THE LIBRARY
The Ontario Institute
for Studies in Education
Toronto, Canada
LIBRARY
:2ilSSS«
RIVERSIDE TEXTBOOKS IN EDUCATION
EDITED BY ELLWOOD P. CUBBERLEY
PROFESSOR OF EDUCATION LELAND STANFORD JUNIOR UNIVERSITY
DIVISION OF SECONDARY EDUCATION
UNDER THE EDITORIAL DIRECTION
OF ALEXANDER INGLIS
ASSISTANT PROFESSOR OF EDUCATION HARVARD UNIVERSITY
RIVERSIDE TEXTBOOKS IN EDUCATION
BY THE SAME AUTHOR
READINGS IN THE HISTORY OF EDUCATION
A COLLECTION OF SOURCES AND READINGS TO
ILLUSTRATE THE DEVELOPMENT OF EDUCATIONAL
PRACTICE, THEORY, AND ORGANIZATION
A Companion Volume to the Present Volume 684 pages, 375 Readings, 90 Illustrations.
PUBLIC EDUCATION IN THE UNITED STATES
A STUDY AND INTERPRETATION OF AMERICAN EDUCATIONAL HISTORY
An Introductory Textbook dealing with the Larger Problems
of Present-Day Education in the Light of their Historical Development
517 pages, 85 illustrations in text, 20 insert plates
"I have always thought that the chief object of education was to awaken the spirit, and that inasmuch as a literature whenever it has touched its great and highest notes w^as an expression of the spirit of mankind, the best induction into education was to feel the pulses of humanity which had beaten from age to age through the universities of men who had penetrated to the secrets of the human spirit." (Wood ROW Wilson, in acknowledg- ing receipt of the Doctor's Degree from the University of Paris, Dec. 21, 1918.)
"The study of the past begins to inspire us with new hopes for the future of humanity. The life which, viewed from without, seems in us, and thousands such as we, so petty and trivial, catches a new significance and even grandeur from the thought that it is not the isolated, transient thing we deemed it. We begin to perceive that no earnest effort for the good of humanity is ever lost, no life, however obscure, that has been devoted to the highest ends, to the service of mankind, to the progress of truth and good- ness in the world, is ever spent in vain. For we think of them as contributions to a life which is not of to-day or yesterday, but of all time — a life which, never hasting, never resting, is through the ages ever advancing to its consummation." (John Caird, in an Address on "The Study of History" delivered at the University of Glasgow, November 8, 1884. "University Addresses," p. 253.)
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THE
HISTORY OF EDUCATION
EDUCATIONAL PRACTICE AND PROGRESS CONSIDERED
AS A PHASE OF THE DEVELOPMENT AND
SPREAD OF WESTERN CIVILIZATION
HY
ELLWOOD P. CUBBERLEY
PROFESSOR OF EDUCATION LELAND STANFORD JUNIOR UNIVERSITY
HOUGHTON MIFFLIN COMPANY
BOSTON NEW YORK CHICAGO
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COPYRIGHT, 1920, BY ELLWOOD F. CUBBERLEV ALL RIGHTS RESERVED
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CAMBRIDGE • MASSACHUSETTS U • S • A
TO MY WIFE
FOR THIRTY YEARS
BEST OF COMPANIONS IN BOTH
WORK AND PLAY
PREFACE
The present volume, as well as the companion volume of Readings, arose out of a practical situation. Twenty-two years ago, on en- tering Stanford University as a Professor of Education and be- ing given the history of the subject to teach, I found it necessary, almost from the first, to begin the construction of a Syllabus of Lectures which would permit of my teaching the subject more as a phase of the history of the rise and progress of our Western civihzation than would any existing text. Through such a study it is possible to give, better than by any other means, that vision of world progress which throws such a flood of light over all our educational efforts. The Syllabus grew, was made to include de- tailed citations to historical literature, and in 1902 was published in book form. In 1905 a second and an enlarged edition was issued,^ and these volumes for a time formed the basis for class- work and reading in a number of institutions, and, though now out of print, may still be found in many libraries. At the same time I began the collection of a series of short, illustrative sources for my students to read.
It had been my intention, after the publication of the second edition of the Syllabus, to expand the outline into a Text Book which would embody my ideas as to what university students should be given as to the history of the work in which they were engaged. I felt then, and still feel, that the history of education, properly conceived and presented, should occupy an important place in the training of an educational leader. Two things now happened which for some time turned me aside from my original purpose. The first was the publication, late in 1905, of Paul Monroe's very comprehensive and scholarly Text Book in the History of Education, and the second was that, with the expan- sion of the work in education in the university with which I was connected, and the addition of new men to the department, the general history of education was for a time turned over to another to teach. I then began, instead, the development of that introductory course in education, dealing entirely with
' Syllabus of Lectures on the History of Edtication, with Bibliographies, ist ed., 302 pp., illustrated, New York, 1902; 2d ed., with classified bibliographies, 358 pp., illustrated, New York, 1905.
viii PREFACE
American educational history and problems, out of which grew my Public Education in the United States.
The second half of the academic year 1910-11 I acted as visiting Lecturer on the History of Education at both Harvard University and Radcliffe College, and while serving in this capac- ity I began work on what has finally evolved into the present volume, together with the accompanying book of illustrative Readings. Other duties, and a deep interest in problems of school administration, largely engaged my energies and writing time until some three years ago, when, in rearranging courses at the university, it seemed desirable that I should again take over the instruction in the general history of education. Since then I have pushed through, as rapidly as conditions would permit, the organization of the parallel book of sources and documents, and the present volume of text.
In doing so I have not tried to prepare another history of edu- cational theories. Of such we already have a sufficient num- ber. Instead, I have tried to prepare a history of the progress and practice and organization of education itself, and to give to such a history its proper setting as a phase of the history of the development and spread of our Western civilization. I have especially tried to present such a picture of the rise, struggle for existence, growth, and recent great expansion of the idea of the improvability of the race and the elevation and emancipation of the individual through education as would be most illuminat- ing and useful to students of the subject. To this end I have traced the great forward steps in the emancipation of the intellect of man, and the efforts to perpetuate the progress made through the organization of educational institutions to pass on to others what had been attained. I have also tried to give a proper set- ting to the great historic forces which have shaped and moulded human progress, and have made the evolution of modern state school systems and the world-wide spread of Western civilization both possible and inevitable.
To this end I have tried to hold to the main lines of the story, and have in consequence omitted reference to many theorists and reformers and events and schools which doubtless were im- portant in their land and time, but the influence of which on the main current of educational progress was, after all, but small. For such omission I have no apology to make. In their place I have introduced a record of world events and forces, not included in
PREFACE ix
the usual history of education, which to me seem important as having contributed materially to the shaping and directing of intellectual and educational progress. While in the treatment major emphasis has been given to modern times, I have never- theless tried to show how all modern education has been after all a development, a culmination, a fiowering-out of forces and im- pulses which go far back in history for their origin. In a civiliza- tion such as we of to-day enjoy, with roots so deeply embedded in the past as is ours, any adequate understandin-g of world prac- tices and of present-day world problems in education calls for some tracing of development to give proper background and perspec- tive. The rise of modern state school systems, the variations in types found to-day in different lands, the new conceptions of the educational purpose, the rise of science study, the new functions which the school has recently assumed, the world-wide sweep of modern educational ideas, the rise of many entirely new types of schools and training within the past century — these and many other features of modern educational practice in progressive nations are better understood if viewed in the light of their proper historical setting. Standing as we are to-day on the threshold of a new era, and with a strong tendency manifest to look only to the future and to ignore the past, the need for sound educational perspective on the part of the leaders in both school and state is given new emphasis.
To give greater concreteness to the presentation, maps, dia- grams, and pictures, as commonly found in standard historical works, have been used to an extent not before employed in writ- ings on the history of education. To give still greater concrete- ness to the presentation I have built up a parallel volume of Read- ings, containing a large collection of illustrative source material designed to back up the historical record of educational develop- ment and progress as presented in this volume. The selections have been fully cross-referenced (R. 129; R. 176; etc.) in the pages of the Text. Depending, as I have, so largely on the com- panion volume for the necessary supplemental readings, I have reduced the chapter bibliographies to a very few of the most valuable and most commonly found references. To add to the teaching value of the book there has been appended to each chap- ter a series of questions for discussion, bearing on the Text, and another series of questions bearing on the Readings to be found in the companion volume. In this form it is hoped that the Text
X PREFACE
will be found good in teaching organization; that the treatment may prove to be of such practical value that it will contribute materially to relieve the history of education from much of the criticism which the devotion in the past to the history of educa- tional theory has brought upon it; and that the two volumes which have been prepared may be of real service in restoring the subject to the position of importance it deserves to hold, for mature stu- dents of educational practice, as the interpreter of world progress as expressed in one of its highest creative forms.
Ellwood p. Cubberley
Stanford University, Cal. September 4, 1920
CONTENTS Introduction : The Sources OF OUR Civilization . . . 3
PART I
THE ANCIENT WORLD
FOUNDATION ELEMENTS OF OUR WESTERN CIVILIZATION GREECE — ROME — CHRISTIANITY
Chapter I. The Old Greek Education
I. Greece and its People 15
II. Early Education IN Greece 21
Chapter 1 1. Later Greek Education
III. The New Greek Education
Chapter III. The Education and Work of Rome
I. The Romans and their Mission . II. The Period of Home Education . HI. The Transition to School Education
IV. The School System as finally established V. Rome's Contribution to Civilization
39
53 58 60
63 74
Chapter IV. The Rise and Contribution of Chris- tianity
I. The Rise and Victory of Christianity .... 82 II. Educational and Governmental Organization of the
Early Church 92
HI. What the Middle Ages started WITH . . . .101
PART II
THE MEDIEVAL WORLD
THE DELUGE OF BARBARISM; THE MEDLEVAL STRUGGLE TO PRESERVE AND REESTABLISH CIVILIZATION
Chapter V. New Peoples in the Empire .... 109 Chapter VI. Education during the Early Middle Ages
I. Condition and Preservation of Learning . . .126
Chapter VII. Education during the Early Middle Ages
11. Schools established and Instruction provided . .150
xii CONTENTS
Chapter VIII. Influences tending toward a Revival OF Learning
I. Moslem Learning from Spain i8o
II. The Rise OF Scholastic Theology i86
III. Law and Medicine as New Studies 192
IV. Other New Influences and Movements . . . .199
Chapter IX. The Rise of the Universities . . .215
PART III
THE TRANSITION FROM MEDIAEVAL TO MODERN ATTITUDES
THE RECOVERY OF THE ANCIENT LEARNING; THE
REAWAKENING OF SCHOLARSHIP; AND THE RISE
OF RELIGIOUS AND SCIENTIFIC INQUIRY
Chapter X. The Revival of Learning 241
Chapter XL Educational Results of the Revival of
Learning 263
Chapter XII. The Revolt against Authority . . . 287
Chapter XIII. Educational Results of the Protestant Revolts
I. Among Lutherans and Anglicans 306
Chapter XIV. Educational Results of the Protestant Revolts
II. Among Calvinists and Catholics 330
Chapter XV. Educational Results of the Protestant Revolts
HI. The Reformation and American Education . . . 356
Chapter XVI. The Rise of Scientific Inquiry . . . 379
Chapter XVI I. The New Scientific Method and the Schools
I. Humanistic Realism 397
II. Social Realism 401
III. Sense Realism , . . . 405
IV. Realism and the Schools 416
Chapter XVIII. Theory and Practice by the Middle OF the Eighteenth Century
I. Pre-Eighteenth-Century Educational Theories . . 428 II. Mid-Eighteenth-Century Educational Conditions . 437
CONTENTS xiii
PART IV
MODERN TIMES
THE ABOLITION OF PRIVILEGE; THE RISE OF DEMOCRACY;
A NEW THEORY FOR EDUCATION EVOLVED-
THE STATE TAKES OVER THE SCHOOL
Chapter XIX. The Eighteenth a Transition Century
I. Work of the Benevolent Despots of Continental
Europe 473
11. The Unsatisfied Demand for Reform in France . .478 HI. England THE First Democratic Nation .... 486 IV. Institution of Constitutional Government and Re- ligious Freedom in America 494
V. The French Revolution sweeps away Ancient Abuses 498
Chapter XX. The Beginnings of National Education
I. New Conceptions of the Educational Purpose . . 506
II. The New State Theory IN France 508
HI. The New State Theory IN America 519
Chapter XXI. A New Theory and Subject-Matter for THE Elementary School
I. The New Theory stated 530
II. German Attempts to work out a New Theory . . 533
HI. The Work and Influence of Pestalozzi .... 539
IV. Redirection of the Elementary School .... 547
Chapter XXI I. National Organization in Prussia
I. The Beginnings of National Organization . . . 552 II. A State School System at last created . . . 566
Chapter XXIII. National Organization in France and
Italy
I. National Organization IN France 588
II. National Organization in Italy 603
Chapter XXIV. The Struggle for National Organiza- tion IN England
I. The Charitable-Voluntary Beginnings . . . .613
II. The Period of Philanthropic Effort (1800-33) • .622
HI. The Struggle for National Education .... 633
IV. The Development of a National System .... 644
Chapter XXV. Awakening an Educational Conscious- ness in the United States
I. Early National Attitudes and Interests . . . 653
II. Awakening an Educational Consciousness . . .658
xiv CONTENTS
Til. Social, Political, and Economic Influences . . . 667 IV. Alignment of Interests, and Propaganda . . . 672
