be consulted freely on all points relating to
European or American educational history.
In the chapter bibliographies, as above, the most important references are
indicated with an asterisk (*).
THE HISTORY OF EDUCATION
INTRODUCTION
THE SOURCES OF OUR CIVILIZATION
The Civilization which we of to-day enjoy is a very complex thing, made up
of many different contributions, some large and some small, from people in
many different lands and different ages. To trace all these contributions
back to their sources would be a task impossible of accomplishment, and,
while specific parts would be interesting, for our purposes they would not
be important. Especially would it not be profitable for us to attempt to
trace the development of minor features, or to go back to the rudimentary
civilizations of primitive peoples. The early development of civilization
among the Chinese, the Hindoos, the Persians, the Egyptians, or the
American Indians all alike present features which to some form a very
interesting study, but our western civilization does not go back to these
as sources, and consequently they need not concern us in the study we are
about to begin. While we have obtained the alphabet from the Phoenicians
and some of our mathematical and scientific developments through the
medium of the Mohammedans, the real sources of our present-day
civilization lie elsewhere, and these minor sources will be referred to
but briefly and only as they influenced the course of western progress.
The civilization which we now know and enjoy has come down to us from four
main sources. The Greeks, the Romans, and the Christians laid the
foundations, and in the order named, and the study of the early history of
our western civilization is a study of the work and the blending of these
three main forces. It is upon these three foundation stones, superimposed
upon one another, that our modern European and American civilization has
been developed. The Germanic tribes, overrunning the boundaries of the
Roman Empire in the fourth and fifth centuries, added another new force of
largest future significance, and one which profoundly modified all
subsequent progress and development. To these four main sources we have
made many additions in modern times, building an entirely new
superstructure on the old foundations, but the groundwork of our
civilization is composed of these four foundation elements. For these
reasons a history of even modern education almost of necessity goes back,
briefly at least, to the work and contributions of these ancient peoples.
Starting, then, with the work of the Greeks, we shall state briefly the
contributions to the stream of civilization which have come down to us
from each of the important historic peoples or groups or forces, and shall
trace the blending and assimilating processes of the centuries. While
describing briefly the educational institutions and ideas of the different
peoples, we shall be far less concerned, as we progress down the
centuries, with the educational and philosophical theories advanced by
thinkers among them than with what was actually done, and with the lasting
contributions which they made to our educational practices and to our
present-day civilization.
The work of Greece lies at the bottom and, in a sense, was the most
important of all the earlier contributions to our education and
civilization. These people, known as Hellenes, were the pioneers of
western civilization. Their position in the ancient world is well shown on
the map reproduced opposite. To the East lay the older political
despotisms, with their caste-type and intellectually stagnant organization
of society, and to the North and West a little-known region inhabited by
barbarian tribes. It was in such a world that our western civilization had
its birth. These Greeks, and especially the Athenian Greeks, represented
an entirely new spirit in the world. In place of the repression of all
individuality, and the stagnant conditions of society that had
characterized the civilizations before them, they developed a civilization
characterized by individual freedom and opportunity, and for the first
time in world history a premium was placed on personal and political
initiative. In time this new western spirit was challenged by the older
eastern type of civilization. Long foreseeing the danger, and in fear of
what might happen, the little Greek States had developed educational
systems in part designed to prepare their citizens for what might come.
Finally, in a series of memorable battles, the Greeks, led by Athens,
broke the dread power of the Persian name and made the future of this new
type of civilization secure. At Marathon, Salamis, and Plataea the fate of
our western civilization trembled in the balance. Now followed the great
creative period in Greek life, during which the Athenian Greeks matured
and developed a literature, philosophy, and art which were to be enjoyed
not only by themselves, but by all western peoples since their time. In
these lines of culture the world will forever remain debtor to this small
but active and creative people.
[Illustration: FIG. I. THE EARLY GREEK CONCEPTION OF THE WORLD
The World according to Hecataeus, a geographer of Miletus, Asia Minor.
Hecataeus was the first Greek traveler and geographer. The map dates from
about 500 B.C.]
The next great source of our western civilization was the work of Rome.
Like the Greeks, the Romans also occupied a peninsula jutting southward
into the Mediterranean, but in most respects they were far different in
type. Unlike the active, imaginative, artistic, and creative Greeks, the
Romans were a practical, concrete, unimaginative, and executive people.
Energy, personality, and executive power were in greatest demand among
them.
The work of Rome was political, governmental, and legal--not artistic or
intellectual. Rome was strong where Greece was weak, and weak where Greece
was strong. As a result the two peoples supplemented one another well in
laying the foundations for our western civilization. The conquests of
Greece were intellectual; those of Rome legal and governmental. Rome
absorbed and amalgamated the whole ancient world into one Empire, to which
she gave a common language, dress, manners, religion, literature, and
political and legal institutions. Adopting Greek learning and educational
practices as her own, she spread them throughout the then-known world. By
her political organization she so fixed Roman ideas as to law and
government throughout the Empire that Christianity built firmly on the
Roman foundations, and the German barbarians, who later swept over the
Empire, could neither destroy nor obliterate them. The Roman conquest of
the world thus decisively influenced the whole course of western history,
spread and perpetuated Greek ideas, and ultimately saved the world from a
great disaster.
To Rome, then, we are indebted most of all for ideas as to government, and
for the introduction of law and order into an unruly world. In all the
intervening centuries between ancient Rome and ourselves, and in spite of
many wars and repeated onslaughts of barbarism, Roman governmental law
still influences and guides our conduct, and this influence is even yet
extending to other lands and other peoples. We are also indebted to Rome
for many practical skills and for important engineering knowledge, which
was saved and passed on to Western Europe through the medium of the monks.
On the other side of the picture, the recent great World War, with all its
awful destruction of life and property, and injury to the orderly progress
of civilization, may be traced directly to the Roman idea of world empire
and the sway of one imperial government, imposing its rule and its culture
on the rest of mankind.
Into this Roman Empire, united and made one by Roman arms and government,
came the first of the modern forces in the ancient world--that of
Christianity--the third great foundation element in our western
civilization. Embracing in its early development many Greek philosophical
ideas, building securely on the Roman governmental organization, and with
its new message for a decaying world, Christianity forms the connecting
link between the ancient and modern civilizations. Taking the conception
of one God which the Jewish tribes of the East had developed, Christianity
changed and expanded this in such a way as to make it a dominant idea in
the world. Exalting the teachings of the fatherhood of God, the
brotherhood of man, the future life, and the need for preparation for a
hereafter, Christianity introduced a new type of religion and offered a
new hope to the poor and oppressed of the ancient world. In so doing a new
ethical force of first importance was added to the effective energies of
mankind, and a basis for the education of all was laid, for the first
time, in the history of the world.
Christianity came at just the right time not only to impart new energy and
hopefulness to a decadent ancient civilization, but also to meet, conquer,
and in time civilize the barbarian hordes from the North which overwhelmed
the Roman Empire. A new and youthful race of German barbarians now
appeared upon the scene, with resulting ravage and destruction, and
anarchy and ignorance, and long centuries ensued during which ancient
civilization fell prey to savage violence and superstition. Progress
ceased in the ancient world. The creative power of antiquity seemed
exhausted. The digestive and assimilative powers of the old world seemed
gone. Greek was forgotten. Latin was corrupted. Knowledge of the arts and
sciences was lost. Schools disappeared. Only the Christian Church remained
to save civilization from the wreck, and it, too, was almost submerged in
the barbaric flood. It took ten centuries partially to civilize, educate,
and mould into homogeneous units this heterogeneous horde of new peoples.
During this long period it required the strongest energies of the few who
understood to preserve the civilization of the past for the enjoyment and
use of a modern world.
Yet these barbarian Germans, great as was the havoc they wrought at first,
in time contributed much to the stream of our modern civilization. They
brought new conceptions of individual worth and freedom into a world
thoroughly impregnated with the ancient idea of the dominance of the State
over the individual. The popular assembly, an elective king, and an
independent and developing system of law were contributions of first
importance which these peoples brought. The individual man and not the
State was, with them, the important unit in society. In the hands of the
Angles and Saxons, particularly, but also among the Celts, Franks,
Helvetii, and Belgae, this idea of individual freedom and of the
subordination of the State to the individual has borne large fruit in
modern times in the self-governing States of France, Switzerland, Belgium,
England and the English self-governing dominions, and in the United States
of America. After much experimenting it now seems certain that the Anglo-
Saxon type of self-government, as developed first in England and further
expanded in the United States, seems destined to be the type of government
in future to rule the world.
It took Europe almost ten centuries to recover from the effects of the
invasion of barbarism which the last two centuries of the Roman Empire
witnessed, to save itself a little later from Mohammedan conquest, and to
pick up the lost threads of the ancient life and begin again the work of
civilization. Finally, however, this was accomplished, largely as a result
of the labor of monks and missionaries. The barbarians were in time
induced to settle down to an agricultural life, to accept Christianity in
name at least, and to yield a more or less grudging obedience to monk and
priest that they might thereby escape the torments of a world to come.
Slowly the monasteries and the churches, aided here and there by far-
sighted kings, worked at the restoration of books and learning, and
finally, first in Italy, and later in the nations evolved from the tribes
that had raided the Empire, there came a period of awakening and
rediscovery which led to the development of the early university
foundations, a wonderful revival of ancient learning, a great expansion of
men's thoughts, a great religious awakening, a wonderful period of world
exploration and discovery, the founding of new nations in new lands, the
reawakening of the spirit of scientific inquiry, the rise of the
democratic spirit, and the evolution of our modern civilization.
