1.1 History Of Western Education
1.1 Education in ancient Greece
Education played a significant role in ancient Greek life since the founding of the poleis till the Hellenistic and Roman period. From its origins in the Homeric and the aristocratic tradition, Greek education was vastly "democratized" in the 5th century BC, influenced by the Sophists, Plato and Isocrates. In the Hellenistic period, education in a gymnasium was considered an inextricable prerequisite for participation in the Greek culture.
There were two forms of education in ancient Greece: formal and informal.
FORMAL education
Formal education was attained through attendance to a public school or was provided by a hired tutor. Informal education was provided by an unpaid teacher, and occurred in a non-public setting. Education was an essential component of a person's identity in ancient Greece, and the type of education a person received was based strongly in one's social class, the culture of one's polis, and the opinion of one's culture on what education should include.
1.1 History Of Western Education
Formal Greek education was primarily for men, and was, in general, not offered to slaves, manual laborers, or women. In some poleis, laws were passed to prohibit the education of slaves. A young girl would receive an informal education from her mother and would be taught how to maintain a household to serve her father and, later in life, her husband. Women's roles included managing the household, raising children, preparing food, and making textiles. One exception to this was in Sparta, where women were expected to run the polis while the men were away at war. Women in Sparta also received an informal physical education.
FORMAL education
Attained through attendance to a public school or was provided by a hired tutor.
INFORMAL education
provided by an unpaid teacher, and occurred in a non-public setting.
Greek education focused heavily on training the entire person, which included education of the mind, body, and imagination. The specific purposes of Greek education differed from polis to polis. The Spartans placed a high emphasis on military training, while the Athenians traditionally gave more attention to music, literature, dance, and later also to the natural sciences, such as biology and chemistry, as well as philosophy, rhetoric, and sophistry-the art of presenting an argument using deception and reason to persuade the public to agree with a certain point of view. The Spartans also taught music and dance, but with the purpose of enhancing their maneuverability as soldiers.
1.1 History Of Western Education
1.1.1 Athenian System
1.1 History Of Western Education
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In their early years, Athenian children were taught at home, sometimes under the guidance of |
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a master or pedagogue. |
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7 Years they were taught basic morals, until they began elementary education. |
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Children were taught how to read and write, as well as how to count and draw. |
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Children were taught letters and then syllables, followed by words and sentences, reading |
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and writing |
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Students would write using a stylus, with which they would etch onto a wax-covered board. |
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When children were ready to begin reading whole works,They would often be given poetry to |
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memorize and recite. |
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An elementary education was the only education available to most people, especially the poor. |
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Children from upper social classes would receive formal elementary education since |
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their parents would be able to afford to hire a tutor or to send them to a public school. |
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Children from poor families, only be offered informal education. |
1.1 History Of Western Education
1.1 History Of Western Education
Other
As mentioned earlier, children of poor families were often unable to receive a formal education. These children, however, were not totally forgotten. Solon, an Athenian leader who lived during the 7th to mid 6th centuries BC, did much to reform his polis, and encouraged poor fathers to provide their sons with a vocational education. By teaching these children a trade, they could also be regarded as productive members of Athenian society.
Music and dance were also very important to Athens. Throughout the many stages of an individual's education, he was encouraged to practice dancing, singing and the playing of instruments. Common instruments used in Athens included the harp, flute and lyre. By advancing in dance, singing and the playing of instruments, an Athenian would help continue a tradition that was a key component of Athenian history.