Chapter XXVI. The American Battle for Free State
Schools
I. The Battle for Tax Support 676
II. The Battle to Eliminate the Pauper-School Idea . 679
III. The Battle to make the Schools entirely Free . . 684
IV. The Battle to establish School Supervision . . 687 V. The Battle to Eliminate Sectarianism . . . .691
VI. The Battle to Establish the American High School . 695 VII. The State University crowns the System . . . 702
Chapter XXVII. Education becomes a Great National
Tool
I. Spread OF THE State-Control Idea 711
II. New Modifying Forces 723
III. Effect OF These Changes ON Education . . . . 736
Chapter XXVIII. Nevv^ Conceptions of the Educational
Process
I. The Psychological Organization of Elementary In--
struction 745
II. New Ideas from Herbartian Sources .... 759
III. The Kindergarten, Play, and Manual Activities . 764
IV. The Addition of Science Study 772
V. Social Meaning of these Changes 779
Chapter XXIX. New Tendencies and Expansions
I. Political 787
II. Scientific 795
III. Vocational 805
IV. Sociological . 812
V. The Scientific Organization of Education . . . 824
Conclusion; The Future 833
Index 841
LIST OF PLATES
Facing
1. The Cloisters of a Monastery, near Florence, Italy . .140
2. The Library of the Church of Saint Wallberg, at Zutphfn,
Holland 140
3. Saint Thomas Aquinas in the School of Albertus Magnus 190
4. A Lecture on Theology by Albertus Magnus .... 22^!
5. Stratford-on-Avon Grammar School 278
6. Educational Leaders in Protestant Germany .... 308
7. The Free School at Harrow 322
8. Map showing the Spread of Jesuit Schools in Northern
Territory by the Year 1725 . . 340
9. Two Tablets on the West Gateway at Harvard University 364
10. John Amos CoMENius (1592-1670) 410
11. Pestalozzi Monument AT YvERDON 542
12. Fellenberg's Institute at Hofwyl 546
13. Two Leaders in the Regeneration of Prussia .... 568
14. Francois Pierre Guillaume Guizot (1787- 1874) . . . 598
15. John Pounds' Ragged School at Portsmouth .... 618
16. An English Village Voluntary School 618
17. Two Leaders in the Educational Awakening in the United
States 690
18. Two Leaders in the Reorganization of Educational Theory 762
LIST OF FIGURES
1 . The Greek Conception of the World ..... 5
2. Ancient Greece AND THE i^GE AN World 15
3. The City-State OF Attica 17
4. Distribution of the Population of Athens and Attica,
ABOUT 430 B.C. 21
5. A Greek Boy 25
6. An Athenian Inscription 26
7. Greek Writing-Materials 27
8. A Greek Counting-Board 27
9. An Athenian School 29
10. Greek School Lessons 31
11. Ground-Plan of the Gymnasium at Ephesos, in Asia Minor 33
12. Socrates (469-399 b.c.) 44
13. Evolution of the Greek University 45
14. The Greek University W^orld 47
15. The Known World about 150 a.d 48
16. The Early Peoples of Italy, and the Extension of the
Roman Power 53
17. The Principal Roman Roads 54
18. The Great Extent of the Roman Empire .... 56
19. A Roman Father instructing his Son 59
20. Cato the Elder (234-148 b.c.) 63
21. Roman Writing-Materials 64
22. A Roman Counting-Board 65
23. A Roman Primary School 66
24. A Roman School of Rhetoric 70
25. The Roman Voluntary Educational System, as finally
EVOLVED 72
26. Origin of our Alphabet 77
27. The Growth of Christianity to the End of the Fourth
Century 89
28. A Bishop 96
29. A Benedictine Monk, Abbot, and Abbess 99
30. Showing the Final Division of the Empire and the Church 103
31. A Bodyguard OF Germans no
32. The German Migrations 112
33. The Known World IN 800 114
34. A German War Chief 115
35.* Romans DESTROYING A German Village 116
36. A Page OF THE Gothic Gospels 119
37. A Typical Monastery OF Southern Europe .... 128
LIST OF FIGURES xvii
38. Bird's-Eye View of a Medieval Monastery . . . .130
39. Initial Letter from an Old Manuscript 133
40. A Monk in a Scriptorium 134
41. Charlemagne's Empire, and the Important Monasteries of
THE Time 136
42. Where the Danes ravaged England 145
43. An Outer Monastic School 150
44. The Medieval System of Education summarized . . .154
45. A School : A Lesson IN Grammar . 156
46. An Anglo-Saxon Map of the World 161
47. An Early Church Musician . . . . . . . . 162
48. A Squire being knighted 168
49. A Knight of the Time of the First Crusade . . . .169
50. Evolution of Education during the Early Middle Ages . 175
51. Showing Centers of Moslem Learning 183
52. Aristotle 185
53. The Cathedral of Notre Dame, at Paris 189
54. The City-States of Northern Italy 194
55. Fragment from the Recovered "Digest" of Justinian . 195
56. The Father of Medicine, Hippocrates of Cos .... 197
57. A Pilgrim of the Middle Ages 200
58. A Typical Medleval Town (Prussian) 203
59. The Educational Pyramid ... 205
60. Trade Routes and Commercial Cities 206
61. Showing Location of the Chief Universities founded be-
fore 1600 219
62. Seal of a Doctor, University of Parts 223
63. New College, at Oxford 224
64. A Lecture on Civil Law by Guillaume Benedicti . . . 227
65. Library of the University of Leyden, in Holland . . . 228
66. A University Disputation 231
67. A University Lecture and Lecture Room 232
68. Petrarch (1304-74) 244
69. Boccaccio (1313-75) 245
70. Demetrius Chalcondyles (1424-15 11) 249
71. Bookcase and Desk in the Medicean Library at Florence 251
72. Two Early Northern Humanists . . . . . . .253
73. An Early Sixteenth-Century Press 255
74. An Early Specimen of Caxton's Printing 256
75. The World as known to Christian Europe before Colum-
bus 258
76. Saint Antoninus and his Scholars . . . . . . 264
77. Two Early Italian Humanist Educators 266
•78. Guillaume Bud.^us (1467-1540) , . . . . . . 268
79. College de France 269
80. JOHANN ReUCHLIN (1455-1522) 27O
81. JoHANN Sturm (1507-89) 272
xviii LIST OF FIGURES
82. Desiderius Erasmus (1467-1536) 274
83. Saint Paul's School, London 276
84. GiGGLESwicK Grammar School 277
85. The Evolution OF Modern Studies 281
86. John Wycliffe (i320?-84) 290
87. Religious Warfare in Bohemia 291
88. Showing the Results of the Protestant Revolts . , , 296
89. huldreich zwingli (1487-i531) 297
90. John Calvin (1509-64) 299
91. A French Protestant (c. 1600) 301
92. Two Early Vernacular Schools 309
93. The First Page OF Wycliffe' s Bible 311
94. Luther giving Instruction 313
95. Johannes Bugenhagen (1485-1558) 314
96. Evolution of German State School Control . . . .319
97. A Chained Bible 321
98. A French School of the Seventeenth Century . . . 332
99. A Dutch Village School 334
too. John Knox (i 505 ?-72) 335
[Oi. Ignatius de Loyola (1491-1556) 337
[02. Plan of a Jesuit Schoolroom 342
[03. An Ursuline 346
[04. A School of La Salle at Paris, 1688 349
[05. The Brothers of the Christian Schools by 1792 . . . 350 [06. Tendencies in Educational Development in Europe, 1500
TO 1700 353
[07. Map showing the Religious Settlements in America . . 358 [08. Homes of the Pilgrims, and their Route to America . . 359 [09. New England Settlements, 1660 . 361
10. The Boston Latin Grammar School 362
11. Where Yale College was founded 367
12. An Old Quaker Meeting-House and School at Lampeter, Pennsylvania 370
;i3. Nicholas Kopernik (Copernicus) (1473-1543) .... 386
14. Tycho Brahe (1546-1601) 387
15. Galileo Galilei (1564- 1 642) 388
16. Sir Isaac Newton (1642-1727) 388
17. William Harvey ( 1 578-1 657) 389
;i8. Francis Bacon (1561-1626) 390
19. The Loss and Recovery OF THE Sciences 393
[20. Ren^ Descartes (i 596-1650) 394
f2i. Francois Rabelais (1483-1553) 399
[22. John Milton (1608-74) 400
[23. Michel de Montaigne (1533-92) 401*
[24. John Locke (1632-1704) 403
[25. An Academie des Armes 404
[26. A Sample Page from the "OrbiS Pictus" 414
LIST OF FIGURES xix
127. Part of a Page from a Latin-English Edition of the "Ves-
tibulum" 415
128. Augustus Hermann Francke (1663-1727) 419
129. A French School before the Revolution 431
130. A Horn Book 440
131. The Westminster Catechism 442
132. Thomas Dilworth (?-i78o) 443
133. Frontispiece to Noah Webster's ''American Spelling
Book" 444
134. Title-Page of Hodder's Arithmetic 445
135. A "Christian Brothers" School 447
136. An English Dame School 448
137. Gravel Lane Charity-School, Southwark 449
138. A Charity-School Girl in Uniform 450
139. A Charity-School Boy in Uniform 451
140. Advertisement for a Teacher to let 452
141. A School Whipping-Post 455
142. An Eighteenth-Century German School 455
143. Children as Miniature Adults 458
144. A Pennsylvania Academy 463
145. Frederick the Great 474
146. Maria Theresa 475
147. Montesquieu (1689-1755) . 480
148. TuRGOT (1727-81) 481
149. Voltaire (1694-1778) 481
150. Diderot (1713-84) 482
151. John Wesley (1707-82) 489
152. Nationality of the White Population, as shown by the
Family Names in the Census of 1790 494
153. The States-General in Session at Versailles .... 499
154. Rousseau (1712-78) 508
155. La Chalotais (1701-83) 510
156. Rolland (1734-93) 510
157. Count de Mirabeau (1749-91) 513
158. Talleyrand (1758-1838) 513
159. CONDORCET (1743-94) 514
160. The Institute of France 515
161. Lakanal (1762-1845) 516
162. Thomas Jefferson ( 1 743-1 826) 525
163. The Rousseau Monument at Geneva 531
164. Basedow (1723-90) 535
165. Immanuel Kant (1724-1804) 537
166. The Scene of Pestalozzi's Labors 541
167. Fellenberg (1771-1844) 547
168. The School of a Handworker 556
169. The Kingdom OF Prussia, 1740-86 . . . . „ .' . 559
170. A German Late Eighteenth-Century School .... 564
XX LIST OF FIGURES
[71. DiNTER (1760-1831) 570
[72. DiESTERWEG (179O-1866) 57 1
[73. The Prussian State School System created .... 577
[74. An Old Foundation transformed 589
[75. Count de Fourcroy (1755-1809) 590
[76. Victor Cousin (i 792-1 867) 597
{']'j. Outline of the Main Features of the French State
School System 598
[78. Europe in 1810 604
[79. The Unification of Italy, SINCE 1848 608
[80. Count of Cavour (1810-61) 609
ii . Outline of the Main Features of the Italian State School
System 610
[82. A Ragged-School Pupil 618
[83. Adam Smith (1723-90) 621
[84. The Reverend T. R. Malthus (1766-1834) 621
[85. The Creators of the Monitorial System 624
[86. The Lancastrian Model School in Borough Road, South-
WARK, London 626
[87. Monitors TEACHING Reading AT "Stations" .... 627
\. Proper Monitorial-School Positions 628
[89. Robert Owen (1771-1858) 630
[90. Lord Brougham (1778-1868) 636
[91. An English Village School in 1840 637
[92. Expenditure from the Education Grants, 1839-70 . . 639
[93. Lord T. B. Macaulay (1800-59) ^4^
[94. Work of the School Boards in providing School Accommo- dations 643
[95. The English Educational System as finally evolved . . 649 [96. The First Schoolhouse built by the Free School Society
IN New York City 661
[97. "Model" School Building of the Public School Society . 665 [98. Evolution of the Essential Features of the American
Public School System 666
199. Dates of the Granting of Full Manhood Suffrage . . 670
200. The First Free Public School in Detroit .... 678
201. The Pennsylvania School Elections OF 1835 .... 682
202. The New York Referendum of 1850 685
203. Status of School Supervision in the United States by 1861 688
204. A Typical New England Academy 696
205. The Development of Secondary Schools in the United
States 699
206. The First High School in the United States .... 700
207. High Schools in the United States by i860 .... 701
208. Colleges and Universities established by i860 . . . 704
209. The American Educational Ladder 708
210. The School System of Denmark 713
LIST OF FIGITRES xxi
211. The Progress of Literacy in P3urope by the Close of the
Nineteenth Century -714
21^. The School System of the Argentine Republic . . . 718
213. The Japanese Two-Class School System 720
214. The Chinese Educational Ladder 721
215. Baron Justus VON LiEBiG (1803-73) 724
216. Charles Darwin (1809-82) 726
217. Louis Pasteur (1822-95) 727
218. Man Power before the Days of Steam 729
219. Threshing Wheat a Century Ago 730
220. A City Water-Supply, about 1830 731
221. The Great Trade Routes of the Modern World . . . 733
222. An Example of the Shifting of Occupations .... 734
223. The Philippine School System 740
224. The First Modern Normal School 749
225. Teacher-Training in the United States by i860 . . . 752
226. Evolution of the Elementary-School Curriculum, and of
Methods of Teaching 756
227. An "Usher" AND HIS Class 758
228. Redirected Manual Training 771
229. Herbert Spencer (1820-1903) 777
230. Thomas H. Huxley (1825-95) 778
231. A Reorganized Kindergarten 781
232. The Peking Union Medical College 804
233. The Destruction of the Trades in Modern Industry . 808
234. School Attendance of American Children, Fourteen to
Twenty Years of Age 810
235. Abbe DE l'Ep6e (1712-89) 819
236. The Reverend Thomas H. Gallaudet teaching the Deaf
and Dumb 819
237. Educational Institutions maintained by the State . . 820
238. Karl Georg von Raumer (1783-1865) 825
239. The Established and Experimental Nations of Europe . 835
240. The Educational Problems of the Future .... 838
GENERAL BIBLIOGRAPHY
In addition to the List of Readings and the Supplemental Ref- erences 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
I. 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 chap- ter bibhographies.
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. 568 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, 191 2.