By the end of the eleventh century it was clear that the long battle for
the preservation of civilization had been won, but it was not until the
fourteenth century that the Revival of Learning in Italy gave clear
evidence of the rise of the modern spirit. By the year 1500 much had been
accomplished, and the new modern questioning spirit of the Italian Revival
was making progress in many directions. Most of the old learning had been
recovered; the printing-press had been invented, and was at work
multiplying books; the study of Greek and Hebrew had been revived in the
western world; trade and commerce had begun; the cities and the
universities which had arisen had become centers of a new life; a new sea
route to India had been found and was in use; Columbus had discovered a
new world; the Church was more tolerant of new ideas than it had been for
centuries; and thought was being awakened in the western world to a degree
that had not taken place since the days of ancient Rome. The world seemed
about ready for rapid advances in many directions, and great progress in
learning, education, government, art, commerce, and invention seemed
almost within its grasp. Instead, there soon opened the most bitter and
vindictive religious conflict the world has ever known; western Christian
civilization was torn asunder; a century of religious warfare ensued; and
this was followed by other centuries of hatred and intolerance and
suspicion awakened by the great conflict.
Still, out of this conflict, though it for a time checked the orderly
development of civilization, much important educational progress was
ultimately to come. In promulgating the doctrine that the authority of the
Bible in religious matters is superior to the authority of the Church, the
basis for the elementary school for the masses of the people, and in
consequence the education of all, was laid. This meant the creation of an
entirely new type of school--the elementary, for the masses, and taught in
the native tongue--to supplement the Latin secondary schools which had
been an outgrowth of the revival of ancient learning, and the still
earlier cathedral and monastery schools of the Church.
The modern elementary vernacular school may then be said to be essentially
a product of the Protestant Reformation. This is true in a special sense
among those peoples which embraced some form of the Lutheran or
Calvinistic faiths. These were the Germans, Moravians, Swedes, Norwegians,
Finns, Danes, Dutch, Walloons, Swiss, Scotch, Scotch-Irish, French
Huguenots, and the English Puritans. As the Renaissance gave a new
emphasis to the development of secondary schools by supplying them with a
large amount of new subject-matter and a new motive, so the Reformation
movement gave a new motive for the education of children not intended for
the service of the State or the Church, and the development of elementary
vernacular schools was the result. Only in England, of all the revolting
countries, did this Protestant conception as to the necessity of education
for salvation fail to take deep root, with the result that elementary
education in England awaited the new political and social and industrial
impulses of the latter half of the nineteenth century for its real
development.
The rise of the questioning and inferring spirit in the Italian
Renaissance marked the beginnings of the transition from mediaeval to
modern attitudes, and one of the most important outgrowths of this was the
rise of scientific inquiry which in time followed. This meant the
application of human reason to the investigation of the phenomena of
nature, with all that this eventually implied. This, slowly to be sure,
turned the energies of mankind in a new direction, led to the substitution
of inquiry and patient experimentation for assumption and disputation, and
in time produced a scientific and industrial revolution which has changed
the whole nature of the older problems. The scientific spirit has to-day
come to dominate all lines of human thinking, and the applications of
scientific principles have, in the past century, completely changed almost
all the conditions surrounding human life. Applied to education, this new
spirit has transformed the instruction and the methods of the schools, led
to the creation of entirely new types of educational institutions, and
introduced entirely new aims and methods and purposes into the educational
process.
From inquiry into religious matters and inquiry into the phenomena of
nature, it was but a short and a natural step to inquiry into the nature
and functions of government. This led to a critical questioning of the old
established order, the rise of new types of intellectual inquiry, the
growth of a consciousness of national problems, and the bringing to the
front of questions of political interest to a degree unknown since the
days of ancient Rome. The eighteenth century marks, in these directions, a
sharp turning-point in human thinking, and the end of mediaevalism and the
ushering in of modern forms of intellectual liberty. The eighteenth
century, too, witnessed a culmination of a long series of progressive
changes which had been under way for centuries, and the flood time of a
slowly but steadily rising tide of protest against the enslavement of the
intellect and the limitation of natural human liberties by either Church
or State. The flood of individualism which characterized the second half
of the eighteenth century demanded outlet, and, denied, it rose and swept
away ancient privileges, abuses, and barriers--religious, intellectual,
social, and political--and opened the way for the marked progress in all
lines which characterized the nineteenth century. Out of this new spirit
was to come the American and the French Revolutions, the establishment of
constitutional liberty and religious freedom, the beginnings of the
abolition of privilege, the rise of democracy, a great extension of
educational advantages, and the transfer of the control of the school from
the Church to the State that the national welfare might be better promoted
thereby.
Now arose the modern conception of the school as the great constructive
instrument of the State, and a new individual and national theory as to
both the nature and the purpose of education was advanced. Schools were
declared to be essentially civil affairs; their purpose was asserted to be
to promote the common welfare and advance the interests of the political
State; ministers of education began to be appointed by the State to take
over and exercise control; the citizen supplanted the ecclesiastic in the
organization of education and the supervision of classroom teaching; the
instruction in the school was changed in direction, and in time vastly
broadened in scope; and the education of all now came to be conceived of
as a birthright of the child of every citizen.
Since the middle of the nineteenth century a great world movement for the
realization of these new aims, through the taking-over of education from
religious bodies and the establishment of state-controlled school systems,
has taken place. This movement is still going on. Beginning in the nations
which were earliest in the front of the struggle to preserve and extend
what was so well begun by little Greece and Imperial Rome, the state-
control conception of education has, in the past three quarters of a
century, spread to every continent on the globe. For ages a Church and
private affair, of no particular concern to government and of importance
to but a relatively small number of the people, education has to-day
become, with the rise and spread of modern ideas as to human freedom,
political equality, and industrial progress, a prime essential to the
maintenance of good government and the promotion of national welfare, and
it is now so recognized by progressive nations everywhere. With the spread
of the state-control idea as to education have also gone western ideas as
to government, human rights, social obligations, political equality, pure
and applied science, trade, industry, transportation, intellectual and
moral improvement, and humanitarian influences which are rapidly
transforming and modernizing not only less progressive western nations,
but ancient civilizations as well, and along the lines so slowly and so
painfully worked out by the inheritors of the conceptions of human freedom
first thought out in little Greece, and those of political equality and
government under law so well worked out by ancient Rome, Western
civilization thus promises to become the dominant force in world
civilization and human progress, with general education as its agent and
greatest constructive force.
Such is a brief outline sketch of the history of the rise and spread and
progress of our western civilization, as expressed in the history of the
progress of education, and as we shall trace it in much more detail in the
chapters which are to follow. The road that man has traveled from the days
when might made right, and when children had no claims which the State or
parents were bound to respect, to a time when the child is regarded as of
first importance, and adults represented in the State declare by law that
the child shall be protected and shall have abundant educational
advantages, is a long road and at times a very crooked one. Its ups and
downs and forward movements have been those of the progress of the race,
and in consequence a history of educational progress must be in part a
history of the progress of civilization itself. Human civilization,
though, represents a more or less orderly evolution, and the education of
man stands as one of the highest expressions of a belief in the
improvability of the race of which mankind is capable.
It is such a development that we propose to trace, and, having now
sketched the broader outlines of the treatment, we next turn to a filling-
in of the details, and begin with the Ancient World and the first
foundation element as found in the little City-States of ancient Greece.
PART I
THE ANCIENT WORLD
THE FOUNDATION ELEMENTS OF OUR WESTERN CIVILIZATION
GREECE--ROME--CHRISTIANITY
CHAPTER I
THE OLD GREEK EDUCATION
I. GREECE AND ITS PEOPLE
THE LAND. Ancient Greece, or Hellas as the Greeks called their homeland,
was but a small country. The map given below shows the Aegean world
superimposed on the States of the old Northwest Territory, from which it
may be seen that the Greek mainland was a little less than half as large
as the State of Illinois. Greece proper was about the size of the State of
West Virginia, but it was a much more mountainous land. No spot in Greece
was over forty miles from the sea. Attica, where a most wonderful
intellectual life arose and flourished for centuries, and whose
contributions to civilization were the chief glory of Greece, was smaller
than two average-size Illinois counties, and about two thirds the size of
the little State of Rhode Island. [1] The country was sparsely populated,
except in a few of the City-States, and probably did not, at its most
prosperous period, contain much more than a million and a half of people--
citizens, foreigners, and slaves included.
[Illustration: FIG. 2. ANCIENT GREECE AND THE AEGEAN WORLD
Superimposed on the East-North-Central Group of American States, to show
relative size. Dotted lines indicate the boundaries of the American
States--Illinois, Indiana, Kentucky, etc. All of Greece will be seen to be
a little less than half the size of the State of Illinois, the Aegean Sea
about the size of the State of Indiana, and Attica not quite so large as
two average-size Illinois counties.]
The land was rough and mountainous, and deeply indented by the sea. The
climate and vegetation were not greatly unlike the climate and vegetation
of Southern California. Pine and fir on the mountain-slopes, and figs,
olives, oranges, lemons, and grapes on the hillsides and plains below,
were characteristic of the land. Fishing, agriculture, and the raising of
cattle and sheep were the important industries. A temperate, bracing
climate, short, mild winters, and a long, dry summer gave an opportunity
for the development of this wonderful civilization. Like Southern
California or Florida in winter, it was essentially an out-of-doors
country. The high mountains to the rear, the sun-steeped skies, and the
brilliant sea in front were alike the beauty of the land and the
inspiration of the people. Especially was this true of Attica, which had
the seashore, the plain, the high mountains, and everywhere magnificent
views through an atmosphere of remarkable clearness. A land of
incomparable beauty and charm, it is little wonder that the Greek citizen,
and the Athenian in particular, took pride in and loved his country, and
was willing to spend much time in preparing himself to govern and defend
it.
THE GOVERNMENT. Politically, Greece was composed of a number of
independent City-States of small size. They had been settled by early
tribes, which originally held the land in common. Attica, with its
approximately seven hundred square miles of territory, was an average-size
City-State. The central city, the surrounding farming and grazing lands,
and the coastal regions all taken together, formed the State, the citizens
of which--city-residents, farmers, herdsmen, and fishermen--controlled the
government. There were in all some twenty of these City-States in mainland
Greece, the most important of which were Attica, of which Athens was the
central city; Laconia, of which Sparta was the central city; and Boeotia,
of which Thebes was the central city. Some of the States developed
democracies, of which class Athens became the most notable example, while
some were governed as oligarchies. Of all the different States but few
played any conspicuous part in the history of Greece. Of these few Attica
stands clearly above them all as the leader in thought and art and the
most progressive in government. Here, truly, was a most wonderful people,
and it is with Attica that the student of the history of education is most
concerned. The best of all Greece was there.
