what is education; the process of receiving or giving systematic instruction, especially at a school or university.
more on;Education, discipline that is concerned with methods of teaching and learning in schools or school-like environments as opposed to various nonformal and informal means of socialization (e.g., rural development projects and education through parent-child relationships).
most dducated person in the world
(Read Arne Duncan’s Britannica essay on “Education: The Great Equalizer.”)
Education can be thought of as the transmission of the values and accumulated knowledge of a society. In this sense, it is equivalent to what social scientists term socialization or enculturation. Children—whether conceived among New Guinea tribespeople, the Renaissance Florentines, or the middle classes of Manhattan—are born without culture. Education is designed to guide them in learning a culture, molding their behaviour in the ways of adulthood, and directing them toward their eventual role in society. In the most primitive cultures, there is often little formal learning—little of what one would ordinarily call school or classes or teachers. Instead, the entire environment and all activities are frequently viewed as school and classes, and many or all adults act as teachers. As societies grow more complex, however, the quantity of knowledge to be passed on from one generation to the next becomes more than any one person can know, and, hence, there must evolve more selective and efficient means of cultural transmission. The outcome is formal education—the school and the specialist called the teacher.
As society becomes ever more complex and schools become ever more institutionalized, educational experience becomes less directly related to daily life, less a matter of showing and learning in the context of the workaday world, and more abstracted from practice, more a matter of distilling, telling, and learning things out of context. This concentration of learning in a formal atmosphere allows children to learn far more of their culture than they are able to do by merely observing and imitating. As society gradually attaches more and more importance to education, it also tries to formulate the overall objectives, content, organization, and strategies of education. Literature becomes laden with advice on the rearing of the younger generation. In short, there develop philosophies and theories of education.
This article discusses the history of education, tracing the evolution of the formal teaching of knowledge and skills from prehistoric and ancient times to the present, and considering the various philosophies that have inspired the resulting systems. Other aspects of education are treated in a number of articles. For a treatment of education as a discipline, including educational organization, teaching methods, and the functions and training of teachers, see teaching; pedagogy; and teacher education. For a description of education in various specialized fields, see historiography; legal education; medical education; science, history of. For an analysis of educational philosophy, see education, philosophy of. For an examination of some of the more important aids in education and the dissemination of knowledge, see dictionary; encyclopaedia; library; museum; printing; publishing, history of. Some restrictions on educational freedom are discussed in censorship. For an analysis of pupil attributes, see intelligence, human; learning theory; psychological testing.
Education in primitive and early civilized cultures
Prehistoric and primitive cultures
The term education can be applied to primitive cultures only in the sense of enculturation, which is the process of cultural transmission. A primitive person, whose culture is the totality of his universe, has a relatively fixed sense of cultural continuity and timelessness. The model of life is relatively static and absolute, and it is transmitted from one generation to another with little deviation. As for prehistoric education, it can only be inferred from educational practices in surviving primitive cultures.
The purpose of primitive education is thus to guide children to becoming good members of their tribe or band. There is a marked emphasis upon training for citizenship, because primitive people are highly concerned with the growth of individuals as tribal members and the thorough comprehension of their way of life during passage from prepuberty to postpuberty.
Because of the variety in the countless thousands of primitive cultures, it is difficult to describe any standard and uniform characteristics of prepuberty education. Nevertheless, certain things are practiced commonly within cultures. Children actually participate in the social processes of adult activities, and their participatory learning is based upon what the American anthropologist Margaret Mead called empathy, identification, and imitation. Primitive children, before reaching puberty, learn by doing and observing basic technical practices. Their teachers are not strangers but rather their immediate community.
In contrast to the spontaneous and rather unregulated imitations in prepuberty education, postpuberty education in some cultures is strictly standardized and regulated. The teaching personnel may consist of fully initiated men, often unknown to the initiate though they are his relatives in other clans. The initiation may begin with the initiate being abruptly separated from his familial group and sent to a secluded camp where he joins other initiates. The purpose of this separation is to deflect the initiate’s deep attachment away from his family and to establish his emotional and social anchorage in the wider web of his culture.
The initiation “curriculum” does not usually include practical subjects. Instead, it consists of a whole set of cultural values, tribal religion, myths, philosophy, history, rituals, and other knowledge. Primitive people in some cultures regard the body of knowledge constituting the initiation curriculum as most essential to their tribal membership. Within this essential curriculum, religious instruction takes the most prominent place.
Education in the earliest civilizations
The Old World civilizations of Egypt, Mesopotamia, and North China
The history of civilization started in the Middle East about 3000 BCE, whereas the North China civilization began about a millennium and a half later. The Mesopotamian and Egyptian civilizations flourished almost simultaneously during the first civilizational phase (3000–1500 BCE). Although these civilizations differed, they shared monumental literary achievements. The need for the perpetuation of these highly developed civilizations made writing and formal education indispensable.
Egypt
Egyptian culture and education were preserved and controlled chiefly by the priests, a powerful intellectual elite in the Egyptian theocracy who also served as the political bulwarks by preventing cultural diversity. The humanities as well as such practical subjects as science, medicine, mathematics, and geometry were in the hands of the priests, who taught in formal schools. Vocational skills relating to such fields as architecture, engineering, and sculpture were generally transmitted outside the context of formal schooling.
Egyptians developed two types of formal schools for privileged youth under the supervision of governmental officials and priests: one for scribes and the other for priest trainees. At the age of 5, pupils entered the writing school and continued their studies in reading and writing until the age of 16 or 17. At the age of 13 or 14 the schoolboys were also given practical training in offices for which they were being prepared. Priesthood training began at the temple college, which boys entered at the age of 17; the length of training depending upon the requirements for various priestly offices. It is not clear whether or not the practical sciences constituted a part of the systematically organized curriculum of the temple college.
Rigid method and severe discipline were applied to achieve uniformity in cultural transmission, since deviation from the traditional pattern of thought was strictly prohibited. Drill and memorization were the typical methods employed. But, as noted, Egyptians also used a work-study method in the final phase of the training for scribes.
Mesopotamia
As a civilization contemporary with Egyptian civilization, Mesopotamia developed education quite similar to that of its counterpart with respect to its purpose and training. Formal education was practical and aimed to train scribes and priests. It was extended from basic reading, writing, and religion to higher learning in law, medicine, and astrology. Generally, youth of the upper classes were prepared to become scribes, who ranged from copyists to librarians and teachers. The schools for priests were said to be as numerous as temples. This indicates not only the thoroughness but also the supremacy of priestly education. Very little is known about higher education, but the advancement of the priestly work sheds light upon the extensive nature of intellectual pursuit.
As in the case of Egypt, the priests in Mesopotamia dominated the intellectual and educational domain as well as the applied. The centre of intellectual activity and training was the library, which was usually housed in a temple under the supervision of influential priests. Methods of teaching and learning were memorization, oral repetition, copying models, and individual instruction. It is believed that the exact copying of scripts was the hardest and most strenuous and served as the test of excellence in learning. The period of education was long and rigorous, and discipline was harsh.
North China
In North China, the civilization of which began with the emergence of the Shang era, complex educational practices were in effect at a very early date. In fact, every important foundation of the formation of modern Chinese character was already established, to a great extent, more than 3,000 years ago.
Chinese ancient formal education was distinguished by its markedly secular and moral character. Its paramount purpose was to develop a sense of moral sensitivity and duty toward people and the state. Even in the early civilizational stage, harmonious human relations, rituals, and music formed the curriculum.
Formal colleges and schools probably antedate the Zhou dynasty of the 1st millennium BCE, at least in the imperial capitals. Local states probably had less-organized institutions, such as halls of study, village schools, and district schools. With regard to actual methods of education, ancient Chinese learned from bamboo books and obtained moral training and practice in rituals by word of mouth and example. Rigid rote learning, which typified later Chinese education, seems to have been rather condemned. Education was regarded as the process of individual development from within.
The New World civilizations of the Maya, Aztecs, and Incas
The outstanding cultural achievements of the pre-Columbian civilizations are often compared with those of Old World civilizations. The ancient Mayan calendar, which surpassed Europe’s Julian calendar in accuracy, was, for example, a great accomplishment demonstrating the extraordinary degree of knowledge of astronomy and mathematics possessed by the Maya. Equally impressive are the sophistication of the Incas’ calendar and their highway construction, the development of the Mayan complex writing system, and the magnificent temples of the Aztecs. It is unfortunate that archaeological findings and written documents hardly shed sufficient light upon education among the Maya, Aztecs, and Incas. But from available documents it is evident that these pre-Columbian civilizations developed formal education for training the nobility and priests. The major purposes of education were cultural conservation, vocational training, moral and character training, and control of cultural deviation.
The Maya
Being a highly religious culture, the Maya regarded the priesthood as one of the most influential factors in the development of their society. The priest enjoyed high prestige by virtue of his extensive knowledge, literate skills, and religious and moral leadership, and high priests served as major advisers of the rulers and the nobility. To obtain a priesthood, which was usually inherited from his father or another close relative, the trainee had to receive rigorous education in the school where priests taught history, writing, methods of divining, medicine, and the calendar system.
Character training was one of the salient features of Mayan education. The inculcation of self-restraint, cooperative work, and moderation was highly emphasized in various stages of socialization as well as on various occasions of religious festivals. In order to develop self-discipline, the future priest endured a long period of continence and abstinence and, to develop a sense of loyalty to community, he engaged in group labour.
The Aztecs
Among the Aztecs, cultural preservation relied heavily upon oral transmission and rote memorization of important events, calendrical information, and religious knowledge. Priests and noble elders, who were called conservators, were in charge of education. Since one of the important responsibilities of the conservator was to censor new poems and songs, he took the greatest care in teaching poetry, particularly divine songs.
At the calmecac, the school for native learning where apprenticeship started at the age of 10, the history of Mexico and the content of the historical codices were systematically taught. The calmecac played the most vital role in ensuring oral transmission of history through oratory, poetry, and music, which were employed to make accurate memorization of events easier and to galvanize remembrance. Visual aids, such as simple graphic representations, were used to guide recitation phases, to sustain interest, and to increase comprehension of facts and dates.
The Incas
The Incas did not possess a written or recorded language as far as is known. Like the Aztecs, they also depended largely on oral transmission as a means of maintaining the preservation of their culture. Inca education was divided into two distinct categories: vocational education for common Incas and highly formalized training for the nobility. As the Inca empire was a theocratic, imperial government based upon agrarian collectivism, the rulers were concerned about the vocational training of men and women in collective agriculture. Personal freedom, life, and work were subservient to the community. At birth an individual’s place in the society was strictly ordained, and at five years of age every child was taken over by the government, and his socialization and vocational training were supervised by government surrogates.
Education for the nobility consisted of a four-year program that was clearly defined in terms of the curricula and rituals. In the first year the pupils learned Quechua, the language of the nobility. The second year was devoted to the study of religion and the third year to learning about the quipu (khipu), a complex system of knotted coloured strings or cords used largely for accounting purposes. In the fourth year major attention was given to the study of history, with additional instruction in sciences, geometry, geography, and astronomy. The instructors were highly respected encyclopaedic scholars known as amautas. After the completion of this education, the pupils were required to pass a series of rigorous examinations in order to attain full status in the life of the Inca nobility.
Nobuo ShimaharaEducation in classical cultures
Ancient India
The Hindu tradition
India is the site of one of the most ancient civilizations in the world. The Indo-European-speaking peoples who entered India in the 2nd millennium BCE established large-scale settlements and founded powerful kingdoms. In the course of time, a group of intellectuals, the Brahmans, became priests and men of learning; another group, of nobles and soldiers, became the Kshatriyas; the agricultural and trading class was called the Vaishyas; and artisans and labourers became the Shudra. Such was the origin of the division of the Hindus into four varnas, or “classes.”
Religion was the mainspring of all activities in ancient India. It was of an all-absorbing interest and embraced not only prayer and worship but also philosophy, morality, law, and government as well. Religion saturated educational ideals too, and the study of Vedic literature was indispensable to higher castes. The stages of instruction were very well defined. During the first period, the child received elementary education at home. The beginning of secondary education and formal schooling was marked by a ritual known as the upanayana, or thread ceremony, which was restricted to boys only and was more or less compulsory for boys of the three higher castes. The Brahman boys had this ceremony at the age of 8, the Kshatriya boys at the age of 11, and the Vaishya boys at the age of 12. The boy would leave his father’s house and enter his preceptor’s ashrama, a home situated amid sylvan surroundings. The acarya would treat him as his own child, give him free education, and not charge anything for his boarding and lodging. The pupil had to tend the sacrificial fires, do the household work of his preceptor, and look after his cattle.
The study at this stage consisted of the recitation of the Vedic mantras (“hymns”) and the auxiliary sciences—phonetics, the rules for the performance of the sacrifices, grammar, astronomy, prosody, and etymology. The character of education, however, differed according to the needs of the caste. For a child of the priestly class, there was a definite syllabus of studies. The trayi-vidya, or the knowledge of the three Vedas—the most ancient of Hindu scriptures—was obligatory for him. During the whole course at school, as at college, the student had to observe brahmacharya—that is, wearing simple dress, living on plain food, using a hard bed, and leading a celibate life.
The period of studentship normally extended to 12 years. For those who wanted to continue their studies, there was no age limit. After finishing their education at an ashrama, they would join a higher centre of learning or a university presided over by a kulapati (a founder of a school of thought). Advanced students would also improve their knowledge by taking part in philosophical discussions at a parisad, or “academy.” Education was not denied to women, but normally girls were instructed at home.
The method of instruction differed according to the nature of the subject. The first duty of the student was to memorize the particular Veda of his school, with special emphasis placed on correct pronunciation. In the study of such literary subjects as law, logic, rituals, and prosody, comprehension played a very important role. A third method was the use of parables, which were employed in the personal spiritual teaching relating to the Upanishads, or conclusion of the Vedas. In higher learning, such as in the teaching of Dharma-shastra (“Righteousness Science”), the most popular and useful method was catechism—the pupil asking questions and the teacher discoursing at length on the topics referred to him. Memorization, however, played the greatest role.
The introduction of Buddhist influences
By about the end of the 6th century BCE, the Vedic rituals and sacrifices had gradually developed into a highly elaborate cult that profited the priests but antagonized an increasing section of the people. Education became generally confined to the Brahmans, and the upanayana was being gradually discarded by the non-Brahmans. The formalism and exclusiveness of the Brahmanic system was largely responsible for the rise of two new religious orders, Buddhism and Jainism. Neither of them recognized the authority of the Vedas, and both challenged the exclusive claims of the Brahmans to priesthood. They taught through the common language of the people and gave education to all, irrespective of caste, creed, or sex. Buddhism also introduced the monastic system of education. Monasteries attached to Buddhist temples served the double purpose of imparting education and of training persons for priesthood. A monastery, however, educated only those who were its members. It did not admit day scholars and thus did not cater to the needs of the entire population.
Meanwhile, significant developments were taking place in the political field that had repercussions on education. The establishment of the imperialistic Nanda dynasty about 413 BCE and then of the even stronger Mauryas some 40 years later shook the very foundations of the Vedic structure of life, culture, and polity. The Brahmans in large numbers gave up their ancient occupation of teaching in their forest retreats and took to all sorts of occupations, the Kshatriyas abandoned their ancient calling as warriors, and the Shudras, in their turn, rose from their servile occupations. These forces produced revolutionary changes in education. Schools were established in growing towns, and even day scholars were admitted. Studies were chosen freely and not according to caste. Taxila had already acquired an international reputation in the 6th century BCE as a centre of advanced studies and now improved upon it. It did not possess any college or university in the modern sense of the term, but it was a great centre of learning with a number of famous teachers, each having a school of his own.
In the 3rd century BCE Buddhism received a great impetus under India’s most celebrated ruler, Ashoka. After his death, Buddhism evoked resistance, and a counterreformation in Hinduism began in the country. About the 1st century CE there was also a widespread lay movement among both Buddhists and Hindus. As a result of these events, Buddhist monasteries began to undertake secular as well as religious education, and there began a large growth of popular elementary education along with secondary and higher learning.
Classical India
The 500 years from the 4th century CE to the close of the 8th, under the Guptas and Harsha and their successors, is a remarkable period in Indian history. It was the age of the universities of Nalanda and Valabhi and of the rise of Indian sciences, mathematics, and astronomy. The university at Nalanda housed a population of several thousand teachers and students, who were maintained out of the revenues from more than 100 villages. Because of its fame, Nalanda attracted students from abroad, but the admission test was so strict that only two or three out of 10 attained admission. More than 1,500 teachers discussed more than 100 different dissertations every day. These covered the Vedas, logic, grammar, Buddhist and Hindu philosophy (Sankhya, Nyaya, and so on), astronomy, and medicine. Other great centres of Buddhist learning of the post-Gupta era were Vikramashila, Odantapuri, and Jagaddala. The achievements in science were no less significant. Aryabhata in the late 5th century was the greatest mathematician of his age. He introduced the concepts of zero and decimals. Varahamihira of the Gupta age was a profound scholar of all the sciences and arts, from botany to astronomy and from military science to civil engineering. There was also considerable development of the medical sciences. According to contemporaries, more than eight branches of medical science, including surgery and pediatrics, were practiced by the physicians.
These were the main developments in education prior to the Muslim invasions, beginning in the 10th century. Nearly every village had its schoolmaster, who was supported from local contributions. The Hindu schools of learning, known as pathasalas in western India and tol in Bengal, were conducted by Brahman acaryas at their residence. Each imparted instruction in an advanced branch of learning and had a student enrollment of not more than 30. Larger or smaller establishments, specially endowed by rajas and other donors for the promotion of learning, also grew in number. The usual centres of learning were either the king’s capital, such as Kanauj, Dhar, Mithila, or Ujjayini, or a holy place, such as Varanasi, Ayodhya, Kanchi, or Nasik. In addition to Buddhist viharas (monasteries), there sprang up Hindu mathas (monks’ residences) and temple colleges in different parts of the country. There were also agrahara villages, which were given in charity to the colonies of learned Brahmans in order to enable them to discharge their scriptural duties, including teaching. Girls were usually educated at home, and vocational education was imparted through a system of apprenticeship.
Indian influences on Asia
An account of Indian education during the ancient period would be incomplete without a discussion of the influence of Indian culture on Sri Lanka and Central and Southeast Asia. It was achieved partly through cultural or trade relations and partly through political influence. Khotan, in Central Asia, had a famous Buddhist vihara as early as the 1st century CE. A number of Indian scholars lived there, and many Chinese pilgrims remained there instead of going to India. Indian pandits (scholars) were also invited to China and Tibet, and many Chinese and Tibetan monks studied in Buddhist viharas in India.
The process of Indianization was at its highest in Southeast Asia. Beginning in the 2nd century CE, Hindu rulers reigned in Indochina and in the numerous islands of the East Indian archipelago from Sumatra to New Guinea for a period of 1,500 years. A greater India was thus established by a general fusion of cultures. Some of the inscriptions of these countries, written in flawless Sanskrit, show the influence of Indian culture. There are references to Indian philosophical ideas, legends, and myths and to Indian astronomical systems and measurements. Hinduism continued to wield its influence on these lands so long as the Hindus ruled in India. This influence ceased by the 15th century CE.
S.N. MukerjiAncient China
Ancient Chinese education served the needs of a simple agricultural society with the family as the basic social organization. Paper and the writing brush had not been invented, and the “bamboo books” then recorded to be in existence were of limited use at best. Oral instruction and teaching by example were the chief methods of education.
The molding of character was a primary aim of education. Ethical teachings stressed the importance of human relations and the family as the foundation of society. Filial piety, especially emphasizing respect for the elderly, was considered to be the most important virtue. It was the responsibility of government to provide instruction so that the talented would be able to enter government service and thus perpetuate the moral and ethical foundation of society.
The Zhou period
Xi (Western) Zhou (1046–771 BCE)
This was the feudal age, when the feudal states were ruled by lords who paid homage to the king of Zhou and recognized him as the “Son of Heaven.”
Schools were established for the sons of the nobility in the capital city of Zhou and the capital cities of the feudal states. Schools for the common people were provided within the feudal states in villages and hamlets and were attended, according to written records, by men and women after their work in the fields. There were elementary and advanced schools for both the ruling classes and the common people. Separate studies for girls were concerned chiefly with homemaking and the feminine virtues that assured the stability of the family system.
The content of education for the nobility consisted of the “six arts”—rituals, music, archery, charioteering, writing, and mathematics. They constituted what may be called the “liberal education” of the period. Mere memory work was condemned. As Confucius said of the ancient spirit of education, “learning without thought is labour lost.”
Dong (Eastern) Zhou (770–256 BCE)
This was a period of social change brought about by the disintegration of the feudal order, the breakdown of traditional loyalties, the rise of cities and urban civilization, and the growth of commerce.
The instability and the perplexing problems of the times challenged scholars to propose various remedies. The absence of central control facilitated independent and creative thinking. Thus appeared one of the most creative periods in China’s intellectual history, when the Hundred Schools of thought vied with one another to expound their views and proposals for attaining a happy social and political order. Some urged a return to the teachings of the sages of old, while others sought better conditions by radical change. Among the major “schools” of this age were Daoism, Confucianism, Mohism, and Legalism. No one school was in the ascendancy. Each major school had its followers and disciples, among whom there was a vigorous program of instruction and intellectual discussion. Most active in the establishment of private schools were Confucius and his disciples, but the Daoists, the Mohists, and the Legalists also maintained teaching institutions.
Another form of educational activity was the practice of the contending feudal states of luring to their domain a large number of scholars, partly to serve as a source of ideas for enhancing the prosperity of the state and partly to gain an aura of intellectual respectability in a land where the respect for scholars had already become an established tradition. The age of political instability and social disintegration was, thus, an age of free and creative intellectual activity. Conscious of their importance and responsibility, the scholars developed a tradition of self-respect and fearless criticism. It was this tradition that Confucius had in mind when he said the educated person was not a utensil to be used, and it was this spirit the Confucian philosopher Mencius described when he said that the great man was a man of principles whom riches and position could not corrupt, whom poverty and lowliness could not swerve, whom power and force could not bend.
The teachings of the Hundred Schools and the records of the feudal states meant a marked increase in literature and, consequently, in the materials for instruction. The classical age of China, the period of the Dong Zhou, left an intellectual and educational legacy of inestimable value. Its scholars propounded theories of government and of social and individual life that were as influential in China and East Asia as the Greek philosophers of almost contemporary age were in the Western world.
The Qin–Han period
Qin autocracy (221–206 BCE)
Of the various schools of thought that arose in China’s classical age, Legalism was the first to be accorded official favour. The policies of the Qin dynasty were based on Legalist principles stressing a strong state with a centralized administration. Many of its policies were so different from past practices that they incurred the criticism of scholars, especially those who upheld the examples of the ancient sages. To stop the criticism, the ruler—who called himself the first emperor—acting upon the advice of a Legalist minister, decreed a clean break with the past and a banning of books on history and of classics glorifying past rulers. Numerous books were collected and burned, and hundreds of scholars were put to death.
Though condemned for the burning of books and the persecution of scholars, the Qin dynasty laid the foundation for a unified empire and made it possible for the next dynasty to consolidate its power and position at home and abroad. In education, the unification efforts included a reform and simplification of the written script and the adoption of a standardized script intelligible throughout the country. First steps were taken toward uniform textbooks for the primary schools. The invention of the writing brush made of hair, as well as the making of ink, led to the replacement of the clumsy stylus and bamboo slips with writing on silk.
Scholarship under the Han (206 BCE–220 CE)
The Han dynasty reversed many of the policies of its short-lived predecessor. The most important change was a shift from Legalism to Confucianism. The banned books were now highly regarded, and the classics became the core of education. An assiduous effort was made to recover the prohibited books and to discover books and manuscripts that scholars had concealed in secret places. Much painstaking work was done in copying and editing, and the textual and interpretative studies of the Han scholars accorded a new importance to the study of the classics. The making of paper further stimulated this revival of learning. Critical examination of old texts resulted in the practice of higher criticism long before it developed in the West.
There were historians, philosophers, poets, artists, and other scholars of renown in the Han dynasty. Deserving special mention is Sima Qian, author of a monumental history of China from the earliest times to the 1st century BCE, whose high level of scholarship earned him the title “Chinese Father of History.” An illustrious woman of letters, Ban Zhao, was named poet laureate. A bibliographer collected and edited ancient texts and designated them as classics. The first dictionary of the Chinese language was written. Since the discovery and interpretation of ancient texts had largely been the work of Confucian scholars, Chinese scholarship from now on became increasingly identified with Confucianism. Most of the Han rulers gave official sanction to Confucianism as a basis of conducting government and state affairs. There was, however, no action to exclude other schools of thought.
There were a variety of schools on the national and local levels. Increasing activity in private education continued, and much of the study of the classics and enriched literature was done in private schools. Of considerable influence in the country and abroad was a national university with an enrollment that soared to 30,000. The classics now became the core of the curriculum, but music, rituals, and archery were still included. The tradition of all-round education in the six arts had not vanished.
Introduction of Buddhism
The Han dynasty was a period of territorial expansion and growth in trade and cultural relations. Buddhism was introduced at this time. Early information about Buddhism was probably brought into China by traders, envoys, and monks. By the 1st century CE an emperor became personally interested and sent a mission to India to seek more knowledge and bring back Buddhist literature. Thereafter Indian missionaries as well as Chinese scholars translated Buddhist scriptures and other writings into Chinese.
Indian missionaries not only preached a new faith but also brought in new cultural influences. Indian mathematics and astronomical ideas enriched Chinese knowledge in these fields. Chinese medicine also benefited. Architecture and art forms reflected Buddhist and Indian influence. Hindu chants became a part of Chinese music.
For a couple of centuries after its introduction, however, Buddhism showed no signs of popular appeal. Han scholarship was engrossed in the study of ancient classics and was dominated by Confucian scholars who had scant interest in Buddhist teachings that were unconcerned with the practical issues of moral and political life. Moreover, the Buddhist view of evil and the Buddhist espousal of celibacy and escape from earthly existence were alien to China’s traditions. Daoist scholars, finding in Buddhism much that seemed not too remote from their own spiritual message, were more inclined to study the new philosophy. Some of them aided in the translation of Buddhist texts, but they were not in the centre of the Han stage.
The fall of the Han dynasty was followed by a few hundred years of division, strife, and foreign invasions. China was not united again until the end of the 6th century. It was during this period that Buddhism gained a foothold in China. The literary efforts of Chinese monks produced a Chinese Buddhist literature, and this marked the beginning of a process that transformed an alien importation into a Chinese religion and system of thought.
Theodore Hsi-en ChenAncient Hebrews
Like all preindustrial societies, ancient Israel first experienced a type of education that was essentially familial; that is to say, the mother taught the very young and the girls, while the father assumed the responsibility of providing moral, religious, and handcraft instruction for the growing sons. This characteristic remained in Jewish education, for the relation of teacher to pupil was always expressed in terms of parenthood and filiation. Education, furthermore, was rigid and exacting; the Hebrew word musar signifies at the same time education and corporal punishment.
Once they were established in Palestine, at the crossroads of the great literate civilizations of the Middle East in the beginning of the 1st millennium BCE, the Jewish people learned to develop a different type of education—one that involved training a specialized, professional class of scribes in a then rather esoteric art called writing, borrowed from the Phoenicians. Writing was at first practical: the scribe wrote letters and drew up contracts, kept accounts, maintained records, and prepared orders. Because he could receive written orders, he eventually became entrusted with their execution; hence the importance of scribes in the royal administration, well-attested since the times of David and Solomon. The training given these scribes, moreover, included training of character and instilling the high ideal of wisdom, as would befit the servants of the king.
Writing found another avenue of application in Israel—in religion. And the scribe again was the agent of education. He was the man who copied the sacred Law faithfully and established the canonical text. He was the one who read the Law to himself and to the people, taught it, and translated it when Hebrew ceased to be the vernacular or “living language” (into Greek in Alexandria, into Aramaic in Palestine); he explained it, commented on it, and studied its application in particular cases. After the downfall of Israel in 722–721 BCE and Judah in 586 BCE and their subjection to foreign rule, Jewish education became characterized more and more by this religious orientation. The synagogue in which the community assembled became not merely a house of prayer but also a school, with a “house of the book” (bet ha-sefer) and a “house of instruction” (bet ha-midrash) corresponding roughly to elementary and secondary or advanced levels of education. Girls, however, continued to be taught at home.
The role of writing in this Oriental world should not be exaggerated, of course; oral instruction still held first place by far. Although a pupil might learn to read aloud, or rather to intone his text, his main effort was to learn by heart fragment after fragment of the sacred Law. Alongside this written Law, however, there developed interpretations or exegeses of it, which at first were merely oral but which progressively were reduced to writing—first in the form of memoranda or aide-mémoire inscribed on tablets or notebooks, then in actual books. The diffusion of this religious literature called for an expansion of programs of instruction, evolving into diverse stages: elementary, intermediate, and advanced—the latter in several centres in Palestine and later in Babylonia. This religiously based education was to become one of the most important factors enabling Judaism to survive the national catastrophes of 70 and 135 CE, involving the capture and subsequent destruction of Jerusalem. In their dispersion, the Jews clung to Hebrew, their only language for worship, for the study of the Law, for tradition, and consequently for instruction. From this evolved the respect with which the teacher was and is surrounded in Jewish communities.
Ancient Greeks
Origins
The history of the Hellenic language, and therewith of the Hellenic people, goes back to the Mycenaean civilization of about 1400–1100 BCE, which itself was the heir of the pre-Hellenic civilization of Minoan Crete. The Mycenaean civilization consisted of little monarchies of an Oriental type with an administration operated by a bureaucracy, and it seems to have operated an educational system designed for the training of scribes similar to those of the ancient civilizations of the Middle East. But continuity did not exist between this education and that which was to develop after a period of obscurity known as the Greek Dark Age, dating approximately from the 11th to the 8th century BCE.
When the Greek world reappeared in history, it was an entirely different society, one headed by a military aristocracy as idealized in Homer’s Iliad and Odyssey. During this period, sons of the nobility received their education at the court of the prince in the setting of a guild companionship of warriors: the young nobleman was educated through the counsel and example of an older man to whom he had been entrusted or had entrusted himself, a senior admired and loved. It was in this atmosphere of virile camaraderie that there developed the characteristic ideal of Greek love that was enduringly to mark Hellenic civilization and to deeply influence its conception of education itself—for example, in the relation of master to pupil. Yet these warriors of the Archaic period were not coarse barbarians; by this time the Homerids (reciters of Homer) and the rhapsodists (singers-reciters and sometimes creative poets) were taking the great epics of Homer and Hesiod throughout the far-flung Greek settlements of the Mediterranean, and a new, cultivated civilization was already emerging. Dance, poetry, and instrumental music were well developed and provided an essential element in the educational formation of the dominant elites. In addition, the idea of aretē was becoming central to Greek life. The epics of Hesiod and Homer glorified physical and military prowess and promoted the ideal of the cultivated patriot-warrior who displayed this cardinal virtue of aretē—a concept difficult to translate but embodying the virtues of military skill, moral excellence, and educational cultivation. It was an ethic of honour, which made virtues of pride and of jealousy the inspiration of great deeds and which accepted it as natural that one would be the object of jealousy or of enmity. Reverence for Homer—which until the end of antiquity (and in Byzantium even later) was to constitute the basis of Greek culture and therewith of Greek education—would maintain from generation to generation this “agonistic” ideal: the cult of the hero, of the champion, of high performance, which found an outlet outside the sphere of battles in games or contests (agōnes), particularly in the realm of athletics, the most celebrated being the Olympic Games, dating traditionally from 776 BCE.