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
I. 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 pubhc libraries.
XXIV GENERAL BIBLIOGRAPHY
III. CYCLOPEDIAS
* I. Monroe, Paul, Editor. Cyclopedia oj Education. 5 vols. New York, 1911-13.
The most important Cyclopaedia of Education in print. Contains ex- cellent articles on all historical points and events, with good selected bib- liographies. 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. EncylopcBdia Britannica. nth 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
*i. BsLTnard'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 bibhographies, as above, the most important references are indicated with an asterisk (*).
THE HISTORY OF EDUCATION
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 accompHshment, and, while specific parts would be interesting, for our purposes they would not be im- portant. 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 de- velopment 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 con- sequently 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 an- other, that our modern European and American civilization has been developed. The Germanic tribes, overrunning the bound- aries of the Roman Empire in the fourth and fifth centuries, added another new force of largest future significance, and one
4 HISTORY OF EDUCATION
which profoundly modified all subsequent progress and develop- ment. 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 civihzation is com- posed 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 educa- tional 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 last- ing 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 in- tellectually 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 pohtical 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 de- signed 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 thi§
INTRODUCTION
5
new t3^e of civilization secure. At Marathon, Salamis, and Plataea the fate of our western civiUzation trembled in the bal- ance. Now followed the great creative period in Greek life, dur- ing which the Athenian Greeks matured and developed a litera- ture, 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.
A m a I c h i 2t m Ma r e
'ndua F.
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 penin- sula jutting southward into the Mediterranean, but in most re- spects they were far different in type. Unlike the active, imagina- tive, artistic, and creative Greeks, the Romans were a practical, concrete, unimaginative, and executive people. Energy, person- ality, and executive power were in greatest demand among them.
6 HISTORY OF EDUCATION
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 intel- lectual; 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 organiza- tion she so fixed Roman ideas as to law and government through- out 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 Ro- man 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 gov- ernment, 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 di- rectly 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 mes- sage for a decaying world, Christianity forms the connecting link between the ancient and modern civilizations. Taking the
INTRODUCTION 7
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 teach- ings of the fatherhood of God, the brotherhood of man, the future Hfe, 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 ener- gies 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 civili- zation 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 cor- rupted. Knowledge of .the arts and sciences was lost. Schools disappeared. Only the Christian Church remained to save civili- zation 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 free- dom and of the subordination of the State to the individual has
8 HISTORY OF EDUCATION
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 Moham- medan 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 learn- ing, a great expansion of men's thoughts, a great religious awak- ening, 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 1 500 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 multiply- ing 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 ; Colum- bus had discovered a new world; the Church was more tolerant
INTRODUCTION 9
of new ideas than it had been for centuries; and thought was be- ing 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 inven- tion 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 awak- ened by the great conflict.
Still, out of this conflict, though it for a time checked the or- derly 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 Ger- mans, 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 salva- tion fail to take deep root, with the result that elementary edu- cation in England awaited the new political and social and in- dustrial impulses of the latter half of the nineteenth century for its real development.
The rise of the questioning and inferring spirit in the Italian
10 HISTORY OF EDUCATION
Renaissance marked the beginnings of the transition from mediae- val to modern attitudes, and one of the most important out- growths 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 cen- tury, 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 crea- tion of entirely new types of educational institutions, and intro- duced entirely new aims and methods and purposes into the edu- cational 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 mediaeval- ism 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 cen- turies, and the flood time of a slowly but steadily rising tide of protest against the enslavement of the intellect and the limita- tion 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,
INTRODUCTION II
the rise of democracy, a great extension of educational advan- tages, 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 af- fairs; their purpose was asserted to be to promote the common welfare and advance the interests of the political State; minis- ters 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 move- ment 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 move- ment 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 govern- ment 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 in- dustrial 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 human- itarian influences which are rapidly transforming and modern- izing not only less progressive western nations, but ancient civili- zations as well, and along the lines so slowly and so painfully worked out by the inheritors of the conceptions of human free-
12 HISTORY OF EDUCATION
dom first thought out in Httle Greece, and those of poUtical equahty and government under law so well worked out by an- cient 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 educa- tional 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 edu- cational 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 /Egean 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
Fig. 2. Ancient Greece and the ^gean World
Superimposed on the East-North-Central Group of American States, to show rela- tive 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 ^Egean Sea about the size of the State of Indiana, and Attica not quite so large as two average-size Illinois counties.
1 6 HISTORY OF EDUCATION
a much more mountainous land. No spot in Greece was over forty miles from the sea. Attica, where a most wonderful intel- lectual life arose and flourished for centuries, and whose contri- butions 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.^ The country was sparsely populated, except in a few of the City-States, and prob- ably did not, at its most prosperous period, contain much more than a million and a half of people — citizens, foreigners, and slaves included.
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 de- velopment of this wonderful civilization. Like Southern Cali- fornia 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 num- ber of independent City-States of small size. They had been set- tled 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
^ The average size of an Illinois county is 550 square miles, or an area 22X 25 miles square. The State of West Virginia contains 24,022 .square miles, and Rhode Island 1067 square miles. Rhode Island would be approximately 30X36 miles square, which would make Attica approximately 20X36 miles square in area.
THE OLD GREEK EDUCATION
17
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 gov- erned 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
Scale of Miles
is with Attica that the student of the history of education is most concerned. The, best of all Greece was there.
The little City-States of Greece, as has just been said, were independent States, just like modern nations. While all the Greeks regarded them- selves as tribes of a single family, descended from a com- mon ancestor, Hellen, and the bonds of a common race, lan- guage, and religion tended to unite them into a sort of brotherhood, the different City- States were held apart by their tribal origins, by narrow polit- ical 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 an- other. 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 Httle States into a Hellenic Nation, but the mutual jealousies and the extreme indi-
10
15
20
Fig. 3. The City-State of Attica
1 8 HISTORY OF EDUCATION
vidualism 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. ^ 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 cooperative 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 iioo 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.^
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
^ The nearest analogy we have to the Greek City-States exists in the local town governments of the New England States, particularly Massachusetts, and the local county-unit governmental organizations of a number of the Southern States, though in each of these cases we have a state and a federal government above to unify and direct and control these small local governments, which did not exist, except tempo- rarily, in Greece.
If an area the size of West Virginia were divided into some twenty independent counties, which could arrange treaties, make alliances, and declare war, and which sometimes united into leagues for defense or offense, but which were never able to unite to form a single State, we should have a condition analogous to that of main- land Greece.
2 A sea-faring people, the Greeks became to the ancient Mediterranean world what the English have been to the modern world. Southern Italy became so thickly set with small Greek cities that it was known as Magna Grcecia. On the island of Sicily the city of Syracuse was founded (734 B.C.), and became a center of power and a home of noted Greeks. The city of Marseilles, in southern France, dates from an Ionic settlement about 600 B.C. The presence of another seafaring people, the Phcenicians, along the northern coast of Africa and southern and eastern Spain, probably checked the further spread of Greek colonies to the westward. ,The city of Gyrene, in northern Africa, dates from about 630 B.C. Greek colonists also went north and east, through the Dardanelles and on into the Black Sea. (See map, Figure 2.) Salonica and Constantinople date back to Greek colonization. Many of the colonies reflected great honor and credit on the motherland, and served to spread Greek manners, language, and religion over a wide area.
THE OLD GREEK EDUCATION 19
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 set- tlers 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 some- what mixed race, which possibly in part accounts for their greater intellectual ability and versatility.^
It accounts, though, only in part. Climate, beautiful surround- ings, and contact with the outside world probably also contrib- uted something, but the real basis underneath was the very su- perior 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, pro- gressive, 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. Citizen- ship 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 ofhce, 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, rehgion, and citizenship were all bound up together, and educa-
^ It is the great mixed races that have counted for most in history. The strength of England is in part due to its wonderful mixture of peoples — Britons, Angles, Saxons, Jutes, Danes, Northmen, to mention only the more important earlier peo- ples which have been welded together to form the English people.
20 HISTORY OF EDUCATION
tion 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 prelim- inary 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.^ From Figure 4 it will be seen what a small percentage of the total population this included. Educa- tion 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-bom ; 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 citi- zens, 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 persist- ently refused to assimilate the foreign-bom. Regarding them- selves 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.-
Beneath both citizens and foreign residents was a great founda- tion mass of working slaves, who rendered all types of menial and intellectual services. Sailors, household servants, field workers,
^ Athens, however, permitted the children of foreigners to attend its schools, particularly in the later period of Athenian education.
2 "When I compare the customs of the Greeks with these (the Romans), I can find no reason to extol either those of the Spartans, or the Thebans, or even of the Athenians, who value themselves the most for their wisdom; all who, jealous of their nobihty and communicating to none or to very few the privileges of their cities . . . were so far from receiving any advantage from this haughtiness that they became the greatest sufferers by it." (Dionysius of Halicamassus, in his Roman Antiquities, book II, chap, xvii.)
THE OLD GREEK EDUCATION
21
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 prac- tice 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 num- bers,^ 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.
Education, then, being only for the male children of citizens, and citizen- ship a degree to be attained to on the basis of education and training, let us next see in whafthat education consisted, and what were its most prominent characteristics and results.
Fig. 4. Distribution of the
Population of Athens and
Attica, about 430 b;c.
(After Gulick)
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 citi- zen 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,
^ In Sparta the number of citizens was still less. At the time of the formulation of the Spartan constitution by Lycurgus (about 850 B.C.) there were but 9000 Spartan famiUes in the midst of 250,000 subject people. This disproportion in- creased rather than diminished in later centuries.
22 HISTORY OF EDUCATION
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.
I. 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 mih- tary power. ^ 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 ne- glected (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 Spar- tan virtues. His food and clothing were scant and his bed hard. Each older man was a teacher. Running, leaping, boxing, wres- tling, military music, mihtary drill, ball-playing, the use of the spear, fighting, stealing, and laconic speech and demeanor con-
^ The Austrian-Magyar combination, which held together and dominated the many tribes of the former Austro-Hungarian Empire, is an analogous modern situa- tion, though on a much larger scale.
THE OLD GREEK EDUCATION 23
stituted 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 con- tinuing to live at the public barrack and spending his energies in training boys (R. i). Women and girls were given gymnastic training to make them strong and capable of bearing strong chil- dren. The family was virtually suppressed in the interests of defense and war.^ 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 nat- urally into two divisions — the old Athenian training which pre- vailed 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
^ Two Greek poems illustrate the Spartan mother, who was said to admonish her sons to come back with their shields, or upon them. The first is: "Eight sons Daementa at Sparta's call Sent forth to fight: one tomb received them all. No tears she shed, but shouted, 'Victory! Sparta, I bore them but to die for thee.'"
The second:
"A Spartan, his companion slain, Alone from battle fled: His mother, kindhng with disdain That she had borne him, struck him dead; For courage and not birth alone In Sparta testifies a son."
"Go, tell at Sparta, thou that passest by, That here, obedient to her laws, we lie."
(Epitaph on the three hundred who fell at Thermopylae.)
24 HISTORY OF EDUCATION
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 estabHshment of any such plan. While education was a necessity for citizen- ship, 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 lit. 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 edu- cate his son, the son was then by law freed from the necessity of supporting his father in his old age. The State supervised edu- cation, 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. ^ 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 modem sense of the term. However, but little was needed. The instruction was largely individual instruction, the boy com- ing, usually in charge of an old slave known as a pedagogue, to re- ceive or recite his lessons. The teaching process was essentially a telling and a leaming-by -heart procedure.
For the earlier years there were two schools which boys at-
^ An Athenian saying, of a man who was missing, was: "Either he is dead or has become a schoolmaster." To call a man a schoolmaster was to abuse him, according to Epicurus. Demosthenes, in his attack on ^schines, ridicules him for the fact that his father was a schoolmaster in the lowest type of reading and writing school. "As a boy," he says, "you were reared in abject poverty, waiting with your father on the school, grinding the ink, sponging the benches, sweeping the room, and doing the duty of a menial rather thanl of a freeman's son." Lucian represents kings as being forced to maintain themseves in hell by teaching reading and writing.
THE OLD GREEK EDUCATION
25
tended — 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 train- ing 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 educa- tional institutions, though they partook of the nature of both.
Early childhood. As at Sparta the in- fant 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 chil- dren 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 chil-
FiG. V A Greek Boy
26
HISTORY OF EDUCATION
dren 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. ^
The school of the grammatist. A Greek boy, unlike a mod- em 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 repre- sented 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 paliBstra he went for instruction in physical training (R. 3).
Reading was taught by first learning the letters, then syllables,
and finally words. ^ Plaques
PYTANEYCNEOK^ MATFYEAANOAL;,
A O E M <^ A ^T E ^;ife
P' I I-fl F r E A if^TF ^A O E M ^ A ^. T t , - / -- r'^ rp. AA/1/' N^^ EMTH I C THJ
A r'K '^A/^KP F7A< IT fj tsjf i^MMNCz-j;. TH I I F,;
v^'
of baked earth, on which the alphabet was written, like the more modem horn- book (see Figure 130), were frequently used."' The ease with which modern children leam to read was unknown in Greece . Reading was very dif- ficult to leam, as accentuation, punctuation, spacing between words, and small letters had not as yet been introduced. As a result the study required
' Women were not supposed to possess any of the privileges of citizenship, be- longing rather to the alien class. They lived secluded lives, were not supposed to take any part in pubHc affairs, and, if their husbands brought company to the house, they were expected to retire from view. In their attitude toward women the Greeks were an oriental rather than a modern or western people.