[Illustration: FIG. 3. THE CITY-STATE OF ATTICA]
The little City-States of Greece, as has just been said, were independent
States, just like modern nations. While all the Greeks regarded themselves
as tribes of a single family, descended from a common ancestor, Hellen,
and the bonds of a common race, language, and religion tended to unite
them into a sort of brotherhood, the different City-States were held apart
by their tribal origins, by narrow political sympathies, and by petty
laws. A citizen of one city, for example, was an alien in another, and
could not hold property or marry in a city not his own. Such attitudes and
laws were but natural, the time and age considered.
Sometimes, in case of great danger, as at the time of the Persian
invasions (492-479 B.C.), a number of the States would combine to form a
defensive league; at other times they made war on one another. The federal
principle, such as we know it in the United States in our state and
national governments, never came into play. At different times Athens,
Sparta, and Thebes aspired to the leadership of Greece and tried to unite
the little States into a Hellenic Nation, but the mutual jealousies and
the extreme individualism of the people, coupled with the isolation of the
States and the difficulties of intercommunication through the mountain
passes, stood in the way of any permanent union. [2] What Rome later
accomplished with relative ease and on a large scale, Greece was unable to
do on even a small scale. A lack of capacity to unite for coöperative
undertakings seemed to be a fatal weakness of the Greek character.
THE PEOPLE. The Greeks were among the first of the European peoples to
attain to any high degree of civilization. Their story runs back almost to
the dawn of recorded history. As early as 3500 B.C. they were in an
advanced stone age, and by 2500 B.C. had reached the age of bronze. The
destruction of Homer's Troy dates back to 1200 B.C., and the Homeric poems
to 1100 B.C., while an earlier Troy (Schliemann's second city) goes back
to 2400 B.C. This history concerns the mainland of Asia Minor. By 1000
B.C. the southern peninsula of Greece had been colonized, between 900 and
800 B.C. Attica and other portions of upper Greece had been settled, and
by 650 B.C. Greek colonization had extended to many parts of the
Mediterranean. [3]
The lower part of the Greek peninsula, known as Laconia, was settled by
the Dorian branch of the Greek family, a practical, forceful, but a wholly
unimaginative people. Sparta was their most important city. To the north
were the Ionic Greeks, a many-sided and a highly imaginative people.
Athens was their chief city. In the settlement of Laconia the Spartans
imposed themselves as an army of occupation on the original inhabitants,
whom they compelled to pay tribute to them, and established a military
monarchy in southern Greece. The people of Attica, on the other hand,
absorbed into their own body the few earlier settlers of the Attic plain.
They also established a monarchy, but, being a people more capable of
progress, this later evolved into a democracy. The people of Attica were
in consequence a somewhat mixed race, which possibly in part accounts for
their greater intellectual ability and versatility. [4]
It accounts, though, only in part. Climate, beautiful surroundings, and
contact with the outside world probably also contributed something, but
the real basis underneath was the very superior quality of the people of
Attica. In some way, just how we do not know, these people came to be
endowed with a superior genius and the rather unusual ability to make
those progressive changes in living and government which enabled them to
make the most of their surroundings and opportunities, and to advance
while others stood still. Far more than other Greeks, the people of Attica
were imaginative, original, versatile, adaptable, progressive, endowed
with rare mental ability, keenly sensitive to beauty in nature and art,
and possessed of a wonderful sense of proportion and a capacity for
moderation in all things. Only on such an assumption can we account for
their marvelous achievements in art, philosophy, literature, and science
at this very early period in the development of the civilization of the
world.
CLASSES IN THE POPULATION. Greece, as was the ancient world in general,
was built politically on the dominant power of a ruling class. In
consequence, all of course could not become citizens of the State, even
after a democracy had been evolved. Citizenship came with birth and proper
education, and, before 509 B.C., foreigners were seldom admitted to
privileges in the State. Only a male citizen might hold office, protect
himself in the courts, own land, or attend the public assemblies. Only a
citizen, too, could participate in the religious festivals and rites, for
religion was an affair of the ruling families of the State. In
consequence, family, religion, and citizenship were all bound up together,
and education and training were chiefly for citizenship and religious
(moral) ends.
Even more, citizenship everywhere in the earlier period was a degree to be
attained to only after proper education and preliminary military and
political training. This not only made some form of education necessary,
but confined educational advantages to male youths of proper birth. There
was of course no purpose in educating any others. [5] From Figure 4 it
will be seen what a small percentage of the total population this
included. Education in Greece was essentially the education of the
children of the ruling class to perpetuate the rule of that class.
Attica almost alone among the Greek States adopted anything approaching a
liberal attitude toward the foreign-born; in Sparta, and generally
elsewhere in Greece, they were looked upon with deep suspicion. As a
result most of the foreign residents of Greece were to be found in Athens,
or its neighboring port city (the Piraeus), attracted there by the
hospitality of the people and the intellectual or commercial advantages of
these cities. After Athens had become the center of world thought, many
foreigners took up their residence in the city because of the importance
of its intellectual life. Foreigners, though, they remained up to 509 B.C.
(See page 40.) Only rarely before this date, and then only for some
conspicuous act of patriotism, and by special vote of the citizens, was a
foreigner admitted to citizenship. Unlike Rome, which received those of
alien birth freely into its citizenship, and opened up to them large
opportunities of every kind, the Greeks persistently refused to assimilate
the foreign-born. Regarding themselves as a superior people, descended
from the gods, they held themselves apart rather exclusively as above
other peoples. This kept the blood pure, but, from the standpoint of world
usefulness, it was a serious defect in Greek life. [6]
Beneath both citizens and foreign residents was a great foundation mass of
working slaves, who rendered all types of menial and intellectual
services. Sailors, household servants, field workers, clerks in shops and
offices, accountants, and pedagogues were among the more common
occupations of slaves in Greece. Many of these had been citizens and
learned men of other City-States or countries, but had been carried off as
captives in some war. This was a common practice in the ancient world,
slavery being the lot of alien conquered people almost without exception.
The composition of Attica, just before the outbreak of the Peloponnesian
War (431 B.C.) is shown in Figure 4. The great number of slaves and
foreigners is clearly seen, even though the citizenship had by this time
been greatly extended. In Sparta and in other City-States somewhat similar
conditions prevailed as to numbers [7] but there the slaves (Helots)
occupied a lower status than in Athens, being in reality serfs, tied to
and being sold with the land, and having no rights which a citizen was
bound to respect.
[Illustration: FIG. 4. DISTRIBUTION OF THE POPULATION OF ATHENS AND
ATTICA, ABOUT 430 B.C. (After Gulick)]
Education, then, being only for the male children of citizens, and
citizenship a degree to be attained to on the basis of education and
training, let us next see in what that education consisted, and what were
its most prominent characteristics and results.
II. EARLY EDUCATION IN GREECE
Some form of education that would train the son of the citizen for
participation in the religious observances and duties of a citizen of the
State, and would prepare the State for defense against outward enemies,
was everywhere in Greece recognized as a public necessity, though its
provision, nature, and extent varied in the different City-States. We have
clear information only as to Sparta and Athens, and will consider only
these two as types. Sparta is interesting as representing the old Greek
tribal training, from which Sparta never progressed. Many of the other
Greek City-States probably maintained a system of training much like that
of Sparta. Such educational systems stand as undesirable examples of
extreme state socialism, contributed little to our western civilization,
and need not detain us long. It was Athens, and a few other City-States
which followed her example, which presented the best of Greece and passed
on to the modern world what was most valuable for civilization.
1. _Education in Sparta_
THE PEOPLE. The system of training which was maintained in Sparta was in
part a reflection of the character of the people, and in part a result of
its geographical location. A warlike people by nature, the Spartans were
for long regarded as the ablest fighters in Greece. Laconia, their home,
was a plain surrounded by mountains. They represented but a small
percentage of the total population, which they held in subjection to them
by their military power. [8] The slaves (Helots) were often troublesome,
and were held in check by many kinds of questionable practices. Education
for citizenship with the Spartans meant education for usefulness in an
intensely military State, where preparedness was a prerequisite to safety.
Strength, courage, endurance, cunning, patriotism, and obedience were the
virtues most highly prized, while the humane, literary, and artistic
sentiments were neglected (R. I). Aristotle well expressed it when he said
that "Sparta prepared and trained for war, and in peace rusted like a
sword in its scabbard."
THE EDUCATIONAL SYSTEM. At birth the child was examined by a council of
elders (R. I), and if it did not appear to be a promising child it was
exposed to die in the mountains. If kept, the mother had charge of the
child until seven if a boy, and still longer if a girl. At the beginning
of the eighth year, and until the boy reached the age of eighteen, he
lived in a public barrack, where he was given little except physical drill
and instruction in the Spartan virtues. His food and clothing were scant
and his bed hard. Each older man was a teacher. Running, leaping, boxing,
wrestling, military music, military drill, ball-playing, the use of the
spear, fighting, stealing, and laconic speech and demeanor constituted the
course of study. From eighteen to twenty was spent in professional
training for war, and frequently the youth was publicly whipped to develop
his courage and endurance. For the next ten years--that is, until he was
thirty years old--he was in the army at some frontier post. At thirty the
young man was admitted to full citizenship and compelled to marry, though
continuing to live at the public barrack and spending his energies in
training boys (R. 1). Women and girls were given gymnastic training to
make them strong and capable of bearing strong children. The family was
virtually suppressed in the interests of defense and war. [9] The
intellectual training consisted chiefly in committing to memory the Laws
of Lycurgus, learning a few selections from Homer, and listening to the
conversation of the older men.