Profound changes were introduced into Greek education as a result of the political transformations involved in the maturing of the city-state. There developed a collective ideal of devotion to the community: the city-state (polis) was everything to its citizens; the city made its citizens what they were—mankind. This subordination of the individual exploit to collective discipline was reinforced by the strategic military revolution that saw the triumph of heavy infantry, the hoplites, foot soldiers heavily armed and in tight formation.
Sparta
It is in Sparta, the most flourishing city of the 8th and 7th centuries BCE, that one sees to best advantage the richness and complexity of this archaic culture. Education was carried to a high level of artistic refinement, as evidenced by the events organized within the framework of the city’s religious festivals. The young men and women engaged in processions, dances, and competitions in instrumental music and song. Physical education had a like part, equally for both sexes, given status by national or international contests; the Spartans regularly took more than half of the first places at the Olympic Games. But military and civic education dominated, as it was expected that the citizen-soldier be ready to fight—and, if necessary, to die—for his country.
This last aspect became not merely dominant but exclusive from the time (about 550 BCE) when a conservative reaction triumphed at Sparta, bringing to power a militarist and aristocratic regime. Arts and sports gave way completely to an education appropriate to men of a warrior caste. The education of girls was subordinated to their future function as mothers; a strict eugenic regime pitilessly eliminated sickly and deformed children. Up to the age of seven, children were brought up by the women, already in an atmosphere of severity and harshness. Education—properly speaking, agōgē—lasted from age 7 to 20 and was entirely in the hands of the state.
The male youth of Sparta were enrolled into formations corresponding to successive age classes, divided into smaller units under the authority of comrades of their own age or of young officers. It was a collective education, which progressively removed them from the family and subjected them to garrison life. Everything was organized with a view to preparation for military service: lightly clothed, bedded on the bare ground, the child was poorly fed, told to steal to supplement his rations, and subjected to rigorous discipline. His virility and combativeness were developed by hardening him to blows—thus the role of ritual brawls between groups of boys and of the institution of the krypteia, a nocturnal expedition designed both to terrify the lower classes of slaves (helots) and to train the future fighter in ambushes and the ruses of warfare. He was also, of course, directly apprenticed to the military craft, using arms and maneuvering in close formation. This puritanical education, proceeding in a climate of austerity, had as its sole norm the interests of the state, erected into a supreme category; the Spartan was trained under a strict discipline to obey blindly the orders of his superiors. Curiously, the child was at the same time trained to dissimulation, to lying, to theft—all virtues when directed toward the foreigner, toward whom distrust and Machiavellianism were encouraged.
This implacably logical education enabled Sparta to remain for long the most powerful city, militarily and diplomatically, of the entire Greek world and to triumph over its rival Athens after the long struggle of the Peloponnesian War (431–404 BCE), but it did not prevent Sparta’s decadence. Not that Sparta ever relaxed its tension: on the contrary, in the course of centuries, the rigour and ferocity were accentuated even as such behaviour became more and more anachronistic and without real use. Rites of initiation were transformed into barbarous tests of endurance, the boys undergoing flagellation and competing in enduring it—sometimes to the very death—under the eyes of tourists attracted by the sadistic spectacle. This occurred in times of complete peace when, under the Roman Empire, Sparta was nothing but a little provincial city with neither independence nor army.
Athens
Beginning at a date difficult to fix precisely (at the end of the 7th or during the 6th century), Athens, in contrast to Sparta, became the first to renounce education oriented toward the future duties of the soldier. The Athenian citizen, of course, was always obliged, when necessary and capable, to fight for the fatherland, but the civil aspect of life and culture was predominant: armed combat was only a sport. The evolution of Athenian education reflected that of the city itself, which was moving toward increasing democratization—though it should be noted that the slave and the resident alien always remained excluded from the body politic. The Athenian democracy, even in its most complete form, attained in the 4th century BCE was to remain always the way of life of a minority—about 10 to 15 percent, it is estimated, of the total population. Athenian culture continued to be oriented toward the noble life—that of the Homeric knight, minus the warrior aspect—and this orientation determined the practice of elegant sports. Some of these, such as horsemanship and hunting, always remained more or less the privilege of an aristocratic and wealthy elite; however, the various branches of athletics, originally reserved for the sons of the great families, became more and more widely practiced.
Education of youth
Schools had begun to appear in those early centuries, probably on eastern Mediterranean models run by private teachers. The earliest references are, however, more recent. Herodotus mentions schools dating from 496 BCE and Pausanias from 491 BCE. The term used is didaskaleion (“a place for instruction”), while the generic term scholē, meaning leisure—a reference to schooling being the preserve of the wealthier sector—was also coming into use. There was no single institution; rather, each activity was carried out in a separate place. The young boy of privileged rank would be taken by a kind of chaperone, the paidagōgos, who was generally a respected slave within the parents’ household. The elements of literacy were taught by the writing master, known as a grammatistes, the child learning his letters and numbers by scratching them on a wax-coated wooden tablet with a stylus. More advanced formal literacy, chiefly in a study of the poets, playwrights, and historians, was given by the grammatikos, although this was restricted to the genuinely leisured. Supremely important was instruction in the mythopoeic legends of Hesiod and Homer, given by the lyre-playing kitharistes. In addition, all boys had to be instructed in physical and military activities in the wrestling school, known as the palaestra, itself part of the more comprehensive institution of the gymnasium.
The moral aspect of education was not neglected. The Athenian ideal was that of the kalos k’agathos, the “wise and good” man. The teachers were as much preoccupied with overseeing the child’s good conduct and the formation of his character as with directing his progress in the various subjects taught him. Poetry served to transmit all the traditional wisdom, which combined two currents: the ethic of the citizen expressed in the moralizing elegies of the 6th-century lawmaker Solon and the old Homeric ideal of the value of competition and heroic exploit. But this ideal equilibrium between the education of the body and that of the mind was interrupted before long as a result on the one hand of the development of professional sports and the exigencies of its specialization and on the other by the development of the strictly intellectual disciplines, which had made great progress since the time of the first philosophers of the 5th century BCE.
Higher education
A system of higher education open to all—to all, at any rate, who had the leisure and necessary money—emerged with the appearance of the Sophists, mostly foreign teachers who were contemporaries and adversaries of Socrates (c. 470–399 BCE). Until then the higher forms of culture had retained an esoteric character, being transmitted by the master to a few chosen disciples—as in the first schools of medicine at Cnidus and at Cos—or within the framework of a religious confraternity involving initiate status. The Sophists proposed to meet a new need that was generally felt in Greek society—particularly in the most active cities, such as Athens, where political life had been intensively developed. Henceforth, participation in public affairs became the supreme occupation engaging the ambition of Greek man; it was no longer in athletics and elegant leisure activities that his valour, his desire to assert himself and to triumph, would find expression but rather in political action.
The Sophists, who were professional educators, introduced a form of higher education whose commercial success attested to and was promoted by its social utility and practical efficacy. They inaugurated the literary genre of the public lecture, which was to experience a long popularity. It was a teaching process that was oriented in an entirely realistic direction, education for political participation. The Sophists pretended neither to transmit nor to seek for the truth concerning man or existence; they offered simply an art of success in political life, which meant, above all, being able on every occasion to make one’s point of view prevail. Two principal disciplines constituted the program: the art of logical argument, or dialectic, and the art of persuasive speaking, or rhetoric—the two most flourishing humanistic sciences of antiquity. These disciplines the Sophists founded by distilling from experience their general principles and logical structures, thus making possible their transmission on a theoretical basis from master to pupil.
To the pedagogy of the Sophists there was opposed the activity of Socrates, who, as inheritor of the earlier aristocratic tradition, was alarmed by this radical utilitarianism. He doubted that virtue could be taught—especially for money, a degrading substance. An heir of the old sages of former times, Socrates held that the supreme ideal of man, and hence of education, was not the spirit of efficiency and power but the disinterested search for the absolute, for virtue—in short, for knowledge and understanding.
It was only at the beginning of the 4th century BCE, however, that the principal types of Classical Greek higher education became organized on definitive lines. This was the result of the joint and rival efforts of two great educators: the philosopher Plato (c. 428–348/347), who opened his school—the Academy—probably in 387, and the orator Isocrates (436–338), who founded his school about 390.
Plato was descended from a long line of aristocrats and became the most distinguished of Socrates’ students. The indictment and execution of Socrates by what Plato considered an ignorant society turned him away from Athens and public life. After an absence of some 10 years, spent traveling the Mediterranean, he returned to Athens, where he founded a school near the grove dedicated to the early hero Acadēmos and hence known as the Academy. The select band of scholars who gathered there engaged in philosophical disputations in preparation for their role as leaders. Good government, Plato believed, would only come from an educated society in which kings are philosophers and philosophers are kings.
Plato’s literary dialogues provide a comprehensive picture of his approach to education. Basically, it was built around the study of dialectic (the skill of accurate verbal reasoning), the proper pursuit of which, he believed, enables misconceptions and confusions to be stripped away and the nature of underlying truth to be established. The ultimate educational quest, as revealed in the dialogues, is the search for the Good—that is, the ultimate idea that binds together all earthly existence.
Plato’s educational program is set out in his most famous dialogue, the Republic. The world, he argued, has two aspects: the visible, or that which is perceived with the senses; and the nonvisible, or the intelligible, which consists of universal, eternal forms or ideas that are apprehensible only by the mind. Furthermore, the visible realm itself is subdivided into two: the realm of appearances and that of beliefs. Human experiences of so-called reality, according to Plato, are only of visible “appearances” and from these can be derived only opinions and beliefs. Most people, he argued, remain locked in this visible world of opinion; only a select few can cross into the realm of the intelligible. Through a rigorous 15-year program of higher education devoted to the study of dialectics and mathematical reasoning, this elite (“persons of gold” was Plato’s term) can attain an understanding of genuine reality, which is composed of such forms as the Good, the True, the Beautiful, and the Just. Plato maintained that only those individuals who survive this program are really fit for the highest offices of the state and capable of being entrusted with the noblest of all tasks, those of maintaining and dispensing justice.
The rival school of Isocrates was much more down-to-earth and practical. It too aimed at a form of wisdom but of a much more practical order, based on working out commonsense solutions to life’s problems. In contrast to Plato, Isocrates sought to develop the quality of grace, cleverness, or finesse rather than the spirit of geometry. The program of study that he enjoined upon his pupils was more literary than scientific. In addition to gymnastics and music, its basics included the study of the Homeric classics and an extensive study of rhetoric—consisting of five or six years of theory, analysis of the great classics, imitation of the classics, and finally practical exercises.
These two parallel forms of culture and of higher education were not totally in conflict: both opposed the cynical pragmatism of the Sophists; each influenced the other. Isocrates did promote elementary mathematics as a kind of mental training or mental gymnastics and did allow for a smattering of philosophy to illumine broad questions of human life. Plato, for his part, recognized the usefulness of the literary art and philosophical rhetoric. The two traditions appear as two species of one genus; their debate, continued in each generation, enriched Classical culture without jeopardizing its unity.
Before leaving the Hellenic period, there is one other great figure to appraise—one who was a bridge to the next age, since he was the tutor of the young prince who became Alexander the Great of Macedonia. Aristotle (384–322 BCE), who was one of Plato’s pupils and shared some of his opinions about education, believed that education should be controlled by the state and that it should have as a main objective the training of citizens. The last book of his Politics opens with these words:
No one will doubt that the legislator should direct his attention above all to the education of youth.…The citizen should be moulded to suit the form of government under which he lives.
He shared some of Plato’s misgivings about democracy, but, because he was no recluse but a man of the world acquainted with public affairs, he declared his preference for limited democracy—“polity”—over other forms of government. His worldliness also led him to be less concerned with the search for ideas, in the Platonic mode, and more concerned with the observation of specific things. His urge for logical structure and classification, for systematization, was especially strong.
This systematization extended to a youth’s education. In his first phase, from birth to age seven, he was to be physically developed, learning how to endure hardship. From age seven to puberty his curriculum would include the fundamentals of gymnastics, music, reading, writing, and enumeration. During the next phase, from puberty to age 17, the student would be more concerned with exact knowledge, not only carrying on with music and mathematics but also exploring grammar, literature, and geography. Finally, in young manhood, only a few superior students would continue into higher education, developing encyclopaedic and intensely intellectual interests in the biological and physical sciences, ethics, and rhetoric, as well as philosophy. Aristotle’s school, the Lyceum, was thus much more empirical than Plato’s Academy.
The Hellenistic Age
Alexander the Great’s conquest of the Persian empire between 334 and 323 BCE abruptly extended the area of Greek civilization by carrying its eastern frontier from the shores of the Aegean to the banks of the Syr Darya and Indus rivers in Central and South Asia. Its unity rested henceforward not so much on nationality (it incorporated and assimilated Persians, Semites, and Egyptians) or on the political unity soon broken after the death of Alexander in 323 but on a common Greek way of life—the fact of sharing the same conception of man. This ideal was no longer social, communal in character, as had been that of the city-state; it now concerned man as an individual—or, better, as a person. This civilization of the Hellenistic Age has been defined as a civilization of paideia—which eventually denoted the condition of a person achieving enlightened, mature self-fulfillment but which originally signified education per se. The Greeks succeeded in preserving their distinctive national way of life amid this immense empire because, wherever numbers of them settled, they brought with them their own system of education for their youth, and they not only resisted being absorbed by the “barbarian” non-Hellenic peoples but also succeeded somewhat in spreading Greek culture to many of the alien elite. It is important to note that, although Hellenism was finally to be swept away in the Middle East by the Persian national renaissance and the invasions originating from Central Asia beginning in the 2nd century BCE, it continued to flourish and even expand in the Mediterranean world under Roman domination. Hellenistic civilization and its educational pattern were prolonged to the end of antiquity and even beyond; it was to be a slow metamorphosis and not a brutal revolution that would later give birth to the civilization and education strictly called Byzantine.
The institutions
Hellenistic education comprised an ensemble of studies occupying the young from age 7 to age 19 or 20. To be sure, this entire program was completed only by a minority, recruited from the rich aristocratic and urban bourgeois classes. The students were mostly boys (girls occupied only a very modest place), and of course they were usually free citizens (masters, though some slaves were given a professional education occasionally reaching a high level).
As in the preceding era, education continued to be dependent upon the city, which remained the primary frame of Greek life. To facilitate control of his empire, Alexander had commenced the process of founding a network of cities or communities organized and administered in the Greek manner. In effect, the creation of vast kingdoms did not eliminate the role of the city, even if the latter was not altogether independent; the Hellenistic state was not at all totalitarian and sought to reduce its administrative machinery to a minimum. It relied upon the cities to assume responsibility for public services, that of education in particular. The city, in turn, looked to the contributions of the richest and most generous private individuals, either by requiring them to fill magistracies and supply costly services or by appealing to their voluntary generosity; the proper functioning of the Hellenistic city presupposed the willing contributions of “benefactors.” Thus, certain educational institutions were supported—and in fact sometimes set up—by private foundations that specified exactly the use to be made of the income from their gift of capital. Many schools were private, the role of the city being limited to inspections and to the organization of athletic and musical competitions and festivals.
Physical education
The Hellenistic school par excellence was still the school of gymnastics, the practice of athletic sports and the nudity that they required being the most characteristic feature contrasting the Greek way of life with that of the barbarians. There were, at least in sufficiently large cities, several gymnasiums, separately for the different age classes and on occasion for the sexes. They were essentially palaestrae, or open-air, square-shaped sports grounds surrounded by colonnades in which were set up the necessary services: cloakrooms, washstands, training rooms, massage rooms, and classrooms. Outside there was a track for footraces, the stadion.
The foundation of the training always consisted of the sports properly called gymnastic and field. Horsemanship remained an aristocratic privilege. Nautical sports had a very modest role—a curious thing for a nation of sailors, but the fact is the Greeks were by origin Indo-Europeans from the interior of the Eurasian continent. The other sports—ball games and hockey—were considered merely diversions or at best preparatory exercises. As the competition of professional sports grew, however, education based on sports progressively—though no doubt very slowly—lost its preeminent position. The popularity of athletic sports as spectacle endured, but educational sports moved into the background, disappearing altogether in the Christian period (in the 4th century CE) in favour of literary studies.
There was a similar progressive decline, a similar final effacement, of artistic—particularly musical—education, the other survivor from the Archaic period. The art of music continued to flourish, but like sports it became the concern of professional practitioners and a feature of public spectacles rather than an art generally practiced in cultivated circles.
The primary school
The child from 7 to 14 years of age went to the school of letters, conducted thither, as in the Classical period, by the paidagōgos, whose role was not limited to accompanying the child: he had also to educate him in good manners and morals and finally to act as a lesson coach. Literacy and numeration were taught in the private school conducted by the grammatistes. Class sizes varied considerably, from a few pupils to perhaps dozens. The teaching of reading involved an analytical method that made the process very slow. First the alphabet was taught from alpha to omega and then backward, then from both ends at once: alpha–omega, beta–psi, and so on to mu–nu. (A comparable progression in the Latin alphabet would be A–Z, B–Y, and so on to M–N.) Then were taught simple syllables—ba, be, bi, bo—followed by more complex ones and then by words, successively of one, two, and three syllables. The vocabulary list included rare words (e.g., some of medical origin) chosen for their difficulty of reading and pronunciation. It took several years for the child to be able to read connected texts, which were anthologies of famous passages. With reading was associated recitation and, of course, practice in writing, which followed the same gradual plan.
The program in mathematics was very limited; rather than computation, the subject, strictly speaking, was numeration: learning the whole numbers and fractions, their names, their written notations, their representation in finger counting (in assorted bent positions of the fingers and assorted placements of either hand relative to the body). The general use of tokens and of the abacus made the teaching of methods of computation less necessary than it became in the modern world.
Secondary education
Between the primary school and the various types of higher education, the Hellenistic educational system introduced a program of intermediate, preparatory studies—a preliminary education, a kind of common trunk preparing for the different branches of higher culture, enkyklios paideia (“general, or common, education”). This general education, far from having “encyclopaedic” ambitions in the modern sense of the word, represented a reaction against the inordinate ambitions of philosophy and, more generally, of the Aristotelian ideals of culture, which had demanded the large accumulation of intellectual attainments. The program of the enkyklios paideia was limited to the common points on which, as noted earlier, the rival pedagogies of Plato and of Isocrates agreed—namely, the study of literature and mathematics. Specialized teachers taught each of these subjects. The mathematics program had not changed since the ancient Pythagoreans and comprised four disciplines—arithmetic, geometry, astronomy, and harmonics (not the art of music but the theory of the numerical laws regulating intervals and rhythm). The primary function of the grammatikos, or professor of letters, was to present and explicate the great classic authors: Homer first of all, of whom every cultivated man was expected to have a deep knowledge, and Euripides and Menander—the other poets being scarcely known except through anthologies. Although poetry remained the basis of literary culture, room was made for prose—for the great historians, for the orators (Demosthenes in particular), even for the philosophers. Along with these explications of texts, the students were introduced to exercises in literary composition of a very elementary character (for example, summarizing a story in a few lines).
The program of this intermediate education did not attain its definitive formulation until the second half of the 1st century BCE, after the appearance of the first manual devoted to the theoretical elements of language, a slim grammatical treatise by Dionysius Thrax. The program then consisted of the seven liberal arts: the three literary arts of grammar, rhetoric, and dialectic and the four mathematical disciplines noted above. (These were, respectively, the trivium and the quadrivium of medieval education, though the latter term did not appear until the 6th century and the former not until the 9th century.) The long career of this program should not conceal the fact that, in the course of centuries, it fell into disuse and became rather largely a theory or abstraction; in reality, literary studies gradually took over at the expense of the sciences. Of the four mathematical disciplines, only one remained in favour—astronomy. And this was not merely because of its connections with astrology but primarily because of the popularity of the basic textbook used to teach it—the Phaenomena, a poem in 1,154 hexameters by Aratus of Soli—whose predominantly literary quality was suited to textual explications. Not until about the 3rd and 4th centuries CE was the need of a sound preparatory mathematical education again recognized and put into practice.
Higher education
Higher education appeared in several forms, complementary or competitive. First was the ephebeia (“youth” culture), a kind of civic and military training that completed the education of the young Greek and prepared him to enter into life; it lasted two years (from 18 to 20) and corresponded quite closely to the obligatory military service of modern states. It was a survival from the regime of the old Greek city-states, but in the Hellenistic Age the absence of national independence erased all reason for this military training; between the 3rd and 2nd centuries BCE the Athenian ephebeia (eventually reduced to a single year) was transformed into a leisured civilian college where a minority of rich young men came to be initiated into the refinements of the elegant life. Military training came to play only a modest role and gave way to athletic competition. To this were added lectures on scientific and literary subjects, assuring the ephebe a polish of general culture. The same evolution took place in other cities: the ephebeia became everywhere more aristocratic than civic, more sporting than military. What the Greeks, especially those who had emigrated to the barbarian lands, demanded of it was above all that it initiate their sons into Greek life and its characteristic customs, beginning with athletic sports. Especially in Egypt, it was intended to legitimize the privileged status of the Hellene relative to the “native” Egyptian. In any event, the ephebeia no longer was the setting for the highest forms of education.
Formal education in science also lacked any institutionalization. There were, however, some establishments having scientific staffs of high competence, of which the most important was the Mouseion (Museum) established at Alexandria, richly endowed by the Ptolemies; but, at least initially, it was an institute for advanced research. If the scholars endowed there were also teachers, this meant only that they dispensed instruction to a small circle of chosen disciples. The same informal character of personal training was to be seen in all the special disciplines—medicine, for example, which saw such a fine development between the time of Hippocrates (5th century BCE) and that of Galen (2nd century CE). If there were in the Hellenistic era certain “schools” of medicine—old (Cnidus, Cos) and new (Pergamum, Alexandria)—these were less the equivalent of today’s medical faculties than simply centres to which the presence of numerous qualified masters attracted a large number of aspirants. Whatever theory these “students” were able to learn, they learned largely through self-training and practice—by associating themselves with a practicing physician whom they accompanied to the bedsides of patients, taking part in his consultations, profiting by his experience and advice.
Philosophy and rhetoric were subjects of education most highly institutionalized. Although philosophy was taught privately by individual masters-lecturers—who could be either itinerants or residents of one place—these teachers were well organized and, in groups, possessed a kind of institutional character. On the model of Plato’s Academy, the new Athenian schools of philosophy—Aristotle’s Lyceum, Epicurus’ Garden, the Porch (stoa), which gave its name to the Stoics—were brotherhoods in which the posts in both teaching and administration were passed from generation to generation as a kind of heritage. It was in philosophy that the personalistic character of the Hellenistic era most clearly asserted itself in contrast to the more communal idea of the preceding period; when philosophy turned to the problem of politics, for instance, it dealt less with the citizens of a republic and more with the sovereign king, his duties and character. The central problem was henceforth that of wisdom—of the purpose that man should set for himself in order to attain happiness, the supreme ideal. The teaching of philosophy was not entirely contemplative: it involved the disciple in an experience analogous to a religious conversion, a decision implying a revision of his life and the adoption of a generally ascetic way of life. Such a vocation, however, could obviously appeal only to a moral, intellectual, and financially secure elite; philosophers were always quite a small number within the Hellenistic (and Roman) intelligentsia.
The reigning discipline was always rhetoric. The prestige of the oratorical art outlived those social conditions that had inspired it; political eloquence operated only in the context of an embassy coming to plead the cause of a particular city or pressure group at the court of the sovereign. Legal eloquence maintained its function, and the profession of advocate retained its attractiveness, but it was above all the eloquence of showy set speeches—the art of the lecturer—that experienced a curious blossoming. Also, as a result of the customary habit of reading aloud, there was no sharp line between speech and the book; thus, eloquence imposed its rule upon all literary genres—poetry, history, philosophy. Even the astronomer and the physician became lecturers.
Hence, great importance was attached to the teaching of rhetoric, which developed from century to century with an ever more rigorous technicalism, precision, and systematization. The study of rhetoric had five parts: (1) invention (the art of finding ideas, according to standard schemes), (2) disposition (the arrangement of words and sentences), (3) elocution, (4) mnemonics (memory training), (5) and action. Action was the art of self-presentation, the regulation of voice and delivery and above all the art of reinforcing the word with the expressive power of gesture. Each of these parts, equally systematized to the tiniest detail, was taught with a technical vocabulary of extreme precision. Such an education—which in addition to theory comprised a study of the great examples to be imitated and exercises in practical application—required many years of study; in fact, even in maturity, the cultivated Hellene continued to deepen his knowledge of the art, to drill himself, to “declaim.”
A rivalry existed between philosophy and rhetoric, each trying to draw into its orbit the best and the most students. Even in the time of Plato and Isocrates, this rivalry did not proceed without mutual concessions and reciprocal influences, but it remained one of the most constant characteristics of the Classical tradition and continued until the end of antiquity and beyond. The long summer of Hellenic civilization was extended under the Roman domination; the great centres of learning also experienced a long prosperity. Athens in particular was the unchallenged capital of philosophy; its ephebeia welcomed foreigners to come to crown their culture in the “school of Greece.” Its masters of eloquence also had a solid reputation, even though they had competition from such schools of Asia Minor as those of Rhodes (in the 1st century CE) and Smyrna (in the 2nd century BCE). Under the later Roman Empire, Alexandria—already famous for medicine—competed with Athens for preeminence in philosophy. Other great centres developed: Beirut, Antioch, and the new capital Constantinople. The quality of the teachers and the number of students attending permits one to apply to these centres, without too much anachronism, the modern designation of “universities,” or institutions of advanced learning.
Ancient Romans
Early Roman education
The quality of Latin education before the 6th century BCE can only be conjectured. Rome and Roman civilization were then dominated by a rural aristocracy of landed proprietors directly engaged in exploiting their lands, even after the establishment of the republic. Their spirit was far removed from Greece and Homeric chivalry; ancient Roman education was instead an education suitable for a rural, traditional people—instilling in youth an unquestioned respect for the customs of the ancestors: the mos maiorum.
Education had a practical aspect, involving instruction in such farm management concerns as how to oversee the work of slaves and how to advise tenant farmers or one’s steward. It had a legal aspect; in contrast to Athenian law, which relied more on common law than on codified law, Roman justice was much more formalistic and technical and demanded much more study on the part of the citizen. Education also had a moral aspect, aiming at inculcating rural virtues, a respect for good management of one’s patrimony, and a sense of austerity and frugality. Roman education, however, did not remain narrowly utilitarian; it broadened in urban Rome, where there developed the same ideal of communal devotion to the public weal that had existed in Greece—with the difference that in Rome such devotion would never be called into question. The interests of the state constituted the supreme law. The ideal set before youth was not that of the chivalrous hero in the Homeric manner but that of the great men of history who, in difficult situations, had by their courage and their wisdom saved the fatherland when it was in danger. A nation of small farmers, Rome was also a nation of soldiers. Physical education was oriented not toward self-realization or competitive sport but toward military preparedness: training in arms, toughening of the body, swimming across cold and rapid streams, and horsemanship, involving such performances as mounted acrobatics and cavalry parades under arms.
Differing from the Greeks, the Romans considered the family the natural milieu in which the child should grow up and be educated. The role of the mother as educator extended beyond the early years and often had lifelong influence. If, in contrast to the girl, the boy at 7 years of age was allowed to move away from the exclusive direction of his mother, he came under the control of his father; the Roman father closely supervised the development and the studies of his son, giving him instruction in an atmosphere of severity and moral exigency, through precept but even more through example. The young Roman noble accompanied his father as a kind of young page in all his appearances, even within the Senate.
Familial education ended at age 16, when the adolescent male was allowed to wear adult dress—the pure white woolen toga virilis. He devoted one year to an apprenticeship in public life, no longer at his father’s side but placed in the care of some old friend of the family, a man of politics laden with years and honours. Then came military service—first as a simple soldier (it was well for the future leader to learn first to obey), encountering his first opportunity to distinguish himself by courage in battle, but soon thereafter as a staff officer under some distinguished commander. Civil and military, the education of the young Roman was thus completed in the entourage of some high personage whom he regarded with respect and veneration, without ceasing, however, to gravitate toward the family orbit. The young Roman was brought up not only to respect the national tradition embodied in the example of the illustrious men of the past but also very specifically to respect the particular traditions of his own family, which also had its great men and which jealously transmitted a stereotype, a specific attitude toward life. If ancient Greek education can be defined as the imitation of the Homeric hero, that of ancient Rome took the form of imitation of one’s ancestors.
Roman adoption of Hellenistic education
Something of these original characteristics was to survive always in Roman society, so ready to be conservative; but Latin civilization did not long develop autonomously.
It assimilated, with a remarkable faculty for adaptation, the structures and techniques of the much further evolved Hellenistic civilization. The Romans themselves were quite aware of this, as evidenced by the famous lines of Horace: “Captive Greece captivated her rude conqueror and introduced the arts to rustic Latium” (“Graecia capta ferum victorem cepit et artis intulit agresti Latio” [Epistles, II, i, 156]).
Greek influence was felt very early in Roman education and grew ever stronger after the long series of gains leading to the annexation of Macedonia (168 BCE), of Greece proper (146 BCE), of the kingdom of Pergamum (133 BCE), and finally of the whole of the Hellenized Orient. The Romans quickly appreciated the advantages they could draw from this more mature civilization, richer than their own national culture. The practical Romans grasped the advantages to be drawn from a knowledge of Greek—an international language known to many of their adversaries, soon to be their Oriental subjects—and grasped the related importance of mastering the art of oratory so highly developed by the Greeks. Second-century Rome assigned to the spoken word, particularly in political and legal life, as great an importance as had Athens in the 5th century. The Roman aristocrats quickly understood what a weapon rhetoric could be for a statesman.