^ " We learn first the names of the elements of speech, which are called grammata; then their shape and functions; then the syllables and their affections; lastly, the parts of speech, and the piarticular mutations connected with each, as inflection, number, contraction, accents, position in the sentence; then we begin to read and write, at first in syllables and slowly, but when we have attained the necessary cer- tainty, easily and quickly." (Dionysiusof Halicarnassus, /)e C'ow/'o^. Verh.ca.\i 25.)
^ Fragments of a tile found in Attica have stamped upon them the syllables ar, bar, gar; er, ber, ger; etc. A bottle-shaped vase has also been found which, in addi- tion to the alphabet, contains pronouncing exercises as follows:
bi-ba-bu-be zi-za-zu-ze pi-pa-pu-pe
gi-ga-gn-ge mi-ma-niu-mr etc.
Fig. 6. An Athenian Inscription
A decree of the Council and Assembly, dating from about 450 B.C. Note the diffi- culty of trying to read, without any punc- tuation, and with only capital letters.
THE OLD GREEK EDUCATION
27
Greek Writing-Materials
Five Times
Unity
Thou
Hun
Te
sands
4 red 8
much time,^ 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 ciuite well. T'he Athenian accent, too, was hard to acquire.
The pupil learned to write by first tracing, with the stylus, letters cut in wax tablets, and later by copy- ing 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 cum- brous system of notation.^ 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.
Great importance of reading and literature. After the pupil had learned to read, much attention was given to accentuation and articulation, in or- der 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 uncom-
^ "Learning to read must have been a difficult business in Hellas, for books were written only in capitals at this time. There were no spaces between the words, and no stops were inserted. Thus the reader had to exercise his ingenuity before he could arrive at the meaning of a sentence." (Freeman, K. J., Schools of Hellas, p. 87.)
^ The Greeks had no numbers, but only words for numbers, and used the letters of the Greek alphabet with accents over them to indicate the words they knew as numbers. Counting and bookkeeping would of course be very difficult with such a, system.
Un
its
Fig. 8 A Greek Counting-Board
Pebbles of different size or color were used for thousands, hun- dreds, tens, and units. Their position on the board gave them their values. The board now shows the total 15,379.
28 HISTORY OF EDUCATION
monly, 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 iEsop.^ Reading, declamation, and music were closely inter- related. To appeal to the emotions and to stir the will along moral and civic lines was a fundamental purpose of the instruc- tion (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 cf their education, the Athenians attained a variety of objects difficult of attainment by any other one means. The fact is, the an- cient poetry of Greece, with its finished form, its heroic tales and char- acters, its accounts of peoples far removed in time and space, its man- liness 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, w^hile from the lyric poets he would learn the language suit- able 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
^ "These poems, especially Homer, Hesiod, and Theognis, served at the same time for drill in language and for recitation, whereby on the one hand the memory was developed and the imagination strengthened, and on the other the heroic forms of antiquity and healthy primitive utterances regarding morality, and full of homely common sense, were deeply engraved on the young mind. Homer was regarded not merely as a poet, but as an inspired moral teacher, and great portions of his poems were learned by heart. The Iliad and the Odyssey were in truth the Bible of the Greeks." (Laurie, S. S., Pre-Christian Education, p. 258.)
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
Ex planalion: 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 mouth- pieces 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 inscrip- tion in Greek.
Fig. q. An Athenian School
(From a cup discovered at Caere, signed by the painter Duris, and now in the
Museum of Berlin)
30 HISTORY OF EDUCATION
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 entertain- ment. ^
The music school. The teacher in this school gradually separ- ated himself from the grammatist, and often the two were found in adjoining rooms in the same school. In his functions he suc- ceeded 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.- Both Aristotle and Plato advocate state
^ Davidson, Thos., Aristotle, pp. 73-75.
2 Plutarch later expressed well the Greek conception of musical education in these words: "Whoever be he that shall give his mind to the study of music in his youth, if he meet with a musical education proper for the forming and regulating his inclinations, he will be sure to applaud and embrace that which is noble and gen- erous, and to rebuke and blame the contrary, as well in other things as in what belongs to music. And by that means he will become clear from all reproachful actions, for now having reaped the noblest fruit of music, he may be of great use,
THE OLD GREEK EDUCATION
31
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 appreci- ate.
The first lessons taught the use of the instrument, and the sim- ple 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 to-
^ ' « '
The Singing Lesson
The Literature Lesson
The boy is singing, to the accompani- ment of a flute. On the wall hangs a bag of flutes.
Fig. 10. Greek School Lessons
The boy is reciting, while the teacher follows him on a roll of manuscript.
gether 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. Profes- sional 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 educa- tion, fully one half of a boy's school life, from eight to sixteen, was given to sports and games in another school under different teach- not only to himself, but to the commonwealth; while music teaches him to abstain from everything that is indecent, both in word and deed, and to observe decorum, temperance, and regularity." (Monroe, Paul, History of Education, p. 92.)
32 HISTORY OF EDUCATION
ers, known as the palcestra. 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 con- trol 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 mas- ters. After the pupils came to be a little older there was a definite course of study, which included, in succession: (i) leaping and jumping, for general bodily and lung development; (2) running contests, for agility and endurance; (3) throwing the discus,^ for arm exercise; (4) casting the javelin, for bodily poise and coordi- nation 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 in- cluded 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 part- ner 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 gymnasia! 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 gen- tleman, to revere the gods, to be moral and upright according to Greek standards, and in addition he had been given that training
1 A flat circle of polished bronze, or other metal, eight or nine inches in diameter.
THE OLD GREEK EDUCATION
33
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 ex- pected 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.
Vl>r, i-r, „„, ^, ,,, „J}7y>^»i>iiu„„, ,,,,,„„,„>,> I ti 1,111} irmrrTm !).!,» t>»>n[^^
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 tilled with chaff for the use of boxers; H, where the young men sprinkled themselves with dust; /, 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; O, 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, look- ing 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.
34 HISTORY OV EDUCATION
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 1 1 shows the ground plan of one of these gymnasia, and a study of the explanation of the plan will re- veal the nature of these establishments. The boy now had for teachers a number of gymnasts of ability. The old exercises of the palcBslra 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 fam- ily 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.^ Aside from a re- quirement that he learn the laws of the State, his education during this period was entirely physical and civic. If he abused his lib- erty 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 au- thorities of his district or ward in the city, and presented him as a candidate for citizenship. He was examined morally and physi- cally, 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
^ "There were no home influences in Hellas. The men-folk lived out of doors. The young Athenian from his sixth year onward spent his whole day away from home, in the company of his contemporaries, at school or palaestra, or in the streets. When he came home there was no home life. His mother was a nonentity, living in the woman's apartments; he probably saw little of her. His real home was the palaestra, his companions his contemporaries and his paidagogos. He learned to disassociate himself from his family and associate himself with his fellow citizens. No doubt he lost much by this system, but. the solidarity of the State gained." (Freeman, K. J., Schools oj Hellas, p. 282.)
THE OLD GREEK EDUCATION 35
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 every- where — drill, camp in the open, learn the army methods and dis- cipline, 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 train- ing 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 educa- tional 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 prepa- ration for citizenship (R. 5). Not only did Athens surpass all
36 HISTORY OF EDUCATION
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 pohtical 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 pre- pare 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 pro- duced wonderful results, both in peace and in war.^ 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.- 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.
^ "No doubt the Athenian public was by no means so learned as we modems are; they were ignorant of many sciences, of much history, — in short of a thousand results of civilization which have since accrued. But in civilization itself, in mental power, in quickness of comprehension, in correctness of taste, in accuracy of judg- ment, no modern nation, however well instructed, has been able to equal by labored acquirements the inborn genius of the Greeks." (Mahaffy, J. P., Old Greek Education.)
^ The great institutions of the Greek City-State were in themselves highly educa- tive. The chief of these were:
1. The Assembly, where the laws were proposed, debated, and made.
2. The Juries, on which citizens sat and where the laws were applied.
3. The Theater, where the great masterpieces of Greek literature were performed.
4. The Olympian and other Games, which were great religious ceremonies of a literary as well as an athletic and artistic character, and to which Greeks from all over Hellas came.
5. The city life itself, among an inquisitive, imaginative, and disputatious people.
THE OLD GREEK EDUCATION 37
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 Chris- tian religion which they did not know. It was, to be sure, class education, and limited to but a small fraction of the total popu- lation. In it girls had no share. There were many features of Greek life, too, that are repugnant to modem 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 edu- cation which has been evolved in the history of the world. Con- sidering 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 character- istic?
3. Are the Athenian characteristics, stated in the middle of page 19, charac- teristics 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 sociaHsm, 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 im- portant 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 contrib- utes to moral worth appeal to you? Why?
38 HISTORY OF EDUCATION
1 6. 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 Ameri- can 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 hfe 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 Hberty, 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 behef into practice?
SELECTED RP:ADINGS
In the accompanying Book of Readings the following selections are repro- duced:
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 (i).
2. Describe and characterize the instruction of the Irens at Sparta. Com- pare with the training given among the best of the American Indian tribes (i).
3. Contrast the type of education given an Athenian and a Spartan boy, as to nature and purpose and character (i 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 (i).
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 effec- tive training, over the uneducated hordes led to battle by the au- tocracy 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 civili- zation were attained. Attica had braved everything for the com- mon cause of Greece, even to leaving Athens to be burned by the invader, and for the next fifty years she held the position of politi- cal as well as cultural preeminence 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 grow- ing commerce, was now extended throughout the Mediterranean world.
From 479 to 431 B.C. was the Golden Age of Greece, and '' dur- ing this short period Athens gave birth to more great men — poets, artists, statesmen, and philosophers — than all the world beside had produced ^ in any period of equal length." Then,
^ The culmination came in what is known as the Age of Pericles, who was the master mind at Athens from 459 to 431 B.C. During the fifth century B.C. such
40 HISTORY OF EDUCATION
•
largely as a result of the growing jealousy of military Sparta, came that cruel and vindictive civil strife, known as the Pelopon- nesian War, which desolated Greece, left Athens a wreck of her former self, permanently lowered the moral tone of the Greek peo- ple, 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 im- paired forever by a revengeful war between those who should have been friends and allies in the cause of civilization.
Transition from the 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, prop- erly born, and properly educated class. Wealth now became im- portant in giving leisure to the citizen, and was no longer looked down upon as it had been in the earlier period. After the Pelo- ponnesian War the predominance of Attica among the Greek States, the growth of commerce, the constant interchange of em- bassies, 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 ^ 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 ^ was now replaced by an attempt to explain the world of ideas and emotions, with a resulting evolution of the sciences of
names as Themistocles and Pericles in government, Phidias and Myron in art, Herodotus and Thucydides in historical narrative, ^schylus, Sophocles, and Euripides in tragic drama, and Aristophanes in comedy, graced Athens.
^ With the Greeks, morality and the future life never had any connection.
2 The early Greek philosophers tried to explain the physical world about them by trying to discover what they called the "first principle," from which all else had been derived. Thales (c. 624-548 B.C.), the father of Greek science, had concluded that water was the original source of all matter; Anaximenes (c. 588-524 B.C.), that air was the first principle; Heraclites (c. 525-475 B.C.), fire; and Pythagoras (c. 580- 500 B.C.), number.
LATER GREEK EDUCATION 41
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. '^ 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 indi- vidual, 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," began to offer a more practical course designed to prepare boys for the
^ "There was now demanded ability to discuss all sorts of social, political, eco- nomic, and scientific or metaphysical questions; to argue in public in the market- place or in the law courts; to declaim in a formal manner on almost any topic; to amuse or even instruct the populace upon topics of interest or questions of the day; to take part in the many diplomatic embassies and political missions of the times — the ability, in fact, to shine in a democratic society much Hke our own and to con- trol the votes and command the approval of an intelligent populace where the function of printing-press, telegraph, railroad, and all modern means of communica- tion were performed through public speech and private discourse, and where the legal, ecclesiastical, and other professional classes of teachers did not exist." (Mon- roe, Paul, History of Education, pp. log-io.)
2 The importance of a political career in the new Athens will be better under- stood if we remember that the influence on public opinion to-day exerted by the pulpit, bar, public platform, press, and scholar was then concentrated in the public speaker, and that the careers now open to promising youths in science, industry, commerce, politics, and government were then concentrated in the political career. It must also be remembered that the Greeks had always been a nation of speakers, both the content and the form of the address being important.
42 HISTORY OF EDUCATION
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 politi- cal and intellectual life of Hellas than did the older type of train- ing. In the schools of the Sophists boys now spent their time in forming phrases, choosing words, examining grammatical struc- ture, 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 es- tablished 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:
I. Primary education, covering the years from seven or eight to thirteen, and embracing reading, writing, arithmetic, and chant- ing. The teacher of this school came to be known as a gram- matist.
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 gram- maticus.
3. Higher or university education, covering the years after sixteen.
The flood of individualism. This period of artistic and intel- lectual 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,\but in vain. The ^ old ideal of citizenship died out. Service to the State be-
^ Each of these philosophers proposed an ideal educational system designed to remedy the evils of the State. Xenophon (c. 410-362 B.C.), in his Cyropcedia, pur- porting to describe the education of Cyrus of Persia, proposed a Spartan modifica- tion of the old Athenian system. Plato (429-348 B.C.), in his Republic, proposed an aristocratic socialism as a means of securing individual virtue and state justice. He first presents the super-civic man, an ideal destined for great usefulness among the Christians later on. Aristotle (384-322 B.C.), in his Ethics, and in his Politics, out- lined an ideal state and a system of education for it.