As might naturally be supposed, Sparta contributed little of anything to
art, literature, science, philosophy, or government. She left to the world
some splendid examples of heroism, as for example the sacrifice of
Leonidas and his Spartans to hold the pass at Thermopylae, and a warning
example of the brutalizing effect on a people of excessive devotion to
military training. It is a pleasure to turn from this dark picture to the
wonderful (for the time) educational system that was gradually developed
at Athens.
2. _The old Athenian education_
SCHOOLS AND TEACHERS. Athenian education divides itself naturally into two
divisions--the old Athenian training which prevailed up to about the time
of the close of the Persian Wars (479 B.C.) and was an outgrowth of
earlier tribal observances and practices, and later Athenian education,
which characterized the period of maximum greatness of Athens and
afterward. We shall describe these briefly, in order.
The state military socialism of Sparta made no headway in more democratic
Attica. The citizens were too individualistic, and did their own thinking
too well to permit the establishment of any such plan. While education was
a necessity for citizenship, and the degree could not be obtained without
it, the State nevertheless left every citizen free to make his own
arrangements for the education of his sons, or to omit such education if
he saw fit. Only instruction in reading, writing, music, and gymnastics
were required. If family pride, and the sense of obligation of a parent
and a citizen were not sufficient to force the father to educate his son,
the son was then by law freed from the necessity of supporting his father
in his old age. The State supervised education, but did not establish it.
The teachers were private teachers, and derived their livelihood from
fees. These naturally varied much with the kind of teacher and the wealth
of the parent, much as private lessons in music or dancing do to-day. As
was common in antiquity, the teachers occupied but a low social position
(R. 5), and only in the higher schools of Athens was their standing of any
importance. Greek literature contains many passages which show the low
social status of the schoolmaster. [10] Schools were open from dawn to
dark. The school discipline was severe, the rod being freely used both in
the school and in the home. There were no Saturday and Sunday holidays or
long vacations, such as we know, but about ninety festival and other state
holidays served to break the continuity of instruction (R. 3). The
schoolrooms were provided by the teachers, and were wholly lacking in
teaching equipment, in any modern sense of the term. However, but little
was needed. The instruction was largely individual instruction, the boy
coming, usually in charge of an old slave known as a _pedagogue_, to
receive or recite his lessons. The teaching process was essentially a
telling and a learning-by-heart procedure.
For the earlier years there were two schools which boys attended--the
music and literary school, and a school for physical training. Boys
probably spent part of the day at one school and part at the other, though
this is not certain. They may have attended the two schools on alternate
days. From sixteen to eighteen, if his parents were able, the boy attended
a state-supported _gymnasium_, where an advanced type of physical training
was given. As this was preparatory for the next two years of army service,
the _gymnasia_ were supported by the State more as preparedness measures
than as educational institutions, though they partook of the nature of
both.
[Illustration: FIG. 5. A GREEK BOY]
EARLY CHILDHOOD. As at Sparta the infant was examined at birth, but the
father, and not a council of citizens, decided whether or not it was to be
"exposed" or preserved. Three ceremonies, of ancient tribal origin, marked
the recognition and acceptance of the child. The first took place five
days after birth, when the child was carried around the family hearth by
the nurse, followed by the household in procession. This ceremony,
followed by a feast, was designed to place the child forever under the
care of the family gods. On the tenth day the child was named by the
father, who then formally recognized the child as his own and committed
himself to its rearing and education. The third ceremony took place at the
autumn family festival, when all children born during the preceding year
were presented to the father's clansmen, who decided, by vote, whether or
not the boy or girl was the legitimate and lawful child of Athenian
parents. If approved, the child's name was entered on the registry of the
clan, and he might then aspire to citizenship and inherit property from
his parent (R. 4).
Up to the age of seven both boys and girls grew up together in the home,
under the care of the nurse and mother, engaging in much the same games
and sports as do children anywhere. From the first they were carefully
disciplined for good behavior and for the establishment of self-control
(R. 3). After the age of seven the boy and girl parted company in the
matter of their education, the girl remaining closely secluded in the home
(women and children were usually confined to the upper floor of the house)
and being instructed in the household arts by her mother, while the boy
went to different teachers for his education. Probably many girls learned
to read and write from their mothers or nurses, and the daughters of well-
to-do citizens learned to spin, weave, sew, and embroider. Music was also
a common accomplishment of women. [11]
THE SCHOOL OF THE GRAMMATIST. A Greek boy, unlike a modern school child,
did not go to one teacher. Instead he had at least two teachers, and
sometimes three. To the _grammatist_, who was doubtless an evolution from
an earlier tribal scribe, he went to learn to read and write and count.
The grammatist represented the earliest or primary teacher. To the music
teacher, who probably at first taught reading and writing also, he went
for his instruction in music and literature. Finally, to the _palaestra_
he went for instruction in physical training (R. 3).
[Illustration: FIG. 6. AN ATHENIAN INSCRIPTION
A decree of the Council and Assembly, dating from about 450 B.C. Note the
difficulty of trying to read without any punctuation, and with only
capital letters.]
Reading was taught by first learning the letters, then syllables, and
finally words. [12] Plaques of baked earth, on which the alphabet was
written, like the more modern horn-book (see Figure 130), were frequently
used. [13] The ease with which modern children learn to read was unknown
in Greece. Reading was very difficult to learn, as accentuation,
punctuation, spacing between words, and small letters had not as yet been
introduced. As a result the study required much time, [14] and much
personal ingenuity had to be exercised in determining the meaning of a
sentence. The inscription shown in Figure 6 will illustrate the
difficulties quite well. The Athenian accent, too, was hard to acquire.
[Illustration: FIG. 7. GREEK WRITING-MATERIALS]
The pupil learned to write by first tracing, with the stylus, letters cut
in wax tablets, and later by copying exercises set for him by his teacher,
using the wax tablet and writing on his knee. Still later the pupil
learned to write with ink on papyrus or parchment, though, due to the cost
of parchment in ancient times, this was not greatly used. Slates and paper
were of course unknown in Greece.
There was little need for arithmetic, and but little was taught.
Arithmetic such as we teach would have been impossible with their cumbrous
system of notation. [15] Only the elements of counting were taught, the
Greek using his fingers or a counting-board, such as is shown in Figure 8,
to do his simple reckoning.
[Illustration: FIG. 8 A GREEK COUNTING-BOARD
Pebbles of different size or color were used for thousands, hundreds,
tens, and units. Their position on the board gave them their values. The
board now shows the total 15,379.]
GREAT IMPORTANCE OF READING AND LITERATURE. After the pupil had learned to
read, much attention was given to accentuation and articulation, in order
to secure beautiful reading. Still more, in reading or reciting, the parts
were acted out. The Greeks were a nation of actors, and the recitations in
the schools and the acting in the theaters gave plenty of opportunity for
expression. There were no schoolbooks, as we know them. The master
dictated and the pupils wrote down, or, not uncommonly, learned by heart
what the master dictated. Ink and parchment were now used, the boy making
his own schoolbooks. Homer was the first and the great reading book of the
Greeks, the _Iliad_ and the _Odyssey_ being the Bible of the Greek people.
Then followed Hesiod, Theognis, the Greek poets, and the fables of Aesop.
[16] Reading, declamation, and music were closely interrelated. To appeal
to the emotions and to stir the will along moral and civic lines was a
fundamental purpose of the instruction (R. 5). A modern writer well
characterizes the ancient instruction in literature in the following
words:
By making the works of the great poets of the Greek people the material of
their education, the Athenians attained a variety of objects difficult of
attainment by any other one means. The fact is, the ancient poetry of
Greece, with its finished form, its heroic tales and characters, its
accounts of peoples far removed in time and space, its manliness and
pathos, its directness and simplicity, its piety and wisdom, its respect
for law and order, combined with its admiration for personal initiative
and worth, furnished, in the hands of a careful and genial teacher, a
material for a complete education such as could not well be matched even
in our own day. What instruction in ethics, politics, social life, and
manly bearing could not find a fitting vehicle in the Homeric poems, not
to speak of the geography, the grammar, the literary criticism, and the
history which the comprehension of them involved? Into what a wholesome,
unsentimental, free world did these poems introduce the imaginative Greek
boy! What splendid ideals of manhood and womanhood did they hold up for
his admiration and imitation! From Hesiod he would learn all that he
needed to know about his gods and their relation to him and his people.
From the elegiac poets he would derive a fund of political and social
wisdom, and an impetus to patriotism, which would go far to make him a
good man and a good citizen. From the iambic poets he would learn to
express with energy his indignation at meanness, feebleness, wrong, and
tyranny, while from the lyric poets he would learn the language suitable
to every genial feeling and impulse of the human heart. And in reciting or
singing all these, how would his power of terse, idiomatic expression, his
sense of poetic beauty and his ear for rhythm and music be developed! With
what a treasure of examples of every virtue and vice, and with what a fund
of epigrammatic expression would his memory be furnished! How familiar he
would be with the character and ideals of his nation, how deeply in
sympathy with them! And all this was possible even before the introduction
of letters. With this event a new era in education begins. The boy now not
only learns and declaims his Homer, and sings his Simonides or Sappho; he
learns also to write down their verses from dictation, and so at once to
read and to write. This, indeed, was the way in which these two (to us)
fundamental arts were acquired. As soon as the boy could trace with his
finger in sand, or scratch with a stylus on wax, the forms of the letters,
and combine them into syllables and words, he began to write poetry from
his master's dictation. The writing-lesson of to-day was the reading,
recitation, or singing-lesson of to-morrow. Every boy made his own reading
book, and, if he found it illegible, and stumbled in reading, he had only
himself to blame. The Greeks, and especially the Athenians, laid the
greatest stress on reading well, reciting well, and singing well, and the
youth who could not do all three was looked upon as uncultured. Nor could
he hide his want of culture, since young men were continually called upon,
both at home and at more or less public gatherings, to perform their part
in the social entertainment. [17]
[Illustration: FIG. 9. AN ATHENIAN SCHOOL
From a cup discovered at Caere, signed by the painter Duris, and now in
the Museum of Berlin.
