EDUCATION IN EUROPE
European pre-university education began its long odyssey with Homer. The social and literary values expressed in his poetry informed Greek education, which became the basis of Roman education. The Renaissance revived ancient literary texts and educational programs, which were modified and
adapted in subsequent centuries. European humanities education still embraces in part ancient Greco-Roman educational ideals and goals.
Greek Education
The great poems the Iliad and the Odyssey believed by the ancient Greeks to have been composed by Homer during the eighth century B.C.E. contained the fundamental idea of Greek education, that the ideal warrior must also be eloquent. He won battles of words as well as arms. Homer made the point by inserting many formal speeches into his poems. And Greek children later memorized long sections of the Iliad and the Odyssey.
In the seventh and sixth centuries B.C.E. an educational program for aristocratic males of gymnastics, music, and letters developed. Then the Sophists, the first professional educators, appeared in the second half of the
fifth century B.C.E. to teach well-born Athenian youths between the ages of thirteen and seventeen. Learning how to be an effective orator became the most important goal of education for Athenian males destined to rule. Simultaneously, a series of directives and principles that could be taught and learned replaced bservation and imitation as the means to the goal. Then Isocrates (436–338 B.C.E.) added the view that the study of Greek literature and history would inculcate the right moral and civic virtues in upper-class Greek males.
Greek education reached full development in the fourth century B.C.E. The Greeks passed this form of education to the rest of the known world during the Hellenistic period, which began with the conquests of Alexander the Great (r.336–323) and lasted through the fourth century C.E. A Greek boy attended a primary school from about age seven to fourteen and learned to read, write, do a little arithmetic, and participate in music and gymnastics. In the secondary school the student read the classics of Greek literature, especially the poet Homer and the tragic dramati st Euripides (c. 484–406 B.C.E.). He also read in whole or part other authors in the Greek literary tradition, such as the epic poets Hesiod (fl. c. 700 B.C.E.) and Apollonius
of Rhodes (3rd century B.C.E.), the lyric poet Callimachus (c. 305–240 B.C.E.), the tragedians Aeschylus (525–456 B.C.E.) and Sophocles (c. 496– 406 B.C.E.), and the comedians Menander (342–292 B.C.E.) and Aristophanes (c. 450–c. 388 B.C.E.). He also read the histories of Herodotus (c. 484–c. 420 B.C.E.), Xenophon (428–354 B.C.E.), and Thucydides (c. 460–c. 400 B.C.E.). But which texts received most attention is difficult to determine. The most important part of the secondary school curriculum was rhetoric, learning how to write and speak well. The program consisted of practice, followed by writing various kinds of works, and then constructing formal speeches according to rules. The goal was to produce the educated upper-class Greek male who could express himself well and persuade others.
The Greeks also had higher schools for those who wished to learn more in specialized branches of knowledge. Plato ’s Academy, founded about 380 B.C.E. and lasting until 529 C.E. albeit undergoing many changes, had no fixed curriculum. It probably emphasized extended philosophical discussions on a variety of topics, including rhetoric. The Lyceum or Peripatetic School founded in 335 by Aristotle (384 –322 B.C.E.) began with the purpose of collecting and studying scientific research and had a strong philosophical and scientific orientation. Theophrastus (c. 370–c. 288 B.C.E.) led the Lyceum after Aristotle’s death, and it endured until the third century C.E. Alexandria in Egypt became famous for its museum and library (founded c. 280 B.C.E., destroyed in or about 651 C.E.) and as a center for higher scientific learning. None of the above schools offered organized formal education. Rather, they were centers of learned men who attracted followers.
Roman Education
Education in the early centuries of the Roman Republic consisted primarily of fathers passing on family traditions and skills to their sons. After reaching adulthood at the age of sixteen, the young man came under the guidance of an older man who groomed him in public speaking and other useful skills for a career as a member of a republic. He also served in the army because he would in time be expected to command troops. By the middle of the second century B.C.E., when Rome ruled a far-flung empire, formal education had developed. Greek educational ideas and practices influenced Rome, as they did the rest of the Mediterranean world. The education of upper-class Romans was Greek schooling that later became Latin. The conquest of Greece aided this process by producing Greek slaves, some much better educated than their Roman masters. A Greek slave tutored the child in simple reading until he went to elementary school at six or seven to be taught reading, writing, and arithmetic. At twelve or thirteen the boy went to a secondary school, where he studied mostly Greek literature until the middle of the first century B.C.E. Upper-class Romans were bilingual at this time. Then, after the lifetime of Marcus Tullius Cicero (106–43 B.C.E.), who had popularized Greek pedagogical and philosophical ideas in his many works, Roman schools became Latin. Students read the great Roman poets Virgil (70–19 B.C.E.) and Horace (65–8 B.C.E.), the historians Livy (59 B.C.E.–17 C.E.) and Sallust (86–35 or 34 B.C.E.), the comic dramatist Terence (186 or 185 –?159 B.C.E.) and, of course, Cicero, whose treatises systematized Greek rhetorical instruction. While Greek remained part of the curriculum, bilingualism declined.