Rome doubly adopted Hellenistic education. On the one hand, it came to pass that a Roman was considered truly cultivated only if he had the same education, in Greek, as a native Greek acquired; on the other hand, there progressively developed a parallel system of instruction that transposed into Latin the institutions, programs, and methods of Hellenistic education. Naturally, only the children of the ruling class had the privilege of receiving the complete and bilingual education. From the earliest years, the child, boy or girl, was entrusted to a Greek servant or slave and thus learned to speak Greek fluently even before being able to speak Latin competently; the child also learned to read and write in both languages, with Greek again coming first. (Alongside this private tutoring there soon developed, from the 3rd century BCE, a Greek public education in schools aimed at a socially broader clientele, but the results of this schooling were less satisfactory than the direct method enjoyed by the children of the aristocracy.) In following the normal course of studies, the young Roman was taught next by an instructor of Greek letters (grammatikos) and then by a Greek rhetorician. Those desiring more complete training did not content themselves with the numerous and often highly qualified Greeks to be found in Rome but went to Greece to participate in the higher studies of the Greeks themselves. From 119 or 118 BCE onward the Romans secured admission to the Ephebic College at Athens, and in the 1st century BCE such young Latins as Cicero were attending the schools of the best philosophers and rhetoricians at Athens and Rhodes.
Roman modifications
The adoption of Hellenistic education did not proceed, however, without a certain adaptation to the Latin temperament: the Romans showed a marked reserve toward Greek athleticism, which shocked both their morals and their sense of the deep seriousness of life. Although gymnastic exercises entered into their daily life, it was under the category of health and not that of sport; in Roman architecture, the palaestra or gymnasium was only an appendage of the public baths, which were exaggerations of their Greek models. There was the same reserve, on grounds of moral seriousness, toward music and dance—arts suitable for professional performers but not for freeborn young men and least of all for young aristocrats. The musical arts indeed became integrated into Latin culture as elements of the life of luxury and refinement but as spectacle rather than as amateur participation—hence their disappearance from programs of education. It must be remembered, however, that athletics and music were in Greece itself survivals of archaic education and had already entered upon a process of decline.
This education in a foreign language was paralleled by a course of studies exactly patterned upon those of the Greek schools but transposed into the Latin language. The aristocracy was to remain always attached to the idea of private education conducted within the family, but social pressure brought about the gradual development of public education in schools, as in Greece, at three levels—elementary, secondary, and higher; they appeared at different dates and in various historical contexts.
Education of youth
The appearance of the first primary schools is difficult to date; but the use of writing from the 7th century BCE implies the early existence of some kind of appropriate primary instruction. The Romans took their alphabet from the Etruscans, who had taken theirs from the Greeks, who had taken theirs from the Phoenicians. The early Romans quite naturally copied the pedagogy of the Hellenistic world: the same ignorance of psychology, the same strict and brutal discipline, the same analytical method characterized by slow progress—the alphabet (forward, backward, from both ends toward the middle), the syllabary, isolated words, then short sentences (one-line moral maxims), finally continuous texts—the same method for writing, and the same numeration, rather than computation.
It was only between the 3rd and the end of the 1st century BCE that Latin secondary education developed, staffed by the grammaticus Latinus, corresponding to the Greek grammatikos. Since the principal object of this education was the explication of poetry, its rise was hindered by the slowness with which Latin literature developed. The first-known of these teachers, Livius Andronicus, took as his subject matter his own Latin translation of the Odyssey; two generations later, Ennius explicated his own poetic works. Only with the great poets of the age of Augustus could Latin literature provide classics able to rival Homer in educational value; they were adopted as basic texts almost immediately after their appearance. Thereafter, and until the end of antiquity, the program was not to undergo further change, the principal authors being first of all Virgil, the comic author Terence, the historian Sallust, and the unchallenged master of prose, Cicero. The methods of the Latin grammarian were copied directly from those of his Greek counterpart; the essential point was the explication of the classic authors, completed by a theoretical study of good language using a grammar textbook and by practical exercises in composition, graduated according to a minutely regulated progression and always remaining rather elementary. Theoretically, the curriculum remained that of the seven liberal arts, but, as in Greece, it practically neglected the study of the sciences in favour of that of letters.
It was only in the 1st century BCE that the teaching of rhetoric in Latin was established: the first recorded Latin rhetorician, Plotius Gallus, appeared in 93 BCE in a political context—namely, as a democratic initiative to counter the aristocratic education given in Greek—and as such was soon prohibited by the conservative party in power. It was not until the end of the century and the appearance of the works of Cicero that this education would be revived and become normal practice. First, Cicero’s discourses offered the young Latin the equivalent of those of the Greek Demosthenes, and, second, Cicero’s theoretical treatises provided a technical vocabulary obviating the need for Greek manuals. But this instruction was to remain always very close to its Hellenistic origins: the terminology used by Rome’s greatest educator, Quintilian (c. 35–c. 100 CE), was much more impregnated with Hellenism, much less Latinized, than that which Cicero had proposed. At Rome, too, rhetoric became the form of higher education enjoying the greatest prestige; as in Greece, this popularity outlived the elimination of political eloquence. More than in Greece, legal eloquence continued to flourish (Quintilian had in mind particularly the training of future advocates), but—as in the Hellenic milieu—Latin culture became predominantly aesthetic: from the beginning of the empire, the public lecture was the most fashionable literary genre, and the teaching of rhetoric was very naturally oriented toward the art of the lecturer as the crowning achievement.
Higher education
Because the oratorical art was incontestably the most popular subject of higher education, the Romans did not feel the same urgency to Latinize the other rival branches of knowledge, which interested only a small number of specialists with unusual vocations. To be sure, the philosophical work of Cicero had the same ambition as his oratorical work and proved by its existence that it was possible to philosophize in Latin, but philosophy found no successors to Cicero as rhetoric did. There was never a Latin school for philosophy. Of course, Rome did not lack philosophers, but many used Greek as their means of expression (even the emperor Marcus Aurelius); those who, like Cicero, wrote in Latin—Seneca, for example—had taken their philosophy studies in Greek. It was the same in the sciences, particularly in the medical sciences; for long, there were no medical books in Latin except encyclopaedias on a popular level.
On the other hand, Rome created in the school of law another type of higher education—the only one that had no equivalent in Hellenistic education. The position of law in Roman life and civilization is, of course, well known. Perhaps even more than rhetoric, it offered young Romans profitable careers; very naturally, there developed an appropriate education to prepare them. At first elementary in character and entirely practical, it was given within the framework of apprenticeship: the professor of law (magister juris) was primarily a practitioner, who initiated into his art the group of young disciples entrusted to him; these listened to his consultations and heard him plead or judge. Beginning in Cicero’s time and undoubtedly under his influence, this instruction was paralleled by a systematic theoretical exposition. Roman law was thus promoted to the rank of a scientific discipline. True schools were progressively established and took on an official character; their existence is well attested beginning with the 2nd century CE. It was at this same time that legal education acquired its definitive tools, with the composition of systematic elementary treatises such as the Institutiones of Gaius, manuals of procedure, commentaries on the law, and systematic collections of jurisprudence. This creative period perhaps reached its peak at the beginning of the 3rd century CE. The works of the great legal authors of this time, which became classics, were offered by the law professor with much interpretation and explication—very similar to the way in which grammarians offered literature.
Rome, the capital, remained the great centre of this advanced study in law. At the beginning of the 3rd century, however, there appeared in the Roman Orient the school of Beirut. The teaching there was in Latin; and, to hear it and profit by the advantages that it offered for a high administrative or judicial career, many young Greeks enrolled at the school, in spite of the language obstacle. Only a legal career could persuade the Greeks to learn Latin, a language that they had always regarded as “barbarous.”
The Roman world became covered with a network of schools concurrent with the Romanization of the provinces. The primary school always remained private; on the other hand, many schools of grammar or rhetoric acquired the character of public institutions supported (as in the Hellenic world) either by private foundations or by a municipal budget. In effect, it was always the city that was responsible for education. The liberal central government of the high empire, anxious to reduce its administrative apparatus to a minimum, made no pretense of assuming charge of it. It was content to encourage education and to favour teaching careers by fiscal exemptions, and only very exceptionally did an emperor create certain chairs of higher education and assign them a regular stipend. Vespasian (69–79 CE) created two chairs at Rome, one of Greek rhetoric and the other of Latin rhetoric. Marcus Aurelius (161–180 CE) similarly endowed, in Athens, a chair of rhetoric and four chairs of philosophy, one for each of the four great sects—Platonism, Aristotelianism, Epicureanism, and Stoicism.
Education in the later Roman Empire
The dominant fact is the extraordinary continuity of the methods of Roman education throughout such a long succession of centuries. Whatever the profound transformations in the Roman world politically, economically, and socially, the same educational institutions, the same pedagogical methods, the same curricula were perpetuated without great change for 1,000 years in Greek and six or seven centuries in Roman territory. At most, a few nuances of change need be noted. There was a measure of increasing intervention by the central government, but this was primarily to remind the municipalities of their educational duties, to fix the remuneration of teachers, and to supervise their selection. Only higher education received direct attention: in 425 CE, Theodosius II created an institute of higher education in the new capital of Constantinople and endowed it with 31 chairs for the teaching of letters, rhetoric (both Greek and Latin), philosophy, and law. Another innovation was that the exuberant growth of the bureaucratic apparatus under the later empire favoured the rise of one branch of technical education, that of stenography.
The only evolution of any notable extent involves the use of Greek and Latin. There had never been more than a few Greeks who learned Latin, even though the growing machinery of administration and the increasing clientele drawn to the law schools of Beirut and Constantinople tended to increase the numerical size of this tiny minority. On the other hand, in Latin territory, late antiquity exhibited a general recession in the use of Greek. Although the ideal remained unchanged and high culture always proposed to be bilingual, most people generally knew Greek less and less well. This retrogression need not be interpreted solely as a phenomenon of decadence: it had also a positive aspect, being an effect of the development of Latin culture itself. The richness and worth of the Latin classics explain why the youth of the West had less time than formerly to devote to the study of the Greek authors. Virgil and Cicero had replaced Homer and Demosthenes, just as in modern Europe the ancient languages have retreated before the progress of the national languages and literatures. Hence, in the later empire there appeared specialists in intercultural relations and translations from Greek into Latin. In the 4th and particularly in the 5th century, medical education in Latin became possible, thanks to the appearance of a whole medical (and veterinary) literature consisting essentially of translations of Greek manuals. It was the same with philosophy: resuming Cicero’s enterprise at a distance of more than five centuries, Boethius (c. 480–524) in his turn sought with his manuals and his translations to make the study of that discipline available in Latin. Although the misfortunes of Italy in the 6th century—including the Lombardian invasion—did not permit this hope to be realized, the work of Boethius later nourished the medieval renaissance of philosophic thought.
Nothing better demonstrates the prestige and the allure of Classical culture than the attitude taken toward it by the Christians. This new religion could have organized an original system of education analogous to that of the rabbinical school—that is, one in which children learned through study of the Holy Scriptures—but it did not do so. Usually, Christians were content to have both their special religious education provided by the church and the family and their Classical instruction received in the schools and shared with the pagans. Thus, they maintained the tradition of the empire after it had become Christian. Certainly, in their view, the education dispensed by these schools must have presented many dangers, inasmuch as Classical culture was bound up with its pagan past (at the beginning of the 3rd century the profession of schoolteacher was among those that disqualified one from baptism); but the utility of Classical culture was so evident that they considered it necessary to send their children to these same schools in which they barred themselves from teaching. From Tertullian to St. Basil the Great of Caesarea, Christian scholars were ever mindful of the dangers presented by the study of the classics, the idolatry and immorality that they promoted; nevertheless, they sought to show how the Christian could make good use of them.
With the passage of time and the general conversion of Roman society and particularly of its ruling class, Christianity, overcoming its reserve, completely assimilated and took over Classical education. In the 4th century Christians were occupying teaching positions at all levels—from schoolmasters and grammarians to the highest chairs of eloquence. In his treatise De doctrina Christiana (426), St. Augustine formulated the theory of this new Christian culture: being a religion of the Book, Christianity required a certain level of literacy and literary understanding; the explication of the Bible required the methods of the grammarian; preaching a new field of action required rhetoric; theology required the equipment of philosophy. The synthesis of Christianity and Classical education had become so intimate that, when the “barbarian” invasions swept away the traditional school along with many other imperial and Roman institutions, the church, needing a literary culture for the education of its clergy, kept alive the cultural tradition that Rome had received from the Hellenistic world.
Henri-Irénée MarrouJames BowenEducation in Persian, Byzantine, early Russian, and Islamic civilizations
Ancient Persia
The ancient Persian empire began when Cyrus II the Great initiated his conquests in 559 BCE. Three elements dominated this ancient Persian civilization: (1) a rigorous and challenging physical environment, (2) the activist and positive Zoroastrian religion and ethics, and (3) a militant, expansionist people. These elements developed in the Persians an adventurous personality mingled with intense national feelings.
In the early period (559–330 BCE), known as the Achaemenian period for the ancestor of Cyrus and his successors, education was sustained by Zoroastrian ethics and the requirements of a military society and aimed at serving the needs of four social classes: priests, warriors, tillers of the soil, and merchants. Three principles sustained Zoroastrian ethics: the development of good thoughts, of good words, and of good actions. Achaemenian Zoroastrian education stressed strong family ties and community feelings, acceptance of imperial authority, religious indoctrination, and military discipline.
Education was a private enterprise. Formative education was carried on in the home and continued after the age of seven in court schools for children of the upper classes. Secondary and higher education included training in law to prepare for government service, as well as medicine, arithmetic, geography, music, and astronomy. There were also special military schools.
In 330 BCE Persia was conquered by Alexander the Great, and native Persian or Zoroastrian education was largely eclipsed by Hellenistic education. Greek practices continued during the Parthian empire (247 BCE–224 CE), founded by seminomadic conquerors from the Caspian steppes. Thus, truly Persian influences were not restored until the appearance of a new, more sophisticated and reform-minded dynasty, the Sāsānians, in the 3rd century CE. In what has been called the neo-Persian empire of the Sāsānians (224–651 CE), the Achaemenian social structure and education were revived and further developed and modified. Zoroastrian ethics, though more advanced than during the Achaemenian period, emphasized similar moral principles but with new stress upon the necessity for labour (particularly agriculture), upon the sanctity of marriage and family devotion, and upon the cultivation of respect for law and of intellectualism—all giving to education a strong moral, social, and national foundation. The subject matter of basic education included physical and military exercises, reading (Pahlavi alphabet), writing (on wooden tablets), arithmetic, and the fine arts.
The greatest achievement of Sāsānian education was in higher education, particularly as it developed in the Academy of Gondēshāpūr. There Zoroastrian culture, Indian and Greek sciences, Alexandrian-Syrian thought, medical training, theology, philosophy, and other disciplines developed to a high degree, making Gondēshāpūr the most advanced academic centre of learning in the later period of Sāsānian civilization. Students from various parts of the world came to the academy, which advanced, among other subjects, Zoroastrian, Greek, and Indian philosophies; Persian, Hellenic, and Indian astronomy; Zoroastrian ethics, theology, and religion; law, government, and finance; and various branches of medicine. It was partly through the Academy of Gondēshāpūr that important elements of Classical Greek and Roman learning reached the Muslims during the 8th and 9th centuries CE and through them, in Latin translations of Arabic works, the Schoolmen of western Europe during the 12th and 13th centuries.
Mehdi K. NakosteenThe Byzantine Empire
The Byzantine Empire was a continuation of the Roman Empire in the eastern Mediterranean area after the loss of the western provinces to Germanic kingdoms in the 5th century. Although it lost some of its eastern lands to the Muslims in the 7th century, it lasted until Constantinople—the new capital founded by the Roman emperor Constantine the Great in 330—fell to the Ottoman Turks in 1453. The empire was seriously weakened in 1204 when, as a result of the Fourth Crusade, its lands were partitioned and Constantinople captured, but until then it had remained a powerful centralized state, with a common Christian faith, an efficient administration, and a shared Greek culture. This culture, already Christianized in the 4th and 5th centuries, was maintained and transmitted by an educational system that was inherited from the Greco-Roman past and based on the study and imitation of Classical Greek literature.
Stages of education
There were three stages of education. The basic skills of reading and writing were taught by the elementary-school master, or grammatistes, whose pupils generally ranged from 6 or 7 to 10 years of age. The secondary-school master, or grammatikos, supervised the study and appreciation of Classical literature and of literary Greek—from which the spoken Greek of everyday life differed more and more in the course of time—and Latin (until the 6th century). His pupils ranged in age from 10 to 15 or 16. Next, the rhetorician, or rhētor, taught pupils how to express themselves with clarity, elegance, and persuasiveness, in imitation of Classical models. Speaking style was deemed more important than content or original thinking. An optional fourth stage was provided by the teacher of philosophy, who introduced pupils to some of the topics of ancient philosophy, often by reading and discussing works of Plato or Aristotle. Rhetoric and philosophy formed the main content of higher education.
Elementary education was widely available throughout most of the empire’s existence, not only in towns but occasionally in the countryside as well. Literacy was therefore much more widespread than in western Europe, at least until the 12th century. Secondary education was confined to the larger cities. Pupils desiring higher education almost always had to go to Constantinople, which became the cultural centre of the empire after the loss to the Muslim Arabs of Syria, Palestine, and Egypt in the 7th century. Monasteries sometimes had schools in which young novices were educated, but they did not teach lay pupils. Girls did not normally attend schools, but the daughters of the upper classes were often educated by private tutors. Many women were literate, and some—such as the hymnographer Kasia (9th century) and the historian-princess Anna Comnena (1083–c. 1153)—were recognized as writers of distinction.
Elementary education
Elementary-school pupils were taught to read and write individual letters first, then syllables, and finally short texts, often passages from the Psalms. They probably also learned simple arithmetic at this stage. Teachers had a humble social status and depended on the fees paid by parents for their livelihood. They usually held classes in their own homes or on church porches but were sometimes employed as private tutors by wealthy households. They had no assistants and used no textbooks. Teaching methods emphasized memorization and copying exercises, reinforced by rewards and punishments.
Secondary education
The secondary-school teacher taught the grammar and vocabulary of Classical and ecclesiastical Greek literature from the Hellenistic and Roman periods and explained the elements of Classical mythology and history that were necessary for the study of a limited selection of ancient Greek texts, mainly poetry, beginning with Homer. The most commonly used textbook was the brief grammar by Dionysius Thrax; numerous and repetitive later commentaries on the book were also frequently used. From the 9th century on, these books were sometimes supplemented with the Canons of Theognostos, a collection of brief rules of orthography and grammar. The grammatikos might also make use of anonymous texts dating from late antiquity, which offered word-by-word grammatical explanations of Homer’s Iliad, or of similar texts on the Psalms by Georgius Choiroboscos (early 9th century). Pupils would not normally possess copies of these textbooks, since handwritten books were very expensive, but would learn the rules by rote from their teacher’s dictation. Beginning in the 11th century, much use was made in secondary education of schedē (literally, “sketches” or “improvisations”), short prose texts that often ended in a few lines of verse. These were specially written by a teacher to illustrate points of grammar or style. From the early 14th century on, much use was also made of erotemata, systematic collections of questions and answers on grammar that the pupil learned by heart.
Secondary schools often had more than one teacher, and the older pupils were often expected to help teach their juniors. Schools of this kind had little institutional continuity, however. The most lasting schools were those conducted in churches.
Higher education
The rhetorician’s textbooks included systematic handbooks of the art of rhetoric, model texts with detailed commentaries, and specimens of oratory by Classical or post-Classical Greek writers and by Church Fathers, in particular Gregory of Nazianzus. Many Byzantine handbooks of rhetoric survive from all periods. They are often anonymous and always derivative, mostly based directly or indirectly on the treatises of Hermogenes of Tarsus (late 2nd century CE). There is little innovation in the theory of rhetoric they expound. After studying models, pupils went on to compose and deliver speeches on various general topics.
Until the early 6th century there was a flourishing school of Neoplatonic philosophy in Athens, but it was repressed or abolished in 529 because of the active paganism of its professors. A similar but Christian school in Alexandria survived until the Arab conquest of Egypt in 640. For the next five centuries, philosophical teaching seems to have been limited to simple surveys of Aristotle’s logic. In the 11th century, however, there was a renewal of interest in the Greek philosophical tradition, and many commentaries on works of Aristotle were composed, evidently for use in teaching. In the early 15th century the philosopher George Gemistos Plethon revived interest in Plato, who until then had been neglected for Aristotle. All philosophical teaching in the Byzantine world was concerned with the explanation of texts rather than with the analysis of problems.
Because higher education provided learned and articulate personnel for the sophisticated bureaucracies of state and church, it was often supported and controlled officially, although private education always existed as well. There were officially appointed teachers in Constantinople in the 4th century, and in 425 the emperor Theodosius II established professorships of Greek and Latin grammar, rhetoric, and philosophy. However, these probably did not survive the great crisis of the Arab and Slav invasions of the 7th century. In the 9th century, the School of Magnaura—an institution of higher learning—was founded by imperial decree. In the 11th century, Constantine IX established new schools of philosophy and law at the Capitol School in Constantinople. Both survived until the 12th century, when the school under the control of the patriarch of Constantinople—with teachers of grammar, rhetoric, and biblical studies—gained predominance. After the interval of Western rule in Constantinople (1204–61), both emperors and patriarchs gave sporadic support to higher education in the capital. As the power, wealth, and territory of the empire were eroded in the 14th and 15th centuries, the church became the principal and ultimately the only patron of higher education.
Professional education
Teaching of such professional subjects as medicine, law, and architecture was largely a matter of apprenticeship, although at various times there was some imperially supported or institutionalized teaching.
Strangely, there is little sign of systematic teaching of theology, apart from that given by the professors of biblical studies in the 12th-century patriarchal school. Studious reading of works by the Church Fathers was the principal path to theological knowledge in Byzantium, both for clergy and for laymen. Nonetheless, religious orthodoxy—or faith—was Byzantium’s greatest strength. It held the empire together for more than 1,000 years against eastern invaders. Faith was also the Byzantine culture’s chief limitation, choking originality in the sciences and the practical arts. But within this limitation it preserved the literature, science, and philosophy of Classical Greece in recopied texts, some of which escaped the plunders of the Crusaders and were carried to southern Italy, restoring Greek learning there. Combined with the treasures of Classical learning that reached Europe through the Muslims, this Byzantine heritage helped to initiate the beginnings of the European Renaissance.
Mehdi K. NakosteenRobert BrowningEarly Russian education: Kiev and Muscovy
Properly, the term Russia applies only to the approximate region occupied by the empire or republic of Russia since the 18th century. It is sometimes less strictly employed, however—as in this section—to refer to that area from ancient times as well.
The influences of the Byzantine Empire and of the Eastern Orthodox Church made themselves strongly felt in Russia as early as the 10th century, when Kiev, the first east Slavic state, was firmly established. At that time, Prince Svyatoslav, a determined pagan, failed to maintain control of the route “from the Varangians to the Greeks” (south from Novgorod through Kiev, along the Dnepr River), and the Byzantine Empire expelled him from its Balkan possessions, which he was attempting to conquer. After his death in 972, the way lay open for sustained penetration of cultural influences emanating from Byzantium into the Kievan state, although formal relations between the two powers were seldom harmonious. Byzantine cultural materials entering the Kievan state were translated into Old Church Slavonic; thus, there was no language barrier. A famous tale in an early chronicle recounts how Grand Prince Vladimir in 988 ordered the people of Kiev to receive baptism in the Orthodox Christian rite. It is, however, highly dubious to claim that this event, which established Christianity as the predominant cultural force in the Kievan state, also marked the beginning of an institutionalized system of education. A few sources of the time spoke of “book learning,” but all this actually meant was that people were expected to be acquainted with the rudiments of Holy Writ.
The next epoch in Russian history is known as the appanage period. This period runs roughly from the decline of Kiev in the 11th century to the rise of the Grand Principality of Moscow (Muscovy) in the 14th century. It was characterized by the appearance of numerous autonomous fiefdoms and a population shift from southern plains to northern forests, brought about in large part by attacks from steppe nomads. Although the church and monasteries continued to acquire wealth and property, anarchic decentralization was not conducive to the development of any kind of widespread, uniform educational apparatus.
During this time of instability, in 1240 the Mongol (or Tatar) empire, known as the Golden Horde, sacked and devastated the European Russian Plain and imposed its control over the region—although with diminishing efficiency—until 1451. Mongol rule had a debilitating effect on all phases of Russian culture, including the church, which became more formalistic and ritualistic. What little can be learned about education at this time must be culled from later biographies of contemporary saints. It is not clear who served as teachers, how many there were, where they taught, or how many and what kind of pupils they had. What instruction they gave was of an uncompromisingly religious nature: seven-year-olds did little more than read aloud and chant devotional materials or, very rarely, recite the numbers from 1 to 100. Because students uttered their assignments simultaneously, the result was often chaotic.
By the time the Mongol rule came to an end, the welter of independent Russian principalities had been united under the authority of the Grand Principality of Moscow, which began a successful program of territorial expansion. Controversies over religious issues, particularly the respective roles of church and state, flared up but failed to bring about any real improvement in education. The church’s inability to provide adequate education was recognized, however, and in 1551 a church council known as the Hundred Chapters was convened at the initiative of the tsar Ivan IV the Terrible. The council heard many stories of clerical ignorance and licentiousness, and its deliberations made it clear that no effective system or institution existed to educate the clergy, the key class in the cultural establishment.
It is misleading to think of education solely in institutional terms, however. Another system existed in early Russia: the highly developed family system, within which from generation to generation parents handed on to their children skills and knowledge. Indeed, the very strength and tenacity of the family unit may well have retarded development of a more formal educational structure.
Things began to change in the 17th century. It is necessary to bear in mind that Kiev and much of western Ukraine had for centuries been under the control of the Roman Catholic Polish-Lithuanian state, where intellectual achievement and ferment—especially during the Renaissance and Reformation—had been considerably greater than in Muscovite Russia. The people of Ukraine were determined to preserve Orthodoxy from Roman Catholic pressure, which grew intense when the Jesuits employed their excellent schools as one means to spearhead the Counter-Reformation. Different Orthodox groups responded to the challenge by forming schools at many levels, culminating in the foundation of the Kievan Academy by Peter Mogila, the energetic metropolitan of Kiev, who strove to adapt Western educational techniques to defend Orthodoxy. It should be noted, however, that, although these schools adopted portions of the broader Western curriculum, their goal continued to be what it always had been: the inculcation of traditional religious values.
By the mid-17th century much of the western Ukraine had come under Muscovite control, enabling a number of educated Ukrainians—some trained in Poland, a few even in Rome—to come to Moscow. They arrived under the auspices of Patriarch Nikon, who was then engaged in correcting what he saw as errors in Orthodox church books, but their appearance aroused deep suspicion on the part of the Orthodox establishment, many of whose members displayed little interest in or sympathy for the establishment of schools, an undertaking the newcomers considered to be of primary importance. Educational reforms nevertheless continued, albeit slowly.
The reign of Peter I the Great (1682–1725) ushered in a new and more dynamic age, although even this ruler’s reforming zeal proved inadequate to the central task of creating a national school system, particularly at the elementary level. Religion was deemphasized as Peter strove to establish at least a few institutions that would provide graduates trained in practical subjects for government and military service. Church schools were brought under state control, and the Academy of Sciences was established. Nevertheless, the creation of a network of schools capable at all levels of responding to Russia’s rapidly changing priorities was a task that awaited the future.
Hugh F. GrahamThe Islamic Era
Influences on Muslim education and culture
The Greco-Byzantine heritage of learning that was preserved through the medium of Middle Eastern scholarship was combined with elements of Persian and Indian thought and taken over and enriched by the Muslims. It was initiated as early as the Umayyad caliphate (661–750), which allowed the sciences of the Hellenistic world to flourish in Syria and patronized Semitic and Persian schools in Alexandria, Beirut, Gondēshāpūr, Nisibis, Haran, and Antioch. But the largest share of Islam’s preservation of Classical culture was assumed by the ʿAbbāsid caliphate (750–c. 1100), which followed the Umayyad and encouraged and supported the translation of Greek works into Arabic, often by Nestorian, Hebrew, and Persian scholars. These translations included works by Plato and Aristotle, Hippocrates, Galen, Dioscorides, Alexander of Aphrodisias, Ptolemy, and others. The great mathematician al-Khwārizmī (flourished 9th century) compiled astronomical tables, introduced Hindu numerals (which became Arabic numerals), formulated the oldest known trigonometric tables, and prepared a geographic encyclopaedia in cooperation with 69 other scholars.
The transmission of Classical culture through Muslim channels can be divided into seven basic types: (1) works translated directly from Greek into Arabic, (2) works translated into Pahlavi, including Indian, Greek, Syriac, Hellenistic, Hebrew, and Zoroastrian materials, with the Academy of Gondēshāpūr as the centre of such scholarship (the works then being translated from Pahlavi into Arabic), (3) works translated from Hindi into Pahlavi, then into Syriac, Hebrew, and Arabic, (4) works written by Muslim scholars from the 9th through the 11th century but borrowed, in effect, from non-Muslim sources, with the line of transmission obscure, (5) works that amounted to summaries and commentaries of Greco-Persian materials, (6) works by Muslim scholars that were advances over pre-Islamic learning but that might not have developed in Islam had there not been the stimulation from Hellenistic, Byzantine, Zoroastrian, and Hindu learning, and, finally, (7) works that appear to have arisen from purely individual genius and national cultures and would likely have developed independently of Islam’s Classical heritage of learning.
Aims and purposes of Muslim education
Islam placed a high value on education, and, as the faith spread among diverse peoples, education became an important channel through which to create a universal and cohesive social order. By the middle of the 9th century, knowledge was divided into three categories: the Islamic sciences, the philosophical and natural sciences (Greek knowledge), and the literary arts. The Islamic sciences, which emphasized the study of the Qurʾān (the Islamic scripture) and the Ḥadīth (the sayings and traditions of the Prophet Muhammad) and their interpretation by leading scholars and theologians, were valued the most highly, but Greek scholarship was considered equally important, albeit less virtuous.
Early Muslim education emphasized practical studies, such as the application of technological expertise to the development of irrigation systems, architectural innovations, textiles, iron and steel products, earthenware, and leather products; the manufacture of paper and gunpowder; the advancement of commerce; and the maintenance of a merchant marine. After the 11th century, however, denominational interests dominated higher learning, and the Islamic sciences achieved preeminence. Greek knowledge was studied in private, if at all, and the literary arts diminished in significance as educational policies encouraging academic freedom and new learning were replaced by a closed system characterized by an intolerance toward scientific innovations, secular subjects, and creative scholarship. This denominational system spread throughout eastern Islam from Transoxania (roughly, modern-day Tajikistan, Uzbekistan, and southwest Kazakhstan) to Egypt, with some 75 schools in existence between about 1050 and 1250.
Organization of education
The system of education in the Muslim world was unintegrated and undifferentiated. Learning took place in a variety of institutions, among them the ḥalqah, or study circle; the maktab (kuttab), or elementary school; the palace schools; bookshops and literary salons; and the various types of colleges, the meshed, the masjid, and the madrasa. All the schools taught essentially the same subjects.