A LESSON IN MUSIC AND LANGUAGE _Explanation_: At the right is the
_paidagogos_; he is seated, and turns his head to look at his pupil, who
is standing before his master. The latter holds a writing-tablet and a
stylus; he is perhaps correcting a task. At the left a pupil is taking a
music lesson. On the wall are hung a roll of manuscript, a folded writing-
tablet, a lyre, and an unknown cross-shaped object.
A LESSON IN MUSIC AND POETRY _Explanation_: At the right sits, cross-
legged, the _paidagogos_, who has just brought in his pupil. The boy
stands before the teacher of poetry and recites his lesson. The master, in
a chair, holds in his hand a roll which he is unfolding, upon which we see
Greek letters. Above these three figures we see on the wall a cup, a lyre,
and a leather case of flutes. To the bag is attached the small box
containing mouthpieces of different kinds for the flutes. Farther on a
pupil is receiving a lesson in music. The master and pupil are both seated
on seats without backs. The master, with head erect, looks at the pupil
who, bent over his lyre, seems absorbed in his playing. Above are hanging
a basket, a lyre, and a cup. On the wall is an inscription in Greek.]
THE MUSIC SCHOOL. The teacher in this school gradually separated himself
from the grammatist, and often the two were found in adjoining rooms in
the same school. In his functions he succeeded the wandering poet or
minstrel of earlier times. Music teachers were common in all the City-
States of Greece. To this teacher the boy went at first to recite his
poetry, and after the thirteenth year for a special music course. The
teacher was known as a _citharist_, and the instrument usually used was
the seven-stringed lyre. This resembled somewhat our modern guitar. The
flute was also used somewhat, but never grew into much favor, partly
because it tended to excite rather than soothe, and partly because of the
contortions of the face to which its playing gave rise. Rhythm, melody,
and the feeling for measure and time were important in instruction, whose
office was to soothe, purge, and harmonize man within and make him fit for
moral instruction through the poetry with which their music was ever
associated. Instead of being a distinct art, as with us, and taught by
itself, music with the Greeks was always subsidiary to the expression of
the spirit of their literature, and in aim it was for moral-training ends.
[18] Both Aristotle and Plato advocate state control of school music to
insure sound moral results. Inferior as their music was to present-day
music, it exerted an influence over their lives which it is difficult for
an American teacher to appreciate.
[Illustration: FIG. 10. GREEK SCHOOL LESSONS
THE SINGING LESSON The boy is singing, to the accompaniment of a flute. On
the wall hangs a bag of flutes.
THE LITERATURE LESSON The boy is reciting, while the teacher follows him
on a roll of manuscript.]
The first lessons taught the use of the instrument, and the simple chants
of the religious services were learned. As soon as the pupil knew how to
play, the master taught him to render the works of the great lyric poets
of Greece. Poetry and music together thus formed a single art. At thirteen
a special music course began which lasted until sixteen, but which only
the sons of the more well-to-do citizens attended. Every boy, though,
learned some music, not that he might be a musician, but that he might be
musical and able to perform his part at social gatherings and participate
in the religious services of the State. Professional playing was left to
slaves and foreigners, and was deemed unworthy a free man and a citizen.
Professionalism in either music or athletics was regarded as disgraceful.
The purpose of both activities was harmonious personal development, which
the Greeks believed contributed to moral worth.
THE PALAESTRA; GYMNASTICS. Very unlike our modern education, fully one
half of a boy's school life, from eight to sixteen, was given to sports
and games in another school under different teachers, known as the
palaestra. The work began gradually, but by fifteen had taken precedence
over other studies. As in music, harmonious physical development and moral
ends were held to be of fundamental importance. The standards of success
were far from our modern standards. To win the game was of little
significance; the important thing was to do the part gracefully and, for
the person concerned, well. To attain to a graceful and dignified carriage
of the body, good physical health, perfect control of the temper, and to
develop quickness of perception, self-possession, ease, and skill in the
games were the aims--not mere strength or athletic prowess (R. 2). Only a
few were allowed to train for participation in the Olympian games.
The work began with children's games, contests in running, and ball games
of various kinds. Deportment--how to get up, walk, sit, and how to achieve
easy manners--was taught by the masters. After the pupils came to be a
little older there was a definite course of study, which included, in
succession: (1) leaping and jumping, for general bodily and lung
development; (2) running contests, for agility and endurance; (3) throwing
the discus, [19] for arm exercise; (4) casting the javelin, for bodily
poise and coördination of movement, as well as for future use in hunting;
(5) boxing and wrestling, for quickness, agility, endurance, and the
control of the temper and passions. Swimming and dancing were also
included for all, dancing being a slow and graceful movement of the body
to music, to develop grace of motion and beauty of form, and to exercise
the whole human being, body and soul. The minuet and some of our folk-
dancing are our nearest approach to the Greek type of dancing, though
still not like it. The modern partner dance was unknown in ancient Greece.
The exercises were performed in classes, or in small groups. They took
place in the open air, and on a dirt or sandy floor. They were accompanied
by music--usually the flute, played by a paid performer. A number of
teachers looked after the boys, examining them physically, supervising the
exercises, directing the work, and giving various forms of instruction.
THE GYMNASIAL TRAINING, SIXTEEN TO EIGHTEEN. Up to this point the
education provided was a private and a family affair. In the home and in
the school the boy had now been trained to be a gentleman, to revere the
gods, to be moral and upright according to Greek standards, and in
addition he had been given that training in reading, writing, music, and
athletic exercises that the State required parents to furnish. It is
certain that many boys, whose parents could ill afford further expense for
schooling, were allowed to quit the schools at from thirteen to fifteen.
Those who expected to become full citizens, however, and to be a part of
the government and hold office, were required to continue until twenty
years of age. Two years more were spent in schooling, largely athletic,
and two years additional in military service. Of this additional training,
if his parents chose and could afford it, the State now took control.
[Illustration: FIG. II. GROUND-PLAN OF THE GYMNASIUM AT EPHESOS, IN ASIA
MINOR
_Explanation:_ A, B, C, pillared corridors, or portico; D, an open space,
possibly a palaestra, evidently intended to supply the peristylium; E, a
long, narrow hall used for games of ball; F, a large hall with seats; G,
in which was suspended a sack filled with chaff for the use of boxers; H,
where the young men sprinkled themselves with dust; I, the cold bath; K,
where the wrestling-master anointed the bodies of the contestants; L, the
cooling-off room; M, the furnace-room; N, the vapor bath; 0, the dry-
sweating apartment; P, the hot bath; Q, Q', rooms for games, for the
keepers, or for other uses; R, R', covered stadia, for use in bad weather;
S, S, S, S, S, rows of seats, looking upon T, the uncovered _stadium_; U,
groves, with seats and walks among the trees; V, V', recessed seats for
the use of philosophers, rhetoricians, and others.]
For the years from sixteen to eighteen the boy attended a state
_gymnasium_, of which two were erected outside of Athens by the State, in
groves of trees, in 590 B.C. Others were erected later in other parts of
Greece. Figure 11 shows the ground plan of one of these _gymnasia_, and a
study of the explanation of the plan will reveal the nature of these
establishments. The boy now had for teachers a number of gymnasts of
ability. The old exercises of the _palaestra_ were continued, but running,
wrestling, and boxing were much emphasized. The youth learned to run in
armor, while wrestling and boxing became more severe. He also learned to
ride a horse, to drive a chariot, to sing and dance in the public
choruses, and to participate in the public state and religious
processions.
Still more, the youth now passed from the supervision of a family
pedagogue to the supervision of the State. For the first time in his life
he was now free to go where he desired about the city; to frequent the
streets, market-place, and theater; to listen to debates and jury trials,
and to witness the great games; and to mix with men in the streets and to
mingle somewhat in public affairs. He saw little of girls, except his
sisters, but formed deep friendships with other young men of his age. [20]
Aside from a requirement that he learn the laws of the State, his
education during this period was entirely physical and civic. If he abused
his liberty he was taken in hand by public officials charged with the
supervision of public morals. He was, however, still regarded as a minor,
and his father (or guardian) was held responsible for his public behavior.
THE CITIZEN-CADET YEARS, EIGHTEEN TO TWENTY. The supervision of the State
during the preceding two years had in a way been joint with that of his
father; now the State took complete control. At the age of eighteen his
father took him before the proper authorities of his district or ward in
the city, and presented him as a candidate for citizenship. He was
examined morally and physically, and if sound, and if the records showed
that he was the legitimate son of a citizen, his name was entered on the
register of his ward as a prospective member of it (R. 4). His long hair
was now cut, he donned the black garb of the citizen, was presented to the
people along with others at a public ceremony, was publicly armed with a
spear and a shield, and then, proceeding to one of the shrines of the
city, on a height overlooking it, he solemnly took the Ephebic oath:
I will never disgrace these sacred arms, nor desert my companion in
the ranks. I will fight for temples and public property, both alone
and with many. I will transmit my fatherland, not only not less, but
greater and better, than it was transmitted to me. I will obey the
magistrates who may at any time be in power. I will observe both the
existing laws and those which the people may unanimously hereafter
make, and, if any person seek to annul the laws or to set them at
naught, I will do my best to prevent him, and will defend them both
alone and with many. I will honor the religion of my fathers. And I
call to witness Aglauros, Enyalios, Ares, Zeus, Thallo, Auxo, and
Hegemone.