The highest level of Roman education began at about the age of sixteen and focused on rhetoric. As in Greek education, the goal was to learn to speak and write effectively as needed in public life and the law courts. If
anything, the emphasis on oratory in Roman schools was stronger than in Greek schools because other parts of the Greek curriculum, such as music and athletics, were eliminated, and the Romans had little interest in science and philosophy. Roman schools used rhetoric manuals that systematized Greek rhetorical instruction. Greco-Roman education prepared upper -class males for leadership roles. Educators hoped to give their students the proper civic and moral values based on the traditions and literature of the Greek city or Roman state. They tried to educate the person rather than impart knowledge. Above all, Greco-Roman education taught rhetoric, a practical skill for future leaders of self-governing societies in which the spoken word meant a great deal. The emphasis on rhetoric continued even after Rome had become a dictatorship ruled by the will and whims of emperors. Despite the great mathematical, medical, philosophical, and scientific ccomplishments of ancient Greece, Greco-Roman education did not stress these.
Education of Women in Greece and Rome
Little is known about the education of girls and women in Greece and Rome. It is likely that educational opportunity for girls was limited in Greece, but a little more available in Rome. During the Roman republican period ending in 27 B.C.E., it is likely that upper-class mothers who were able to do so taught their sons and daughters reading and writing in Latin and Greek. During the Empire at least a few girls studied alongside boys in primary and secondary schools outside the home. The poet Martial (c. 40–c. 104 C.E.) mentioned boys and girls studying together in what must have been secondary-level schools. For most girls formal education probably ended with marriage in the early to mid-teens. Nevertheless, the fact that many Roman wives and mothers played roles in Roman imperial politics suggests that they were reasonably well educated, and that more schooling was available for upper-class girls than can be documented. The rest of the
population, male and female, below the elite in both Greece and Rome probably received no education or learned only rudimentary skills.
Medieval Education
The Roman educational system disintegrated as the empire declined in the fifth and sixth centuries. Church institutions of the early Middle Ages (c. 400–c. 1000) were forced to establish schools to train future churchmen. Bishops established schools attached to their cathedrals to train priests for their dioceses. Religious orders organized schools in their monasteries to educate young members of the order. An unknown number of parish priests taught boys from the parish or town. In each case the primary purpose was to train future clergymen, although church schools often enrolled boys who would not become clergymen. The curriculum was limited to learning medieval Latin, which differed from classical Latin, the Bible and other
religious works, a little bit of arithmetic, and skills such as chanting needed to perform church rituals. After 1100, many more Latin grammar schools appeared. Supported by towns as in Italy or endowments in England, they educated both future clergymen and lay boys. These schools developed a more sophisticated Latin curriculum that included reading manufactured verse texts of pious sentiments, grammar manuals and glossaries, and a little bit of ancient poetry, especially passages from Virgil’s Aeneid. At the secondary level they taught ars dictaminis, the theory and practice of writing prose letters by following the principles found in medieval manuals. The latter offered rules for prose composition derived from Cicero’s De inventione and the pseudo-Ciceronian Rhetorica ad Herennium, both written in the first century B.C.E. Upper-level students, especially those beginning university study, might also study introductory logic or dialectic, a key part of Scholastic method.
A new kind of school teaching vernacular literature and commercial mathematics and bookkeeping skills appeared in Italy in the second half of the thirteenth century. These schools taught little or no Latin, but did teach popular vernacular texts, often stories illustrating the benefits of Christian virtues and the terrible consequences of vices. The commercial mathematics (called abbaco) and bookkeeping skills were quite
complex. The vernacular schools educated boys who would become merchants or otherwise enter the commercial world. Other parts of Europe, especially Germany, had vernacular schools in the sixteenth century, which probably means that they began in the Middle Ages, but little is known about them. Outside Italy vernacular schools did not teach t he sophisticated commercial mathematics and bookkeeping skills of Italian vernacular schools until much later. These modest vernacular schools marked a new departure in European education because they educated boys for secular nonprofessional and nonuniversity careers. They marked the beginning of a separation between Latin humanistic education for the elite, universitybound
student and a practically oriented education for the rest who would enter the world of work. This division lasted through World War II (1939–1945) and is still found in Europe in some measure.