The simplest type of early Muslim education was offered in the mosques, where scholars who had congregated to discuss the Qurʾān began before long to teach the religious sciences to interested adults. Mosques increased in number under the caliphs, particularly the ʿAbbāsids: 3,000 of them were reported in Baghdad alone in the first decades of the 10th century; as many as 12,000 were reported in Alexandria in the 14th century, most of them with schools attached. Some mosques—such as that of al-Manṣūr, built during the reign of Hārūn al-Rashīd in Baghdad, or those in Isfahan, Mashhad, Ghom, Damascus, Cairo, and the Alhambra (Granada)—became centres of learning for students from all over the Muslim world. Each mosque usually contained several study circles (ḥalqah), so named because the teacher was, as a rule, seated on a dais or cushion with the pupils gathered in a semicircle before him. The more advanced a student, the closer he was seated to the teacher. The mosque circles varied in approach, course content, size, and quality of teaching, but the method of instruction usually emphasized lectures and memorization. Teachers were, as a rule, looked upon as masters of scholarship, and their lectures were meticulously recorded in notebooks. Students often made long journeys to join the circle of a great teacher. Some circles, especially those in which the Ḥadīth was studied, were so large that it was necessary for assistants to repeat the lecture so that every student could hear and record it.
Elementary schools (maktab, or kuttab), in which pupils learned to read and write, date to the pre-Islamic period in the Arab world. After the advent of Islam, these schools developed into centres for instruction in elementary Islamic subjects. Students were expected to memorize the Qurʾān as perfectly as possible. Some schools also included in their curriculum the study of poetry, elementary arithmetic, penmanship, ethics (manners), and elementary grammar. Maktabs were quite common in almost every town or village in the Middle East, Africa, Sicily, and Spain.
Schools conducted in royal palaces taught not only the curriculum of the maktabs but also social and cultural studies designed to prepare the pupil for higher education, for service in the government of the caliphs, or for polite society. The instructors were called muʾaddibs, or instructors in good manners. The exact content of the curriculum was specified by the ruler, but oratory, history, tradition, formal ethics, poetry, and the art of good conversation were often included. Instruction usually continued long after the pupils had passed elementary age.
The high degree of learning and scholarship in Islam, particularly during the ʿAbbāsid period in eastern Islam and the later Umayyads in western Islam, encouraged the development of bookshops, copyists, and book dealers in large, important Islamic cities such as Damascus, Baghdad, and Córdoba. Scholars and students spent many hours in these bookshop schools browsing, examining, and studying available books or purchasing favourite selections for their private libraries. Book dealers traveled to famous bookstores in search of rare manuscripts for purchase and resale to collectors and scholars and thus contributed to the spread of learning. Many such manuscripts found their way to private libraries of famous Muslim scholars such as Avicenna, al-Ghazālī, and al-Fārābī, who in turn made their homes centres of scholarly pursuits for their favourite students.
Fundamental to Muslim education though the circle schools, the maktabs, and the palace schools were, they embodied definite educational limitations. Their curricula were limited; they could not always attract well-trained teachers; physical facilities were not always conducive to a congenial educational environment; and conflicts between religious and secular aims in these schools were almost irreconcilable. Most importantly, these schools could not meet the growing need for trained personnel or provide sufficient educational opportunities for those who wished to continue their studies. These pressures led to the creation of a new type of school, the madrasa, which became the crown and glory of medieval Muslim education. The madrasa was an outgrowth of the masjid, a type of mosque college dating to the 8th century. The differences between these two institutions are still being studied, but most scholars believe that the masjid was also a place of worship and that, unlike the madrasa, its endowment supported only the faculty and not the students as well. A third type of college, the meshed (shrine college), was usually a madrasa built next to a pilgrimage centre. Whatever their particularities, all three types of college specialized in legal instruction, each turning out experts in one of the four schools of Sunni, or orthodox, Islamic law.
Madrasas may have existed as early as the 9th century, but the most famous one was founded in 1057 by the vizier Niẓām al-Mulk in Baghdad. The Niẓāmīyah, devoted to Sunni learning, served as a model for the establishment of an extensive network of such institutions throughout the eastern Islamic world, especially in Cairo, which had 75 madrasas; in Damascus, which had 51; and in Aleppo, where the number of madrasas rose from 6 to 44 between 1155 and 1260.
Important institutions also developed in western Islam, under the Umayyads, in the Spanish cities of Córdoba, Sevilla (Seville), Toledo, Granada, Murcia, Almería, Valencia, and Cádiz. The madrasas had no standard curriculum; the founder of each school determined the specific courses that would be taught, but they generally offered instruction in both the religious sciences and the physical sciences.
The contribution of these institutions to the advancement of knowledge was vast. Muslim scholars calculated the angle of the ecliptic; measured the size of the Earth; calculated the precession of the equinoxes; explained, in the field of optics and physics, such phenomena as refraction of light, gravity, capillary attraction, and twilight; and developed observatories for the empirical study of heavenly bodies. They made advances in the uses of drugs, herbs, and foods for medication; established hospitals with a system of interns and externs; discovered causes of certain diseases and developed correct diagnoses of them; proposed new concepts of hygiene; made use of anesthetics in surgery with newly innovated surgical tools; and introduced the science of dissection in anatomy. They furthered the scientific breeding of horses and cattle; found new ways of grafting to produce new types of flowers and fruits; introduced new concepts of irrigation, fertilization, and soil cultivation; and improved upon the science of navigation. In the area of chemistry, Muslim scholarship led to the discovery of such substances as potash, alcohol, nitrate of silver, nitric acid, sulfuric acid, and mercury chloride. It also developed to a high degree of perfection the arts of textiles, ceramics, and metallurgy.
Major periods of Muslim education and learning
The renaissance of Islamic culture and scholarship developed largely under the ʿAbbāsid administration in eastern Islam and later under the Umayyads in western Islam, mainly in Spain, between 800 and 1000. This latter period, the golden age of Islamic scholarship, was largely a period of translation and interpretation of Classical thoughts and their adaptation to Islamic theology and philosophy. The period also witnessed the introduction and assimilation of Hellenistic, Persian, and Hindu mathematics, astronomy, algebra, trigonometry, and medicine into Muslim culture.
Whereas the 8th and 9th centuries—mainly between 750 and 900—were characterized by the introduction of Classical learning and its refinement and adaptation to Islamic culture, the 10th and 11th were centuries of interpretation, criticism, and further adaptation. There followed a period of modification and significant additions to Classical culture through Muslim scholarship. Creative scholarship in Islam from the 10th to the 12th century included works by such scholars as Omar Khayyam, al-Bīrūnī, Fakhr al-Dīn al-Rāzī, Avicenna (Ibn Sīnā), al-Ṭabarī, Avempace (Ibn Bājjah), and Averroës (Ibn Rushd). During the 12th and 13th centuries, most of the works of Classical learning and the creative Muslim additions were translated from Arabic into Hebrew and Latin. These translations were instrumental in bringing about the early phases of the European intellectual awakening, which coincided with the decline of Muslim scholarship.
Influence of Islamic learning on the West
As Europe was absorbing the fruits of Islam’s centuries of creative productivity, signs of Latin Christian awakening were evident throughout the European continent. The 12th century was one of intensified traffic of Muslim learning into the Western world through many hundreds of translations of Muslim works, which helped Europe seize the initiative from Islam when political conditions in Islam brought about a decline in Muslim scholarship. By 1300, European scholars stood once again on the solid ground of Hellenistic thought, enriched or modified through Muslim and Byzantine efforts.
Mehdi K. NakosteenJoseph S. SzyliowiczEurope in the Middle Ages
The background of early Christian education
From the beginnings to the 4th century
Initially, Christianity found most of its adherents among the poor and illiterate, making little headway—as St. Paul observed (1 Corinthians 1:26)—among the worldly-wise, the mighty, and those of high rank. But during the 2nd century CE and afterward, it appealed more and more to the educated class and to leading citizens. These individuals naturally wanted their children to have at least as good an education as they themselves had, but the only schools available were the grammar and rhetoric schools with their Greco-Roman, non-Christian culture. There were different opinions among Christian leaders about the right attitude to this dilemma that confronted all Christians who sought a good education for their children. The Greek Fathers—especially the Christian Platonists Clement of Alexandria and Origen—sought to prove that the Christian view of the universe was compatible with Greek thought and even regarded Christianity as the culmination of philosophy, to which the way must be sought through liberal studies. Without a liberal education, the Christian could live a life of faith and obedience but could not expect to attain an intellectual understanding of the mysteries of the faith or expect to appreciate the significance of the Gospel as the meeting ground of Hellenism and Judaism. St. Augustine and St. Basil also tolerated the use of the secular schools by Christians, maintaining that literary and rhetorical culture is valuable so long as it is kept subservient to the Christian life. The Roman theologian Tertullian, on the other hand, was suspicious of pagan culture, but he admitted the necessity (though deploring it) of making use of the educational facilities available.
In any event, most Christians who wanted their children to have a good education appear to have sent them to the secular schools; this practice continued even after 313, when the emperor Constantine, who had been converted to Christianity, stopped the persecution of Christians and gave them the same rights as other citizens. Christians also set up catechetical schools for the religious instruction of adults who wished to be baptized. Of these schools, the most famous was the one at Alexandria in Egypt, which had a succession of outstanding heads, including Clement and Origen. Under their scholarly guidance, it developed a much wider curriculum than was usual in catechetical schools, including the best in Greek science and philosophy in addition to Christian studies. Other schools modeled on that at Alexandria developed in some parts of the Middle East, notably in Syria, and continued for some time after the collapse of the empire in the west.
From the 5th to the 8th century
The gradual subjugation of the Western Empire by the barbarian invaders during the 5th century eventually entailed the breakup of the educational system that the Romans had developed over the centuries. The barbarians, however, did not destroy the empire; in fact, their entry was really in the form of vast migrations that swamped the existing and rapidly weakening Roman culture. The position of the emperor remained, the barbarians exercising local control through smaller kingdoms. Roman learning continued, and there were notable examples in the writings of Boethius—chiefly his Consolation of Philosophy. Boethius composed most of these studies while acting as director of civil administration under the Ostrogoths. Equally famous was his contemporary Cassiodorus (c. 490–c. 585), who, as a minister under the Ostrogoths, worked energetically at his vision of civilitas, a program of educating the public and developing a sound administrative structure. Thus, despite the political and social upheavals, the methods and program of ancient education survived into the 6th century in the new barbarian Mediterranean kingdoms; indeed, the barbarians were frequently impressed and attracted by things Roman. In Ostrogothic Italy (Milan, Ravenna, Rome) and in Vandal Africa (Carthage), the schools of the grammarians and rhetoricians survived for a time, and, even in those places where such schools soon disappeared—such as Gaul and Spain—private teachers or parents maintained the tradition of Classical culture until the 7th century. As in previous centuries, the culture bestowed was essentially literary and oratorical: grammar and rhetoric constituted the basis of the studies. The pupils read, reread, and commented on the Classical authors and imitated them by composing certain kinds of exercises (dictiones) with the aim of achieving a perfect mastery of their style. In fact, however, the practice was desultory, and the results were mechanical and poor. Greek was ignored more and more, and attempts to revive Hellenic studies were limited to a dwindling number of scholars.
Christianity, meanwhile, was becoming more formally organized, and in the Latin-speaking Western division of the empire the Catholic church (as it was beginning to be called, from the Greek katholikos, the “whole”) developed an administrative pattern, based upon that of the empire itself, for which learning was essential for the proper discharge of its duties. Schools began to be formed in the rudimentary cathedrals, although the main centres of learning from the 5th century to the time of Charlemagne in the 8th century were in the monasteries. The prototype of Western monasticism was the great monastery founded at Monte Cassino in 529 by Benedict of Nursia (c. 480–c. 547), probably on the model of Vivarium, the scholarly monastery established by Cassiodorus. The rule developed by Benedict to guide monastic life stimulated many other foundations, and one result was the rapid spread of Benedictine monasteries and the establishment of an order. The Benedictine monasteries became the chief centres of learning and the source of the many literate scribes needed for the civil administration.
The monastic schools, however, are no more significant in the history of education than the schools founded by bishops, usually in connection with a cathedral. These episcopal schools are sometimes looked upon as successors of the grammar schools of the Roman Empire. First specializing in the development of the clergy, they later admitted young laypeople when the small Roman schools had disappeared. At the same time, there were bishops who organized a kind of boarding school where the aspiring clergyman, living in a community, participated in duties of a monastic character and learned his clerical trade.
The influence of monasticism affected the content of instruction and the method of presenting it. Children were to be dutiful; as the Celtic and English monks Columban and Bede were to remark, “A child does not remain angry, he is not spiteful, does not contradict the professors, but receives with confidence what is taught him.” In the case of the adolescent destined for a religious profession, the monastic lawgiver was severe. The teacher must know and teach the doctrine, reprimand the undisciplined, and adapt his method to the different temperaments of the young monks. The education of young girls destined for monastic life was similar: the mistress of the novices recommended prayer, manual work, and study.
Between the 5th and 8th centuries the principles of education of the laity likewise evolved. The treatises on education, later called the “mirrors,” pointed to the importance of the moral virtues of prudence, courage, justice, and temperance. The Institutionum disciplinae of an anonymous Visigoth pedagogue expressed the desire that all young men “quench their thirst at the quadruple fountain of the virtues.” In the 7th and 8th centuries the moral concepts of antiquity completely surrendered to religious principles. The Christian Bible was more and more considered as the only source of moral life—as the mirror in which humans must learn to see themselves. A bishop addressing himself to a son of the Frankish king Dagobert (died 639) drew his examples from the books of the Hebrew Bible (Old Testament). The mother of Didier of Cahors addressed to her son letters of edification on the fear of God, on the horror of vice, and on penitence.
The Christian education of children who were not aristocrats or future clergymen or monks was irregular. Whereas in antiquity catechetical instruction was organized especially for the adult laity, after the 5th century more and more children and then infants received baptism, and, once baptized, a child was not required to receive any particular religious education. His parents and godparents assisted him in learning the minimum, if anything at all. Only by attending church services and listening to sermons did the child acquire his religious culture.
The Irish and English revivals
During the 5th and 6th centuries there was a renaissance of learning in the remote land of Ireland, introduced there initially by the patron saints of Ireland—Patrick, Bridget, and Columba—who established schools at Armagh, Kildare, and Iona. They were followed by a number of other native scholars, who also founded colleges—the most famous and greatest university being the one at Clonmacnois, on the River Shannon near Athlone. To these and lesser schools flocked Anglo-Saxons, Gauls, Scots, and Teutons from Britain and the Continent. From about 600 to 850 Ireland itself sent scholars to the Continent to teach, found monasteries, and establish schools.
Although the very earliest Irish scholars may have aimed primarily at propagating the Christian faith, their successors soon began studying and teaching the Greek and Roman classics (but only in Latin versions), along with Christian theology. Eventually there were additions of mathematics, nature study, rhetoric, poetry, grammar, and astronomy—all studied, it seems, very largely through the medium of the Irish language.
England was next to experience the reawakening, and, though there were notable schools at such places as Canterbury and Winchester, it was in Northumbria that the schools flourished most. At the monasteries of Jarrow and Wearmouth and at the Cathedral School of York, some of the greatest of early medieval writers and schoolmasters appeared, including the Venerable Bede and Alcuin. The latter went to France in 780 to become master of Charlemagne’s palace school.
The Carolingian renaissance and its aftermath
The cultural revival under Charlemagne and his successors
Charlemagne (742/743–814) has been represented as the sponsor or even creator of medieval education, and the Carolingian renaissance has been represented as the renewal of Western culture. This renaissance, however, built on earlier episcopal and monastic developments, and, although Charlemagne did help to ensure the survival of scholarly traditions in a relatively bleak and rude age, there was nothing like the general advance in education that occurred later with the cultural awakening of the 11th and 12th centuries.
Learning, nonetheless, had no more ardent friend than Charlemagne, who came to the Frankish throne in 768 distressed to find extremely poor standards of Latin prevailing. He thus ordered that the clergy be educated severely, whether by persuasion or under compulsion. He recalled that, in order to interpret the Holy Scriptures, one must have a command of correct language and a fluent knowledge of Latin; he later commanded, “In each bishopric and in each monastery let the psalms, the notes, the chant, calculation and grammar be taught and carefully corrected books be available” (capitulary of 789 CE). His promotion of ecclesiastical and educational reform bore fruit in a generation of churchmen whose morals and whose education were of a higher standard than before.
The possibility then arose of providing, for the brighter young clerics and perhaps also for a few laymen, a more advanced religious and academic training. It was perhaps to meet this modest need that a school grew up within the precincts of the emperor’s palace at Aachen. In order to develop and staff other centres of culture and learning, Charlemagne imported considerable foreign talent. During the 8th century England had been the scene of some intellectual activity. Thus, Alcuin, who had been the master of the school at York, and other English scholars were brought over to transplant to the Continent the studies and disciplines of the Anglo-Saxon schools. From Moorish Spain came Christian refugees who also contributed to this intellectual revival; disputations with the Muslims had forced them to develop a dialectic skill in which they now instructed Charlemagne’s subjects. From Italy came grammarians and chroniclers, men such as Paul the Deacon; the more formalistic Classical traditions in which they had been bred supplied the framework to discipline the effervescent brilliance of the Anglo-Saxons. Irish scholars also arrived. Thanks to these foreigners, who represented the areas where Classical and Christian culture had been maintained in the 6th and 8th centuries, the court became a kind of “academy,” to use Alcuin’s term. There the emperor, his heirs, and his friends discussed various subjects—the existence or nonexistence of the underworld and of nothingness; the eclipse of the sun; the relationship of Father, Son, and Holy Spirit; and so on. Recognizing the importance of manuscripts in the cultural revival, Charlemagne formed a library (the catalog of which is still extant), had texts and books copied and recopied, and bade every school to maintain a scriptorium. Alcuin developed a school of calligraphy at Tours, and its new script spread rapidly throughout the empire; this Carolingian minuscule was more legible and less wasteful of space than the uncial scripts hitherto employed.
Outside the court at Aachen were to be found here and there a few seats of culture—but not many. The archbishop of Lyon reorganized the schools of readers and choir leaders; Alcuin in Saint-Martin-de-Tours and Angilbert in Saint-Riquier organized monastic schools with relatively well-stocked libraries. It was necessary to wait for the second generation, or even the third, to witness the greatest brilliance of the Carolingian renewal. Under Charlemagne’s son Louis the Pious and especially under his grandsons, the monastic schools reached their apogee in France north of the Loire, in Germany, and in Italy. The most famous were at Saint-Gall, Reichenau, Fulda, Bobbio, Saint-Denis, Saint-Martin-de-Tours, and Ferrières. Unfortunately, the breakup of the Carolingian empire, following local rebellions and the Viking invasions, ended the progress of the Carolingian renaissance.
Influences of the Carolingian renaissance abroad
In England—at least in the kingdom of Wessex—King Alfred the Great stands out as another royal patron of learning, one who wanted to imitate the creativity of Charlemagne. When he came to the throne in 871, cultural standards had fallen to a low level, partly because of the turmoil of the Danish invasions. He was grieved to find so few who could understand Latin church services or translate a letter from Latin into English. To accomplish an improvement, he called upon monks from the Continent, particularly those of Saint-Bertin. Moreover, he attracted to his court certain English clergy and young sons of nobles. Since the latter did not know Latin, he had translated into Wessex English some works of Pope Gregory the Great, Boethius, the theologian and historian Paulus Orosius, Venerable Bede, St. Augustine, and others. He himself translated Boethius’s Consolation of Philosophy, Gregory the Great’s Pastoral Care, and Bede’s Ecclesiastical History of the English People. This promotion of learning was continued by Alfred’s successors and spread elsewhere in England; and in the reformed monasteries at Canterbury, York, and Winchester, the young monks renewed the study of religious and secular sciences. Among the master scholars of the late 10th century was the Benedictine monk Aelfric, perhaps the greatest prose writer of Anglo-Saxon times. In order to facilitate the learning of Latin for young monks, Aelfric composed a grammar, glossary, and colloquy, containing a Latin grammar described in Anglo-Saxon, or Old English, a glossary in which master and pupil could find a methodically classified Latin vocabulary (names of birds, fish, plants, and so forth), and a manual of conversation, inspired by the bilingual manuals of antiquity.
Among the other Saxons—those of the Continent who presided over the destinies of Germany—there were also significant gatherings of masters and students at selected monasteries, such as Corvey and Gandersheim. In any case, wherever teaching became important in the 10th century, it concentrated largely on grammar and the works of the Classical authors. Thus, when Gerbert of Aurillac, after a course of instruction in Catalonia, came to teach dialectic and the arts of the quadrivium (geometry, arithmetic, harmonics, and astronomy) at Reims, he aroused astonishment and admiration. His renown helped in his later election as Pope Sylvester II. The first half of the 11th century contained the first glimmerings of a rediscovered dialectic. A new stage in the history of teaching was beginning.
Education of the laity in the 9th and 10th centuries
The clergy who dominated society thought it necessary to give laymen some directives about life comparable to those offered in monastic rules and thus issued what were called miroirs (“mirrors”), setting forth the duties of a good sovereign and exalting the Christian struggle. Already the image of the courtly and Christian knight was beginning to take shape. It was not a question of governing a state well but, rather, of governing oneself. The layman must struggle against vice and practice virtue; he must emphasize his religious heritage. Alcuin became indignant when he heard it said that the reading of the Gospel was the duty of the clergy and not that of the layman. Huoda, wife of Bernard, duke of Septimania, addressed a manual to her 16-year-old son, stressing the reading and praying that a young man should do. In the libraries of the laity, the volumes of the Old Testament and New Testament took first place, along with prayer books, a kind of breviary designed for day-to-day use.
If a minority of aristocrats could receive a suitable moral and religious education, the masses remained illiterate and preferred a military apprenticeship to study. “He who has remained in school up to twelve years without mounting a horse is no longer good for anything but the priesthood,” wrote a German poet. Writers of hagiographic texts were fond of contrasting the mother of the future saint, anxious to give education to her son, and the father, who wanted to harden his son at an early age to the chase or to war. The Carolingian tradition, however, was not totally forgotten by princes and others in high places. In Germany, Otto I and his successors, who wished to re-create the Carolingian empire, encouraged studies at the court: Wipo, the preceptor of Henry III, set out a program of education for the laity in his Proverbia. Rediscovering the ancient moralists, chiefly Cicero and Seneca, he praised moderation as opposed to warlike brutality or even the ascetic strength of the monks. The same tendency is found in other writings.
The medieval renaissance
The era that has been called the “renaissance of the 12th century” corresponds to a rediscovery of studies originating in the 11th century in a West in the process of transformation. The church cast off the tutelage of lay power, and there was general acceptance of the authority of the church in matters of belief, conduct, and education; the papacy took over the direction of Christianity and organized the Crusades to the East; the monarchies regrouped the political and economic forces of feudal society; the cities were reanimated and were organized into communes; the merchants traced out the great European trade routes and, before long, the Mediterranean ones. Soon, contact with the East—by trade and in the Crusades—and with the highly cultivated Moors in Spain further stimulated intellectual life. Arabic renderings of some of the works of Aristotle, together with commentaries, were translated into Latin, exercising a profound influence on the trend of culture. It was inevitable that the world of education would take on a new appearance.
Changes in the schools and philosophies
Monastic schools
In the first place, the monastic reformers made the decision to close their schools to those who did not intend to enter upon a cloistered life. According to their idea of solitude and sanctity, recalling the words of St. Jerome, “The monk was not made to teach but to mortify himself.” Divine works were to be the only object of study and meditation, and Pierre de Celle asserted that “divine science ought to mould rather than question, to nourish conscience rather than knowledge.”
The scholarly monks completed their studies before being admitted to the monastery—the age of entrance in Benedictine houses, for instance, being fixed at 15 years at Cîteaux and 20 years at Cluny. If there were admitted a few oblates (laymen living in monasteries under modified rules), they were given an ascetic and moral education and were taught to read the Holy Writ and, what was still more desirable, to “relish” it. In the Carthusian monastery, the four steps of required spiritual exercise were reading, meditation, prayer, and contemplation. Thus there existed a monastic culture, but there were no truly monastic studies such as those that had existed in the 9th and 10th centuries. The rich libraries of the monasteries served only a few scholarly abbots, while the monks searched for God through prayer and asceticism.
Urban schools
In the cities, on the contrary, the schools offered to all the clergy who so desired the means of satisfying their intellectual appetite. More and more of them attended these schools, for the studies were a good means of social advancement or material profit. The development of royal and municipal administrations offered the clergy new occupations. Hence the success of the schools for notaries and the schools of law. These schools were organized under the protection of the collegiate churches and the cathedrals. The schools for secular subjects were directed by an archdeacon, chancellor, cantor, or cleric who had received the title of scholasticus, caput scholae, or magister scholarum and who was assisted by one or more auxiliary masters. The success of the urban schools was such that it was necessary, in the middle of the 12th century, to define the teaching function. Only those who were provided with the licencia docendi conferred by the bishop—or, more often, by the scholasticus—could teach. Those who were licensed taught within the limits of the city or the diocese, whose clerical leaders supervised this monopoly and intervened if a cleric set himself up as master without having the right. The popes were sufficiently concerned about licensing that the Lateran Council of 1179 gave this institution universal application.
New curricula and philosophies
The pupils who attended these urban schools learned in them their future occupation as clerics; they learned Latin, learned to sing the various offices, and studied Holy Writ. The more gifted ones extended their studies further and applied for admission to the liberal arts (the trivium, made up of grammar, rhetoric, and logic; and the quadrivium, including geometry, arithmetic, harmonics, and astronomy) and subsequently to philosophy. Philosophy had four branches: theoretical, practical, logical, and mechanical. The theoretical was divided into theology, physics, and mathematics; the practical consisted of morals or ethics (personal, economic, political). The logical, which concerned discourse, consisted of the three arts of the trivium. Finally, the mechanical included the work of processing wool, of navigation, of agriculture, of medicine, and so on. This was an ambitious humanistic program. In fact, the students became specialized in the study of one art or another according to their tastes or the presence of a renowned master, such as Guillaume de Champeaux at Paris and St. Victor for rhetoric and theology; Peter Abelard at Paris for dialectic and theology; Bernard de Chartres for grammar; William of Conches at Chartres for grammar, ethics, and medicine; and Thierry de Chartres for rhetoric. In particular, teachers of the “literary” arts, grammar and rhetoric, always had great success in a period of enthusiasm for the ancient authors. It may be noted that Bernard de Chartres organized his literary teaching in this fashion: grammatical explanations (declinatio), studies of authors, and each morning the correction of the exercises given the day before.
The third art of the trivium, logic (or dialectics), was nevertheless a strong competitor of the other two, grammar and rhetoric. Since the 11th century, Aristotle’s Posterior Analytics, which had been translated centuries earlier by Boethius, had developed the taste for reasoning, and, by the time Abelard arrived in Paris around 1100, interest in dialectics was flourishing. The written words of the Scriptures and of the Fathers of the Church were to be subjected to the scrutiny of human reason; a healthy skepticism was to be the stepping-stone to knowledge, aided by an understanding of critical logic.
While dialectic reigned in Paris, the masters at Chartres offered a study of the whole of the quadrivium. This interest in the sciences, which had been manifest at Chartres since the early 11th century, had been favoured by the stimulus of Greco-Arabic translations. The works of Euclid, Ptolemy, Hippocrates, Galen, and other Hellenic and Hellenistic scholars, as preserved in the Arabic manuscripts, were translated in southern Italy, Sicily, and Spain and were gradually transmitted northward. The scientific revival allowed the Chartrians to Christianize Greek cosmology, to explain Genesis according to physics, and to rediscover nature.
Another revival was that of law. The conflicts in the second half of the 12th century between the church and the lay powers encouraged on both sides a new activity in the juridical field. The princes found in the Corpus Juris Civilis, the 6th-century Roman code of the emperor Justinian, the means of legitimizing their politics, and the papacy likewise used Roman sources to promote its claims.
Thomist philosophy
In the long view, the greatest educational and philosophical influence of the age was St. Thomas Aquinas, who in the 13th century made a monumental attempt to reconcile the two great streams of the Western tradition. In his teaching at the University of Paris and in his writings—particularly the Summa theologiae and the Summa contra gentiles—Aquinas tried to synthesize reason and faith, philosophy and theology, university and monastery, and activity and contemplation. In his writings, however, faith and theology ultimately took precedence over reason and philosophy because the former were presumed to give access to truths that were not available through rational inquiry. Hence, Aquinas started with assumptions based on divine revelation and went on to a philosophical explication of man and nature. The model of the educated man that emerged from this process was the Scholastic, whose rational intelligence had been vigorously disciplined for the pursuit of moral excellence and whose highest happiness was found in contemplation of the Christian God.
The Scholastic model greatly affected the development of Western education, especially in fostering the notion of intellectual discipline. Aquinas’s theological-philosophical doctrine was a powerful intellectual force throughout the West, being officially adopted by the Dominican order (of which Aquinas was a member) in the 13th century and by the Jesuits in the 17th century. Known as Thomism, this doctrine came to constitute the basis of official Roman Catholic theology from 1879. Although Aquinas made an important place in his hierarchy of values for the practical uses of reason, later Thomists were often more exclusively intellectual in their educational emphasis.
The development of the universities
The Middle Ages were thus beset by a multiplicity of ideas, both homegrown and imported from abroad. The multiplicity of students and masters, their rivalries, and the conflicts in which they opposed the religious and civil authorities obliged the world of education to reorganize. To understand the reorganization, one must review the various stages of development in the coming together of students and masters. The first stage, already alluded to, occurred when the bishop or some other authority began to accord to other masters permission to open schools other than the episcopal school in the neighbourhood of his church. A further stage was reached when a license to teach, the jus ubique docendi—granted only after a formal examination—empowered a master to carry on his vocation at any similar centre. A further development came when it began to be recognized that, without a license from pope, emperor, or king, no school could be formed possessing the right of conferring degrees, which originally meant nothing more than licenses to teach.
Students and teachers, as clerici (“clerks,” or members of the clergy), enjoyed certain privileges and immunities, but, as the numbers traveling to renowned schools increased, they needed additional protection. In 1158 Emperor Frederick I Barbarossa of the Holy Roman Empire granted them privileges such as protection against unjust arrest, trial before their peers, and permission to “dwell in security.” These privileges were subsequently extended and included protection against extortion in financial dealings and the cessatio—the right to strike, discontinue lectures, and even to secede to protest against grievances or interference with established rights.
In the north of Europe, licenses to teach were granted by the chancellor, scholasticus, or some other officer of a cathedral church; in the south, it is probable that the guilds of masters (when these came to be formed) were at first free to grant their own licenses, without any ecclesiastical or other supervision. Gradually, however, toward the end of the 12th century a few great schools, from the excellence of their teaching, came to assume more than local importance. In practice, a doctor of Paris or Bologna would be allowed to teach anywhere and those great schools began to be known as studia generalia—that is, places resorted to by scholars from all parts. Eventually the term came to have a more definite and technical significance. The emperor Frederick II in 1225 set the example of attempting to confer upon his new school at Naples, by an authoritative bull, the prestige that the earlier studia had acquired by reputation and general consent. Pope Gregory IX did the same for Toulouse in 1229, and he added to its original privileges in 1233 a bull by which anyone who had been admitted to the doctorate or mastership in that university should have the right to teach anywhere without further examination. Other studia generalia were subsequently founded by papal or imperial bulls, and in 1292 even the oldest universities—Paris and Bologna—found it desirable to obtain similar bulls from Pope Nicholas IV. From this time, the notion began to prevail that the essence of the studium generale was the privilege of conferring a universally valid teaching license and that no new studium could acquire that position without a papal or imperial bull. There were, however, a few studia generalia (such as Oxford), the position of which was too well established to be questioned, even though they had never obtained such a bull; these were held to be studia generalia by repute. A few Spanish universities founded by royal charter were held to be studia generalia for the kingdom.