LATER CxREEK EDUCATION 43
came purely subordinate to personal pleasure and advancement. Irreverence and a scofi&ng 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 spec- tacle 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 repre- sents 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 393 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 success- ful, 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 aff'ord 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 froin the baser individualism of the Sophists of his day to the larger general
44
HISTORY OF EDUCATION
truths which measure the Hfe of a true man. In particular he tried to show that the greatest of all arts — the art of Hving 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 edu- cation 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 show- ing 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 con- demned to death by the Athenian popu- lace on the charge of impiety and corrupt- ing the youth of Athens.
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-bom pupil of Plato's by the name of Aristotle, who did a remarkable work in organizing the known knowledge of his time; ^ 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
1 "It is beyond all conception what that man espied, saw, beheld, remarked, observed." (Goethe.)
"One of the richest and most comprehensive geniuses that has ever appeared — a man beside whom no age has an equal to place." (Hegel.)
"Aristotle, Nature's private secretary, dipping his pen in intellect." (Eusebius.)
Fig. 12 Socrates (469-399 b.c.)
(After a marble bust in the Vatican Gallery, at Rome)
LATER CREEK EDUCATION
45
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 expound- ing the philosophy of the founder.
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
SOPHISTS
5th C. B.C.
PHILOSOPHICAL SCHOOLS
386-306 B.C.
RHETORICAL SCHOOLS
4th and 3rd Cs. B.C.
UNIVERSITY OF ATHENS
About 200 B.C.
Fig. 13. Evolution of the Greek University
attempts to meet fundamental changes in Athenian Hfe, the edu- cation 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 Athe- nian Assembly, professorships were created over which the Assem- bly 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 Ufe as regards both students and
46 HISTORY OF EDUCATION
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 atten- tion to making their city a center of world learning. This may be said to have been accomphshed 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 west- em 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 Alex- ander 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 becom- ing the teachers of an enlarged world. ^ '' 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
^ "As Alexander passed conquering through Asia, he restored to the East, as garnered grain, that Greek civilization whose seeds had long ago been received from the East. Each conqueror in turn, the Macedonian and the Roman bowed before conquered Greece and learnt lessons at her feet." (Butcher, S. H., Some Aspects of the Greek Genius, p. 43.)
LATER GREEK EDUCATION
47
by the Greek mind, henceforth became the heritage of many nations." ^
Greek universities were established at Pergamum and Tarsus in Asia Minor; at Rhodes on the island of that name in the ALgean; and at the newly founded city of Alexandria in Egypt. Antioch, in Syria, became another im-
FiG. 14 The Greek University World
portant center of Greek influ- ence and learning. A large library was developed at Pergamum. and it was here that writing on prepared skins of animals-' was be- gun, 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. Mingling of Orient and Occident at Alexandria. The most famous of all these Greek institutions, however, was the Univer- sity 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.^ 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
^ Webster, D. H., Ancient History, p. 302.
2 Previous to this, paper had been made from the papyrus plant, but Egypt, having forbidden its export, necessity again became the mother of invention.
' With this exception, never before the Italian Renaissance was there such interest in collecting books. Almost every book written in antiquity was gathered here, and the library at Alexandria became the British Museum or the BibHotheque Nationale of the ancient world. Every book entering Egypt was required to be brought to this library.
48
HISTORY OF EDUCATION
great center of learning, but, still more important, the chief min- gling place for Greek, Jew, Egyptian, Roman, and Oriental, and here Greek philosophy, Hebrew and Christian religion, and Ori- ental 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. lo). 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 b}^ Aristotle at Athens was introduced and used. Instead of spec- ulating as to phenomena and causes, as had been the earlier Greek practice, observation and experiment now became the rule.
UNKNOWN LAND
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.
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 me- chanics and physics. Eratosthenes (226-196 B.C.), librarian at Alexandria, is famous as a geographer ^ and astronomer, and made
^ He founded the science of geography. Before his time Greek students had concluded that the world was round, instead of flat, as stated in the Homeric poems. By careful measurements he determined its size, within a few thousand miles of its actual circumference, and predicted that one might sail from Spain to the Indie§ along the same parallel of latitude.
LATER GREEK EDUCATION 49
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 fif- teen 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 constel- lations. 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, organi- zation, 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 ^ 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 philo- sophical. Ultimately Alexandria became the seat of a metaphys- ical 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 de- stroyed, furnishing, it is said, "fuel sufficient for four thousand ^ From the tradition that seventy scholars labored on it.
50 HISTORY OF EDUCATION
public baths for a period of six months," and Greek learning was extinguished in the western world.
Our debt to Hellas. As a poHtical power the Greek States left the world nothing of importance. As a people they were too in- dividualistic, and seemed to have a strange inability to unite for pohtical purposes. To the new power slowly forming to the west- ward — 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." ^ (R. ii.)
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 modi- fied form became dominant in Rome and throughout the prov- inces, 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 Mediter- ranean 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.
^ Henry Sumner Maine.
LATER GREEK EDUCATION 51
QUESTIONS FOR DISCUSSION
1. Try to picture what might have been the result for western civiHzation 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 edu- cation 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 civihzation, 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 repro- duced:
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.
52 HISTORY OF EDUCATION
3. What would be necessary for the proper training of one for eloquence? Could any Sophist teacher have trained any one?
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 sub- jects is the Socratic quiz applicable?
6. How do you account for the fact that the wonderful promise of Alexan- drian science was not fulfilled?
7. State our debt to the Greeks (11).
SUPPLEMENTAL REFERENCES
The most important references are indicated by an *
* Bevan, J. O. University Life in Olden Time.
* Butcher, S. H. Some Aspects of the Greek Genius.
* Davidson, Thos. Aristotle, and Ancient Educational Ideals.
* Freeman, K. J. Schools of Hellas.
Gulick, C. B. The Life of the Ancient Greeks.
* Kingsley, Chas. Alexandria and her Schools.
Laurie, S. S. Historical Survey of Pre-Christian Education.
* Mahaffy, J. P. Old Greek Education.
Sandys, J. E. History of Classical Scholarship, vol. i.
Walden, John W. H. The Universities of Ancient Greece.
Wilkins, A. S. National Education in Greece in the Fourth Century, B.C.
CHAPTER III THE EDUCATION AND WORK OF ROME
I. THE ROMANS AND THEIR MISSION
Development of the Roman State. About the time that the Hellenes, in the City-States of the Greek peninsula, had brought their civilization to its Golden Age, another branch of the great Aryan race, which had previously settled in the Italian peninsula, had begun the creation of a new civilization there which was destined to become extended and powerful. At the beginning of
Growth of Rome up to .201 B.C.
At 509 B.C.
At end of Latin War. 338 B.C.
By 264 B.C.
By 201 B.C.
Fig. 1 6. The Early Peoples of Italy, and the Extension of the
Roman Power
In 509 B.C. Attica opened her citizenship to all free inhabitants, and half a century later the Golden Age of Greece was in full swing. By 338 B.C. Greece's glory had departed. Philip of Macedon had become master, and its political freedom was over. By 264 B.C. the center of Greek life and thought had been transferred to Alexandria, and Rome's great expansion had begun.
54
HISTORY OF EDUCATION
recorded history we find a number of tribes of this branch of the Aryan race settled in different parts of Italy, as is shown in Figure 1 6. Slowly, but gradually, the smallest of these divisions, the Latins, extended its rule over the other tribes, and finally over the Greek settlements to the south and the Gauls to the north, so that by 201 B.C. the entire Italian peninsula had become subject to the City-State government at Rome.
By a wise policy of tolerance, patience, conciliation, and assim- ilation the Latins gradually became the masters of all Italy. Un- Hke the Greek City-States, Rome seemed to possess a natural genius for the art of government. Upon the people she con- quered she bestowed the great gift of Roman citizenship, and she attached them to her by granting local government to their towns
and by interfering as little as possible with their local manners, speech, habits, and institutions. By founding colonies among them and by building excellent military roads to them, she insured her rule, and by kindly and generous treatment she bound the different Italian peoples ever closer and closer to the central government at Rome. By a most wonderful un- derstanding of the psychology of other peoples, new in the world before the work of Rome, and not seen again until the work of the English in the nineteenth cen- tury, Rome gradually assimilated the peoples of the Italian peninsula and in time amalgamated them into a single Roman race. In speech, customs, manners, and finally in blood she Romanized the different tribes and brought them under her leadership. Later this same process was extended to Spain, Gaul, and even to far-off Britain.
A concrete, practical people. The Roman people were a con- crete, practical, constructive nation of farmers and herdsmen (R. 14), merchants and soldiers, governors and executives. The whole of the early struggle of the Latins to extend their rule and absorb the other tribes of the peninsula called for practical rulers — warriors who were at the same time constructive statesmen and executives who possessed power and insight, energy, and
Fig. 17 The Principal Roman Roads
EDUCATION AND WORK OF ROME 55
personality. The long struggle for political and social rights/ carried on by the common people (plebeians) with the ruling class (patricians), tended early to shape their government along rough but practical lines, ^ and to elevate law and orderly procedure among the people. The later extension of the Empire to include many distant lands — how vast the Roman Empire finally be- came may be seen from the map on the following page — called still more for a combination of force, leadership, tolerance, pa- tience, executive power, and insight into the psychology of subject people to hold such a vast empire together. Only a great, creative people, working along very practical lines, could have used and used so well the opportunity which came to Rome ^ to create a great world empire.
The great mission of Rome. Had Rome tried to impose her rule and her ways and her mode of thought on her subject people, and to reduce them to complete subjection to her, as the modern German and Austrian Empires, for example, tried to do with the peoples who came under their control, the Roman Empire could never have been created, and what would have saved civilization
^ This struggle of the common people (plebeians) for an equal place with the ruling class {patricians) before the law, in religious matters, and in politics, covered two and a half centuries, the old restrictions being broken down but gradually. The most important steps in the process were:
509 B.C. Magistrates forbidden to scourge or execute a Roman citizen without giving him a chance to appeal to the people in their popular assembly. This " right of appeal" was regarded as the Magna Charta of Roman liberty.
494 B.C. Plebeian soldiers granted officers of their own (Tribunes) to protect them against patrician cruelty and injustice.
451-449 B.C. Laws must be written — Code commission appointed. Result, the Laws of the Twelve Tables (R. 12); these mark the beginning of the great Roman legal system.
445 B.C. Intermarriage between the two orders legalized.
367 B.C. Right to hold office granted, and one of the Consuls elected each year to be a plebeian.
250 B.C. By this date the distinctions between the two orders had disappeared; patricians and plebeians intermarried and formed one compact body of citizens in the Roman State.
2 "The scholar who compares carefully the Greek constitutions with the Roman will undoubtedly consider the former to be finer and more finished specimens of political work. The imperfect and incomplete character which the Roman consti- tution presents, at almost any point of its history, the number of institutions it exhibits which appear to be temporary expedients merely, are necessary results of its method of growth to meet demands as they rose from time to time; they are evidence, indeed, of its highly practical character." (Adams, G. B., Civilization during the Middle Ages, 2d ed., p. 20.)
* The same opportunity came to Athens after the Persian Wars and to Sparta after the Peloponnesian War, but neither possessed the creative power along polit- ical and governmental lines, or the tolerance for the ideas and feelings of subject peoples, to accomplish anything permanent. Rome succeeded where previous States had failed because of her larger insight, tolerance, patience, and constructive power.
Fig. 1 8. The Great Extent of the Roman Empire
The map shows the Roman Empire as it was by the end of the first century a.d., and the tribes shown beyond the frontier are as they were at the beginning of the fourth century a.d. It was 2500 miles, air line, from the eastern end of the Black Sea to the western coasts of Spain, 1400 miles from Rome to Palestine, and iioo miles from Rome to northern Britain. To maintain order in this vast area Rome depended on the loyalty of her subjects, the strength of her armies, her military roads, and a messenger service by horse, yet throughout this vast area she imposed her law and a unified government for centuries.
EDUCATION AND WORK OF ROME 57
from complete destruction during the period of the barbarian invasions is hard to see. Instead, Rome treated her subjects as her friends, and not as conquered peoples; led them to see that their interests were identical with hers; gave them large local inde- pendence and freedom in government, under her strong control of general affairs ; opened up her citizenship ^ and the line of pro- motion in the State to her provincials; ^ and won them to the peace and good order which she everywhere imposed by the ad- vantages she offered through a common language, common law, common coinage, common commercial arrangements, common state service, and the common treatment of all citizens of every race.'^ In consequence, the provincial was willingly absorbed into the common Roman race ^ — absorbed in dress, manners, religion, poHtical and legal institutions, family names, and, most impor- tant of all, in language. As a result, race pride and the native tongues very largely disappeared, and Latin became the spoken language of all except the lower classes throughout the whole of the Western Empire. Only in the eastern Mediterranean, where the Hellenic tongue and the Hellenic civilization still dominated, did the Latin language make but little headway, and here Rome had the good sense not to try to impose her speech or her culture. Instead she absorbed the culture of the East, while the East ac- cepted in return the Roman government and Roman law, and Latin in time became the language of the courts and of govern- ment.
Having stated thus briefly the most prominent characteristics of the Roman people, and indicated their great work for civiliza- tion, let us turn back and trace the development of such educa-
^ Caesar extended Roman citizenship to certain communities in Gaul and in Sicily, and began the further extension of the process of assimilation by taking the con- quered provincial into citizenship in the Empire. This was carried on and extended by. succeeding Emperors until finally, in 212 a.d., Roman citizenship was extended to all free-born inhabitants in all the provinces.