1.1.2 Spartan System
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The Spartan society desired that all male citizens become successful soldiers with the stamina and |
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skills to defend their polis as members of a Spartan phalanx. |
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Thus, only the healthiest male babies born to Spartan citizens were allowed to live. |
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A council convened at the birth of each male child with the purpose of examining the baby for defects |
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and signs of weakness. After examination, the council would either rule that the baby was fit to live |
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or would reject the baby sentencing him to a death by abandonment and exposure. |
1.1 History Of Western Education
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Formal education for a Spartan male began at about the age of seven when the state removed the |
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boy from the custody of his parents and sent him to live in a barracks with many other boys his age. |
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For all intents and purposes, the barracks was his new home, and the other males living in the barracks |
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his family. |
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For the next five years, until about the age of twelve, the boys would eat, sleep and train within their |
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barracks-unit and receive instruction from an adult male citizen who had completed all of his military |
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training and experienced battle. |
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The instructor stressed discipline and exercise and saw to it that his students received little food and |
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minimal clothing in an effort to force the boys to learn how to forage, steal and endure extreme hunger |
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all of which would be necessary skills in the course of a war. |
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Those boys who survived the first stage of training entered into a secondary stage in which |
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punishments became harsher and physical training and participation in sports almost non-stop in |
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order to build up strength and endurance. |
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During this stage, which lasted until the males were about eighteenyears old, fighting within the unit |
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was encouraged, mock battles were performed, acts of courage praised, and signs of cowardice |
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and disobedience severely punished . Students were also trained in dancing and music, because this |
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would enhance their ability to move gracefully as a unit . |
1.1 History Of Western Education
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The students would graduate from the agoge at the age of eighteen and receive the title of ephebes. |
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Upon becoming an ephebe, the male would pledge strict and complete allegiance to Sparta and would |
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join a private organization to continue training in which he would compete in gymnastics, hunting |
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and performance with planned battles using real weapons. |
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After two years, at the age of twenty, this training was finished and the now grown men were |
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officially regarded as Spartan soldiers. |
Education of Spartan Women
Spartan women, unlike their Athenian counterparts, received a formal education that was supervised and controlled by the state. Much of the public schooling received by the Spartan women revolved around physical education. Until about the age of eighteen women were taught to run, wrestle, throw a discus, and also to throw javelins. The skills of the young women were tested regularly in competitions such as the annual footrace at the Heraea of Elis, In addition to physical education the young girls also were taught to sing, dance, and play instruments often by travelling poets such as Alcman or by the elderly women in the polis. The Spartan educational system for females was very strict, because its purpose was to train future mothers of soldiers in order to maintain the strength of Sparta's phalanxes, which were essential to Spartan defense and culture.
1.1 History Of Western Education
Education in ancient Rome
From the founding of Rome , there is little evidence of anything more than rudimentary education. A child's primary educators were likely to be his or her own parents. Parents taught their children the skills necessary for living in the early Republic, namely agricultural, domestic and military skills. Most important, however, were the moral and civic responsibilities that would be expected of citizens of the Republic, the inculcation of the qualities of the vir bonus, "good man".
The first schools in Rome arose by the middle of the 4th century BC, coinciding with the rise of the plebeian class to political power. These schools were called ludi (singular: ludus), the Latin word for "play," and like modern "play schools" were concerned with basic socialization and rudimentary education for young children. In the second half of the 3rd century BC, an ex-slave named Spurius Carvilius is credited with opening the first fee-paying ludus, thereby creating a teaching profession in ancient Rome. Organized education remained relatively rare, and there are few primary sources or accounts of the Roman educational process until the 2nd century BC .
Formal schools were established, which served paying students; very little that could be described as free public education existed. Both boys and girls were educated, though not necessarily together.
1.1 History Of Western Education
Following various military conquests in the Greek East, Romans adapted a number of Greek educational precepts to their own fledgling system. Roman students were taught (especially at the elementary level) in similar fashion to Greek students, sometimes by Greek slaves who had a penchant for education. But differences between the Greek and Roman systems emerge at the highest tiers of education. Roman students that wished to pursue the highest levels of education went to Greece to study philosophy, as the Roman system developed to teach speech, law and gravitas.
In a system much like the one that predominates in the modern world, the Roman education system that developed arranged schools in tiers. The educator Quintilian recognized the importance of starting education as early as possible, noting that "memory ... not only exists even in small children, but is specially retentive at that age". A Roman student would progress through schools just as a student today might go from primary school to secondary school, then to college, and finally university. Progression depended more on ability than age with great emphasis being placed upon a student's ingenium or inborn "gift" for learning, and a more tacit emphasis on a student's ability to afford high-level education.