The word universitas originally applied only to the scholastic guild (or guilds)—that is, the corporation of students and masters—within the studium, and it was always modified, as universitas magistrorum, or universitas scholarium, or universitas magistrorum et scholarium. In the course of time, however, probably toward the latter part of the 14th century, the term began to be used by itself, with the exclusive meaning of a self-regulating community of teachers and scholars whose corporate existence had been recognized and sanctioned by civil or ecclesiastical authority.
The Italian universities
The earliest studia arose out of efforts to provide instruction beyond the range of the cathedral and monastic schools for the education of priests and monks. Salerno, the first great studium, became known as a school of medicine as early as the 9th century and, under the teaching of Constantine the African (died 1087), its fame spread throughout Europe. In 1231 it was licensed by Frederick II as the only school of medicine in the kingdom of Naples. It remained a medical school only.
The great revival of legal studies that took place at Bologna about the year 1000 had been preceded by a corresponding activity at Pavia and Ravenna. In Bologna a certain Pepo was lecturing on parts of the Corpus Juris Civilis about the year 1076. The secular character of this new study and its close connection with the claims and prerogatives of the Western emperor aroused papal suspicion, and for a time Bologna and its students were regarded by the church with distrust. The students found their first real protector in the emperor Frederick I Barbarossa. The immunities and privileges he conferred eventually extended to all the other universities of Italy.
The first university of Bologna was not constituted until the close of the 11th century—the “universities” there being student guilds, formed to obtain by combination that protection and those rights that they could not claim as citizens. As the number of students increased, the number of universitates, or societies of scholars, increased, each representing the national origin of its members (France, England, Provence, Spain, Italy). These confederations were presided over by a common head, the rector scholarium, and the different nations were represented by their consiliarii, a deliberative assembly with which the rector habitually took counsel. The practice at Bologna was adopted as other studia generalia arose.
The students at Bologna were mostly of mature years. Because civil law and canon law were, at first, the only branches of study offered, the class they attracted was often composed of lawyers already filling office in some department of the church or state—archdeacons, heads of schools, canons of cathedrals, and like functionaries. About 1200, the two faculties of medicine and philosophy were formed. The former was developed by a succession of able teachers, among whom Thaddeus Alderottus was especially eminent. The faculty of arts, down to the 14th century, scarcely attained equal eminence.
At Bologna the term “college” long had a meaning different from the ordinary modern one. The masters formed themselves into collegia (that is, organizations), chiefly for the conferment of degrees. Places of residence for students existed at Bologna at a very early date, but it was not until the 14th century that they possessed any organization; the humble domus, as it was termed, was at first designed solely for needy students who were not natives of Bologna; a separate house, with a fund for the maintenance of a specified number of scholars, was all that was originally contemplated.
From the 13th to the 15th century, a number of universities in Italy originated from migrations of students; others were established by papal or other charters. Almost all the schools taught civil or canon law or both. Of these institutions the most important were Padua, Piacenza, Pavia, Rome, Perugia, Pisa, Florence, Siena, and Turin.
The French universities
The history of the University of Paris well illustrates the fact that the universities arose in response to new needs. The schools out of which the university arose were those attached to the Notre-Dame Cathedral on the Île de la Cité in Paris and presided over by its chancellor. Although, in the second decade of the 13th century, some masters placed themselves under the jurisdiction of the abbot of the monastery of Sainte-Geneviève on the Left Bank of the Seine, it was around the bestowal of the license by the chancellor of Notre-Dame that the university grew. It is in this license that the whole significance of the master of arts degree was contained; for admission to that degree was the receiving of the chancellor’s permission to “incept,” and by “inception” was implied the master’s formal entrance upon the functions of a duly licensed teacher and his recognition as such by his brethren in the profession. The stage of bachelordom had been one of apprenticeship for the mastership; and his emancipation from this state was symbolized by the placing of the magisterial cap (biretta) upon his head. The new master gave a formal inaugural lecture, and he was then welcomed into the society of his professional brethren with set speeches and took his seat in his master’s chair.
Sometime between 1150 and 1170, the University of Paris came formally into being. Its first written statutes were not, however, compiled until about 1208, and it was not until long after that date that it possessed a “rector.” Its earliest recognition as a legal corporation belongs to about the year 1211, when a brief of Innocent III empowered it to elect a proctor to be its representative at the papal court. With papal support, Paris became the great transalpine centre of orthodox theological teaching. Successive pontiffs, down to the Great Schism of 1378, cultivated friendly relations with the university and systematically discouraged the formation of theological faculties at other centres. In 1231 Gregory IX, in the bull Parens scientiarum (“Mother of Learning”), gave full recognition to the right of the several faculties to regulate and modify the constitution of the university. The fully developed university was divided into four faculties: three superior, those of theology, canon law, and medicine; and one inferior, that of arts, which was divided into four student confederations, or nations (French, Picard, Norman, and English), including both professors and scholars from the respective countries. The head of each faculty was the dean; of each nation, the proctor. The rector in the first instance head of the faculty of arts eventually became the head of the collective university.
After the close of the Middle Ages, Paris came to be virtually reduced to a federation of colleges, though at Paris the colleges were less independent of university authority than was often the case elsewhere. Other major French universities of the Middle Ages were Montpellier, Toulouse, Orléans, Angers, Avignon, Cahors, Grenoble, Orange, and Perpignan.
The English universities
The University of Paris became the model for French universities north of the Loire and for those of central Europe and England; Oxford would appear to have been the earliest. Certain schools, opened early in the 12th century within the precincts of the dissolved nunnery of St. Frideswide and of Oseney Abbey, are supposed to have been the nucleus around which it grew. But the beginning may have been a migration of English students from Paris about 1167 or 1168. Immediately after 1168, allusions to Oxford as a studium and a studium generale begin to multiply. In the 13th century, mention first occurs of university “chests,” which were benefactions designed for the assistance of poor students. Halls, or places of licensed residence for students, also began to be established. Against periodic vicissitudes, such as student dispersions and plagues, the foundation of colleges proved the most effective remedy. The earliest colleges were University College, founded in 1249; Balliol College, founded about 1263; and Merton College, founded in 1264.
The University of Cambridge, although it came into existence somewhat later than Oxford, may reasonably be held to have had its origin in the same century. In 1112 the canons of St. Giles crossed the River Cam and took up their residence in the new priory in Barnwell, and their work of instruction acquired additional importance. In 1209 a body of students migrated there from Oxford. Then, about 1224, the Franciscans established themselves in the town and, somewhat less than half a century later, were followed by the Dominicans. At both the English universities, as at Paris, the mendicants and other religious orders were admitted to degrees—a privilege that, until the year 1337, was extended to them at no other university. Their interest in and influence at these three centres were consequently proportionately great.
In 1231 and 1233 royal and papal letters afford satisfactory proof that the University of Cambridge was already an organized body, with a chancellor at its head. Although both Oxford and Cambridge were modeled on Paris, their higher faculties never developed the same distinct organization; and, while the two proctors at Cambridge originally represented north and south, the nations are scarcely to be discerned. An important step was made, however, in 1276, when an ordinance was passed requiring everyone who claimed to be recognized as a scholar to have a fixed master within 15 days of his entry into the university. The traditional constitution of the English universities was in its origin an imitation of the Parisian, modified by the absence of the cathedral chancellor. But the feature that most served to give permanence and cohesion to the entire community at Cambridge was, as at Oxford, the institution of colleges. The earliest of these was Peterhouse, in 1284. All the early colleges were expressly designed for the benefit of the secular clergy.
Universities elsewhere in Europe
From the 13th to the 15th century, studia generalia or universities proliferated in central and northern Europe and were usually modeled on the University of Paris. Although the earliest was Prague, which existed as a studium in the 13th century and was chartered by Pope Clement VI in 1348, perhaps no medieval university achieved a more rapid and permanent success than Heidelberg. The University of Heidelberg, the oldest in the German realm, received its charter in 1386 from Pope Urban VI as a studium generale and contained all the recognized faculties—theology, canon law, medicine, and the arts, as well as civil law. In the subsequent 100 years, universities were founded at Cologne, Erfurt, Leipzig, Rostock, Freiburg, Tübingen, Ofen (Budapest), Basel, Uppsala, and Copenhagen.
Spain was also an important scene of developments in higher education. Valladolid received its charter in 1346 and attained great celebrity after it obtained the rank of studium generale and a universitas theologiae by a decree of Pope Martin V in 1418. Salamanca was founded in 1243 by Ferdinand III of Castile with faculties of arts, medicine, and jurisprudence, to which theology was added through the efforts of Martin V. The College of St. Bartholomew, the earliest founded at Salamanca, was noted for its ancient library and valuable collection of manuscripts. Other important early Spanish and Portuguese schools were Sevilla, Alcalá, and Lisbon.
General characteristics of medieval universities
Generally speaking, the medieval universities were conservative. Alexander Hegius and Rodolphus Agricola carried on their work as reformers at places such as Deventer in the Netherlands, remote from university influences. A considerable amount of mental activity went on in the universities; but it was mostly of the kind that, while giving rise to endless controversy, turned upon questions in connection with which the implied postulates and the terminology employed rendered all scientific investigation hopeless. At almost every university, the realists and nominalists represented two great parties occupied with an internecine struggle.
In Italian universities such controversies were considered endless and their effects pernicious. It was resolved, accordingly, to expel logic and allow its place to be filled by rhetoric, thereby effecting that important revolution in academic studies that constituted a new era in university learning and largely helped to pave the way for the Renaissance. The professorial body in the great Italian universities attained an almost unrivaled reputation throughout Europe. For each subject of importance there were always two—and sometimes three—rival chairs. While other universities became sectarian and local, those of Italy continued to be universal, and foreigners of all nations could be found among the professors.
The material life of the students was difficult. In order to aid the poorest, some colleges founded by clerical or lay benefactors offered board and lodging to a number of foundationers. Courses, too, could occasionally be difficult. The courses in theology were particularly long—eight years at the minimum (one could not be a teacher of theology in Paris before the age of 35). Many students preferred the more rapid and more lucrative paths of law and medicine. Others led the life of perpetual students, vagabond clerics, or disputatious goliards—the objects of repeated but ineffectual condemnation.
The methods of teaching are particularly well known in the case of Paris. The university year was divided into two terms: from St. Remi (October 1) to Lent and from Easter to St. Pierre (June 29). The courses consisted of lectures (collatio) but more often of explications of texts (lectio). There were also discussions and question periods. Examinations were given at the end of each term. The student could receive three degrees: the determinatio, or baccalaureate, gave him the right to teach under the supervision of a master; the licencia docendi was literally the “license to teach” and could be obtained at 21 years of age; and the doctorate, which marked his entrance into mastership and which involved a public examination.
Lay education and the lower schools
The founding of universities was naturally accompanied by a corresponding increase in schools of various kinds. In most parts of western Europe, there were soon grammar schools of some type available for boys. Not only were there grammar schools at cathedrals and collegiate churches, but many others were founded in connection with chantries and craft and merchant guilds and a few in connection with hospitals. It has been estimated, for example, that toward the close of the Middle Ages there were in England and Wales approximately 400 grammar schools for a population of about 2.5 million—although the number of their enrollments was generally quite small.
In fulfillment of its responsibility for education, the church from the 11th century onward made the establishment of an effective education system a central feature of ecclesiastical policy. During the papacy of Gregory VII (1073–85), all bishops had been asked to see that the art of grammar was taught in their churches, and a Lateran Council in 1215 decreed that grammar-school masters should be appointed not only in the cathedral church but also in others that could afford it. Solicitude at the centre for the advancement of education did not, however, result in centralized administration. It was the duty of bishops to carry out approved policy, but it was left to them to administer it, and they in turn allowed schools a large measure of autonomy. Such freedom as medieval schools enjoyed was, however, always subject to the absolute authority of the church, and the right to teach, as earlier noted, was restricted to those who held a bishop’s license. This device was used to ensure that all teachers were loyal to the doctrines of the church.
Knowledge of the teaching provided in the grammar schools at this period is too slight to justify an attempt at a description. No doubt the curriculum varied, but religion was all-important, with Latin as a written and spoken language the other major element in the timetable. There might have been instruction in reading and writing in the vernacular but, in addition to the grammar schools, there were writing and song schools and other schools of an elementary type. Elementary teaching was given in many churches and priests’ houses, and children who did not receive formal scholastic instruction were given oral teaching by parish priests in the doctrines and duties of the faith. The evidence of accounts, bills, inventories, and the like suggests that there was some careful teaching of writing and of an arithmetic that covered the practical calculations required in ordinary life. Literacy, however, was limited by the lack of printed materials; until the 15th century (when typesetting developed), books were laboriously cut page by page on blocks (hence they were known as block books) and consequently were rare and expensive. From the mid-15th century on, literacy increased as typeset books became more widely available.
Educational provision for girls in medieval society was much more restricted. Wealthy families made some provision in the home, but the emphasis was primarily on piety and secondarily on skills of household management, along with artistic “accomplishments.” Neither girls nor boys of the lowest social ranks—peasants or unskilled urban dwellers—were likely to be literate. Nor were girls of the artisan classes until the 16th century, when female teaching congregations such as the Ursulines, founded by Angela Merici, began to appear. There were, however, provisions for boys of the artisan class to receive sufficient vernacular schooling to enable them to be apprenticed to various trades under the auspices of the guilds.
There was an entirely different training for boys of high rank, and this created a cultural cleavage. Instead of attending the grammar school and proceeding to a university, these boys served as pages and then as squires in the halls and castles of the nobility, there receiving prolonged instruction in chivalry. The training was designed to fit the noble youth to become a worthy knight, a just and prudent master, and a sensible manager of an estate. Much of this knowledge was gained from daily experience in the household, but, in addition, the page received direct instruction in reading and writing, courtly pastimes such as chess and playing the lute, singing and making verses, the rules and usages of courtesy, and the knightly conception of duty. As a squire, he practiced more assiduously the knightly exercises of war and peace and acquired useful experience in leadership by managing large and small bodies of men. But this was a type of education that could flourish only in a feudal society; though some of its ideals survived, it was outmoded when feudalism was undermined by the growth of national feeling.
Pierre RichéJames BowenEducation in Asian civilizations: c. 700 to the eve of Western influence
India
During its medieval period, India was ruled by dynasties of Muslim culture and religion. Muslims from Arabia first appeared in the country in the 8th century, but the foundation of their rule was laid much later by Muḥammad Ghūri, who established his power at Delhi in 1192. The original Muslim rule was replaced successively by that of the Muslim Pashtuns and Mughals.
The foundations of Muslim education
Muslim educational institutions were of two types—a maktab, or elementary school, and a madrasa, or institution of higher learning. The content of education imparted in these schools was not the same throughout the country. It was, however, necessary for every Muslim boy at least to attend a maktab and to learn the necessary portions of the Qurʾān required for daily prayers. The curriculum in the madrasa comprised Ḥadīth (the study of Muslim traditions), jurisprudence, literature, logic and philosophy, and prosody. Later on, the scope of the curriculum was widened, and such subjects as history, economics, mathematics, astronomy, and even medicine and agriculture were added. Generally, not all the subjects were taught in every institution. Selected madrasas imparted postgraduate instruction, and a number of towns—Agra, Badaun, Bidar, Gulbarga, Delhi, Jaunpur, and a few others—developed into university centres to which students flocked for study under renowned scholars. The sultans and amirs of Delhi and the Muslim rulers and nobles in the provinces also extended patronage to Persian scholars who came from other parts of Asia under the pressure of Mongol inroads. Delhi vied with Baghdad and Córdoba as an important centre of Islamic culture. Indian languages also received some attention. The Muslim rulers of Bengal, for example, engaged scholars to translate the Hindu classics the Ramayana and the Mahabharata into Bengali.
Under the Pathan Lodis, a dynasty of Afghan foreigners (1451–1526), the education of the Hindus was not only neglected but was often adversely affected in newly conquered territories. The rulers generally tolerated Sanskrit and vernacular schools already in existence but neither helped the existing ones financially nor built new ones. At early stages, the maktabs and madrasas were attended by Muslims only. Later, when Hindus were allowed into high administrative positions, Hindu children began to receive Persian education in Muslim schools.
The Mughal period
The credit for organizing education on a systematic basis goes to Akbar (1542–1605), a contemporary of Queen Elizabeth I of England and undoubtedly the greatest of Mughal emperors. He treated all his subjects alike and opened a large number of schools and colleges for Muslims as well as for Hindus throughout his empire. He also introduced a few curricular changes, based on students’ individual needs and the practical necessities of life. The scope of the curriculum was so widened as to enable every student to receive education according to his religion and views of life. The adoption of Persian as the court language gave further encouragement to the Hindus and the Muslims to study Persian.
Akbar’s policy was continued by his successors Jahāngīr and Shah Jahān. But his great-grandson Aurangzeb (1618–1707) changed his policy with regard to the education of the Hindus. In April 1669, for instance, he ordered the provincial governors to destroy Hindu schools and temples within their jurisdiction; and, at the same time, he supported Muslim education with a certain religious fanaticism. After his death, the glory of the Mughal empire began gradually to vanish, and the whole country was overrun by warlords.
During the Mughal period, girls received their education at home or in the house of some teacher living in close proximity. There were special arrangements for the education of the ladies of the royal household, and some of the princesses were distinguished scholars. Vocational education was imparted through a system of apprenticeship either in the house of ustāds (teachers) or in kārkhānahs (manufacturing centres).
Muslim rulers of India were also great patrons of literature and gave considerable impetus to its development. Akbar ordered various Hindu classics and histories translated into Persian. In addition, a number of Greek and Arabic works were translated into Persian. Literary activities did not entirely cease even in the troubled days of later rulers. Men of letters were patronized by such emperors as Bahādur Shah and Muḥammad Shah and by various regional officials and landlords.
Such is the history of Muslim education in India. It resembles ancient Indian education to a great extent: instruction was free; the relation between the teachers and the taught was cordial; there were great centres of learning; the monitorial system was used; and people were preoccupied with theology and the conduct of life. There were, however, several distinctive features of Muslim education. First, education was democratized. As in mosques, so in a maktab or madrasa all were equal, and the principle was established that the poor should also be educated. Second, Muslim rule influenced the system of elementary education of the Hindus, which had to accommodate itself to changed circumstances by adopting a new method of teaching and by using textbooks full of Persian terms and references to Muslim usages. Third, the Muslim period brought in many cultural influences from abroad. The courses of studies were both widened and brought under a humanistic influence. Finally, Muslim rule produced a cross-cultural influence in the country through the establishment of an educational system in which Hindus and Muslims could study side by side and in which there would be compulsory education in Persian, cultivation of Sanskrit and Hindi, and translation of great classics of literature into different languages. Ultimately, it led to the development of a common medium of expression, Urdu.
Education in the Muslim era was not a concerted and planned activity but a voluntary and spontaneous growth. There was no separate administration of education, and state aid was sporadic and unsteady. Education was supported by charitable endowments and by lavish provision for the students in a madrasa or in a monastery.
The Muslim system, however, proved ultimately harmful. In the early stages genuine love of learning attracted students to the cultural centres, but later on “the bees that flocked there were preeminently drones.” The whole system became stagnant and stereotyped as soon as cultural communication was cut off from the outside world because of political disturbances and internecine wars. The Indian teachers were reduced to dependence on their own resources, and a hardening tradition that became increasingly unreceptive to new ideas reduced the whole process to mere routine.
S.N. MukerjiChina
The Tang dynasty (618–907 CE)
The Tang was one of China’s greatest dynasties, marked by military power, political stability, economic prosperity, and advance in art, literature, and education. It was an age in which Buddhist scholarship won recognition and respect for its originality and high intellectual quality and in which China superseded India as the land from which Buddhism was to spread to other countries in East Asia.
The Tang was known for its literature and art and has been called the golden age of Chinese poetry. There were thousands of poets of note who left a cultural legacy unsurpassed in subsequent periods and even in other lands. Prose writers also flourished, as did artists whose paintings reflected the influences of Buddhism and Daoism.
One of China’s greatest gifts to the world was the invention of printing. Block printing was invented in the 8th century and movable type in the 11th century. The first book printed from blocks was a Buddhist sutra, or set of precepts, in 868. Printing met the demand created by the increase in the output of literature and by the regularized civil service examination system. It also met the popular demand for Buddhist and Daoist prayers and charms. One historian (Kenneth Scott Latourette) noted that “as late as the close of the eighteenth century the [Chinese] Empire possibly contained more printed books than all the rest of the world put together.”
Education in the Tang dynasty was under the dominant influence of Confucianism, notwithstanding the fact that Buddhism and Daoism both received imperial favours. A national academic examination system was firmly established, and officials were selected on the basis of civil service examinations. But Confucianism did not dominate to the extent of excluding other schools of thought and scholarship. Renowned scholars were known to spurn public office because they were not satisfied with a narrow interpretation of Confucianism. Artists and poets were, in general, rebellious against traditional Confucianism.
An emperor in the 5th century ordered the establishment of a “School of Occult Studies” along with the more commonly accepted schools of Confucian learning. It was devoted to the study of Buddhism and Daoism and occult subjects that transcended the practical affairs of government and society. Such schools were often carried on by the private effort of scholars who served as tutors for interested followers.
The schools of Tang were well organized and systematized. There were schools under the central government, others under local management, and private schools of different kinds. Public schools were maintained in each prefecture, district, town, and village. In the capital were “colleges” of mathematics, law, and calligraphy, as well as those for classical study. There was also a medical school.
Semiprivate schools formed by famous scholars gave lectures and tutelage to students numbering in the hundreds. Students from Korea and Japan came to study in China and took back the lunar calendar and the Buddhist sects, as well as the examination system and the Confucian theories of government and social life. Chinese culture also penetrated Indochina.
The examination system was at this time given the form that remained essentially unchanged until the 20th century. Examinations were held on different levels, and for each a corresponding academic degree was specified. Interestingly, there was provision for three degrees, not unlike the bachelor’s, master’s, and doctor’s degrees of modern times. The first degree was the xiucai (“cultivated talent”), the second the mingjing (“understanding the classics”), and the third the jinshi (“advanced scholar”). The name of the second degree was in later periods changed to juren (“recommended man”). An academy of scholars later known as the Hanlin Academy was established for select scholars whom the emperor could call upon for advice and expert opinion on various subjects. Membership in this institution became the highest honour that could be conferred upon those who passed the jinshi degree with distinction. To be appointed a Hanlin scholar was to be recognized as one of the top scholars of the land. Among the services that they rendered were the administration and supervision of examinations and the explanation of difficult texts in literature, classics, and philosophy.
Examinations were given for students of medicine and for military degrees. The study of medicine included acupuncture and massage, as well as the treatment of general diseases of the body and those of eye, ear, throat, and teeth.
The Song (960–1279)
The Song was another dynasty of cultural brilliance. Landscape painting approached perfection, and cultural achievement was stimulated by the invention of movable type (first made of earthenware, then of wood and metal). This advance from the older method of block printing led to the multiplication of books; the printing of a complete set of the classics was a boon to literary studies in schools.
The rulers of Song were receptive to new ideas and innovative policies. The outstanding innovator of the dynasty was Wang Anshi, prime minister from 1068 to 1076. He introduced a comprehensive program of reform that included important changes in education; more emphasis was subsequently placed on the study of current problems and political economy.
Wang’s reforms met with opposition from conservatives. The controversy was only a phase of a deeper and more far-reaching intellectual debate that made the philosophical contributions of the Song scholars as significant as those of the Hundred Schools in the Zhou dynasty over a millennium earlier. Confucianism and the dominant mode of Chinese thinking had been subject to the challenge of ideas from legalism, Daoism, and Buddhism, and, despite the resistance of conservatives, the traditional views had to be modified. Outstanding Confucian scholars of conservative bent argued vigorously with aggressive proponents of new concepts of man, of knowledge, and of the universe. The result was Neo-Confucianism, or what some prefer to call rational philosophy. The most eminent Neo-Confucianist was Zhu Xi, a Confucian scholar who had studied Daoism and Buddhism. His genius lay in his ability to synthesize ideas from a fresh point of view. Song scholars distinguished themselves in other fields, too. Sima Guang’s Zizhi tongjian (“Comprehensive Mirror for Aid in Government”) was a history of China from the 5th century BCE to the 10th century CE. The result of 20 years of painstaking research, it consisted of 1,000 chapters prepared under imperial direction. A volume on architecture was produced that is still used today as a basic reference work, and a treatise on botany contained the most ancient record of varieties of citrus fruits then known in China. No less worthy of mention is an encyclopaedia titled Taiping yulan.
The general pattern of the school system remained essentially the same, with provision for lower schools, higher schools, and technical schools, but there was a broadening of the curriculum. A noteworthy development was the rise of a semiprivate institution known as the shuyuan, or academy. With financial support coming from both state grants and private contributions, these academies were managed by noted scholars of the day and attracted many students and lecturers. Often located in mountain retreats or in the woods, they symbolized the influence of Daoism and Buddhism and a desire to pursue quiet study far away from possible government interference.
The Mongol period (1206–1368)
The Mongols were ferocious fighters but inept administrators. Distrustful of the Chinese, they enlisted the services of many nationalities and employed non-Chinese aliens. To facilitate the employment of these aliens, the civil service examinations were suspended for a number of years. Later, when a modified form of examinations was in effect, there were special examinations for Mongol candidates to make sure of their admission into high offices.
The Mongols despised the Chinese and placed many limitations on them. Consequently, an aftermath of Mongol rule was a strong antiforeign reaction on the part of the Chinese, accompanied by an overanxious desire to preserve the Chinese heritage.
Despite the setback in Chinese culture under Mongol rule, the period was not devoid of positive cultural development. The increase in foreign contacts as a result of travel to and from China brought new ideas and new knowledge of other lands and other peoples. Mathematics and medicine were further influenced by new ideas from abroad. The classics were translated into the Mongol language, and the Mongol language was taught in schools.
Private schools and the academies of the Song dynasty became more popular. As a result of a decrease in opportunities for government appointment, scholars withdrew into the provinces for study and tutoring. Relieved of the pressure of preparing for the examinations, they applied their talents to the less formal but more popular arts and literary forms, including the drama and the novel. Instead of the classical form, they used the vernacular, or the spoken, language. The significance of this development was not evident until the 20th century, when a “literary revolution” popularized the vernacular tongue.
The Ming period (1368–1644)
The Ming dynasty restored Chinese rule. Ming was famous for its ceramics and architecture. There were excellent painters too, but they were at best the disciples of the Tang and Song masters. The outstanding intellectual contribution of the period was the novel, whose development was spurred by increases in literacy and in the demand for reading materials. Ming novels are today recognized as masterpieces of popular vernacular literature. Also of note was the compilation of Pencao kangmu (“Great Pharmacopoeia”), a valuable volume on herbs and medicine that was the fruit of 26 years of labour.
Of considerable scholarly and educational importance was the Yongle dadian (“The Great Canon of the Yongle Era”), which marked a high point in the Chinese encyclopaedic movement. It was a gigantic work resulting from the painstaking efforts of 2,000 scholars over a period of five years. It ran into more than 11,000 volumes, too costly to print, and only two extra copies were made.
The examination system remained basically the same. In the early period of the dynasty, the schools were systematized and regularized. In the latter part of the dynasty, however, the increasing importance of the examination system relegated the schools to a secondary position. The decline of the state-supported schools stimulated the further growth of private education.
The Manchu period (1644–1911/12)
Except for two capable emperors, who ruled for a span of 135 years at the beginning, the Manchu dynasty was weak and undistinguished. Under Emperors Kangxi and Qianlong, learning flourished, but there was little originality. The alien Manchu rulers concentrated on the preservation of what seemed best for stability and the maintenance of the status quo. They wanted new editions of classical and literary works, not creative contributions to scholarship.
Distrust of the Chinese by the Manchus and a feeling of insecurity caused the conquerors to erect barriers between themselves and the Chinese. The discriminatory policy was expressed in the administration of the examinations. To assure the appointment of Manchus to government posts, equal quotas were set aside for the Manchus and the Chinese, although the former constituted only about 3 percent of the population. The Chinese thus faced the keenest competition in the examinations, and those who passed tended to be brilliant intellects, whereas the Manchus could be assured of success without great effort.
Schools were encouraged and regulated during the early period of the dynasty. The public school system consisted of schools for nobles, national schools, and provincial schools. Separate schools were maintained for the Manchus, and for their benefit Chinese books were translated into the Manchu language. Village and charitable schools were supported by public funds, but they were neglected in later years so that, by the end of the dynasty, private schools and tutoring had overshadowed them.
At the threshold of the modern era, China had sunk into political weakness and intellectual stagnation. The creativity and originality that had brightened previous periods of history were now absent. Examinations dominated the educational scene, and the content of the examinations was largely literary and classical. Daoism and Buddhism had lost their intellectual vigour, and Confucianism became the unchallenged model of scholarship.
Much could be said for the Chinese examination system at its best. It was instrumental in establishing an intellectual aristocracy whereby the nation could be sure of a cultural unity by entrusting government to scholars reared in a common tradition, nurtured in a common cultural heritage, and dedicated to common ideals of political and social life. It established a tradition of government by civilians and by scholars. It made the scholars the most highly esteemed people of the land. The examinations provided an open road to fame and position. Chinese society was not without classes, but there was a high degree of social mobility, and education provided the opportunity for raising one’s position and status. There were no rigid prerequisites and no age limits for taking the examinations. Selection was rigorous, but the examinations were on the whole administered with fairness. The names of the candidates did not appear on the examination papers, and the candidates were not permitted to have any outside contacts while writing them.
Nevertheless, the system had serious drawbacks. The content of the examinations became more and more limited in scope. The Confucianist classics constituted the core, and a narrow and rigid interpretation prevailed. In early times, Chinese education was broad and liberal, but by the 19th century art, music, and science had been dropped on the wayside; even arithmetic was not accorded the same importance as reading and writing. Modern science and technology were completely neglected.
After alien rule by the Mongols, the Chinese were obsessed with restoring their heritage; they avoided deviating from established forms and views. This conservatism was accentuated under Manchu rule and resulted in sterility and stagnation. The creativity and original spirit of classical education was lost. The narrow curriculum was far removed from the pressing problems and changing needs of the 19th century.