2 For example, Balbus, a Spaniard, was Consul in Rome forty years before the Christian era, and another Spaniard, Nerva, had become Emperor before the close of the first century a.d. Many commanders in the army and governors in the provinces were provincials by birth.
^ Roman citizenship was much more than a mere name. A Roman citizen could not be maltreated or punished without a legal trial before a Roman court. If ac- cused in a capital case he could always protect himself from what he considered an unjust decision by an "appeal to Caesar"; that is, to the Emperor at Rome. The protection of law was always extended to his property and himself, wherever in the Roman Empire he might live or travel.
^ Both literature and inscriptions testify abundantly to the affectionate regard in which Roman rule was held. The rule may have been far from perfect, judged from a modern point of view, but it was so much better and so much more orderly than anything that had gone before that it was accepted in all quarters.
58 HISTORY OF EDUCATION
tional system as existed among them, see in what it consisted, how it modified the Hfe and habits of thinking of the Roman peo- ple, and what educational organization or traditions Rome passed on to western civilization.
II. THE PERIOD OF HOME EDUCATION
The early Romans and their training. In the early history of the Romans there were no schools, and it was not until about 300 B.C. that even primary schools began to develop. What edu- cation was needed was imparted in the home or in the field and in the camp, and was of a very simple type. Certain virtues were demanded — modesty, firmness, prudence, piety, courage, seri- ousness, and regard for duty — and these were instilled both by precept and example. Each home was a center of the religious life, and of civic virtue and authority. In it the father was a high priest, with power of life and death over wife and children. He alone conversed with the gods and prepared the sacrifices. The wife and mother, however, held a high place in the home and in the training of the children, the marriage tie being regarded as very sacred. She also occupied a respected position in society, and was complete mistress of the house (R. 17).
The religion of the city was an outgrowth of that of the home. Virtue, courage, duty, justice — these became the great civic vir- tues. Their religion, both family and state, lacked the beauty and stately ceremonial of the Greeks, lacked that lofty faith and aspiration after virtue that characterized the Hebrew and the later Christian faith, was singularly wanting in awe and mystery, and was formal and mechanical and practical ^ in character, but it exercised a great influence on these early peoples and on their conceptions of their duty to the State.
The father trained the son for the practical duties of a man
^ Every house was protected from the evil spirits of the outside world by Janus, and had its sacred fire presided over by Vesta. Every house had its protecting Lares. The cupboard where the food was stored was blest by and under the charge of the Penates. The daily worship of these household deities took place at the family meal, the father offering a little food and a Httle wine at the sacred hearth, livery house father, too, had his guardian Genius, whose festival was celebrated on the master's birthday. In a similar fashion the State had its temples, its sacred fire and votive offerings, and various divinities ruled the elements and sent or withheld success.
Almost every activity in life was presided over by some deity, whom it was necessary to propitiate before engaging in it. Davidson says, with reference to the practical nature of their religion, that "V/hile the Athenians rejoiced before their gods, the Romans kept a debtor and creditor account v/ith theirs, and were very anxious that the balance should be on the right side."
EDUCATION AND WORK OF ROME
59
Fig. 19. a Roman Father
instructing his son (From a Roman Sarcophagus)
and a citizen; the mother trained the daughter to become a good housekeeper, wife, and mother. MoraHty, character, obedience to parents and to the State, and whole-hearted service were em- phasized. The boy's father taught him to read, write, and count. Stories of those who had done great deeds for the State were told, and martial songs were learned and sung. After 450 B.C. every boy had to learn the Laws of the Twelve Tables (R. 12), and be able to explain their meaning (R. 13). As the boy grew older he fol- lowed his father in the fields and in the public place and listened to the con- versation of men.^ If the son of a pa- trician he naturally learned much more from his father, by reason of his larger knowledge and larger contact with men of affairs and public business, than if he were the son of a plebeian. Through games as a boy, and later in the exercises of the fields and the camps, the boy gained what physical training he received.-
Education by doing. It was largely an education by doing, as was that of the old Greek period, though entirely different in character. Either by apprenticeship to the soldier, farmer, or statesman, or by participation in the activities of a citizen, was the training needed imparted. Its purpose was to produce good fathers, citizens, and soldiers.^ Its ideals were found in the real and practical needs of a small State, where the ability to care for one's self was a neecssary virtue. To be healthy and strong, to
^ "Among our ancestors," says Pliny, "one learned not only through the ears, but through the eyes. The young, in observing the elders, learned what they would soon have to do themselves, and what they would one day teach to their successor." - Such careful physical training as was given in a Greek palastra and gymnasium would have been regarded by the Romans as most effeminate. Unlike the (Greeks, who strove for a harmonious bodily development, the Romans exercised for useful- ness in war. Cicero exclaims, with reference to Greek gymnasial training: "What an absurd system of training youth is exhibited in their gymnasia! What a frivo- lous preparation for the labors and hazards of war!"
3 Macaulay, in his Horatius, describes the results of the education of this early period as follows:
"Then none were for the party, But all were for the State; And the rich man loved the poor,
And the poor man loved the great. Then lands were fairly portioned . And spoils were fairly sold; For the Romans were like brothers In the brave days of old,"
60 HISTORY OF EDUCATION
reverence the gods and the institutions of the State, to obey his parents and the laws, to be proud of his family connections and his ancestors, to be brave and efficient in war, to know how to farm or to manage a business, were the aims and ends of this early train- ing. It produced a nation of citizens who willingly subordinated themselves to the interests of the State, ^ a nation of warriors who brought all Italy under their rule, a calculating, practical people who believed themselves destined to become the conquerors and rulers of the world, and a reserved and proud race, trained to govern and to do business, but not possessed of lofty ideals or large enthusiasms in life (Rs. 15, 16).
III. THE TRANSITION TO SCHOOL PIDUCATION
Beginnings of school education. Up to about 3C0 B.C. educa- tion had been entirely in the home, and in the activities of the fields and the State. It was a period of personal valor and stern civic virtue, in a rather primitive type of society, as yet but little in contact with the outside world, and little need of any other type of training had been felt. By the end of the third century B.C., the influence of contact with the Greek cities of southern Italy and Sicily (Magna Croecia), and the influence of the extensive con- quests of Alexander the Great in the eastern Mediterranean (334- 323 B.C.), had begun to be felt in Italy. By that time Greek had become the language of commerce and diplomacy throughout the Mediterranean, and Greek scholars and tradesmen had begun to frequent Rome. By 303 B.C. it seems certain that a few private teachers had set up primary schools at Rome to supplement the home training, and had begun the introduction of the pedagogue as a fashionable adjunct to attract attention to their schools. These schools, however, were only a fad at first, and were patron- ized only by a few of the wealthy citizens. Up to about 250 B.C., at least, Roman education remained substantially as it had been in the preceding centuries. Reading, writing, declamation, chanting, and the Laws of the Twelve Tables still constituted the subject-matter of instruction, and the old virtues continued to be emphasized.
By the middle of the third century B.C. Rome had expanded its
^ "The Romans," says the historian, Wilhelm Ihne, "were distinguished from all other nations, not only by the extre^ne earnestness and precision with which they conceived their law and worked out the consequences of its fundamental principles, but by the good sense which made them submit to the law, once established, as an absolute necessity of political health and strength. It was this severity in thinking and acting which, more than any other cause, made Rome great and powerful."
EDUCATION AND WORK OF ROME 6l
rule to include nearly all the Italian peninsula (see Figure i6), and was transforming itself politically from a little rural City- State into an Empire, with large world relationships. A knowl- edge of Greek now came to be demanded both for diplomatic and for business reasons, and the need of a larger culture, to corre- spond with the increased importance of the State, began to be felt by the wealthier and better-educated classes. Greek scholars, brought in as captured slaves from the Greek colonies of southern Italy, soon began to be extensively employed as teachers and as secretaries.
About 233 B.C., Li\ ius Andronicus, who had been brought to Rome as a slave when Tarentum, one of the Greek cities of south- ern Italy, was captured,^ and who later had obtained his freedom, made a translation of the Odyssey into Latin, and became a teacher of Latin and Greek at Rome. This had a wonderful effect in developing schools and a literary atmosphere at Rome. The Odyssey at once became the great school textbook, in time sup- planting the Twelve Tables, and literary and school education now rapidly developed. The Latin language became crystallized in form, and other Greek works were soon translated. The be- ginnings of a native Latin literature were now made. Greek higher schools were opened, many Greek teachers and slaves offered instruction, and the Hellenic scheme of culture, as it had previously developed in Attica, soon became the fashion at Rome.
Changes in national ideals. The second century B.C. was even more a period of rapid change in all phases and. aspects of Roman hfe. During this century Rome became a world empire, annexing Spain, Carthage, Illyria, and Greece, and during the century that followed she subjugated northern Africa, Egypt, Asia Minor, and Gaul to the Elbe and the Danube (see Figure 18). Rome soon became mistress of the whole Mediterranean world. Her ships plied the seas, her armies and governors ruled the land. The introduction of wealth, luxuries, and slaves from the new prov- inces, which followed their capture, soon had a very demoralizing influence upon the people. Private and public religion and moral- ity rapidly declined; religion came to be an empty ceremonial;
^ The lot of a captive in war, everywhere throughout the ancient world, was to be taken and sold as a slave by his captors. Many educated Greeks were thus taken in the capture of Greek cities in southern Italy and sold as slaves in Rome. These were let out by their masters as teachers of the new learning. Even the thrifty Cato, who vigorously opposed the new learning on principle, was not averse to per- mitting his educated Greek slaves to conduct schools and thus add to his private fortune.
62 HISTORY OF EDUCATION
divorce became common; wealth and influence ruled the State; slaves became very cheap and abundant, and were used for almost every type of service. From a land of farmers of small farms, sturdy and self-supporting, who lived simply, reared large fam- ilies, feared the gods, respected the State, and made an honest living, it became a land of great estates and wealthy men, and the self-respecting peasantry were transformed into soldiers for foreign wars, or joined the rabble in the streets of Rome.^ Wealth became the great desideratum, and the great avenue to this was through the public service, either as army commanders and gov- ernors, or as public men who could sway the multitude and com- mand votes and influence. Manifestly the old type of education was not intended to meet such needs, and now in Rome, as pre- viously in Athens, a complete transformation in the system of training for the young took place. The imaginative and creative Athenians, when confronted by a great change in national ideals, evolved a new type of education adapted to the new needs of the time; the unimaginative and practical Romans merely adopted that which the Athenians had created.
The Hellenization of Rome. The result was the Hellenization of the intellectual life of Rome, making complete the Helleniza- tion of the Mediterranean world. After the fall of Greece, in 146 B.C., a great influx of educated Greeks took place. As the Latin poet Horace expressed it:
Captive Greece took captive her rude conqueror, And brought the arts to Latium.
So completely did the Greek educational system seem to meet the needs of the changed Roman State that at first the Greek schools were adopted bodily — Greek language, pedagogue, higher schools of rhetoric and philosophy, and all — and the schools were in reality Greek schools but slightly modified to meet the needs of Rome. Gymnasia were erected, and wealthy Romans, as well as youths, began to spend their leisure in studying Greek and in trying to learn gymnastic exercises.
In time the national pride and practical sense of the Romans
^ These men had little choice otherwise. Grain from Spain and Africa became so cheap that a farmer could not raise enough on his small farm to pay his taxes and support his family, so he was obliged to sell his land to men who turned it into large cattle and sheep ranches. He would not emigrate to the provinces, as Englishmen have done to Canada and Australia, but instead went to the cities, where he led a hand-to-mouth existence in a type of tenement house. It was from such sources that the Roman mob, demanding free grain and entertainment in return for its votes, was made up.
EDUCATION AND WORK OF ROME
63
led them to open so-called "culture schools" of their own, mod- eled after the Greek. The Latin language then replaced the Greek as the vehicle of instruction, though Greek was still studied extensively, and Rome began the development of a system of private-school instruction possessing some elements that were native to Roman life and Roman needs.
Struggle against, and final victory. That this great change in national ideals and in educational practice was accepted without protest should not be imagined. Plutarch and other writers appealed to the family as the center for all true education. Cato the elder, who died in 149 B.C., labored hard to stem the Hellenic tide. He wrote the first Roman book on education, in part to show what education a good citi- zen needed as an orator, husbandman, jurist, and warrior, and in part as a pro- test against Hellenic innovations. In 167 B.C., the first library was founded in Rome, with books brought from Greece by the conqueror Paulus Emilius. In 161 B.C., the Roman Senate directed the Praetor to see "that no philosophers or rhetoricians be suffered in Rome" (R. 20 a), but the edict could not be enforced. In 92 B.C., the Censors issued an edict ex- pressing their disapproval of such schools (R. 20 b). By 100 B.C., the Hellenic victory was complete, and the Graeco-Roman school system had taken form. In 27 B.C., Rome ceased to be a Republic and became an Empire, and under the Emperors the professors of the new learning were encouraged and protected, higher schools were established in the provinces, literature and philosophy were opened as possible careers, and the Greek lan- guage, literature, and learning were spread, under Roman imperial protection, to every corner of the then civilized world. This vic- tory of Hellenic thought and learning at Rome, viewed in the light of the future history of the civilization of the world, was an event of large importance.
IV. THE SCHOOL SYSTEM AS FINALLY ESTABLISHED
The ludus, or primary school. The elementary school, known as the Indus, or ludus liter arum, the teacher of which was known
Fig. 20. Cato the Elder
(234-148 B.C.)