He was now an _Ephebos_, or citizen-cadet, with still two years of severe
training ahead of him before he could take up the full duties of
citizenship. The first year he spent in and near Athens, learning to be a
soldier. He did what recruits do almost everywhere--drill, camp in the
open, learn the army methods and discipline, and march in public
processions and take part in religious festivals. This first year was much
like that of new troops in camp being worked into real soldiers. At the
end of the year there was a public drill and inspection of the cadets,
after which they were sent to the frontier. It was now his business to
come to know his country thoroughly--its topography, roads, springs,
seashores, and mountain passes. He also assisted in enforcing law and
order throughout the country districts, as a sort of a state constabulary
or rural police. At the end of this second year of practical training the
second examination was held, the cadet was now admitted to full
citizenship, and passed to the ranks of a trained citizen in the reserve
army of defense, as does a boy in Switzerland to-day (R. 4).
RESULTS UNDER THE OLD GREEK SYSTEM. Such was the educational system which
was in time evolved from the earlier tribal practices of the citizens of
old Athens. If we consider Sparta as representing the earlier tribal
education of the Greek peoples, we see how far the Athenians, due to their
wonderful ability to make progress, were able to advance beyond this
earlier type of preparation for citizenship (R. 5). Not only did Athens
surpass all Greece, but, for the first time in the history of the world,
we find here, expressing itself in the education of the young, the modern
western, individualistic and democratic spirit, as opposed to the
deadening caste and governmental systems of the East. Here first we find a
free people living under political conditions which favored liberty,
culture, and intellectual growth, and using their liberty to advance the
culture and the knowledge of the people (R. 6).
Here also we find, for the first time, the thinkers of the State deeply
concerned with the education of the youth of the State, and viewing
education as a necessity to make life worth living and secure the State
from dangers, both within and without. To prepare men by a severe but
simple and honest training to fear the gods, to do honest work, to despise
comfort and vice, to obey the laws, to respect their neighbors and
themselves, and to reverence the wisdom of their race, was the aim of this
old education. The schooling for citizenship was rigid, almost
puritanical, but it produced wonderful results, both in peace and in war.
[21] Men thus trained guided the destinies of Athens during some two
centuries, and the despotism of the East as represented by Persia could
not defeat them at Marathon, Salamis, and Plataea.
THE SIMPLE AND EFFECTIVE CURRICULUM. The simplicity of the curriculum was
one of its marked features. In a manner seldom witnessed in the world's
educational history, the Greeks used their religion, literature,
government, and the natural activities of young men to impart an education
of wonderful effectiveness. [22] The subjects we have valued so highly for
training were to them unknown. They taught no arithmetic or grammar, no
science, no drawing, no higher mathematics, and no foreign tongue. Music,
the literature and religion of their own people, careful physical
training, and instruction in the duties and practices of citizenship
constituted the entire curriculum.
It was an education by doing; not one of learning from books. That it was
an attractive type of education there is abundant testimony by the Greeks
themselves. We have not as yet come to value physical education as did the
Greeks, nor are we nearly so successful in our moral education, despite
the aid of the Christian religion which they did not know. It was, to be
sure, class education, and limited to but a small fraction of the total
population. In it girls had no share. There were many features of Greek
life, too, that are repugnant to modern conceptions. Yet, despite these
limitations, the old education of Athens still stands as one of the most
successful in its results of any system of education which has been
evolved in the history of the world. Considering its time and place in the
history of the world and that it was a development for which there were
nowhere any precedents, it represented a very wonderful evolution.
QUESTIONS FOR DISCUSSION
1. Why are imaginative ability and many-sided natures such valuable
characteristics for any people?
2. Why is the ability to make progressive changes, possessed so markedly
by the Athenian Greeks, an important personal or racial characteristic?
3. Are the Athenian characteristics, stated in the middle of page 19,
characteristics capable of development by training, or are they native, or
both?
4. How do you explain the Greek failure to achieve political unity?
5. Would education for citizenship with us to-day possess the same defects
as in ancient Greece? Why? Do we give an equivalent training?
6. Which is the better attitude for a nation to assume toward the
foreigner--the Greek, or the American? Why?
7. Why does a state military socialism, such as prevailed at Sparta, tend
to produce a people of mediocre intellectual capacity?
8. How do you account for the Athenian State leaving literary and musical
education to private initiative, but supporting state _gymnasia_?
9. Would the Athenian method of instruction have been possible had all
children in the State been given an education? Why?
10. How did the education of an Athenian girl differ from that of a girl
in the early American colonies?
11. Why did the Greek boy need three teachers, whereas the American boy is
taught all and more by one primary teacher?
12. Contrast the Greek method of instruction in music, and the purposes of
the instruction, with our own.
13. How could we incorporate into our school instruction some of the
important aspects of Greek instruction in music?
14. What do you think of the contentions of Aristotle and Plato that the
State should control school music as a means of securing sound moral
instruction?
15. Does the Greek idea that a harmonious personal development contributes
to moral worth appeal to you? Why?
16. Contrast the Greek ideal as to athletic training with the conception
of athletics held by an average American schoolboy.
17. Contrast the education of a Greek boy at sixteen with that of an
American boy at the same age.
18. Contrast the emphasis placed on expression as a method in teaching in
the schools of Athens and of the United States.
19. Do the needs of modern society and industrial life warrant the greater
emphasis we place on learning from books, as opposed to the learning by
doing of the Greeks?
20. Compare the compulsory-school period of the Greeks with our own. If we
were to add some form of compulsory military training, for all youths
between eighteen and twenty, and as a preparedness measure, would we
approach still more nearly the Greek requirements?
21. Explain how the Athenian Greeks reconciled the idea of social service
to the State with the idea of individual liberty, through a form of
education which developed personality. Compare this with our American
ideal.
22. The Greek schoolboy had no long summer vacation, as do American
children. Is there any special reason why we need it more than did they?
23. Do we believe that virtue can be taught in the way the Hellenic
peoples did? Do we carry such a belief into practice?
SELECTED READINGS
In the accompanying _Book of Readings_ the following selections are
reproduced:
1. Plutarch: Ancient Education in Sparta.
2. Plato: An Athenian Schoolboy's Life.
3. Lucian: An Athenian Schoolboy's Day.
4. Aristotle: Athenian Citizenship and the Ephebic Years.
5. Freeman: Sparta and Athens compared.
6. Thucydides: Athenian Education summarized.
QUESTIONS ON THE READINGS
1. Describe and characterize the Laws which Lycurgus framed for Spartan
training (1).
2. Describe and characterize the instruction of the Ireus at Sparta.
Compare with the training given among the best of the American Indian
tribes (1).
3. Contrast the type of education given an Athenian and a Spartan boy, as
to nature and purpose and character (1 and 2).
4. What degree of State supervision of education is indicated by Plato
(2)? By Freeman (5)?
5. Compare an Athenian school day as described by Lucian (3) with a school
day in a modern Gary-type school.
6. Compare the Ephebic years of an Athenian youth (4) with those of a
Spartan youth (1).
7. What were some of the chief defects of Athenian schools (5)?
8. What was the position of the State in the matter of the education of
youth (5)?
9. What were the great merits of the Athenian educational and political
system of training (6)?
(For SUPPLEMENTAL REFERENCES, see following chapter.)
CHAPTER II
LATER GREEK EDUCATION
III. THE NEW GREEK EDUCATION
POLITICAL EVENTS: THE GOLDEN AGE OF GREECE. The Battle of Marathon (490
B.C.) has long been considered one of the "decisive battles of the world."
Had the despotism of the East triumphed here, and in the subsequent
campaign that ended in the defeat of the Persian fleet at Salamis (480
B.C.) and of the Persian army at Plataea (479 B.C.), the whole history of
our western world would have been different. The result of the war with
Persia was the triumph of this new western democratic civilization,
prepared and schooled for great national emergencies by a severe but
effective training, over the uneducated hordes led to battle by the
autocracy of the East. This was the first, but not the last, of the many
battles which western democracy and civilization has had to fight to avoid
being crushed by autocracy and despotism. Marathon broke the dread spell
of the Persian name and freed the more progressive Greeks to pursue their
intellectual and political development. Above all it revealed the strength
and power of the Athenians to themselves, and in the half-century
following the most wonderful political, literary, and artistic development
the world had ever known ensued, and the highest products of Greek
civilization were attained. Attica had braved everything for the common
cause of Greece, even to leaving Athens to be burned by the invader, and
for the next fifty years she held the position of political as well as
cultural preëminence among the Greek City-States. Athens now became the
world center of wealth and refinement and the home of art and literature
(R. 7), and her influence along cultural lines, due in part to her mastery
of the sea and her growing commerce, was now extended throughout the
Mediterranean world.
From 479 to 431 B.C. was the Golden Age of Greece, and during this short
period Athens gave birth to more great men--poets, artists, statesmen, and
philosophers--than all the world beside had produced [1] in any period of
equal length. Then, largely as a result of the growing jealousy of
military Sparta came that cruel and vindictive civil strife, known as the
Peloponnesian War, which desolated Greece, left Athens a wreck of her
former self, permanently lowered the moral tone of the Greek people, and
impaired beyond recovery the intellectual and artistic life of Hellas. For
many centuries Athens continued to be a center of intellectual
achievement, and to spread her culture throughout a new and a different
world, but her power as a State had been impaired forever by a revengeful
war between those who should have been friends and allies in the cause of
civilization.
TRANSITION FROM OLD TO THE NEW. As early as 509 B.C. a new constitution
had admitted all the free inhabitants of Attica to citizenship, and the
result was a rapid increase in the prestige, property, and culture of
Athens. Citizenship was now open to the commercial classes, and no longer
restricted to a small, properly born, and properly educated class. Wealth
now became important in giving leisure to the citizen, and was no longer
looked down upon as it had been in the earlier period. After the
Peloponnesian War the predominance of Attica among the Greek States, the
growth of commerce, the constant interchange of embassies, the travel
overseas of Athenian citizens, and the presence of many foreigners in the
State all alike led to a tolerance of new ideas and a criticism of old
ones which before had been unknown. A leisure class now arose, and
personal interest came to have a larger place than before, with a
consequent change in the earlier conceptions as to the duty of the citizen
to the State. Literature lost much of its earlier religious character, and
the religious basis of morality [2] began to be replaced by that of
reason. Philosophy was now called upon to furnish a practical guide for
life to replace the old religious basis. A new philosophy in which "man
was the measure of all things" arose, and its teachers came to have large
followings. The old search for an explanation of the world of matter [3]
was now replaced by an attempt to explain the world of ideas and emotions,
with a resulting evolution of the sciences of philosophy, ethics, and
logic. It was a period of great intellectual as well as political change
and expansion, and in consequence the old education, which had answered
well the needs of a primitive and isolated community, now found itself but
poorly adapted to meet the larger needs of the new cosmopolitan State. [4]
The result was a material change in the old education to adapt it to the
needs of the new Athens, now become the intellectual center of the
civilized world.