Theodore Hsi-en ChenJapan
The ancient period to the 12th century
The Japanese nation seems to have formed a unified ancient state in the 4th century CE. Society at that time was composed of shizoku, or clans, each of which served the chōtei (“the imperial court”) with its specialized skill or vocation. People sustained themselves by engaging in agriculture, hunting, and fishing, and the chief problem of education was how to convey the knowledge of these activities and provide instruction in the skills useful for these occupations.
The influence of the civilizations of China and India had a profound effect on both the spiritual life and the education of the Japanese. Toward the 6th century the assimilation of Chinese civilization became more and more rapid, particularly as a result of the spread of Confucianism. Buddhism was also an important intellectual and spiritual influence. Originating in India and then spreading to China, Buddhism was transmitted to Japan through the Korean peninsula in the mid-6th century.
A monarchic state system with an emperor as its head was established following a coup d’état in 645. The subsequent Taika (Great Reform) era saw the beginning of many new institutions, most of which were primarily imitations of institutions of the Tang dynasty of China. In the field of education, a daigakuryō, or college house, was established in the capital, and kokugaku, or provincial schools, were built in the provinces. Their chief aim was to train government officials. The early curriculum was almost identical to that of the Tang dynasty of China but by the 8th and 9th centuries had been modified considerably to meet internal conditions, particularly as regarded the educational needs of the nobility.
Through the Nara and the Heian eras (8th–12th century), the nobility (kuge) constituted the ruling class, and learning and culture were the concern primarily of the kuge and the Buddhist monks. The kuge lived an artistic life, so that the emphasis of education came to be placed on poetry, music, and calligraphy. Teaching in the daigakuryō gradually shifted in emphasis from Confucianism to literature, since the kuge set a higher value on artistic refinement than on more spiritual endeavours. Apart from the daigakuryō, other institutions were established in which families of influential clans lodged and developed their intellectual lives.
The feudal period (1192–1867)
Education of the warriors
Toward the mid-12th century, political power passed from the nobility to the buke, or warrior, class. The ensuing feudal period in Japan dates from the year 1192 (the establishment of the Kamakura shogunate) to 1867 (the decline of the Tokugawa shogunate).
The warrior’s way of life was quite unlike that of the nobility, and the aims and content of education in the warrior’s society inevitably differed. The warrior constantly had to practice military arts, hardening his body and training his will. Education was based on military training, and a culture characteristic of warriors began to flourish. Some emphasis, though, was placed on spiritual instruction. The warrior society, founded on firm master–servant relations and centring on the philosophy of Japanese family structure, set the highest value on family reputation and on genealogies. Furthermore, because the military arts proved insufficient to enable warriors to grasp political power and thereby maintain their ruling position, there arose a philosophy of bumbu-kembi, which asserted the desirability of being proficient in both literary and military arts. Thus, the children of warriors attended temples and rigorously trained their minds and wills. Reading and writing were the main subjects.
Temples were the centres of culture and learning and can be said to have been equivalent to universities, in that they provided a meeting place for scholars and students. Education in the temple, originally aimed at instructing novitiates, gradually changed its character, eventually providing education for children not destined to be monks. Thus, the temples functioned as institutions of primary education.
Education in the Tokugawa era
In 1603 a shogunate was established by a warrior, Tokugawa Ieyasu, in the city of Edo (present Tokyo). The period thence to the year 1867—the Tokugawa, or Edo, era—constitutes the later feudal period in Japan. This era, though also dominated by warriors, differed from former ones in that internal disturbances finally ended and long-enduring peace ensued. There emerged a merchant class that developed a flourishing commoner’s culture. Schools for commoners thus were established.
Representative of such schools were the terakoya (temple schools), deriving from the earlier education in the temple. As time passed, some terakoya used parts of private homes as classrooms. Designed to be one of the private schools, or shijuku, the terakoya developed rapidly in the latter half of the Tokugawa era, flourishing in most towns and villages. Toward the end of the era they assumed the characteristics of the modern primary school, with emphasis on reading, writing, and arithmetic. Other shijuku—emphasizing Chinese, Dutch, and national studies, as well as practical arts—contributed to the diversification of learning and permitted students with different class and geographic backgrounds to pursue learning under the guidance of the same teacher. Their curricula were free from official control.
The shogunate established schools to promote Confucianism, which provided the moral training for upper-class samurai that was essential for maintaining the ideology of the feudal regime. Han, or feudal domains, following the same policy, built hankō, or domain schools, in their castle towns for the education of their own retainers.
The officially run schools for the samurai were at the apex of the educational system in the Tokugawa era. The Confucian Academy, which was known as the Shōheikō and was administered directly by the shogunate, became a model for hankō throughout Japan. The hankō gradually spread after about 1750, so that by the end of the era they numbered over 200.
The curriculum in the hankō consisted chiefly of kangaku (the study of books written in Chinese) and, above all, of Confucianism. Classics of Confucianism, historical works, and anthologies of Chinese poems were used as textbooks. Brush writing, kokugaku (study of thought originating in Japan), and medicine were also included. Later, in the last days of the shogunate, yōgaku, or Western learning, including Western medicine, was added in several institutions.
Both hankō for samurai and terakoya for commoners were the typical schools after the middle of the Tokugawa era. Also to be found, however, were gōgaku, or provincial schools, for samurai as well as commoners. They were founded at places of strategic importance by the feudal domain.
The various shijuku became centres of interaction among students from different domains when such close contact among residents of different areas was prohibited. They served as centres of learning and dialogue for many of those who later constituted the political leadership responsible for the Meiji Restoration of 1868.
Effect of early Western contacts
The Europeans who first arrived in Japan were the Portuguese, in 1543. In 1549 the Jesuit Francis Xavier visited Japan and, for the first time, the propagation of Christianity began. Many missionaries began to arrive, Christian schools were built, and European civilization was actively introduced.
In 1633 the shogunate, in apprehension of further Christian infiltration of Japan, banned foreign travel and prohibited the return of overseas Japanese. Further, in 1639, the shogunate banned visits by Europeans. This was the so-called sakoku, or period of national isolation. From that time on, Christianity was strictly forbidden, and international trade was conducted with only the Chinese and the Dutch. Because contact with Europeans was restricted to the Dutch, Western studies developed as rangaku, or learning through the Dutch language.
It is noteworthy that the Tokugawa period laid the foundation of modern Japanese learning. As a result of the development of hankō and terakoya, Japanese culture and education had developed to such an extent that Japan was able to absorb Western influences and attain modernization at a remarkably rapid pace after the Meiji Restoration.
Arata NakaNobuo ShimaharaEuropean Renaissance and Reformation
The channels of development in Renaissance education
The Muslim influence
Western civilization was profoundly influenced by the rapid rise and expansion of Islam from the 7th until the 15th century. By 732 CE, 100 years after the death of Muhammad, Islam had expanded from western Asia throughout all of northern Africa, across the Strait of Gibraltar into Spain, and into France, reaching Tours, halfway from the Pyrenees to Paris. Muslim Spain rapidly became one of the most advanced civilizations of the period, where much of the learning of the past—Oriental, Greek, and Roman—was preserved and further developed. In particular, Greek and Latin scholarship was collected in great libraries in the splendid cities of Córdoba, Sevilla (Seville), Granada, and Toledo, which became major centres of advanced scholarship, especially in the practical arts of medicine and architecture.
Inevitably, scholarship in the adjacent Frankish—and subsequent French—kingdom was influenced, leading to a revitalization of western Christian scholarship, which had long been dormant as a result of the barbarian migrations. The doctrines of Aristotle, which had been assiduously cultivated by the Muslims, were especially influential for their emphasis on the role of reason in human affairs and on the importance of the study of humankind in the present, as distinct from the earlier Christian preoccupation with the cultivation of faith as essential for the future life. Thus, Muslim learning helped to usher in the new phase in education known as humanism, which first took definite form in the 12th century.
The secular influence
The word humanism comes from studia humanitatis (“studies of humanity”). Toward the end of the Middle Ages, there was a renewed interest in those studies that stressed the importance of man, his faculties, affairs, worldly aspirations, and well-being. The primacy of theology and otherworldliness was over. The reductio artium ad theologiam (freely, “reducing everything to theological argument”) was rejected since it no longer expressed the reality of the new situation that was developing in Europe, particularly in Italy. Society had been profoundly transformed, commerce had expanded, and life in the cities had evolved. Economic and political power, previously in the hands of the ecclesiastical hierarchy and the feudal lords, was beginning to be taken over by the city burghers. Use of the vernacular languages was becoming widespread. The new society needed another kind of education and different educational structures; the burghers required new instruments with which to express themselves and found the old medieval universities inadequate.
The educational institutions of humanism had their origin in the schools set up in the free cities in the late 13th and the 14th centuries—schools designed to answer to the needs of the new urban population that was beginning to have greater economic importance in society. The pedagogical thought of the humanists took these transformations of society into account and worked out new theories that often went back to the Classical Greek and Latin traditions; it was not, however, a servile imitation of the pedagogical thought and institutions of the Classical world.
The Renaissance of the Classical world and the educational movements it gave rise to were variously expressed in different parts of Europe and at various times from the 14th to the 17th century; there was a connecting thread, but there were also many differences. What the citizens of the Florentine republic needed was different from what was required by princes in the Renaissance courts of Italy or in other parts of Europe. Common to both, however, was the rejection of the medieval tradition that did not belong in the new society they were creating. Yet the search for a new methodology and a new relation with the ancient world was bitterly opposed by the traditionalists, who did not want renewal that would bring about a profound transformation of society; and, in fact, the educational revolution did not completely abolish existing traditions. The humanists, for example, were not concerned with extending education to the masses but turned their attention to the sons of princes and rich burghers.
The humanists had the important and original conception that education was neither completed at school nor limited to the years of one’s youth but that it was a continuous process making use of varied instruments: companionship, games, and pleasure were part of education. Rather than suggesting new themes, they wanted to discover the method by which the ancient texts should be studied. For them, knowledge of the Classical languages meant the possibility of penetrating the thought of the past; grammar and rhetoric were being transformed into philological studies not for the sake of pedantic research but in order to acquire a new historical and critical consciousness. They reconstructed the past in order better to understand themselves and their own time.
The humanistic tradition in Italy
Early influences
One of the most influential of early humanists was Manuel Chrysoloras, who came to Florence from Constantinople in 1396. He introduced the study of Greek and, among other things, translated Plato’s Republic into Latin, which were important steps in the development of the humanistic movement.
Inspired by the ancient Athenian schools, the Platonic Academy established in Florence in the second half of the 15th century became a centre of learning and diffusion of Christian Platonism, a philosophy that conceived of all forms as the creative thoughts of God and that inspired considerable artistic innovation and creativity. Marsilio Ficino and Pico della Mirandola were two of the most original of the scholars who taught there. Florence was the first city to have such a centre, but Rome and Naples soon had similar academies, and Padua and Venice also became centres of culture.
A famous early humanist and professor of rhetoric at Padua was Pietro Paolo Vergerio (1370–1444). He wrote the first significant exclusively pedagogical treatise, De ingenuis moribus et liberalibus studiis (“On the Manners of a Gentleman and on Liberal Studies”), which—though not presenting any new techniques—did set out the fundamental principles by which education should be guided. He gave pedagogical expression to the ideal of harmony, or equilibrium, found in all aspects of humanism, and underlined the importance of the education of the body as well as of the spirit. The liberal arts were emphasized (“liberal” because of the liberation they reputedly brought). The program outlined by Vergerio focused upon eloquence, history, and philosophy but also included the sciences (mathematics, astronomy, and natural science) as well as medicine, law, metaphysics, and theology. The later subjects were not studied in depth; humanism was by its nature against encyclopaedism, but it brought out the relations between the disciplines and enabled students to know many subjects before they decided in which to specialize. Learning was not to be exclusively from books, and emphasis was placed on the advantages of preparing for social life by study and discussion in common. Vergerio felt that education should not be used as a means of entering the lucrative professions; medicine and law, especially, were looked on with suspicion if one’s aim in studying them was merely that of gaining material advantages.
Emergence of the new gymnasium
As a result of the renewed emphasis on Greek studies, early in the 15th century a definite sequence of institutions emerged. The gymnasium was the principal school for young boys and was preparatory to further liberal studies in the major nonuniversity institution of higher learning, the academy. Both terms, gymnasium and academy, were Classical revivals, but their programs were markedly different from those of ancient Greece. The gymnasiums appeared in ducal courts; they were created for the liberal education of privileged boys and as the first stage of the studia humanitatis. Outstanding among these early gymnasiums was the school conducted by Gasparino da Barzizza in Padua from 1408 to 1421, which was considered a model for later institutions, and more particularly the gymnasium of Guarino Veronese (1374–1460) and that of his contemporary Vittorino da Feltre (1378–1446).
Guarino had first established a school in 1415 in Venice, where he was joined by Vittorino. He subsequently moved to Ferrara where, from 1429 to 1436, he assumed responsibility for the humanist education of the young son of Nicolò d’Este, the lord of Ferrara. Guarino wrote no treatises, but something may be learned about his work and methods from his large correspondence and from De ordine docendi et studendi (1485; “On the Order for Teaching and Studying”), written by his son Battista. Guarino organized his students’ courses into three stages: the elementary level, at which reading and pronunciation were primarily taught, followed by the grammatical level, and finally the highest level, concentrating on rhetoric. The education given in his schools was perhaps the best example of the humanistic ideals, since it underlined the importance of literary studies together with a harmonious development of body and spirit, to the exclusion of any utilitarian purpose.
Vittorino was a disciple of both Barzizza and Guarino. He conducted boarding schools at Padua and Venice and, most importantly, from 1423 to 1446 one at Mantua, where he had been invited by the reigning lord, Gianfrancesco Gonzaga. This last school, known as La Giocosa (literally, “The Jocose, or Joyful”), soon became famous. At La Giocosa only those who had both talent and a modest disposition were accepted; wealth was neither necessary nor sufficient to gain admission. In fact, the school was one of the few efforts made during this period to extend education to a wider public. The program of study at La Giocosa was perhaps closer to the medieval tradition than that of the other boarding schools but, in any case, the spirit was different. Studies were stimulating; mathematics was taught pleasantly—Vittorino going back to very ancient traditions of practicing mathematics with games. After having studied the seven arts of the trivium (grammar, rhetoric, and logic) and the quadrivium (geometry, arithmetic, harmonics, and astronomy), students completed the cycle by a study of philosophy and then, having mastered this discipline, could go on to higher studies leading to such professions as medicine, law, philosophy, and theology. Italian was completely ignored at Vittorino’s school; all instruction was given in Latin, the study of which, along with Greek, reached a high level of excellence. Great importance was given to recreation and physical education; his concern for the health of his students did not come to an end with the scholastic year, for during the summers, when the cities became unhealthy, he would arrange for his students to go to Lake Garda or to the hills outside Verona.
Vittorino’s educational philosophy was inspired by a profound religious faith and moral integrity, which contrasted with the general relaxation of standards within the church itself; but, if he was severe with himself, he was very open and tolerant with his pupils. The school continued only for a while after his death because, more than in the case of the other schools, La Giocosa was identified with the personality of the founder.Education, discipline that is concerned with methods of teaching and learning in schools or school-like environments as opposed to various nonformal and informal means of socialization (e.g., rural development projects and education through parent-child relationships).
(Read Arne Duncan’s Britannica essay on “Education: The Great Equalizer.”)
Education can be thought of as the transmission of the values and accumulated knowledge of a society. In this sense, it is equivalent to what social scientists term socialization or enculturation. Children—whether conceived among New Guinea tribespeople, the Renaissance Florentines, or the middle classes of Manhattan—are born without culture. Education is designed to guide them in learning a culture, molding their behaviour in the ways of adulthood, and directing them toward their eventual role in society. In the most primitive cultures, there is often little formal learning—little of what one would ordinarily call school or classes or teachers. Instead, the entire environment and all activities are frequently viewed as school and classes, and many or all adults act as teachers. As societies grow more complex, however, the quantity of knowledge to be passed on from one generation to the next becomes more than any one person can know, and, hence, there must evolve more selective and efficient means of cultural transmission. The outcome is formal education—the school and the specialist called the teacher.
As society becomes ever more complex and schools become ever more institutionalized, educational experience becomes less directly related to daily life, less a matter of showing and learning in the context of the workaday world, and more abstracted from practice, more a matter of distilling, telling, and learning things out of context. This concentration of learning in a formal atmosphere allows children to learn far more of their culture than they are able to do by merely observing and imitating. As society gradually attaches more and more importance to education, it also tries to formulate the overall objectives, content, organization, and strategies of education. Literature becomes laden with advice on the rearing of the younger generation. In short, there develop philosophies and theories of education.
This article discusses the history of education, tracing the evolution of the formal teaching of knowledge and skills from prehistoric and ancient times to the present, and considering the various philosophies that have inspired the resulting systems. Other aspects of education are treated in a number of articles. For a treatment of education as a discipline, including educational organization, teaching methods, and the functions and training of teachers, see teaching; pedagogy; and teacher education. For a description of education in various specialized fields, see historiography; legal education; medical education; science, history of. For an analysis of educational philosophy, see education, philosophy of. For an examination of some of the more important aids in education and the dissemination of knowledge, see dictionary; encyclopaedia; library; museum; printing; publishing, history of. Some restrictions on educational freedom are discussed in censorship. For an analysis of pupil attributes, see intelligence, human; learning theory; psychological testing.
Education in primitive and early civilized cultures
Prehistoric and primitive cultures
The term education can be applied to primitive cultures only in the sense of enculturation, which is the process of cultural transmission. A primitive person, whose culture is the totality of his universe, has a relatively fixed sense of cultural continuity and timelessness. The model of life is relatively static and absolute, and it is transmitted from one generation to another with little deviation. As for prehistoric education, it can only be inferred from educational practices in surviving primitive cultures.
The purpose of primitive education is thus to guide children to becoming good members of their tribe or band. There is a marked emphasis upon training for citizenship, because primitive people are highly concerned with the growth of individuals as tribal members and the thorough comprehension of their way of life during passage from prepuberty to postpuberty.
Because of the variety in the countless thousands of primitive cultures, it is difficult to describe any standard and uniform characteristics of prepuberty education. Nevertheless, certain things are practiced commonly within cultures. Children actually participate in the social processes of adult activities, and their participatory learning is based upon what the American anthropologist Margaret Mead called empathy, identification, and imitation. Primitive children, before reaching puberty, learn by doing and observing basic technical practices. Their teachers are not strangers but rather their immediate community.
In contrast to the spontaneous and rather unregulated imitations in prepuberty education, postpuberty education in some cultures is strictly standardized and regulated. The teaching personnel may consist of fully initiated men, often unknown to the initiate though they are his relatives in other clans. The initiation may begin with the initiate being abruptly separated from his familial group and sent to a secluded camp where he joins other initiates. The purpose of this separation is to deflect the initiate’s deep attachment away from his family and to establish his emotional and social anchorage in the wider web of his culture.
The initiation “curriculum” does not usually include practical subjects. Instead, it consists of a whole set of cultural values, tribal religion, myths, philosophy, history, rituals, and other knowledge. Primitive people in some cultures regard the body of knowledge constituting the initiation curriculum as most essential to their tribal membership. Within this essential curriculum, religious instruction takes the most prominent place.
Education in the earliest civilizations
The Old World civilizations of Egypt, Mesopotamia, and North China
The history of civilization started in the Middle East about 3000 BCE, whereas the North China civilization began about a millennium and a half later. The Mesopotamian and Egyptian civilizations flourished almost simultaneously during the first civilizational phase (3000–1500 BCE). Although these civilizations differed, they shared monumental literary achievements. The need for the perpetuation of these highly developed civilizations made writing and formal education indispensable.
Egypt
Egyptian culture and education were preserved and controlled chiefly by the priests, a powerful intellectual elite in the Egyptian theocracy who also served as the political bulwarks by preventing cultural diversity. The humanities as well as such practical subjects as science, medicine, mathematics, and geometry were in the hands of the priests, who taught in formal schools. Vocational skills relating to such fields as architecture, engineering, and sculpture were generally transmitted outside the context of formal schooling.
Egyptians developed two types of formal schools for privileged youth under the supervision of governmental officials and priests: one for scribes and the other for priest trainees. At the age of 5, pupils entered the writing school and continued their studies in reading and writing until the age of 16 or 17. At the age of 13 or 14 the schoolboys were also given practical training in offices for which they were being prepared. Priesthood training began at the temple college, which boys entered at the age of 17; the length of training depending upon the requirements for various priestly offices. It is not clear whether or not the practical sciences constituted a part of the systematically organized curriculum of the temple college.
Rigid method and severe discipline were applied to achieve uniformity in cultural transmission, since deviation from the traditional pattern of thought was strictly prohibited. Drill and memorization were the typical methods employed. But, as noted, Egyptians also used a work-study method in the final phase of the training for scribes.
Mesopotamia
As a civilization contemporary with Egyptian civilization, Mesopotamia developed education quite similar to that of its counterpart with respect to its purpose and training. Formal education was practical and aimed to train scribes and priests. It was extended from basic reading, writing, and religion to higher learning in law, medicine, and astrology. Generally, youth of the upper classes were prepared to become scribes, who ranged from copyists to librarians and teachers. The schools for priests were said to be as numerous as temples. This indicates not only the thoroughness but also the supremacy of priestly education. Very little is known about higher education, but the advancement of the priestly work sheds light upon the extensive nature of intellectual pursuit.
As in the case of Egypt, the priests in Mesopotamia dominated the intellectual and educational domain as well as the applied. The centre of intellectual activity and training was the library, which was usually housed in a temple under the supervision of influential priests. Methods of teaching and learning were memorization, oral repetition, copying models, and individual instruction. It is believed that the exact copying of scripts was the hardest and most strenuous and served as the test of excellence in learning. The period of education was long and rigorous, and discipline was harsh.
North China
In North China, the civilization of which began with the emergence of the Shang era, complex educational practices were in effect at a very early date. In fact, every important foundation of the formation of modern Chinese character was already established, to a great extent, more than 3,000 years ago.
Chinese ancient formal education was distinguished by its markedly secular and moral character. Its paramount purpose was to develop a sense of moral sensitivity and duty toward people and the state. Even in the early civilizational stage, harmonious human relations, rituals, and music formed the curriculum.
Formal colleges and schools probably antedate the Zhou dynasty of the 1st millennium BCE, at least in the imperial capitals. Local states probably had less-organized institutions, such as halls of study, village schools, and district schools. With regard to actual methods of education, ancient Chinese learned from bamboo books and obtained moral training and practice in rituals by word of mouth and example. Rigid rote learning, which typified later Chinese education, seems to have been rather condemned. Education was regarded as the process of individual development from within.
The New World civilizations of the Maya, Aztecs, and Incas
The outstanding cultural achievements of the pre-Columbian civilizations are often compared with those of Old World civilizations. The ancient Mayan calendar, which surpassed Europe’s Julian calendar in accuracy, was, for example, a great accomplishment demonstrating the extraordinary degree of knowledge of astronomy and mathematics possessed by the Maya. Equally impressive are the sophistication of the Incas’ calendar and their highway construction, the development of the Mayan complex writing system, and the magnificent temples of the Aztecs. It is unfortunate that archaeological findings and written documents hardly shed sufficient light upon education among the Maya, Aztecs, and Incas. But from available documents it is evident that these pre-Columbian civilizations developed formal education for training the nobility and priests. The major purposes of education were cultural conservation, vocational training, moral and character training, and control of cultural deviation.
The Maya
Being a highly religious culture, the Maya regarded the priesthood as one of the most influential factors in the development of their society. The priest enjoyed high prestige by virtue of his extensive knowledge, literate skills, and religious and moral leadership, and high priests served as major advisers of the rulers and the nobility. To obtain a priesthood, which was usually inherited from his father or another close relative, the trainee had to receive rigorous education in the school where priests taught history, writing, methods of divining, medicine, and the calendar system.
Character training was one of the salient features of Mayan education. The inculcation of self-restraint, cooperative work, and moderation was highly emphasized in various stages of socialization as well as on various occasions of religious festivals. In order to develop self-discipline, the future priest endured a long period of continence and abstinence and, to develop a sense of loyalty to community, he engaged in group labour.
The Aztecs
Among the Aztecs, cultural preservation relied heavily upon oral transmission and rote memorization of important events, calendrical information, and religious knowledge. Priests and noble elders, who were called conservators, were in charge of education. Since one of the important responsibilities of the conservator was to censor new poems and songs, he took the greatest care in teaching poetry, particularly divine songs.
At the calmecac, the school for native learning where apprenticeship started at the age of 10, the history of Mexico and the content of the historical codices were systematically taught. The calmecac played the most vital role in ensuring oral transmission of history through oratory, poetry, and music, which were employed to make accurate memorization of events easier and to galvanize remembrance. Visual aids, such as simple graphic representations, were used to guide recitation phases, to sustain interest, and to increase comprehension of facts and dates.
The Incas
The Incas did not possess a written or recorded language as far as is known. Like the Aztecs, they also depended largely on oral transmission as a means of maintaining the preservation of their culture. Inca education was divided into two distinct categories: vocational education for common Incas and highly formalized training for the nobility. As the Inca empire was a theocratic, imperial government based upon agrarian collectivism, the rulers were concerned about the vocational training of men and women in collective agriculture. Personal freedom, life, and work were subservient to the community. At birth an individual’s place in the society was strictly ordained, and at five years of age every child was taken over by the government, and his socialization and vocational training were supervised by government surrogates.
Education for the nobility consisted of a four-year program that was clearly defined in terms of the curricula and rituals. In the first year the pupils learned Quechua, the language of the nobility. The second year was devoted to the study of religion and the third year to learning about the quipu (khipu), a complex system of knotted coloured strings or cords used largely for accounting purposes. In the fourth year major attention was given to the study of history, with additional instruction in sciences, geometry, geography, and astronomy. The instructors were highly respected encyclopaedic scholars known as amautas. After the completion of this education, the pupils were required to pass a series of rigorous examinations in order to attain full status in the life of the Inca nobility.
Nobuo ShimaharaEducation in classical cultures
Ancient India
The Hindu tradition
India is the site of one of the most ancient civilizations in the world. The Indo-European-speaking peoples who entered India in the 2nd millennium BCE established large-scale settlements and founded powerful kingdoms. In the course of time, a group of intellectuals, the Brahmans, became priests and men of learning; another group, of nobles and soldiers, became the Kshatriyas; the agricultural and trading class was called the Vaishyas; and artisans and labourers became the Shudra. Such was the origin of the division of the Hindus into four varnas, or “classes.”
Religion was the mainspring of all activities in ancient India. It was of an all-absorbing interest and embraced not only prayer and worship but also philosophy, morality, law, and government as well. Religion saturated educational ideals too, and the study of Vedic literature was indispensable to higher castes. The stages of instruction were very well defined. During the first period, the child received elementary education at home. The beginning of secondary education and formal schooling was marked by a ritual known as the upanayana, or thread ceremony, which was restricted to boys only and was more or less compulsory for boys of the three higher castes. The Brahman boys had this ceremony at the age of 8, the Kshatriya boys at the age of 11, and the Vaishya boys at the age of 12. The boy would leave his father’s house and enter his preceptor’s ashrama, a home situated amid sylvan surroundings. The acarya would treat him as his own child, give him free education, and not charge anything for his boarding and lodging. The pupil had to tend the sacrificial fires, do the household work of his preceptor, and look after his cattle.
The study at this stage consisted of the recitation of the Vedic mantras (“hymns”) and the auxiliary sciences—phonetics, the rules for the performance of the sacrifices, grammar, astronomy, prosody, and etymology. The character of education, however, differed according to the needs of the caste. For a child of the priestly class, there was a definite syllabus of studies. The trayi-vidya, or the knowledge of the three Vedas—the most ancient of Hindu scriptures—was obligatory for him. During the whole course at school, as at college, the student had to observe brahmacharya—that is, wearing simple dress, living on plain food, using a hard bed, and leading a celibate life.
The period of studentship normally extended to 12 years. For those who wanted to continue their studies, there was no age limit. After finishing their education at an ashrama, they would join a higher centre of learning or a university presided over by a kulapati (a founder of a school of thought). Advanced students would also improve their knowledge by taking part in philosophical discussions at a parisad, or “academy.” Education was not denied to women, but normally girls were instructed at home.
The method of instruction differed according to the nature of the subject. The first duty of the student was to memorize the particular Veda of his school, with special emphasis placed on correct pronunciation. In the study of such literary subjects as law, logic, rituals, and prosody, comprehension played a very important role. A third method was the use of parables, which were employed in the personal spiritual teaching relating to the Upanishads, or conclusion of the Vedas. In higher learning, such as in the teaching of Dharma-shastra (“Righteousness Science”), the most popular and useful method was catechism—the pupil asking questions and the teacher discoursing at length on the topics referred to him. Memorization, however, played the greatest role.
The introduction of Buddhist influences
By about the end of the 6th century BCE, the Vedic rituals and sacrifices had gradually developed into a highly elaborate cult that profited the priests but antagonized an increasing section of the people. Education became generally confined to the Brahmans, and the upanayana was being gradually discarded by the non-Brahmans. The formalism and exclusiveness of the Brahmanic system was largely responsible for the rise of two new religious orders, Buddhism and Jainism. Neither of them recognized the authority of the Vedas, and both challenged the exclusive claims of the Brahmans to priesthood. They taught through the common language of the people and gave education to all, irrespective of caste, creed, or sex. Buddhism also introduced the monastic system of education. Monasteries attached to Buddhist temples served the double purpose of imparting education and of training persons for priesthood. A monastery, however, educated only those who were its members. It did not admit day scholars and thus did not cater to the needs of the entire population.
Meanwhile, significant developments were taking place in the political field that had repercussions on education. The establishment of the imperialistic Nanda dynasty about 413 BCE and then of the even stronger Mauryas some 40 years later shook the very foundations of the Vedic structure of life, culture, and polity. The Brahmans in large numbers gave up their ancient occupation of teaching in their forest retreats and took to all sorts of occupations, the Kshatriyas abandoned their ancient calling as warriors, and the Shudras, in their turn, rose from their servile occupations. These forces produced revolutionary changes in education. Schools were established in growing towns, and even day scholars were admitted. Studies were chosen freely and not according to caste. Taxila had already acquired an international reputation in the 6th century BCE as a centre of advanced studies and now improved upon it. It did not possess any college or university in the modern sense of the term, but it was a great centre of learning with a number of famous teachers, each having a school of his own.
In the 3rd century BCE Buddhism received a great impetus under India’s most celebrated ruler, Ashoka. After his death, Buddhism evoked resistance, and a counterreformation in Hinduism began in the country. About the 1st century CE there was also a widespread lay movement among both Buddhists and Hindus. As a result of these events, Buddhist monasteries began to undertake secular as well as religious education, and there began a large growth of popular elementary education along with secondary and higher learning.