64
HISTORY OF EDUCATION
Fig. 21. Roman Writing-Materials
Inkstand, pen, letter, box of manuscripts, wax tablets, stylus.
as a ludi magister, was the beginning or primary school of the scheme as finally evolved. This corresponded to the school of the Athenian grammatist, and like it the instruction consisted of reading, writing, and counting. These schools were open to both sexes, but were chiefly frequented by boys. They were entered at the age of seven, sometimes six, and covered the period up
to twelve. Reading and writing were taught by much the same methods as in the Greek schools, and approximately the same writing materials were used. Something of the same difficulty was experienced also in mas- tering the reading art (R. 2i). Dionysius of Ha- licarnassus, a Greek his- torian who lived in Rome for twenty-two years, during the first century B.C., has left us a clear description of the Roman method of teaching reading:
When we learned to read was it not necessary at first to know the name of the letters, their shape, their value in syllables, their differ- ences, then the words and their case, their quantity long or short, their accent, and the rest?
Arrived at this point we began to read and write, slowly at first and syllable by syllable. Some time afterwards, the forms being sufficiently engraved on our memory, we read more cursorily, in the elementary book, then in all sorts of books, finally with incredible quickness and without making any mistake.
Writing seems rather to have followed reading, and, as in the Greek schools, the pupils copied down from dictation and made their own books {dictatd) . Literature received no such emphasis in the elementary schools of Rome as in those of the Greeks, and the palcBstra of the Greeks was not reproduced at Rome.
Due in part to the practical character of the Roman people, to the established habit of keeping careful household accounts, to the difficulties of their system of calculation,^ to the practice
^ Arithmetic was not easy for the Romans, partly because they had no figure or other sign for zero, partly because they used a decimal system for counting and a duodecimal for their money, and partly because the Roman system of notation
EDUCATION AND WORK OF ROME
65
of finger reckoning, and to the vast commercial and financial interests that the Romans formed throughout the world which they conquered, arithmetic became a subject of fundamental importance in their schools, and much time was given to securing perfection in calculation and finger reckoning.^ Hence it occu- pied a place of large importance in the primary school. An abacus or counting- board was used, similar to the one shown in Figure 22, and Horace mentions a bag of stones {calculi) as a part of a school- boy's equipment.
The ludi magister. The ludi magister at Rome held a position even less enviable than that held by the grammatist at Athens. "The starveling Greek," who was glad to barter his knowledge for the certainty of a good dinner, was sneered at by many Roman writers. Many slaves were engaged in this type of instruction, bringing in fees for their owners. It was not regarded as of importance that the teachers of these schools be of high grade. The establishment of and attenda.nce at these primary schools was wholly volun- tary, and the children in them probably represented but a small percentage of those of school age in the total population. These schools became quite common in the Italian cities, and in time were found in the provincial cities of the Empire as well. They remained, however, entirely private-adven-
(I, V, X, L, C. D, M) did not adapt itself to quick calculation. Try, for example, these simple sums:
Add: CCLVII Subtract: LXVIII
CIX XXXIV
|
• |
• |
• |
• |
• |
• |
• |
|
M |
C |
X |
I |
c |
X |
1 |
|
• • • • |
• • • • |
• • • • |
0 • • |
• • • • |
• • • • |
• • • |
Fig. 22. a Roman Counting-Board
Pebbles were used, those nearest the numbered di- viding partition being counted. Each pebble above-, when moved downward counted five of those in the same division below. The board now shows 8,760,254.
Multiply:
CXXV XII
Divide: XII ICXXXII
1 Finger reckoning (whence digits) with the Romans attained a prominence probably never reached with any other people. Bills and accounts were reckoned up on the fingers, in the presence of the patron. Eighteen positions of the fingers of the left hand stood for the nine units and the nine tens, and eighteen positions of the fingers of the right hand stood for the nine hundreds and the nine thousands. For larger sums, such as ten thousand and more, various parts of the body were touched. Any one who betrayed, according to Quintilian, "by an uncertain or awkward movement of his fingers, a want of confidence in his calculations," was thought to be but imperfectly trained in arithmetic.
66
HISTORY OF EDUCATION
ture undertakings, the State doing nothing toward encouraging their estabUshment, supervising the instruction in them, or requiring attendance at them. They were in no sense free schools, nor were the prices for instruction fixed, as in our private schools of to-day. Instead, the pupil made a present to the master, usu- ally at some understood rate, though some masters left the size of the fee to the liberality of their pupils.^ The pedagogue, copied from Greece, was nearly always an old or infirm slave of the family.
The schools were held anywhere ■ — in a portico (see Figure 23), in a shed or booth in front of a house, in a store, or in a recessed
Fig. 2$. A Roman Primary School {Ludus)
(From a fresco found at Herculaneum)
This shows a school held in a portico of a house.
corner shut in by curtains. A chair for the master, benches for the pupils, an outer room for cloaks and for the pedagogues to wait in, and a bundle of rods {ferula) constituted the necessary equipment. The pupils brought with them boxes containing
^ There was much complaint that parents were slow with their fees, and at times forgot them entirely if the boy did not turn out well. Finally, in the reign of Diocletian (284-305 a.d.), in an effort to reheve the distress of schoolmasters, prices were legally fixed at approximately the equivalent of $1.20 per month per pupil for teaching reading and $1.80 for arithmetic, measured in money values of a decade ago. These were regarded as "hard times prices."
EDUCATION AND WORK OF ROME 67
writing-materials, book-rolls, and reckoning-stones. Schools began early in the morning, pupils in winter going with lanterns to their tasks. There was much flogging of children, and in Martial we find an angry epigram which he addressed to a school- master who disturbed his sleep (R. 23 a).
The secondary schools. Secondary or Latin grammar schools, under a grammaticus, and covering instruction from the age of twelve to sixteen, had become clearly differentiated from the primary schools under a ludi magister by the time of the death of Cato, 148 B.C. At first this higher instruction began in the form of private tutors, probably in the homes of the wealthy, and Greek was the language taught. By the beginning of the first century B.C., however, Latin secondary schools began to arise, and in time these too spread to all the important cities of the Empire. Attendance at them was wholly voluntary, and was confined entirely to the children of the well-to-do classes. The teachers were Greeks, or Latins who had been trained by the Greeks. Each teacher taught as he wished, but the schools throughout the Empire came to be much the same in character. The course of study consisted chiefly of instruction in grammar and literature, the purpose being to secure such a mastery of the Latin language and Greek and Latin literatures as might be most helpful in giving that broader culture now recognized as the mark of an educated man, and in preparing the young Roman to take up the life of an orator and public official (R. 24). Both Greek and Latin secondary schools were in existence, and Quintilian, the foremost Roman writer on educational practice, recommends attendance at the Greek school first.
Grammar was studied first, and was intended to develop cor- rectness in the use of speech. With its careful study of words, phonetic changes, drill on inflections, and practice in composing and paragraphing, this made a strong appeal to the practical Roman and became a favorite study. Literature followed, and was intended to develop an appreciation for literary style, elevate thought, expand one's knowledge, and, by memorization and repetition, to train the powers of expression. The method prac- ticed was much as follows : The selection was carefully read first by the teacher, and then by the pupils.^ After the reading the
^ "Reading aloud, with careful attention to pronunciation, accent, quantity, and expression, formed an, important part of the training in literature of a Latin youth. Correct reading of Latin was a much more diificult art, as practiced, than
68 HISTORY OF EDUCATION
selection was gone over again and the historical, geographical, and mythological allusions were carefully explained by the teacher.^ The text was next critically examined, to point out where and how it might be improved and its expressions strength- ened, and much paraphrasing of it was engaged in. Finally the study of the selection was rounded out by a judgment — that is, a critical estimate of the work, a characterization of the author's style, and a resume of his chief merits and defects. The founda- tions were here laid for Grammar and Rhetoric as the great studies of the Middle Ages.
Homer and Neander were the favorite authors in Greek, and Vergil, Horace, Sallust, and Livy in Latin, with much use of iEsop's Fables for work in composition. The pupils made their own books from dictation, though in later years educated slave labor became so cheap that the copying and sale of books was organized into a business at Rome, and it was possible for the children of wealthy parents to own their own books. Grammar, composition, elocution, ethics, history,, mythology, and geography were all comprehended in the instruction in grammar and litera- ture in the secondary schools. A little music was added at times, to help the pupil intone his reading and declamation. A little geometry and astronomy were also included, for their practical applications. The athletic exercises of the Greeks were rejected, as contributing to immorality and being a waste of time and strength. In a sense these schools were finishing schools for Roman youths who went to any school at all, much as are our high schools of to-day for the great bulk of American children. The schools were better housed than those of the ludi, and the masters were of a better quality and received larger fees. Like the elementary schools, the State exercised no supervision or con- trol over these schools or the teachers or pupils in them.
is the reading of English, as all of us well know who learned properly to intone our ''Arma virumqtie cano, Trojce qui primus ah oris Ilaliam, falo profugus, Lavinaqtie venii."
The lack of use of small letters and spacing between the words (R. 21), as well as poor punctuat'on, also added to the difficulty.
^ A nonsensical minuteness was followed here, and many trivialities were empha- sized. Juvenal tells us, in his Seventh Satire, written about 130 a.d., that " a teacher was expected to read all histories and know all authors as well as his finger ends. That, if questioned, he should be able to tell the name of Anchises' nurse, and the name and native land of the stepmother of Anchemotus — tell how many years Ancestes lived — how many flagons of wine the Sicilian king gave to the Phrygians." This reminds us of some of the dissected study of English and Latin until recently given in our colleges and high schools.
EDUCATION AND WORK OF ROME 69
The schools of rhetoric. Up to this point the schools estab- lished had been for practical and useful information (the primary schools) or cultural (the grammar or secondary schools). On top of these a higher and professional type of school was next devel- oped, to train youths in rhetoric and oratory, preparatory to the great professions of law and pubhc hfe at Rome.^ These schools were direct descendants of the Greek rhetorical schools, which evolved from the schools of the Sophists. Suetonius ^ tells us that:
Rhetoric, also, as well as grammar, was not introduced amongst us till a late period, and with still more difficulty, inasmuch as we find that, at times, the practice of it was even prohibited. ^ . . . However, by slow degrees, rhetoric manifested itself to be a useful and honorable study, and many persons devoted themselves to it both as a means of defense and of acquiring a reputation. In consequence, public favor was so much attracted to the study of rhetoric that a vast number of professional and learned men devoted themselves to it; and it flour- ished to such a degree that some of them raised themselves by it to the rank of senators and to the highest offices.
These schools, the teachers of which were known as rhetors, fur- nished a type of education representing a sort of collegiate educa- tion for the period. They were oratorical in purpose, because the orator had become the Roman ideal of a well-educated man (R. 24). During the life of the Republic the orator found many opportunities for the constructive use of his ability, and all young men ambitious to enter law or politics found the training of these schools a necessary prerequisite. They were attended for two or three years by boys over sixteen, but only the wealthier and more aristocratic families could afford to send their boys to them.
In addition to oratorical and some legal training, these schools included a further linguistic and literary training, some mathe-
^ Quintilian well states the aim of this higher education when he says that "the man who can duly sustain his character as a citizen, who is qualified for the manage- ment of public and private affairs, and who can govern communities by his counsels, settle them by means of laws, and improve them by judicial enactments, can cer- tainly be nothing else but an orator."
2 In his Lives of Eminent Grammarians and Rhetoricians, chap. i. Suetonius lived from 75 to 160 A.D., and was an advocate at Rome and private secretary to the Emperor Hadrian.
* There was a general dread of Greek higher learning on the part of the older Romans, and this found expression in many ways. Among these was an edict of the Senate, in i6i B.C., directing the Praetor to see that "no philosophers or rhetori- cians be' suffered at Rome" (R. 20), a decree which could not be enforced, and the edict of the Censors, in 92 B.C. (R. 20), expressing their disapproval of the Latin schools of rhetoric,
70 HISTORY OF EDUCATION
matical and scientific knowledge, and even some philosophy. The famous "Seven Liberal Arts" of the Middle Ages — Grammar, Rhetoric, and Dialectic; Music, Arithmetic, Geometry, and Astronomy — all seem to have been included in the instruction of thes6 schools.^ The great studies, though, were the first three
Fig. 24. A Roman School of Rhetoric
This picture, which has been drawn from a description, shows a much better t>T3e of school than that of the ludi.
and some Law, Music being studied largely to help with gestures and to train the voice, Geometry to aid in settling lawsuits re- lating to land. Dialectic (logic) to aid in detecting fallacies, and Astronomy to understand the movements of the heavenly bodies and the references of literary writers.^ There was much work in debate and in the declamation of ethical and political material, the fine distinctions in Roman Law and Ethics were brought out,*^ and there was much drill in preparing and delivering speeches and much attention given to the factors involved in the preparation and delivery of a successful oration (R. 25).
1 These seven studies became the famous studies of tlie church schools of the Middle Ages, with Grammar as the greatest and most important study (see chap, vri; R. 74). The curriculum of the Middle Ages was a direct inheritance from Rome. ■ 2 See Quintilian, Institutes of Oratory, book i, chap, x, 22, 37, and 46. This chap- ter is devoted largely to a description of the use of these studies.
•'' Sample questions which were debated to bring out the fine distinctions in Roman Law and Ethics were :
(c) Was a slave about whose neck a master had hung the leather or golden token (worn by free youths only), in order to smuggle him past the boundary, freed when he reached Roman soil wearing this insignia of freedom?
(b) If a stranger buys a prospective clraught of fishes and the fisherman draws up a casket of jewels, does the stranger own the jewels?
EDUCATION AND WORK OF ROME 71
These schools became very popular as institutions of higher learning, and continued so even after the later Emperors, by seizing the power of the State, had taken away the inspiration that comes from a love of freedom and had thus deprived the rhetorical art of practical value. The work of the schools then became highly stilted and artificial in character, and oratory then came to be cultivated largely as a fine art.^ Men educated in these schools came to boast that they could speak with equal effectiveness on either side of any question, and the art came to depend on the use of many and big words and on the manners of the stage. Such ideals naturally destroyed the value of these schools, and stopped intellectual progress so far as they con- tributed to it.