1.1 History Of Western Education
1.1.3 Education in Middle Ages
The Catholic Church, which means "universal church", was the major unifying cultural influence. It preserved selections from Latin learning, maintained the art of writing, and provided centralized administration through its network of bishops. Some regions that were populated by Catholics were conquered by Arian rulers, which provoked much tension between Arian kings and the Catholic hierarchy. Clovis I of the Franks is a well-known example of a barbarian king who chose Catholic orthodoxy over Arianism. His conversion marked a turning point for the Frankish tribes of Gaul.
Bishops were central to Middle Age society due to the literacy they possessed. As a result, they often played a significant role in governance. However, beyond the core areas of Western Europe, there remained many people with little or no contact with Christianity or with classical Roman culture. Martial societies such as the Avars and the Vikings were still capable of causing major disruption to the newly emerging societies of Western Europe.
The Early middle Ages witnessed the rise of monasticism within the West. Although the impulse to withdraw from society to focus upon a spiritual life is experienced by people of all cultures, the shape of European monasticism was determined by traditions and ideas that originated in the deserts of Egypt and Syria. The style of monasticism that focuses on community experience of the spiritual life, called Cenobitism, was pioneered by the saint Pachomius in the 4th century. Monastic ideals spread from Egypt to Western Europe in the 5th and 6th centuries through hagiographical literature such as the Life of Saint Anthony .
1.1 History Of Western Education
The University of Oxford, the University of Cambridge, and many other universities were founded at this time.
The early middle Ages coincided with the Islamic Golden Age. At that time, Islamic philosophy, science, and technology were more advanced than in Western Europe. Islamic scholars both preserved and built upon earlier Ancient Greek and Roman traditions and added their own inventions and innovations in Islamic Al-Andalus (modern Spain and Portugal). Some of this knowledge was collected after the Christian reconquest of Muslim Spain.
Islamic Golden Age
During the Islamic Golden Age (c. 750 CE - c. 1258 CE) philosophers, scientists and engineers of the Islamic world contributed enormously to technology and culture, both by preserving earlier traditions and by adding their own inventions and innovations. Scientific and intellectual achievements blossomed in the Golden age.
Only in philosophy, Islamic scholars were relatively restricted from putting forth unorthodox ideas. Nevertheless, Ibn Rushd and Persian polymath Ibn Sina played a major role in saving the works of Aristotle, whose ideas came to dominate the non-religious thought of the Christian and Muslim worlds. They would also absorb ideas from China, and India, adding to them tremendous knowledge from their own studies. Ibn Sina and other speculative thinkers such as al-Kindi and al-Farabi combined Aristotelianism and Neoplatonism with other ideas introduced through Islam.
1.1 History Of Western Education
Arabic philosophic literature was translated into Latin, and Ladino, contributing to the development of modern European philosophy. Sociologist-historian Ibn Khaldun, Carthage citizen Constantine the African who translated Greek medical texts and Al-Khwarzimi's collation of mathematical techniques were important figures of the Golden Age. The Islamic golden age also allow the flourishing of non-Muslims philosophers. The Jewish philosopher Moses Maimonides who lived in Andalusia is an example.
Many notable Islamic scientists lived and practiced during the Islamic Golden Age. Among the achievements of Muslim scholars during this period were the development of trigonometry into its modern form (greatly simplifying its practical application to calculate the phases of the moon), advances in optics, and advances in astronomy.
The important events that affected the aspect of education
1.1 History Of Western Education
Three important events happened during the history that affected the aspect and the type, internationally, of education. These three events were;
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The invention of writing: writing operation started in many countries before birth. The Summers in Iraq, |
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The Egyptian Pharos and the Chinese in educating the young children which made it easy to more |
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learning and keeping the knowledge safe and trainable. |
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The invention of printing; in the year 1456 in Germany by "Gutenberg" when he invented the printer |
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that made the books spread. Before the printer, there were nearly, 30000 books in all Europe about |
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the bible and the holy book. By the year 1500, there became more than 9 million book in Europe. |
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The second world war; where Germany, UK and USA have invented the computer which was at first, |
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for the military purposes, then, step by step, it used for every purpose. It was the cause of the |
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information revelation that contributed in progress in the field of education and its theories |
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and methods. |