Classical India
The 500 years from the 4th century CE to the close of the 8th, under the Guptas and Harsha and their successors, is a remarkable period in Indian history. It was the age of the universities of Nalanda and Valabhi and of the rise of Indian sciences, mathematics, and astronomy. The university at Nalanda housed a population of several thousand teachers and students, who were maintained out of the revenues from more than 100 villages. Because of its fame, Nalanda attracted students from abroad, but the admission test was so strict that only two or three out of 10 attained admission. More than 1,500 teachers discussed more than 100 different dissertations every day. These covered the Vedas, logic, grammar, Buddhist and Hindu philosophy (Sankhya, Nyaya, and so on), astronomy, and medicine. Other great centres of Buddhist learning of the post-Gupta era were Vikramashila, Odantapuri, and Jagaddala. The achievements in science were no less significant. Aryabhata in the late 5th century was the greatest mathematician of his age. He introduced the concepts of zero and decimals. Varahamihira of the Gupta age was a profound scholar of all the sciences and arts, from botany to astronomy and from military science to civil engineering. There was also considerable development of the medical sciences. According to contemporaries, more than eight branches of medical science, including surgery and pediatrics, were practiced by the physicians.
These were the main developments in education prior to the Muslim invasions, beginning in the 10th century. Nearly every village had its schoolmaster, who was supported from local contributions. The Hindu schools of learning, known as pathasalas in western India and tol in Bengal, were conducted by Brahman acaryas at their residence. Each imparted instruction in an advanced branch of learning and had a student enrollment of not more than 30. Larger or smaller establishments, specially endowed by rajas and other donors for the promotion of learning, also grew in number. The usual centres of learning were either the king’s capital, such as Kanauj, Dhar, Mithila, or Ujjayini, or a holy place, such as Varanasi, Ayodhya, Kanchi, or Nasik. In addition to Buddhist viharas (monasteries), there sprang up Hindu mathas (monks’ residences) and temple colleges in different parts of the country. There were also agrahara villages, which were given in charity to the colonies of learned Brahmans in order to enable them to discharge their scriptural duties, including teaching. Girls were usually educated at home, and vocational education was imparted through a system of apprenticeship.
Indian influences on Asia
An account of Indian education during the ancient period would be incomplete without a discussion of the influence of Indian culture on Sri Lanka and Central and Southeast Asia. It was achieved partly through cultural or trade relations and partly through political influence. Khotan, in Central Asia, had a famous Buddhist vihara as early as the 1st century CE. A number of Indian scholars lived there, and many Chinese pilgrims remained there instead of going to India. Indian pandits (scholars) were also invited to China and Tibet, and many Chinese and Tibetan monks studied in Buddhist viharas in India.
The process of Indianization was at its highest in Southeast Asia. Beginning in the 2nd century CE, Hindu rulers reigned in Indochina and in the numerous islands of the East Indian archipelago from Sumatra to New Guinea for a period of 1,500 years. A greater India was thus established by a general fusion of cultures. Some of the inscriptions of these countries, written in flawless Sanskrit, show the influence of Indian culture. There are references to Indian philosophical ideas, legends, and myths and to Indian astronomical systems and measurements. Hinduism continued to wield its influence on these lands so long as the Hindus ruled in India. This influence ceased by the 15th century CE.
S.N. MukerjiAncient China
Ancient Chinese education served the needs of a simple agricultural society with the family as the basic social organization. Paper and the writing brush had not been invented, and the “bamboo books” then recorded to be in existence were of limited use at best. Oral instruction and teaching by example were the chief methods of education.
The molding of character was a primary aim of education. Ethical teachings stressed the importance of human relations and the family as the foundation of society. Filial piety, especially emphasizing respect for the elderly, was considered to be the most important virtue. It was the responsibility of government to provide instruction so that the talented would be able to enter government service and thus perpetuate the moral and ethical foundation of society.
The Zhou period
Xi (Western) Zhou (1046–771 BCE)
This was the feudal age, when the feudal states were ruled by lords who paid homage to the king of Zhou and recognized him as the “Son of Heaven.”
Schools were established for the sons of the nobility in the capital city of Zhou and the capital cities of the feudal states. Schools for the common people were provided within the feudal states in villages and hamlets and were attended, according to written records, by men and women after their work in the fields. There were elementary and advanced schools for both the ruling classes and the common people. Separate studies for girls were concerned chiefly with homemaking and the feminine virtues that assured the stability of the family system.
The content of education for the nobility consisted of the “six arts”—rituals, music, archery, charioteering, writing, and mathematics. They constituted what may be called the “liberal education” of the period. Mere memory work was condemned. As Confucius said of the ancient spirit of education, “learning without thought is labour lost.”
Dong (Eastern) Zhou (770–256 BCE)
This was a period of social change brought about by the disintegration of the feudal order, the breakdown of traditional loyalties, the rise of cities and urban civilization, and the growth of commerce.
The instability and the perplexing problems of the times challenged scholars to propose various remedies. The absence of central control facilitated independent and creative thinking. Thus appeared one of the most creative periods in China’s intellectual history, when the Hundred Schools of thought vied with one another to expound their views and proposals for attaining a happy social and political order. Some urged a return to the teachings of the sages of old, while others sought better conditions by radical change. Among the major “schools” of this age were Daoism, Confucianism, Mohism, and Legalism. No one school was in the ascendancy. Each major school had its followers and disciples, among whom there was a vigorous program of instruction and intellectual discussion. Most active in the establishment of private schools were Confucius and his disciples, but the Daoists, the Mohists, and the Legalists also maintained teaching institutions.
Another form of educational activity was the practice of the contending feudal states of luring to their domain a large number of scholars, partly to serve as a source of ideas for enhancing the prosperity of the state and partly to gain an aura of intellectual respectability in a land where the respect for scholars had already become an established tradition. The age of political instability and social disintegration was, thus, an age of free and creative intellectual activity. Conscious of their importance and responsibility, the scholars developed a tradition of self-respect and fearless criticism. It was this tradition that Confucius had in mind when he said the educated person was not a utensil to be used, and it was this spirit the Confucian philosopher Mencius described when he said that the great man was a man of principles whom riches and position could not corrupt, whom poverty and lowliness could not swerve, whom power and force could not bend.
The teachings of the Hundred Schools and the records of the feudal states meant a marked increase in literature and, consequently, in the materials for instruction. The classical age of China, the period of the Dong Zhou, left an intellectual and educational legacy of inestimable value. Its scholars propounded theories of government and of social and individual life that were as influential in China and East Asia as the Greek philosophers of almost contemporary age were in the Western world.
The Qin–Han period
Qin autocracy (221–206 BCE)
Of the various schools of thought that arose in China’s classical age, Legalism was the first to be accorded official favour. The policies of the Qin dynasty were based on Legalist principles stressing a strong state with a centralized administration. Many of its policies were so different from past practices that they incurred the criticism of scholars, especially those who upheld the examples of the ancient sages. To stop the criticism, the ruler—who called himself the first emperor—acting upon the advice of a Legalist minister, decreed a clean break with the past and a banning of books on history and of classics glorifying past rulers. Numerous books were collected and burned, and hundreds of scholars were put to death.
Though condemned for the burning of books and the persecution of scholars, the Qin dynasty laid the foundation for a unified empire and made it possible for the next dynasty to consolidate its power and position at home and abroad. In education, the unification efforts included a reform and simplification of the written script and the adoption of a standardized script intelligible throughout the country. First steps were taken toward uniform textbooks for the primary schools. The invention of the writing brush made of hair, as well as the making of ink, led to the replacement of the clumsy stylus and bamboo slips with writing on silk.
Scholarship under the Han (206 BCE–220 CE)
The Han dynasty reversed many of the policies of its short-lived predecessor. The most important change was a shift from Legalism to Confucianism. The banned books were now highly regarded, and the classics became the core of education. An assiduous effort was made to recover the prohibited books and to discover books and manuscripts that scholars had concealed in secret places. Much painstaking work was done in copying and editing, and the textual and interpretative studies of the Han scholars accorded a new importance to the study of the classics. The making of paper further stimulated this revival of learning. Critical examination of old texts resulted in the practice of higher criticism long before it developed in the West.
There were historians, philosophers, poets, artists, and other scholars of renown in the Han dynasty. Deserving special mention is Sima Qian, author of a monumental history of China from the earliest times to the 1st century BCE, whose high level of scholarship earned him the title “Chinese Father of History.” An illustrious woman of letters, Ban Zhao, was named poet laureate. A bibliographer collected and edited ancient texts and designated them as classics. The first dictionary of the Chinese language was written. Since the discovery and interpretation of ancient texts had largely been the work of Confucian scholars, Chinese scholarship from now on became increasingly identified with Confucianism. Most of the Han rulers gave official sanction to Confucianism as a basis of conducting government and state affairs. There was, however, no action to exclude other schools of thought.
There were a variety of schools on the national and local levels. Increasing activity in private education continued, and much of the study of the classics and enriched literature was done in private schools. Of considerable influence in the country and abroad was a national university with an enrollment that soared to 30,000. The classics now became the core of the curriculum, but music, rituals, and archery were still included. The tradition of all-round education in the six arts had not vanished.
Introduction of Buddhism
The Han dynasty was a period of territorial expansion and growth in trade and cultural relations. Buddhism was introduced at this time. Early information about Buddhism was probably brought into China by traders, envoys, and monks. By the 1st century CE an emperor became personally interested and sent a mission to India to seek more knowledge and bring back Buddhist literature. Thereafter Indian missionaries as well as Chinese scholars translated Buddhist scriptures and other writings into Chinese.
Indian missionaries not only preached a new faith but also brought in new cultural influences. Indian mathematics and astronomical ideas enriched Chinese knowledge in these fields. Chinese medicine also benefited. Architecture and art forms reflected Buddhist and Indian influence. Hindu chants became a part of Chinese music.
For a couple of centuries after its introduction, however, Buddhism showed no signs of popular appeal. Han scholarship was engrossed in the study of ancient classics and was dominated by Confucian scholars who had scant interest in Buddhist teachings that were unconcerned with the practical issues of moral and political life. Moreover, the Buddhist view of evil and the Buddhist espousal of celibacy and escape from earthly existence were alien to China’s traditions. Daoist scholars, finding in Buddhism much that seemed not too remote from their own spiritual message, were more inclined to study the new philosophy. Some of them aided in the translation of Buddhist texts, but they were not in the centre of the Han stage.
The fall of the Han dynasty was followed by a few hundred years of division, strife, and foreign invasions. China was not united again until the end of the 6th century. It was during this period that Buddhism gained a foothold in China. The literary efforts of Chinese monks produced a Chinese Buddhist literature, and this marked the beginning of a process that transformed an alien importation into a Chinese religion and system of thought.
Theodore Hsi-en ChenAncient Hebrews
Like all preindustrial societies, ancient Israel first experienced a type of education that was essentially familial; that is to say, the mother taught the very young and the girls, while the father assumed the responsibility of providing moral, religious, and handcraft instruction for the growing sons. This characteristic remained in Jewish education, for the relation of teacher to pupil was always expressed in terms of parenthood and filiation. Education, furthermore, was rigid and exacting; the Hebrew word musar signifies at the same time education and corporal punishment.
Once they were established in Palestine, at the crossroads of the great literate civilizations of the Middle East in the beginning of the 1st millennium BCE, the Jewish people learned to develop a different type of education—one that involved training a specialized, professional class of scribes in a then rather esoteric art called writing, borrowed from the Phoenicians. Writing was at first practical: the scribe wrote letters and drew up contracts, kept accounts, maintained records, and prepared orders. Because he could receive written orders, he eventually became entrusted with their execution; hence the importance of scribes in the royal administration, well-attested since the times of David and Solomon. The training given these scribes, moreover, included training of character and instilling the high ideal of wisdom, as would befit the servants of the king.
Writing found another avenue of application in Israel—in religion. And the scribe again was the agent of education. He was the man who copied the sacred Law faithfully and established the canonical text. He was the one who read the Law to himself and to the people, taught it, and translated it when Hebrew ceased to be the vernacular or “living language” (into Greek in Alexandria, into Aramaic in Palestine); he explained it, commented on it, and studied its application in particular cases. After the downfall of Israel in 722–721 BCE and Judah in 586 BCE and their subjection to foreign rule, Jewish education became characterized more and more by this religious orientation. The synagogue in which the community assembled became not merely a house of prayer but also a school, with a “house of the book” (bet ha-sefer) and a “house of instruction” (bet ha-midrash) corresponding roughly to elementary and secondary or advanced levels of education. Girls, however, continued to be taught at home.
The role of writing in this Oriental world should not be exaggerated, of course; oral instruction still held first place by far. Although a pupil might learn to read aloud, or rather to intone his text, his main effort was to learn by heart fragment after fragment of the sacred Law. Alongside this written Law, however, there developed interpretations or exegeses of it, which at first were merely oral but which progressively were reduced to writing—first in the form of memoranda or aide-mémoire inscribed on tablets or notebooks, then in actual books. The diffusion of this religious literature called for an expansion of programs of instruction, evolving into diverse stages: elementary, intermediate, and advanced—the latter in several centres in Palestine and later in Babylonia. This religiously based education was to become one of the most important factors enabling Judaism to survive the national catastrophes of 70 and 135 CE, involving the capture and subsequent destruction of Jerusalem. In their dispersion, the Jews clung to Hebrew, their only language for worship, for the study of the Law, for tradition, and consequently for instruction. From this evolved the respect with which the teacher was and is surrounded in Jewish communities.
Ancient Greeks
Origins
The history of the Hellenic language, and therewith of the Hellenic people, goes back to the Mycenaean civilization of about 1400–1100 BCE, which itself was the heir of the pre-Hellenic civilization of Minoan Crete. The Mycenaean civilization consisted of little monarchies of an Oriental type with an administration operated by a bureaucracy, and it seems to have operated an educational system designed for the training of scribes similar to those of the ancient civilizations of the Middle East. But continuity did not exist between this education and that which was to develop after a period of obscurity known as the Greek Dark Age, dating approximately from the 11th to the 8th century BCE.
When the Greek world reappeared in history, it was an entirely different society, one headed by a military aristocracy as idealized in Homer’s Iliad and Odyssey. During this period, sons of the nobility received their education at the court of the prince in the setting of a guild companionship of warriors: the young nobleman was educated through the counsel and example of an older man to whom he had been entrusted or had entrusted himself, a senior admired and loved. It was in this atmosphere of virile camaraderie that there developed the characteristic ideal of Greek love that was enduringly to mark Hellenic civilization and to deeply influence its conception of education itself—for example, in the relation of master to pupil. Yet these warriors of the Archaic period were not coarse barbarians; by this time the Homerids (reciters of Homer) and the rhapsodists (singers-reciters and sometimes creative poets) were taking the great epics of Homer and Hesiod throughout the far-flung Greek settlements of the Mediterranean, and a new, cultivated civilization was already emerging. Dance, poetry, and instrumental music were well developed and provided an essential element in the educational formation of the dominant elites. In addition, the idea of aretē was becoming central to Greek life. The epics of Hesiod and Homer glorified physical and military prowess and promoted the ideal of the cultivated patriot-warrior who displayed this cardinal virtue of aretē—a concept difficult to translate but embodying the virtues of military skill, moral excellence, and educational cultivation. It was an ethic of honour, which made virtues of pride and of jealousy the inspiration of great deeds and which accepted it as natural that one would be the object of jealousy or of enmity. Reverence for Homer—which until the end of antiquity (and in Byzantium even later) was to constitute the basis of Greek culture and therewith of Greek education—would maintain from generation to generation this “agonistic” ideal: the cult of the hero, of the champion, of high performance, which found an outlet outside the sphere of battles in games or contests (agōnes), particularly in the realm of athletics, the most celebrated being the Olympic Games, dating traditionally from 776 BCE.
Profound changes were introduced into Greek education as a result of the political transformations involved in the maturing of the city-state. There developed a collective ideal of devotion to the community: the city-state (polis) was everything to its citizens; the city made its citizens what they were—mankind. This subordination of the individual exploit to collective discipline was reinforced by the strategic military revolution that saw the triumph of heavy infantry, the hoplites, foot soldiers heavily armed and in tight formation.
Sparta
It is in Sparta, the most flourishing city of the 8th and 7th centuries BCE, that one sees to best advantage the richness and complexity of this archaic culture. Education was carried to a high level of artistic refinement, as evidenced by the events organized within the framework of the city’s religious festivals. The young men and women engaged in processions, dances, and competitions in instrumental music and song. Physical education had a like part, equally for both sexes, given status by national or international contests; the Spartans regularly took more than half of the first places at the Olympic Games. But military and civic education dominated, as it was expected that the citizen-soldier be ready to fight—and, if necessary, to die—for his country.
This last aspect became not merely dominant but exclusive from the time (about 550 BCE) when a conservative reaction triumphed at Sparta, bringing to power a militarist and aristocratic regime. Arts and sports gave way completely to an education appropriate to men of a warrior caste. The education of girls was subordinated to their future function as mothers; a strict eugenic regime pitilessly eliminated sickly and deformed children. Up to the age of seven, children were brought up by the women, already in an atmosphere of severity and harshness. Education—properly speaking, agōgē—lasted from age 7 to 20 and was entirely in the hands of the state.
The male youth of Sparta were enrolled into formations corresponding to successive age classes, divided into smaller units under the authority of comrades of their own age or of young officers. It was a collective education, which progressively removed them from the family and subjected them to garrison life. Everything was organized with a view to preparation for military service: lightly clothed, bedded on the bare ground, the child was poorly fed, told to steal to supplement his rations, and subjected to rigorous discipline. His virility and combativeness were developed by hardening him to blows—thus the role of ritual brawls between groups of boys and of the institution of the krypteia, a nocturnal expedition designed both to terrify the lower classes of slaves (helots) and to train the future fighter in ambushes and the ruses of warfare. He was also, of course, directly apprenticed to the military craft, using arms and maneuvering in close formation. This puritanical education, proceeding in a climate of austerity, had as its sole norm the interests of the state, erected into a supreme category; the Spartan was trained under a strict discipline to obey blindly the orders of his superiors. Curiously, the child was at the same time trained to dissimulation, to lying, to theft—all virtues when directed toward the foreigner, toward whom distrust and Machiavellianism were encouraged.
This implacably logical education enabled Sparta to remain for long the most powerful city, militarily and diplomatically, of the entire Greek world and to triumph over its rival Athens after the long struggle of the Peloponnesian War (431–404 BCE), but it did not prevent Sparta’s decadence. Not that Sparta ever relaxed its tension: on the contrary, in the course of centuries, the rigour and ferocity were accentuated even as such behaviour became more and more anachronistic and without real use. Rites of initiation were transformed into barbarous tests of endurance, the boys undergoing flagellation and competing in enduring it—sometimes to the very death—under the eyes of tourists attracted by the sadistic spectacle. This occurred in times of complete peace when, under the Roman Empire, Sparta was nothing but a little provincial city with neither independence nor army.
Athens
Beginning at a date difficult to fix precisely (at the end of the 7th or during the 6th century), Athens, in contrast to Sparta, became the first to renounce education oriented toward the future duties of the soldier. The Athenian citizen, of course, was always obliged, when necessary and capable, to fight for the fatherland, but the civil aspect of life and culture was predominant: armed combat was only a sport. The evolution of Athenian education reflected that of the city itself, which was moving toward increasing democratization—though it should be noted that the slave and the resident alien always remained excluded from the body politic. The Athenian democracy, even in its most complete form, attained in the 4th century BCE was to remain always the way of life of a minority—about 10 to 15 percent, it is estimated, of the total population. Athenian culture continued to be oriented toward the noble life—that of the Homeric knight, minus the warrior aspect—and this orientation determined the practice of elegant sports. Some of these, such as horsemanship and hunting, always remained more or less the privilege of an aristocratic and wealthy elite; however, the various branches of athletics, originally reserved for the sons of the great families, became more and more widely practiced.
Education of youth
Schools had begun to appear in those early centuries, probably on eastern Mediterranean models run by private teachers. The earliest references are, however, more recent. Herodotus mentions schools dating from 496 BCE and Pausanias from 491 BCE. The term used is didaskaleion (“a place for instruction”), while the generic term scholē, meaning leisure—a reference to schooling being the preserve of the wealthier sector—was also coming into use. There was no single institution; rather, each activity was carried out in a separate place. The young boy of privileged rank would be taken by a kind of chaperone, the paidagōgos, who was generally a respected slave within the parents’ household. The elements of literacy were taught by the writing master, known as a grammatistes, the child learning his letters and numbers by scratching them on a wax-coated wooden tablet with a stylus. More advanced formal literacy, chiefly in a study of the poets, playwrights, and historians, was given by the grammatikos, although this was restricted to the genuinely leisured. Supremely important was instruction in the mythopoeic legends of Hesiod and Homer, given by the lyre-playing kitharistes. In addition, all boys had to be instructed in physical and military activities in the wrestling school, known as the palaestra, itself part of the more comprehensive institution of the gymnasium.
The moral aspect of education was not neglected. The Athenian ideal was that of the kalos k’agathos, the “wise and good” man. The teachers were as much preoccupied with overseeing the child’s good conduct and the formation of his character as with directing his progress in the various subjects taught him. Poetry served to transmit all the traditional wisdom, which combined two currents: the ethic of the citizen expressed in the moralizing elegies of the 6th-century lawmaker Solon and the old Homeric ideal of the value of competition and heroic exploit. But this ideal equilibrium between the education of the body and that of the mind was interrupted before long as a result on the one hand of the development of professional sports and the exigencies of its specialization and on the other by the development of the strictly intellectual disciplines, which had made great progress since the time of the first philosophers of the 5th century BCE.
Higher education
A system of higher education open to all—to all, at any rate, who had the leisure and necessary money—emerged with the appearance of the Sophists, mostly foreign teachers who were contemporaries and adversaries of Socrates (c. 470–399 BCE). Until then the higher forms of culture had retained an esoteric character, being transmitted by the master to a few chosen disciples—as in the first schools of medicine at Cnidus and at Cos—or within the framework of a religious confraternity involving initiate status. The Sophists proposed to meet a new need that was generally felt in Greek society—particularly in the most active cities, such as Athens, where political life had been intensively developed. Henceforth, participation in public affairs became the supreme occupation engaging the ambition of Greek man; it was no longer in athletics and elegant leisure activities that his valour, his desire to assert himself and to triumph, would find expression but rather in political action.
The Sophists, who were professional educators, introduced a form of higher education whose commercial success attested to and was promoted by its social utility and practical efficacy. They inaugurated the literary genre of the public lecture, which was to experience a long popularity. It was a teaching process that was oriented in an entirely realistic direction, education for political participation. The Sophists pretended neither to transmit nor to seek for the truth concerning man or existence; they offered simply an art of success in political life, which meant, above all, being able on every occasion to make one’s point of view prevail. Two principal disciplines constituted the program: the art of logical argument, or dialectic, and the art of persuasive speaking, or rhetoric—the two most flourishing humanistic sciences of antiquity. These disciplines the Sophists founded by distilling from experience their general principles and logical structures, thus making possible their transmission on a theoretical basis from master to pupil.
To the pedagogy of the Sophists there was opposed the activity of Socrates, who, as inheritor of the earlier aristocratic tradition, was alarmed by this radical utilitarianism. He doubted that virtue could be taught—especially for money, a degrading substance. An heir of the old sages of former times, Socrates held that the supreme ideal of man, and hence of education, was not the spirit of efficiency and power but the disinterested search for the absolute, for virtue—in short, for knowledge and understanding.
It was only at the beginning of the 4th century BCE, however, that the principal types of Classical Greek higher education became organized on definitive lines. This was the result of the joint and rival efforts of two great educators: the philosopher Plato (c. 428–348/347), who opened his school—the Academy—probably in 387, and the orator Isocrates (436–338), who founded his school about 390.
Plato was descended from a long line of aristocrats and became the most distinguished of Socrates’ students. The indictment and execution of Socrates by what Plato considered an ignorant society turned him away from Athens and public life. After an absence of some 10 years, spent traveling the Mediterranean, he returned to Athens, where he founded a school near the grove dedicated to the early hero Acadēmos and hence known as the Academy. The select band of scholars who gathered there engaged in philosophical disputations in preparation for their role as leaders. Good government, Plato believed, would only come from an educated society in which kings are philosophers and philosophers are kings.
Plato’s literary dialogues provide a comprehensive picture of his approach to education. Basically, it was built around the study of dialectic (the skill of accurate verbal reasoning), the proper pursuit of which, he believed, enables misconceptions and confusions to be stripped away and the nature of underlying truth to be established. The ultimate educational quest, as revealed in the dialogues, is the search for the Good—that is, the ultimate idea that binds together all earthly existence.
Plato’s educational program is set out in his most famous dialogue, the Republic. The world, he argued, has two aspects: the visible, or that which is perceived with the senses; and the nonvisible, or the intelligible, which consists of universal, eternal forms or ideas that are apprehensible only by the mind. Furthermore, the visible realm itself is subdivided into two: the realm of appearances and that of beliefs. Human experiences of so-called reality, according to Plato, are only of visible “appearances” and from these can be derived only opinions and beliefs. Most people, he argued, remain locked in this visible world of opinion; only a select few can cross into the realm of the intelligible. Through a rigorous 15-year program of higher education devoted to the study of dialectics and mathematical reasoning, this elite (“persons of gold” was Plato’s term) can attain an understanding of genuine reality, which is composed of such forms as the Good, the True, the Beautiful, and the Just. Plato maintained that only those individuals who survive this program are really fit for the highest offices of the state and capable of being entrusted with the noblest of all tasks, those of maintaining and dispensing justice.
The rival school of Isocrates was much more down-to-earth and practical. It too aimed at a form of wisdom but of a much more practical order, based on working out commonsense solutions to life’s problems. In contrast to Plato, Isocrates sought to develop the quality of grace, cleverness, or finesse rather than the spirit of geometry. The program of study that he enjoined upon his pupils was more literary than scientific. In addition to gymnastics and music, its basics included the study of the Homeric classics and an extensive study of rhetoric—consisting of five or six years of theory, analysis of the great classics, imitation of the classics, and finally practical exercises.
These two parallel forms of culture and of higher education were not totally in conflict: both opposed the cynical pragmatism of the Sophists; each influenced the other. Isocrates did promote elementary mathematics as a kind of mental training or mental gymnastics and did allow for a smattering of philosophy to illumine broad questions of human life. Plato, for his part, recognized the usefulness of the literary art and philosophical rhetoric. The two traditions appear as two species of one genus; their debate, continued in each generation, enriched Classical culture without jeopardizing its unity.
Before leaving the Hellenic period, there is one other great figure to appraise—one who was a bridge to the next age, since he was the tutor of the young prince who became Alexander the Great of Macedonia. Aristotle (384–322 BCE), who was one of Plato’s pupils and shared some of his opinions about education, believed that education should be controlled by the state and that it should have as a main objective the training of citizens. The last book of his Politics opens with these words:
No one will doubt that the legislator should direct his attention above all to the education of youth.…The citizen should be moulded to suit the form of government under which he lives.
He shared some of Plato’s misgivings about democracy, but, because he was no recluse but a man of the world acquainted with public affairs, he declared his preference for limited democracy—“polity”—over other forms of government. His worldliness also led him to be less concerned with the search for ideas, in the Platonic mode, and more concerned with the observation of specific things. His urge for logical structure and classification, for systematization, was especially strong.
This systematization extended to a youth’s education. In his first phase, from birth to age seven, he was to be physically developed, learning how to endure hardship. From age seven to puberty his curriculum would include the fundamentals of gymnastics, music, reading, writing, and enumeration. During the next phase, from puberty to age 17, the student would be more concerned with exact knowledge, not only carrying on with music and mathematics but also exploring grammar, literature, and geography. Finally, in young manhood, only a few superior students would continue into higher education, developing encyclopaedic and intensely intellectual interests in the biological and physical sciences, ethics, and rhetoric, as well as philosophy. Aristotle’s school, the Lyceum, was thus much more empirical than Plato’s Academy.
The Hellenistic Age
Alexander the Great’s conquest of the Persian empire between 334 and 323 BCE abruptly extended the area of Greek civilization by carrying its eastern frontier from the shores of the Aegean to the banks of the Syr Darya and Indus rivers in Central and South Asia. Its unity rested henceforward not so much on nationality (it incorporated and assimilated Persians, Semites, and Egyptians) or on the political unity soon broken after the death of Alexander in 323 but on a common Greek way of life—the fact of sharing the same conception of man. This ideal was no longer social, communal in character, as had been that of the city-state; it now concerned man as an individual—or, better, as a person. This civilization of the Hellenistic Age has been defined as a civilization of paideia—which eventually denoted the condition of a person achieving enlightened, mature self-fulfillment but which originally signified education per se. The Greeks succeeded in preserving their distinctive national way of life amid this immense empire because, wherever numbers of them settled, they brought with them their own system of education for their youth, and they not only resisted being absorbed by the “barbarian” non-Hellenic peoples but also succeeded somewhat in spreading Greek culture to many of the alien elite. It is important to note that, although Hellenism was finally to be swept away in the Middle East by the Persian national renaissance and the invasions originating from Central Asia beginning in the 2nd century BCE, it continued to flourish and even expand in the Mediterranean world under Roman domination. Hellenistic civilization and its educational pattern were prolonged to the end of antiquity and even beyond; it was to be a slow metamorphosis and not a brutal revolution that would later give birth to the civilization and education strictly called Byzantine.
The institutions
Hellenistic education comprised an ensemble of studies occupying the young from age 7 to age 19 or 20. To be sure, this entire program was completed only by a minority, recruited from the rich aristocratic and urban bourgeois classes. The students were mostly boys (girls occupied only a very modest place), and of course they were usually free citizens (masters, though some slaves were given a professional education occasionally reaching a high level).
As in the preceding era, education continued to be dependent upon the city, which remained the primary frame of Greek life. To facilitate control of his empire, Alexander had commenced the process of founding a network of cities or communities organized and administered in the Greek manner. In effect, the creation of vast kingdoms did not eliminate the role of the city, even if the latter was not altogether independent; the Hellenistic state was not at all totalitarian and sought to reduce its administrative machinery to a minimum. It relied upon the cities to assume responsibility for public services, that of education in particular. The city, in turn, looked to the contributions of the richest and most generous private individuals, either by requiring them to fill magistracies and supply costly services or by appealing to their voluntary generosity; the proper functioning of the Hellenistic city presupposed the willing contributions of “benefactors.” Thus, certain educational institutions were supported—and in fact sometimes set up—by private foundations that specified exactly the use to be made of the income from their gift of capital. Many schools were private, the role of the city being limited to inspections and to the organization of athletic and musical competitions and festivals.
Physical education
The Hellenistic school par excellence was still the school of gymnastics, the practice of athletic sports and the nudity that they required being the most characteristic feature contrasting the Greek way of life with that of the barbarians. There were, at least in sufficiently large cities, several gymnasiums, separately for the different age classes and on occasion for the sexes. They were essentially palaestrae, or open-air, square-shaped sports grounds surrounded by colonnades in which were set up the necessary services: cloakrooms, washstands, training rooms, massage rooms, and classrooms. Outside there was a track for footraces, the stadion.