Much was done by the later Emperors to encourage these schools, and they too came to exist in almost every provincial city in the Empire. Often they were supported by the cities in which they were located. The Emperor Vespasian, about 75 a.d. began the practice of paying, from the Imperial Treasury, the sala- ries of grammarians and rhetoricians - at Rome. Antoninus Pius, who ruled as Emperor from 138 to 161 a.d., extended payment to the provinces, gave to these teachers the privileges of the sena- torial class, and a certain number in each city were exempted from payment of taxes, support of soldiers, and obligations to military service. Other Emperors extended these special privileges (R. 26) which became the basis for the special rights afterwards granted to the Christian clergy (R. 38) and, still later, to teachers in the universities (Rs. 101-04).
University learning. Roman youths desiring still further training could now journey to the eastward and attend the Greek universities (see Figure 14). A few did so, much as American students in the middle of the nineteenth century went to Germany for higher study. Athens and Rhodes were most favored. Bru- tus, Horace, and Cicero, among others, studied at Athens; Caesar,
^ In the later centuries of the Empire, people went to hear a man who could orate or declaim, as people now do to hear a great political orator, a revivalist preacher, or a popular actor or singer. A form of amusement for distinguished travelers pass- ing through a city was to have some one orate before them. "This power of using words for mere pleasurable effect," says Professor Dill, in his Roman Socieiy in the Last Century of the Western Empire, "on the most trivial or the most extravagantly absurd themes, was for many ages, in both West and East, esteemed the highest proof of talent and cultivation."
- Each Greek rhetorician in Rome was given one hundred sestertia (about $4000) yearly from the Imperial Treasury, Quintilian probably being one of the first to receive a state salary.
72
HISTORY OF EDUCATION
Cicero, and Cassius at Rhodes. Later Alexandria was in favor. In a library founded in the Temple of Peace by Vespasian (ruled 69 to 79 A.D.) the University at Rome had its origin, and in time this developed into an institution with professors in law, medicine, architecture, mathematics and mechanics, and grammar and rhetoric in both the Latin and Greek languages. In this many youths from provincial cities came to study. The lines of instruc- tion represented nothing, however, in the way of scientific investi- gation or creative thought; the instruction was formal and dog- matic, being largely a further elaboration of what had previously been well done by the Greeks.
Nature of the educational system developed. Such was the educational system which was finally evolved to meet the new
cultural needs of the Roman Empire. In all its foundation elements it was Greek. Hav- ing borrowed — conquered one might almost say — Greek re- ligion, philosophy, literature, and learning, the Romans naturally borrowed also the school system that had been evolved to impart this culture. Never before or since has any people adapted so completely to their own needs the system of educational training evolved by another. To the Greek basis some distinctively Ro- man elements were added to adapt it better to the peculiar needs of their own people, while on the other hand many of the finer Greek character- istics were omitted entirely. Having once adopted the Greek plan, the constructive Roman mind organized it into a system superior to the original, but in so doing formalized it more than the Greeks had ever done (R. 19). That the system afforded an opportunity to wealthy Romans to obtain for their children some understanding and appreciation of the culture of the Greek world with which their Empire was
|
2 |
u > 1 |
(Greek Universities) University of Rome (Professor) |
Law Medicine Architecture Mathematics Grammar Rhetoric |
|
s s |
v .2 V 0 u |
Schools of Rhetoric (Rhetor) |
Grammar Rhetoric Dialectic Law |
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s |
u (8 "0 c 0 |
Latin Grammar Schools (Grammaticus) |
Grammar and Literature |
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e 0 tt |
B c u E |
Ludi, or Primary- Schools (iLuii m^ister) |
Readi4ig Writing ReckoninfiT |
Fig. 25. The Roman Voluntary Educational System, as finally
EVOLVED
EDUCATION AND WORK OF ROME ']2>
now in contact, and answered fairly well the preparatory needs along political and governmental lines of those Romans who could afford to educate their boys for such careers, can hardly be doubted (R. 22). Roman writers on education, especially Cicero (R. 24) and QuintiHan (R. 25), give us abundant testimony as to the value and usefulness of the system evolved in the training of orators and men for the public service. In the provinces, too, we know that the schools were very useful in inculcating Roman traditions and in helping the Romans to assimilate the sons of local princes and leaders.^ During the days of the Republic the schools were naturally more useful than after the establishment of the Empire, and especially after the later Emperors had stamped out many of the political and civic liberties for the enjoyment of which the schools prepared. On the other hand, the schools reached but a small, selected class of youths, trained for only the political career, and cannot be considered as ever having been general or as having educated any more than a small percentage of the future citizens of the State. Many of the important lines of activity in which the Romans engaged, and which to-day are regarded as monuments to theii' constructive skill and practical genius, such as architectural achievements, the building of roads and aqueducts, the many skilled trades, and the large commercial undertakings, these schools did nothing to prepare youths for. The State, unlike Athens, never required education of any one, did not make what was offered a prepara- tion for citizenship, and made no attempt to regulate either teachers or instruction until late in the history of the Empire. Education at Rome was from the first purely a private-adventure affair, most nearly analogous with us to instruction in music and dancing. Those who found the education offered of any value could take it and pay for it; those who did not could let it alone. A few did the former, the great mass of the Romans the latter. For the great slave class that developed at Rome there was, of course, no education at all.
Results on Roman life and government. Still, out of this pri- vate and tuition system of schools many capable political leaders and executives came — men who exercised great influence on the
^ "He [Claudius] was also attentive to provide a liberal education for the sons of their chieftains; . . . and his attempts were attended with such success that they, who lately disdained to make use of the Roman language, were now ambitious of becoming eloquent. Hence the Roman habit began to be held in honor, and the toga was fpequently worn." Tacitus's Account of Britain, Agricola, chap. 21.
74 HISTORY OF EDUCATION
history of the State, fought out her poHtical battles, organized and directed her government at home and in the provinces, and helped build up that great scheme of government and law and order which was Rome's most significant contribution to future civilization.^ It was in this direction, and in practical and con- structive work along engineering and architectural lines, that Rome excelled. The Roman genius for government and law and order and constructive undertakings must be classed, in impor- tance for the future of civilization in the world, along with the ability of Greece in literature and philosophy and art. 'Tf," says Professor Adams, "as is sometimes said, that in the course of history there is no literature which rivals the Greek except the English, it is perhaps even more true that the Anglo-Saxon is the only race which can be placed beside the Romans in creative power and in politics." The conquest of the known world by this practical and constructive people could not have otherwise than decisively influenced the whole course of human history, and, coming at the time in world affairs that it did, the influence on all future civilization of the work of Rome has been profound. The great political fact which, dominated all the Middle Ages, and shaped the religion and government and civilization of the time, was the fact that the Roman Empire had been and had done its work so well.
V. ROME'S CONTRIBUTION TO CIVILIZATION
Greece and Rome contrasted. The contrast between the Greeks and the Romans is marked in almost every particular. The Greeks were an imaginative, subjective, artistic, and idealistic people, with little administrative ability and few practical ten- dencies. The Romans, on the other hand, were an unimagina- tive, concrete, practical, and constructive nation. Greece made its great contribution to world civilization in Hterature and phil- osophy and art; Rome in law and order and government. The Greeks hved a Kfe of aesthetic enjoyment of the beautiful in nature and art, and their basis for estimating the worth of a thing was intellectual and artistic; to the Romans the aesthetic and the
^ England offers us the nearest modern analogy. This was one of the last of the great European, nations to establish popular education, but for centuries previous thereto the great private, tuition, grammar schools of England — Eton, Harrow, Rugby, Winchester, and others — together with the Universities of Oxford and Cambridge, prepared a succession of leaders for the State — men who have steered England's destinies at home and abroad and made her a great world power.
EDUCATION AND WORK OF ROME 75
beautiful made little appeal, and their basis for estimating the worth of a thing was utilitarian. The Greeks worshiped "the beautiful and the good," and tried to enjoy life rationally and nobly, while the Romans worshiped force and effectiveness, and lived by rule and authority. The Greeks thought in personal terms of government and virtue and happiness, while the Romans thought in general terms of law and duty, and their happiness was rather in present denial for future gain than in any immediate enjoyment.
As a result the Romans developed no great scholarly or literary atmosphere, as the Greeks had done at Athens. They built up no great speculative philosophies, and framed no great theories of government. Even their literature was, in part, an imitation of the Greek, though possessing many elements of native strength and beauty. They were a people who knew how to accomplish results rather than to speculate about means and ends. Useful- ness and effectiveness were with them the criteria of the worth of any idea or project. They subdued and annexed an empire, they gave law and order to a primitive world, they civilized and Roman- ized barbarian tribes, they built roads connecting all parts of their Empire that were the best the world had ever known, their aque- ducts and bridges were wonders of engineering skill, their public buildings and monuments still excite admiration and envy, in many of the skilled trades they developed tools and processes of large future usefulness, and their agriculture was the best the world had known up to that time. They were strong where the Greeks were weak, and weak where the Greeks were strong.
By reason of this difference the two peoples supplemented one another well in the work of laying the foundations upon which our modern civilization has been built. Greece created the intellectual and aesthetic ideals and the culture for our life, while Rome developed the political institutions under which ideals may be realized and culture may be enjoyed. From the Greeks and Hebrews our modern life has drawn its great inspirations and its ideals for life, while from the Romans we have derived our ideals as to government and obedience to law. One may say that the Romans as a people specialized in government, law, order, and constructive practical undertakings, and bequeathed to posterity a wonderful inheritance in governmental forms, legal codes, com- mercial processes, and engineering undertakings, while the Greeks left to us a philosophy, Hteraturc, art, and a world culture which
76 HISTORY OF EDUCATION
the civilized world will never cease to enjoy. The Greeks were an imaginative, impulsive, and a joyous people; the Romans sedate, severe, and superior to the Greeks in persistence and moral force. The Greeks were ever young; the Romans were always grown and serious men.
Rome's great contribution. Rome's great contribution, then, was along the lines just indicated. To this, the school system which became established in the Roman State contributed only indirectly and .but little. The unification of the ancient world into one Empire, with a common body of traditions, practices, coinage, speech, and law, which made the triumph of Christianity possible; the formulation of a body of law ^ which barbarian tribes accepted, which was studied throughout the Middle Ages, which formed the basis of the legal system of the mediaeval Church, and which has largely influenced modern practice; the development of a language from which many modern tongues have been de- rived, and which has modified all western languages; and the perfection of an alphabet which has become the common property of all nations whose civilization has been derived from the Greek and Roman — these constitute the chief contributions of Rome to modern civilization.
Roman city government, too, had been established throughout all the provincial cities, and this remained after the Empire had passed away. The municipal corporation, with its charter of rights, has ever since been a fixed idea in the western world. Roman law, organized into a compact code, and studied in the law schools of the Middle Ages, has rriodified our modern ideas and practices to a degree we scarcely realize. It was accepted by the German rulers as a permanent thing after they had over- run the Empire, and it remained as the law of the courts wherever Roman subjects were tried. Preserved and codified at Constanti- nople under Justinian in the sixth century, and re-introduced into western Europe when the study of law was revived in the newly founded universities in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries,
^ This grew up, as all law grows, by enacted laws and decisions of the courts, and in time came to be an enormous body of law. Lacking the printed law books and indices of to-day, to obtain a knowledge of Roman law became a formidable task. Finally the practical Roman mind codified it, and reduced it to system and order. The Theodosian Code, of 438 a.d., and the Justinian Code, of 528 and 534 a.d., were the final results. These codes were compact, capable of duplication with relative ease, and later became the standard textbooks throughout the Middle Ages. The great importance of these codifications may be appreciated when we know that almost all the original laws and decisions from which they were compiled have been lost.
EDUCATION AND WORK OF ROME
11
Roman law has greatly modified all modern legal practices and has become the basis of the legal systems of a number of modern states.^
Of all the Roman contributions to mod- ern civilization perhaps the one that most completely permeates all our modern life is their alphabet and speech. Figure 26 shows how our modern alphabet goes back to the old Roman, which they obtained from the Greek colonies in southern Italy, and which the Greeks obtained from the still earlier Phcenicians. This alphabet has be- come the common property of almost all the civilized world.'- In speech, the French, Spanish, Portuguese, and Italian tongues go back directly to the Latin, and these are the tongues of Mexico and South America as well. The English language, which is spoken throughout a large part of the civ- ilized world, and by two thirds of its inhab- itants, has also received so many additions from Romanic sources that we to-day scarcely utter a sentence without using some word once used by the citizens of ancient Rome.
Among the smaller but nevertheless important contributions which we owe to Rome, and which were passed on to med- iaeval and modern Europe, should be men-
1 The Romanic countries — France, Spain, Italy — have drawn their law most completely from the Jus- tinian Code. Due to Spanish and French occupation of parts of x\merica, Roman legal ideas also entered here, the Louisiana Code of 1824 being Roman in law and technical expressions and spirit, though English in language. Spanish and Portuguese settlement of the South American continent has carried Roman law there.
2 The Roman alphabet is the alphabet of all North and South x\merica, Australia, Africa, and all of Europe except Russia, Greece, Germany, Austria-Hungary, and a few minor Slavic and Teutonic peoples. Even in Germany and Austria, Roman letters were rapidlysu- perseding the more difficult German letters in the print- ing of papers and books for the better-educated classes before the Great War. In India, Siam, China, and Japan, Roman letters are also being increasingly used.
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