CHANGES IN THE OLD EDUCATION. A number of changes in the character of the
old education were now gradually introduced. The rigid drill of the
earlier period began to be replaced by an easier and a more pleasurable
type of training. Gymnastics for personal enjoyment began to replace drill
for the service of the State, and was much less rigid in type. The old
authors, who had rendered important service in the education of youth,
began to be replaced by more modern writers, with a distinct loss of the
earlier religious and moral force. New musical instruments, giving a
softer and more pleasurable effect, took the place of the seven-stringed
lyre, and complicated music replaced the simple Doric airs of the earlier
period. Education became much more individual, literary, and theoretical.
Geometry and drawing were introduced as new studies. Grammar and rhetoric
began to be studied, discussion was introduced, and a certain glibness of
speech began to be prized. The citizen-cadet years, from sixteen to
twenty, formerly devoted to rather rigorous physical training, were now
changed to school work of an intellectual type.
NEW TEACHERS; THE SOPHISTS. New teachers, known as Sophists, who professed
to be able to train men for a political career, [5] began to offer a more
practical course designed to prepare boys for the newer type of state
service. These in time drew many Ephebes into their private schools, where
the chief studies were on the content, form, and practical use of the
Greek language. Rhetoric and grammar before long became the master studies
of this new period, as they were felt to prepare boys better for the new
political and intellectual life of Hellas than did the older type of
training. In the schools of the Sophists boys now spent their time in
forming phrases, choosing words, examining grammatical structure, and
learning how to secure rhetorical effect. Many of these new teachers made
most extravagant claims for their instruction (R. 8) and drew much
ridicule from the champions of the older type of education, but within a
century they had thoroughly established themselves, and had permanently
changed the character of the earlier Greek education.
By 350 B.C. we find that Greek school education had been differentiated
into three divisions, as follows:
1. _Primary education_, covering the years from seven or eight to
thirteen, and embracing reading, writing, arithmetic, and chanting.
The teacher of this school came to be known as a _grammatist_.
2. _Secondary education_, covering the years from thirteen to
sixteen, and embracing geometry, drawing, and a special music
course. Later on some grammar and rhetoric were introduced into
this school. The teacher of this school came to be known as a
_grammaticus_.
3. _Higher or university education_, covering the years after
sixteen.
THE FLOOD OF INDIVIDUALISM. This period of artistic and intellectual
brilliancy of Greece following the Peloponnesian War marked the beginning
of the end of Greece politically. The war was a blow to the strength of
Greece from which the different States never recovered. Greece was bled
white by this needless civil strife. The tendencies toward individualism
in education were symptomatic of tendencies in all forms of social and
political life. The philosophers--Xenophon, Plato, and Aristotle--proposed
ideal remedies for the evils of the State, [6] but in vain. The old ideal
of citizenship died out. Service to the State became purely subordinate to
personal pleasure and advancement. Irreverence and a scoffing attitude
became ruling tendencies. Family morality decayed. The State in time
became corrupt and nerveless. Finally, in 338 B.C., Philip of Macedon
became master of Greece, and annexed it to the world empire which he and
his son Alexander created. Still later, in 146 B.C., the new world power
to the west, Rome, conquered Greece and made of it a Roman province.
Though dead politically, there now occurred the unusual spectacle of
"captive Greece taking captive her rude conqueror," and spreading Greek
art, literature, philosophy, science, and Greek ideas throughout the
Mediterranean world. It was the Greek higher learning that now became
predominant and exerted such great influence on the future of our world
civilization. It remains now to trace briefly the development and spread
of this higher learning, and to point out how thoroughly it modified the
thinking of the future.
NEW SCHOOLS; SOCRATES. In the beginning each Sophist teacher was a free
lance, and taught what he would and in the manner he thought best. Many of
them made extraordinary efforts to attract students and win popular
approval and fees. Plato represents the Sophist Protagoras as saying, with
reference to a youth ambitious for success in political life, "If he comes
to me he will learn that which he comes to learn." At first the
instruction was largely individual, but later classes were organized.
Isocrates, who lived from 436 to 338 B.C., organized the instruction for
the first time into a well-graded sequence of studies, with definite aims
and work (R. 8). He shifted the emphasis in instruction from training for
success in argumentation, to training to think clearly and to express
ideas properly. His pupils were unusually successful, and his school did
much to add to the fame of Athens as an intellectual center. From his work
sprang a large number of so called Rhetorical Schools, much like our
better private schools and academies, offering to those Ephebes who could
afford to attend a very good preparation for participation in the public
life of the period.
In contrast with the Sophists, a series of schools of philosophy also
arose in Athens. These in a way were the outgrowth of the work of
Socrates. Accepting the Sophists' dictum that "man is the measure of all
things," he tried to turn youths from the baser individualism of the
Sophists of his day to the larger general truths which measure the life of
a true man. In particular he tried to show that the greatest of all arts--
the art of living a good life--called for correct individual thinking and
a knowledge of the right. "Know thyself" was his great guiding principle.
His emphasis was on the problems of everyday morality. Frankly accepting
the change from the old education as a change that could not be avoided,
he sought to formulate a new basis for education in personal morality and
virtue, and as a substitute for the old training for service to the State.
He taught by conversation, engaging men in argument as he met them in the
street, and showing to them their ignorance (R. 9). Even in Athens, where
free speech was enjoyed more than anywhere else in the world at that time,
such a shrewd questioner would naturally make enemies, and in 399 B.C. at
the age of seventy-one, he was condemned to death by the Athenian populace
on the charge of impiety and corrupting the youth of Athens.
[Illustration: FIG. 12 SOCRATES (469-399 B.C.)
(After a marble bust in the Vatican Gallery, at Rome)]
Socrates' greatest disciple was a citizen of wealth by the name of Plato,
who had abandoned a political career for the charms of philosophy, and to
him we owe our chief information as to the work and aims of Socrates. In
386 B.C. he founded the Academy, where he passed almost forty years in
lecturing and writing. His school, which formed a model for others,
consisted of a union of teachers and students who possessed in common a
chapel, library, lecture-rooms, and living-rooms. Philosophy, mathematics,
and science were taught, and women as well as men were admitted.
Other schools of importance in Athens were the Lyceum, founded in 335 B.C.
by a foreign-born pupil of Plato's by the name of Aristotle, who did a
remarkable work in organizing the known knowledge of his time; [7] the
school of the Stoics, founded by Zeno in 308 B.C.; and the school of the
Epicureans, founded by Epicurus in 306 B.C. Each of these schools offered
a philosophical solution of the problem of life, and Plato and Aristotle
wrote treatises on education as well. Each school evolved into a form of
religious brotherhood which perpetuated the organization after the death
of the master. In time these became largely schools for expounding the
philosophy of the founder.
[Illustration: FIG. 13. EVOLUTION OF THE GREEK UNIVERSITY]
THE UNIVERSITY OF ATHENS. Coincident with the founding of these schools
and the political events we have previously recorded, certain further
changes in Athenian education were taking place. The character of the
changes in the education before the age of sixteen we have described. As a
result in part of the development of the schools of the Sophists, which
were in themselves only attempts to meet fundamental changes in Athenian
life, the education of youths after sixteen tended to become literary,
rather than physical and military. The Ephebic period of service (from
eighteen to twenty) was at first reduced from two years to one, and after
the Macedonian conquest, in 338 B.C., when there was no longer an Athenian
State to serve or protect, the entire period of training was made
optional. The Ephebic corps was now opened to foreigners, and in time
became merely a fashionable semi-military group. Instead of the military
training, attendance at the lectures of the philosophical schools was now
required, and attendance at the rhetorical schools was optional. Later the
philosophical schools were granted public support by the Athenian
Assembly, professorships were created over which the Assembly exercised
supervision, the rhetorical and philosophical schools were gradually
merged, the study years were extended from two to six, or seven, a form of
university life as regards both students and professors was developed, and
what has since been termed "The University of Athens" was evolved. Figure
13 shows how this evolution took place.
As Athens lost in political power her citizens turned their attention to
making their city a center of world learning. This may be said to have
been accomplished by 200 B.C. Though Greece had long since become a
Macedonian province, and was soon to pass under the control of Rome, the
so-called University of Athens was widely known and much frequented for
the next three hundred years, and continued in existence until finally
closed, as a center of pagan thought, by the edict of the Roman-Christian
Emperor, Justinian, in 529 A.D. Though reduced to the rank of a Roman
provincial town, Athens long continued to be a city of letters and a
center of philosophic and scientific instruction.
SPREAD AND INFLUENCE OF GREEK HIGHER EDUCATION. Alexander the Great
rendered a very important service in uniting the western Orient and the
eastern Mediterranean into a common world empire, and in establishing
therein a common language, literature, philosophy, a common interest, and
a common body of scientific knowledge and law. It was his hope to create a
new empire, in which the distinction between European and Asiatic should
pass away. No less than seventy cities were established with a view to
holding his empire together. These served to spread Hellenic culture.
Greek schools, Greek theaters, Greek baths, and Greek institutions of
every type were to be found in practically all of them, and the Greek
tongue was heard in them all. With Alexander the Great the history of
Greek life, culture, and learning merges into that of the history of the
ancient world. Everywhere throughout the new empire Greek philosophers and
scientists, architects and artists, merchants and colonists, followed
behind the Macedonian armies, spreading Greek civilization and becoming
the teachers of an enlarged world. [8] "Greek cities stretched from the
Nile to the Indus, and dotted the shores of the Black and the Caspian
seas. The Greek language, once the tongue of a petty people, grew to be a
universal language of culture, spoken even by barbarian lips, and the art,
the science, the literature, the principles of politics and philosophy,
developed in isolation by the Greek mind, henceforth became the heritage
of many nations." [9]
Greek universities were established at Pergamum and Tarsus in Asia Minor;
at Rhodes on the island of that name in the Aegean; and at the newly
founded city of Alexandria in Egypt. Antioch, in Syria, became another
important center of Greek influence and learning. A large library was
developed at Pergamum, and it was here that writing on prepared skins of
animals [10] was begun, from which the term "parchment" (originally "per-
gament") comes. It was also at Pergamum that Galen (born c. 130 A.D.)
organized what was then known of medical science, and his work remained
the standard treatise for more than a thousand years. Rhodes became a
famous center for instruction in oratory. During Roman days many eminent
men, among whom were Cassius, Caesar, and Cicero, studied oratory here.
[Illustration: FIG. 14 THE GREEK UNIVERSITY WORLD]
MINGLING OF ORIENT AND OCCIDENT AT ALEXANDRIA. The most famous of all
these Greek institutions, however, was the University of Alexandria, which
gradually sapped Athens as a center of learning and became the
intellectual capital of the world. The greatest library of manuscripts the
world had ever known was collected together here. [11] It is said to have
numbered over 700,000 volumes. These included Greek, Jewish, Egyptian, and
Oriental works. In connection with the library was the museum, where men
of letters and investigators were supported at royal expense. These two
constituted an institution so like a university that it has been given
that name. Alexandria became not only a great center of learning, but,
still more important, the chief mingling place for Greek, Jew, Egyptian,
Roman, and Oriental, and here Greek philosophy, Hebrew and Christian
religion, and Oriental faith and philosophy met and mixed. It was this
mingled civilization and culture, all tinged through and through with the
Greek, with which the Romans came in contact as they pushed their
conquering armies into the eastern Mediterranean (R. 10).
[Illustration: FIG. 15. THE KNOWN WORLD ABOUT 150 A.D.
A map by Ptolemy, geographer and astronomer at Alexandria. Compare this
with the map on page 4, and note the progress in geographical discovery
which had been made during the intervening centuries.]
CHARACTER OF ALEXANDRIAN LEARNING. The great advances in knowledge made at
Alexandria were in mathematics, geography, and science. The method of
scientific investigation worked out by Aristotle at Athens was introduced
and used. Instead of speculating as to phenomena and causes, as had been
the earlier Greek practice, observation and experiment now became the
rule. Euclid (c. 323-283 B.C.) opened a school at Alexandria as early as
300 B.C., and there worked out the geometry which is still used in our
schools. Archimedes (287-212 B.C.), who studied under Euclid, made many
important discoveries and advances in mechanics and physics. Eratosthenes
(226-196 B.C.), librarian at Alexandria, is famous as a geographer [12]
and astronomer, and made some studies in geology as well. Ptolemy (b.?; d.
168 A.D.) here completed his Mechanism of the Heavens (_Syntaxis_) in 138
A.D., and this became the standard astronomy in Europe for nearly fifteen
hundred years, while his geography was used in the schools until well into
the fifteenth century. The map of the known world, shown in Figure 15, was
made by him. Hipparcus, the Newton of the Greeks, studied the heavens both
at Alexandria and Rhodes, and counted the stars and arranged them in
constellations. Many advances also were made in the study of medicine, the
Alexandrian schools having charts, models, and dissecting rooms for the
study of the human body, The functions of the brain, nerves, and heart
were worked out there.
Except in science and mathematics, though, the creative ability of the
earlier Greeks was now largely absent. Research, organization, and comment
upon what had previously been done rather was the rule. Still much
important work was done here. Books were collected, copied, and preserved,
and texts were edited and purified from errors. Here grammar, criticism,
prosody, and mythology were first developed into sciences. The study of
archaeology was begun, and the first dictionaries were made. The
translation of the Hebrew Scriptures into Greek was begun for the benefit
of the Alexandrian Jews who had forgotten their Mother tongue, this being
the origin of the famous _Septuagint_ [13] version of the Old Testament.
It is owing to these Alexandrian scholars, also, that we now possess the
theory of Greek accents, and have good texts of Homer and other Greek
writers.
ALEXANDRIA SAPPED IN TURN. In 30 B.C. Alexandria, too, came under Roman
rule and was, in turn, gradually sapped by Rome. Greek influence
continued, but the interest became largely philosophical. Ultimately
Alexandria became the seat of a metaphysical school of Christian theology,
and the scene of bitter religious controversies. In 330 A.D.,
Constantinople was founded on the site of the earlier Byzantium, and soon
thereafter Greek scholars transferred their interest to it and made it a
new center of Greek learning. There Greek science, literature, and
philosophy were preserved for ten centuries, and later handed back to a
Europe just awakening from the long intellectual night of the Middle Ages.
In 640 A.D. Alexandria was taken by the Mohammedans, and the university
ceased to exist. The great library was destroyed, furnishing, it is said,
"fuel sufficient for four thousand public baths for a period of six
months," and Greek learning was extinguished in the western world.
OUR DEBT TO HELLAS. As a political power the Greek States left the world
nothing of importance. As a people they were too individualistic, and
seemed to have a strange inability to unite for political purposes. To the
new power slowly forming to the westward--Rome--was left the important
task, which the Greek people were never able to accomplish, of uniting
civilization into one political whole. The world conquest that Greece made
was intellectual. As a result, her contribution to civilization was
artistic, literary, philosophical, and scientific, but not political. The
Athenian Greeks were a highly artistic and imaginative rather than a
practical people. They spent their energy on other matters than government
and conquest. As a result the world will be forever indebted to them for
an art and a literature of incomparable beauty and richness which still
charms mankind; a philosophy which deeply influenced the early Christian
religion, and has ever since tinged the thinking of the western world; and
for many important beginnings in scientific knowledge which were lost for
ages to a world that had no interest in or use for science. So deeply has
our whole western civilization been tinctured by Greek thought that one
enthusiastic writer has exclaimed,--"Except the blind forces of Nature,
nothing moves in this world which is not Greek in its origin." [14] (R.
11)
In education proper the old Athenian education offers us many lessons of
importance that we of to-day may well heed. In the emphasis they placed on
moral worth, education of the body as well as the mind, and moderation in
all things, they were much ahead of us. Their schools became a type for
the cities of the entire Mediterranean world, being found from the Black
Sea south to the Persian Gulf and westward to Spain. When Rome became a
world empire the Greek school system was adopted, and in modified form
became dominant in Rome and throughout the provinces, while the
universities of the Greek cities for long furnished the highest form of
education for ambitious Roman youths. In this way Greek influence was
spread throughout the Mediterranean world. The higher learning of the
Greeks, preserved first at Athens and Alexandria, and later at
Constantinople, was finally handed back to the western world at the time
of the Italian Revival of Learning, after Europe had in part recovered
from the effects of the barbarian deluge which followed the downfall of
Rome.
QUESTIONS FOR DISCUSSION
1. Try to picture what might have been the result for western civilization
had the small and newly-developed democratic civilization of Greece been
crushed by the Persians at the time they overran the Greek peninsula.
2. Do periods of great political, commercial, and intellectual expansion
usually subject old systems of morality and education to severe strain?
Illustrate.
3. Why was the change in the type of Athenian education during the Ephebic
years a natural and even a necessary one for the new Athens?
4. Do you understand that the system of training before the Ephebic years
was also seriously changed, or was the change largely a re-shaping and
extension of the education of youths after sixteen?
5. Were the Sophists a good addition to the Athenian instructing force, or
not? Why?
6. How may a State establish a corrective for such a flood of
individualism as overwhelmed Greece, and still allow individual
educational initiative and progress?
7. Do we as a nation face danger from the flood of individualism we have
encouraged in the past? How is our problem like and unlike that of Athens
after the Peloponnesian War?
8. What is the place in Greek life and thought of the ideal treatises on
education written by Xenophon, Plato, and Aristotle, after the flood of
individualism had set in?
9. In what ways was the conquest of Alexander good for world civilization?
10. Of what importance is it, in the history of our western civilization,
that Greek thought had so thoroughly permeated the eastern Mediterranean
world before Roman armies conquered the region?
11. Picture for yourself the great intellectual advances of the Greeks by
contrasting the tribal preparedness-type of education of the early Greek
States and the learning possessed by the scholars of the University at
Alexandria.
12. Compare the spread of Greek language and knowledge throughout the
eastern Mediterranean world, following the conquests of Alexander, with
the spread of the English language and ideas as to government throughout
the modern world.
SELECTED READINGS
In the accompanying _Book of Readings_ the following selections are
reproduced:
7. Wilkins: Athens in the Time of Pericles.
8. Isocrates: The Instruction of the Sophists.
9. Xenophon: An Example of Socratic Teaching.
10. Draper: The Schools of Alexandria.
11. Butcher: What we Owe to Greece.
QUESTIONS ON THE READINGS
1. Characterize the many educational influences of Athens, as pictured by
Wilkins (7).
2. Were the evils of the Sophist teachers, which Isocrates points out (8),
natural ones? Compare with teachers of vocal training to-day.
3. What would be necessary for the proper training of one for eloquence?
Could any Sophist teacher have trained anyone?
4. Would it be possible to-day for any one city to become such a center of
the world's intellectual life as did Alexandria (10)? Why?
5. Could the Socratic method (9) be applied to instruction in psychology,
ethics, history, and science equally well? Why? To what class of subjects
is the Socratic quiz applicable?
6. How do you account for the fact that the wonderful promise of
Alexandrian science was not fulfilled?
7. State our debt to the Greeks (11).
SUPPLEMENTAL REFERENCES
_The most important references are indicated by an *_