The foundation of the training always consisted of the sports properly called gymnastic and field. Horsemanship remained an aristocratic privilege. Nautical sports had a very modest role—a curious thing for a nation of sailors, but the fact is the Greeks were by origin Indo-Europeans from the interior of the Eurasian continent. The other sports—ball games and hockey—were considered merely diversions or at best preparatory exercises. As the competition of professional sports grew, however, education based on sports progressively—though no doubt very slowly—lost its preeminent position. The popularity of athletic sports as spectacle endured, but educational sports moved into the background, disappearing altogether in the Christian period (in the 4th century CE) in favour of literary studies.
There was a similar progressive decline, a similar final effacement, of artistic—particularly musical—education, the other survivor from the Archaic period. The art of music continued to flourish, but like sports it became the concern of professional practitioners and a feature of public spectacles rather than an art generally practiced in cultivated circles.
The primary school
The child from 7 to 14 years of age went to the school of letters, conducted thither, as in the Classical period, by the paidagōgos, whose role was not limited to accompanying the child: he had also to educate him in good manners and morals and finally to act as a lesson coach. Literacy and numeration were taught in the private school conducted by the grammatistes. Class sizes varied considerably, from a few pupils to perhaps dozens. The teaching of reading involved an analytical method that made the process very slow. First the alphabet was taught from alpha to omega and then backward, then from both ends at once: alpha–omega, beta–psi, and so on to mu–nu. (A comparable progression in the Latin alphabet would be A–Z, B–Y, and so on to M–N.) Then were taught simple syllables—ba, be, bi, bo—followed by more complex ones and then by words, successively of one, two, and three syllables. The vocabulary list included rare words (e.g., some of medical origin) chosen for their difficulty of reading and pronunciation. It took several years for the child to be able to read connected texts, which were anthologies of famous passages. With reading was associated recitation and, of course, practice in writing, which followed the same gradual plan.
The program in mathematics was very limited; rather than computation, the subject, strictly speaking, was numeration: learning the whole numbers and fractions, their names, their written notations, their representation in finger counting (in assorted bent positions of the fingers and assorted placements of either hand relative to the body). The general use of tokens and of the abacus made the teaching of methods of computation less necessary than it became in the modern world.
Secondary education
Between the primary school and the various types of higher education, the Hellenistic educational system introduced a program of intermediate, preparatory studies—a preliminary education, a kind of common trunk preparing for the different branches of higher culture, enkyklios paideia (“general, or common, education”). This general education, far from having “encyclopaedic” ambitions in the modern sense of the word, represented a reaction against the inordinate ambitions of philosophy and, more generally, of the Aristotelian ideals of culture, which had demanded the large accumulation of intellectual attainments. The program of the enkyklios paideia was limited to the common points on which, as noted earlier, the rival pedagogies of Plato and of Isocrates agreed—namely, the study of literature and mathematics. Specialized teachers taught each of these subjects. The mathematics program had not changed since the ancient Pythagoreans and comprised four disciplines—arithmetic, geometry, astronomy, and harmonics (not the art of music but the theory of the numerical laws regulating intervals and rhythm). The primary function of the grammatikos, or professor of letters, was to present and explicate the great classic authors: Homer first of all, of whom every cultivated man was expected to have a deep knowledge, and Euripides and Menander—the other poets being scarcely known except through anthologies. Although poetry remained the basis of literary culture, room was made for prose—for the great historians, for the orators (Demosthenes in particular), even for the philosophers. Along with these explications of texts, the students were introduced to exercises in literary composition of a very elementary character (for example, summarizing a story in a few lines).
The program of this intermediate education did not attain its definitive formulation until the second half of the 1st century BCE, after the appearance of the first manual devoted to the theoretical elements of language, a slim grammatical treatise by Dionysius Thrax. The program then consisted of the seven liberal arts: the three literary arts of grammar, rhetoric, and dialectic and the four mathematical disciplines noted above. (These were, respectively, the trivium and the quadrivium of medieval education, though the latter term did not appear until the 6th century and the former not until the 9th century.) The long career of this program should not conceal the fact that, in the course of centuries, it fell into disuse and became rather largely a theory or abstraction; in reality, literary studies gradually took over at the expense of the sciences. Of the four mathematical disciplines, only one remained in favour—astronomy. And this was not merely because of its connections with astrology but primarily because of the popularity of the basic textbook used to teach it—the Phaenomena, a poem in 1,154 hexameters by Aratus of Soli—whose predominantly literary quality was suited to textual explications. Not until about the 3rd and 4th centuries CE was the need of a sound preparatory mathematical education again recognized and put into practice.
Higher education
Higher education appeared in several forms, complementary or competitive. First was the ephebeia (“youth” culture), a kind of civic and military training that completed the education of the young Greek and prepared him to enter into life; it lasted two years (from 18 to 20) and corresponded quite closely to the obligatory military service of modern states. It was a survival from the regime of the old Greek city-states, but in the Hellenistic Age the absence of national independence erased all reason for this military training; between the 3rd and 2nd centuries BCE the Athenian ephebeia (eventually reduced to a single year) was transformed into a leisured civilian college where a minority of rich young men came to be initiated into the refinements of the elegant life. Military training came to play only a modest role and gave way to athletic competition. To this were added lectures on scientific and literary subjects, assuring the ephebe a polish of general culture. The same evolution took place in other cities: the ephebeia became everywhere more aristocratic than civic, more sporting than military. What the Greeks, especially those who had emigrated to the barbarian lands, demanded of it was above all that it initiate their sons into Greek life and its characteristic customs, beginning with athletic sports. Especially in Egypt, it was intended to legitimize the privileged status of the Hellene relative to the “native” Egyptian. In any event, the ephebeia no longer was the setting for the highest forms of education.
Formal education in science also lacked any institutionalization. There were, however, some establishments having scientific staffs of high competence, of which the most important was the Mouseion (Museum) established at Alexandria, richly endowed by the Ptolemies; but, at least initially, it was an institute for advanced research. If the scholars endowed there were also teachers, this meant only that they dispensed instruction to a small circle of chosen disciples. The same informal character of personal training was to be seen in all the special disciplines—medicine, for example, which saw such a fine development between the time of Hippocrates (5th century BCE) and that of Galen (2nd century CE). If there were in the Hellenistic era certain “schools” of medicine—old (Cnidus, Cos) and new (Pergamum, Alexandria)—these were less the equivalent of today’s medical faculties than simply centres to which the presence of numerous qualified masters attracted a large number of aspirants. Whatever theory these “students” were able to learn, they learned largely through self-training and practice—by associating themselves with a practicing physician whom they accompanied to the bedsides of patients, taking part in his consultations, profiting by his experience and advice.
Philosophy and rhetoric were subjects of education most highly institutionalized. Although philosophy was taught privately by individual masters-lecturers—who could be either itinerants or residents of one place—these teachers were well organized and, in groups, possessed a kind of institutional character. On the model of Plato’s Academy, the new Athenian schools of philosophy—Aristotle’s Lyceum, Epicurus’ Garden, the Porch (stoa), which gave its name to the Stoics—were brotherhoods in which the posts in both teaching and administration were passed from generation to generation as a kind of heritage. It was in philosophy that the personalistic character of the Hellenistic era most clearly asserted itself in contrast to the more communal idea of the preceding period; when philosophy turned to the problem of politics, for instance, it dealt less with the citizens of a republic and more with the sovereign king, his duties and character. The central problem was henceforth that of wisdom—of the purpose that man should set for himself in order to attain happiness, the supreme ideal. The teaching of philosophy was not entirely contemplative: it involved the disciple in an experience analogous to a religious conversion, a decision implying a revision of his life and the adoption of a generally ascetic way of life. Such a vocation, however, could obviously appeal only to a moral, intellectual, and financially secure elite; philosophers were always quite a small number within the Hellenistic (and Roman) intelligentsia.
The reigning discipline was always rhetoric. The prestige of the oratorical art outlived those social conditions that had inspired it; political eloquence operated only in the context of an embassy coming to plead the cause of a particular city or pressure group at the court of the sovereign. Legal eloquence maintained its function, and the profession of advocate retained its attractiveness, but it was above all the eloquence of showy set speeches—the art of the lecturer—that experienced a curious blossoming. Also, as a result of the customary habit of reading aloud, there was no sharp line between speech and the book; thus, eloquence imposed its rule upon all literary genres—poetry, history, philosophy. Even the astronomer and the physician became lecturers.
Hence, great importance was attached to the teaching of rhetoric, which developed from century to century with an ever more rigorous technicalism, precision, and systematization. The study of rhetoric had five parts: (1) invention (the art of finding ideas, according to standard schemes), (2) disposition (the arrangement of words and sentences), (3) elocution, (4) mnemonics (memory training), (5) and action. Action was the art of self-presentation, the regulation of voice and delivery and above all the art of reinforcing the word with the expressive power of gesture. Each of these parts, equally systematized to the tiniest detail, was taught with a technical vocabulary of extreme precision. Such an education—which in addition to theory comprised a study of the great examples to be imitated and exercises in practical application—required many years of study; in fact, even in maturity, the cultivated Hellene continued to deepen his knowledge of the art, to drill himself, to “declaim.”
A rivalry existed between philosophy and rhetoric, each trying to draw into its orbit the best and the most students. Even in the time of Plato and Isocrates, this rivalry did not proceed without mutual concessions and reciprocal influences, but it remained one of the most constant characteristics of the Classical tradition and continued until the end of antiquity and beyond. The long summer of Hellenic civilization was extended under the Roman domination; the great centres of learning also experienced a long prosperity. Athens in particular was the unchallenged capital of philosophy; its ephebeia welcomed foreigners to come to crown their culture in the “school of Greece.” Its masters of eloquence also had a solid reputation, even though they had competition from such schools of Asia Minor as those of Rhodes (in the 1st century CE) and Smyrna (in the 2nd century BCE). Under the later Roman Empire, Alexandria—already famous for medicine—competed with Athens for preeminence in philosophy. Other great centres developed: Beirut, Antioch, and the new capital Constantinople. The quality of the teachers and the number of students attending permits one to apply to these centres, without too much anachronism, the modern designation of “universities,” or institutions of advanced learning.
Ancient Romans
Early Roman education
The quality of Latin education before the 6th century BCE can only be conjectured. Rome and Roman civilization were then dominated by a rural aristocracy of landed proprietors directly engaged in exploiting their lands, even after the establishment of the republic. Their spirit was far removed from Greece and Homeric chivalry; ancient Roman education was instead an education suitable for a rural, traditional people—instilling in youth an unquestioned respect for the customs of the ancestors: the mos maiorum.
Education had a practical aspect, involving instruction in such farm management concerns as how to oversee the work of slaves and how to advise tenant farmers or one’s steward. It had a legal aspect; in contrast to Athenian law, which relied more on common law than on codified law, Roman justice was much more formalistic and technical and demanded much more study on the part of the citizen. Education also had a moral aspect, aiming at inculcating rural virtues, a respect for good management of one’s patrimony, and a sense of austerity and frugality. Roman education, however, did not remain narrowly utilitarian; it broadened in urban Rome, where there developed the same ideal of communal devotion to the public weal that had existed in Greece—with the difference that in Rome such devotion would never be called into question. The interests of the state constituted the supreme law. The ideal set before youth was not that of the chivalrous hero in the Homeric manner but that of the great men of history who, in difficult situations, had by their courage and their wisdom saved the fatherland when it was in danger. A nation of small farmers, Rome was also a nation of soldiers. Physical education was oriented not toward self-realization or competitive sport but toward military preparedness: training in arms, toughening of the body, swimming across cold and rapid streams, and horsemanship, involving such performances as mounted acrobatics and cavalry parades under arms.
Differing from the Greeks, the Romans considered the family the natural milieu in which the child should grow up and be educated. The role of the mother as educator extended beyond the early years and often had lifelong influence. If, in contrast to the girl, the boy at 7 years of age was allowed to move away from the exclusive direction of his mother, he came under the control of his father; the Roman father closely supervised the development and the studies of his son, giving him instruction in an atmosphere of severity and moral exigency, through precept but even more through example. The young Roman noble accompanied his father as a kind of young page in all his appearances, even within the Senate.
Familial education ended at age 16, when the adolescent male was allowed to wear adult dress—the pure white woolen toga virilis. He devoted one year to an apprenticeship in public life, no longer at his father’s side but placed in the care of some old friend of the family, a man of politics laden with years and honours. Then came military service—first as a simple soldier (it was well for the future leader to learn first to obey), encountering his first opportunity to distinguish himself by courage in battle, but soon thereafter as a staff officer under some distinguished commander. Civil and military, the education of the young Roman was thus completed in the entourage of some high personage whom he regarded with respect and veneration, without ceasing, however, to gravitate toward the family orbit. The young Roman was brought up not only to respect the national tradition embodied in the example of the illustrious men of the past but also very specifically to respect the particular traditions of his own family, which also had its great men and which jealously transmitted a stereotype, a specific attitude toward life. If ancient Greek education can be defined as the imitation of the Homeric hero, that of ancient Rome took the form of imitation of one’s ancestors.
Roman adoption of Hellenistic education
Something of these original characteristics was to survive always in Roman society, so ready to be conservative; but Latin civilization did not long develop autonomously.
It assimilated, with a remarkable faculty for adaptation, the structures and techniques of the much further evolved Hellenistic civilization. The Romans themselves were quite aware of this, as evidenced by the famous lines of Horace: “Captive Greece captivated her rude conqueror and introduced the arts to rustic Latium” (“Graecia capta ferum victorem cepit et artis intulit agresti Latio” [Epistles, II, i, 156]).
Greek influence was felt very early in Roman education and grew ever stronger after the long series of gains leading to the annexation of Macedonia (168 BCE), of Greece proper (146 BCE), of the kingdom of Pergamum (133 BCE), and finally of the whole of the Hellenized Orient. The Romans quickly appreciated the advantages they could draw from this more mature civilization, richer than their own national culture. The practical Romans grasped the advantages to be drawn from a knowledge of Greek—an international language known to many of their adversaries, soon to be their Oriental subjects—and grasped the related importance of mastering the art of oratory so highly developed by the Greeks. Second-century Rome assigned to the spoken word, particularly in political and legal life, as great an importance as had Athens in the 5th century. The Roman aristocrats quickly understood what a weapon rhetoric could be for a statesman.
Rome doubly adopted Hellenistic education. On the one hand, it came to pass that a Roman was considered truly cultivated only if he had the same education, in Greek, as a native Greek acquired; on the other hand, there progressively developed a parallel system of instruction that transposed into Latin the institutions, programs, and methods of Hellenistic education. Naturally, only the children of the ruling class had the privilege of receiving the complete and bilingual education. From the earliest years, the child, boy or girl, was entrusted to a Greek servant or slave and thus learned to speak Greek fluently even before being able to speak Latin competently; the child also learned to read and write in both languages, with Greek again coming first. (Alongside this private tutoring there soon developed, from the 3rd century BCE, a Greek public education in schools aimed at a socially broader clientele, but the results of this schooling were less satisfactory than the direct method enjoyed by the children of the aristocracy.) In following the normal course of studies, the young Roman was taught next by an instructor of Greek letters (grammatikos) and then by a Greek rhetorician. Those desiring more complete training did not content themselves with the numerous and often highly qualified Greeks to be found in Rome but went to Greece to participate in the higher studies of the Greeks themselves. From 119 or 118 BCE onward the Romans secured admission to the Ephebic College at Athens, and in the 1st century BCE such young Latins as Cicero were attending the schools of the best philosophers and rhetoricians at Athens and Rhodes.
Roman modifications
The adoption of Hellenistic education did not proceed, however, without a certain adaptation to the Latin temperament: the Romans showed a marked reserve toward Greek athleticism, which shocked both their morals and their sense of the deep seriousness of life. Although gymnastic exercises entered into their daily life, it was under the category of health and not that of sport; in Roman architecture, the palaestra or gymnasium was only an appendage of the public baths, which were exaggerations of their Greek models. There was the same reserve, on grounds of moral seriousness, toward music and dance—arts suitable for professional performers but not for freeborn young men and least of all for young aristocrats. The musical arts indeed became integrated into Latin culture as elements of the life of luxury and refinement but as spectacle rather than as amateur participation—hence their disappearance from programs of education. It must be remembered, however, that athletics and music were in Greece itself survivals of archaic education and had already entered upon a process of decline.
This education in a foreign language was paralleled by a course of studies exactly patterned upon those of the Greek schools but transposed into the Latin language. The aristocracy was to remain always attached to the idea of private education conducted within the family, but social pressure brought about the gradual development of public education in schools, as in Greece, at three levels—elementary, secondary, and higher; they appeared at different dates and in various historical contexts.
Education of youth
The appearance of the first primary schools is difficult to date; but the use of writing from the 7th century BCE implies the early existence of some kind of appropriate primary instruction. The Romans took their alphabet from the Etruscans, who had taken theirs from the Greeks, who had taken theirs from the Phoenicians. The early Romans quite naturally copied the pedagogy of the Hellenistic world: the same ignorance of psychology, the same strict and brutal discipline, the same analytical method characterized by slow progress—the alphabet (forward, backward, from both ends toward the middle), the syllabary, isolated words, then short sentences (one-line moral maxims), finally continuous texts—the same method for writing, and the same numeration, rather than computation.
It was only between the 3rd and the end of the 1st century BCE that Latin secondary education developed, staffed by the grammaticus Latinus, corresponding to the Greek grammatikos. Since the principal object of this education was the explication of poetry, its rise was hindered by the slowness with which Latin literature developed. The first-known of these teachers, Livius Andronicus, took as his subject matter his own Latin translation of the Odyssey; two generations later, Ennius explicated his own poetic works. Only with the great poets of the age of Augustus could Latin literature provide classics able to rival Homer in educational value; they were adopted as basic texts almost immediately after their appearance. Thereafter, and until the end of antiquity, the program was not to undergo further change, the principal authors being first of all Virgil, the comic author Terence, the historian Sallust, and the unchallenged master of prose, Cicero. The methods of the Latin grammarian were copied directly from those of his Greek counterpart; the essential point was the explication of the classic authors, completed by a theoretical study of good language using a grammar textbook and by practical exercises in composition, graduated according to a minutely regulated progression and always remaining rather elementary. Theoretically, the curriculum remained that of the seven liberal arts, but, as in Greece, it practically neglected the study of the sciences in favour of that of letters.
It was only in the 1st century BCE that the teaching of rhetoric in Latin was established: the first recorded Latin rhetorician, Plotius Gallus, appeared in 93 BCE in a political context—namely, as a democratic initiative to counter the aristocratic education given in Greek—and as such was soon prohibited by the conservative party in power. It was not until the end of the century and the appearance of the works of Cicero that this education would be revived and become normal practice. First, Cicero’s discourses offered the young Latin the equivalent of those of the Greek Demosthenes, and, second, Cicero’s theoretical treatises provided a technical vocabulary obviating the need for Greek manuals. But this instruction was to remain always very close to its Hellenistic origins: the terminology used by Rome’s greatest educator, Quintilian (c. 35–c. 100 CE), was much more impregnated with Hellenism, much less Latinized, than that which Cicero had proposed. At Rome, too, rhetoric became the form of higher education enjoying the greatest prestige; as in Greece, this popularity outlived the elimination of political eloquence. More than in Greece, legal eloquence continued to flourish (Quintilian had in mind particularly the training of future advocates), but—as in the Hellenic milieu—Latin culture became predominantly aesthetic: from the beginning of the empire, the public lecture was the most fashionable literary genre, and the teaching of rhetoric was very naturally oriented toward the art of the lecturer as the crowning achievement.
Higher education
Because the oratorical art was incontestably the most popular subject of higher education, the Romans did not feel the same urgency to Latinize the other rival branches of knowledge, which interested only a small number of specialists with unusual vocations. To be sure, the philosophical work of Cicero had the same ambition as his oratorical work and proved by its existence that it was possible to philosophize in Latin, but philosophy found no successors to Cicero as rhetoric did. There was never a Latin school for philosophy. Of course, Rome did not lack philosophers, but many used Greek as their means of expression (even the emperor Marcus Aurelius); those who, like Cicero, wrote in Latin—Seneca, for example—had taken their philosophy studies in Greek. It was the same in the sciences, particularly in the medical sciences; for long, there were no medical books in Latin except encyclopaedias on a popular level.
On the other hand, Rome created in the school of law another type of higher education—the only one that had no equivalent in Hellenistic education. The position of law in Roman life and civilization is, of course, well known. Perhaps even more than rhetoric, it offered young Romans profitable careers; very naturally, there developed an appropriate education to prepare them. At first elementary in character and entirely practical, it was given within the framework of apprenticeship: the professor of law (magister juris) was primarily a practitioner, who initiated into his art the group of young disciples entrusted to him; these listened to his consultations and heard him plead or judge. Beginning in Cicero’s time and undoubtedly under his influence, this instruction was paralleled by a systematic theoretical exposition. Roman law was thus promoted to the rank of a scientific discipline. True schools were progressively established and took on an official character; their existence is well attested beginning with the 2nd century CE. It was at this same time that legal education acquired its definitive tools, with the composition of systematic elementary treatises such as the Institutiones of Gaius, manuals of procedure, commentaries on the law, and systematic collections of jurisprudence. This creative period perhaps reached its peak at the beginning of the 3rd century CE. The works of the great legal authors of this time, which became classics, were offered by the law professor with much interpretation and explication—very similar to the way in which grammarians offered literature.
Rome, the capital, remained the great centre of this advanced study in law. At the beginning of the 3rd century, however, there appeared in the Roman Orient the school of Beirut. The teaching there was in Latin; and, to hear it and profit by the advantages that it offered for a high administrative or judicial career, many young Greeks enrolled at the school, in spite of the language obstacle. Only a legal career could persuade the Greeks to learn Latin, a language that they had always regarded as “barbarous.”
The Roman world became covered with a network of schools concurrent with the Romanization of the provinces. The primary school always remained private; on the other hand, many schools of grammar or rhetoric acquired the character of public institutions supported (as in the Hellenic world) either by private foundations or by a municipal budget. In effect, it was always the city that was responsible for education. The liberal central government of the high empire, anxious to reduce its administrative apparatus to a minimum, made no pretense of assuming charge of it. It was content to encourage education and to favour teaching careers by fiscal exemptions, and only very exceptionally did an emperor create certain chairs of higher education and assign them a regular stipend. Vespasian (69–79 CE) created two chairs at Rome, one of Greek rhetoric and the other of Latin rhetoric. Marcus Aurelius (161–180 CE) similarly endowed, in Athens, a chair of rhetoric and four chairs of philosophy, one for each of the four great sects—Platonism, Aristotelianism, Epicureanism, and Stoicism.
Education in the later Roman Empire
The dominant fact is the extraordinary continuity of the methods of Roman education throughout such a long succession of centuries. Whatever the profound transformations in the Roman world politically, economically, and socially, the same educational institutions, the same pedagogical methods, the same curricula were perpetuated without great change for 1,000 years in Greek and six or seven centuries in Roman territory. At most, a few nuances of change need be noted. There was a measure of increasing intervention by the central government, but this was primarily to remind the municipalities of their educational duties, to fix the remuneration of teachers, and to supervise their selection. Only higher education received direct attention: in 425 CE, Theodosius II created an institute of higher education in the new capital of Constantinople and endowed it with 31 chairs for the teaching of letters, rhetoric (both Greek and Latin), philosophy, and law. Another innovation was that the exuberant growth of the bureaucratic apparatus under the later empire favoured the rise of one branch of technical education, that of stenography.
The only evolution of any notable extent involves the use of Greek and Latin. There had never been more than a few Greeks who learned Latin, even though the growing machinery of administration and the increasing clientele drawn to the law schools of Beirut and Constantinople tended to increase the numerical size of this tiny minority. On the other hand, in Latin territory, late antiquity exhibited a general recession in the use of Greek. Although the ideal remained unchanged and high culture always proposed to be bilingual, most people generally knew Greek less and less well. This retrogression need not be interpreted solely as a phenomenon of decadence: it had also a positive aspect, being an effect of the development of Latin culture itself. The richness and worth of the Latin classics explain why the youth of the West had less time than formerly to devote to the study of the Greek authors. Virgil and Cicero had replaced Homer and Demosthenes, just as in modern Europe the ancient languages have retreated before the progress of the national languages and literatures. Hence, in the later empire there appeared specialists in intercultural relations and translations from Greek into Latin. In the 4th and particularly in the 5th century, medical education in Latin became possible, thanks to the appearance of a whole medical (and veterinary) literature consisting essentially of translations of Greek manuals. It was the same with philosophy: resuming Cicero’s enterprise at a distance of more than five centuries, Boethius (c. 480–524) in his turn sought with his manuals and his translations to make the study of that discipline available in Latin. Although the misfortunes of Italy in the 6th century—including the Lombardian invasion—did not permit this hope to be realized, the work of Boethius later nourished the medieval renaissance of philosophic thought.
Nothing better demonstrates the prestige and the allure of Classical culture than the attitude taken toward it by the Christians. This new religion could have organized an original system of education analogous to that of the rabbinical school—that is, one in which children learned through study of the Holy Scriptures—but it did not do so. Usually, Christians were content to have both their special religious education provided by the church and the family and their Classical instruction received in the schools and shared with the pagans. Thus, they maintained the tradition of the empire after it had become Christian. Certainly, in their view, the education dispensed by these schools must have presented many dangers, inasmuch as Classical culture was bound up with its pagan past (at the beginning of the 3rd century the profession of schoolteacher was among those that disqualified one from baptism); but the utility of Classical culture was so evident that they considered it necessary to send their children to these same schools in which they barred themselves from teaching. From Tertullian to St. Basil the Great of Caesarea, Christian scholars were ever mindful of the dangers presented by the study of the classics, the idolatry and immorality that they promoted; nevertheless, they sought to show how the Christian could make good use of them.
With the passage of time and the general conversion of Roman society and particularly of its ruling class, Christianity, overcoming its reserve, completely assimilated and took over Classical education. In the 4th century Christians were occupying teaching positions at all levels—from schoolmasters and grammarians to the highest chairs of eloquence. In his treatise De doctrina Christiana (426), St. Augustine formulated the theory of this new Christian culture: being a religion of the Book, Christianity required a certain level of literacy and literary understanding; the explication of the Bible required the methods of the grammarian; preaching a new field of action required rhetoric; theology required the equipment of philosophy. The synthesis of Christianity and Classical education had become so intimate that, when the “barbarian” invasions swept away the traditional school along with many other imperial and Roman institutions, the church, needing a literary culture for the education of its clergy, kept alive the cultural tradition that Rome had received from the Hellenistic world.
Henri-Irénée MarrouJames BowenEducation in Persian, Byzantine, early Russian, and Islamic civilizations
Ancient Persia
The ancient Persian empire began when Cyrus II the Great initiated his conquests in 559 BCE. Three elements dominated this ancient Persian civilization: (1) a rigorous and challenging physical environment, (2) the activist and positive Zoroastrian religion and ethics, and (3) a militant, expansionist people. These elements developed in the Persians an adventurous personality mingled with intense national feelings.
In the early period (559–330 BCE), known as the Achaemenian period for the ancestor of Cyrus and his successors, education was sustained by Zoroastrian ethics and the requirements of a military society and aimed at serving the needs of four social classes: priests, warriors, tillers of the soil, and merchants. Three principles sustained Zoroastrian ethics: the development of good thoughts, of good words, and of good actions. Achaemenian Zoroastrian education stressed strong family ties and community feelings, acceptance of imperial authority, religious indoctrination, and military discipline.
Education was a private enterprise. Formative education was carried on in the home and continued after the age of seven in court schools for children of the upper classes. Secondary and higher education included training in law to prepare for government service, as well as medicine, arithmetic, geography, music, and astronomy. There were also special military schools.
In 330 BCE Persia was conquered by Alexander the Great, and native Persian or Zoroastrian education was largely eclipsed by Hellenistic education. Greek practices continued during the Parthian empire (247 BCE–224 CE), founded by seminomadic conquerors from the Caspian steppes. Thus, truly Persian influences were not restored until the appearance of a new, more sophisticated and reform-minded dynasty, the Sāsānians, in the 3rd century CE. In what has been called the neo-Persian empire of the Sāsānians (224–651 CE), the Achaemenian social structure and education were revived and further developed and modified. Zoroastrian ethics, though more advanced than during the Achaemenian period, emphasized similar moral principles but with new stress upon the necessity for labour (particularly agriculture), upon the sanctity of marriage and family devotion, and upon the cultivation of respect for law and of intellectualism—all giving to education a strong moral, social, and national foundation. The subject matter of basic education included physical and military exercises, reading (Pahlavi alphabet), writing (on wooden tablets), arithmetic, and the fine arts.
The greatest achievement of Sāsānian education was in higher education, particularly as it developed in the Academy of Gondēshāpūr. There Zoroastrian culture, Indian and Greek sciences, Alexandrian-Syrian thought, medical training, theology, philosophy, and other disciplines developed to a high degree, making Gondēshāpūr the most advanced academic centre of learning in the later period of Sāsānian civilization. Students from various parts of the world came to the academy, which advanced, among other subjects, Zoroastrian, Greek, and Indian philosophies; Persian, Hellenic, and Indian astronomy; Zoroastrian ethics, theology, and religion; law, government, and finance; and various branches of medicine. It was partly through the Academy of Gondēshāpūr that important elements of Classical Greek and Roman learning reached the Muslims during the 8th and 9th centuries CE and through them, in Latin translations of Arabic works, the Schoolmen of western Europe during the 12th and 13th centuries.
Mehdi K. NakosteenThe Byzantine Empire
The Byzantine Empire was a continuation of the Roman Empire in the eastern Mediterranean area after the loss of the western provinces to Germanic kingdoms in the 5th century. Although it lost some of its eastern lands to the Muslims in the 7th century, it lasted until Constantinople—the new capital founded by the Roman emperor Constantine the Great in 330—fell to the Ottoman Turks in 1453. The empire was seriously weakened in 1204 when, as a result of the Fourth Crusade, its lands were partitioned and Constantinople captured, but until then it had remained a powerful centralized state, with a common Christian faith, an efficient administration, and a shared Greek culture. This culture, already Christianized in the 4th and 5th centuries, was maintained and transmitted by an educational system that was inherited from the Greco-Roman past and based on the study and imitation of Classical Greek literature.
Stages of education
There were three stages of education. The basic skills of reading and writing were taught by the elementary-school master, or grammatistes, whose pupils generally ranged from 6 or 7 to 10 years of age. The secondary-school master, or grammatikos, supervised the study and appreciation of Classical literature and of literary Greek—from which the spoken Greek of everyday life differed more and more in the course of time—and Latin (until the 6th century). His pupils ranged in age from 10 to 15 or 16. Next, the rhetorician, or rhētor, taught pupils how to express themselves with clarity, elegance, and persuasiveness, in imitation of Classical models. Speaking style was deemed more important than content or original thinking. An optional fourth stage was provided by the teacher of philosophy, who introduced pupils to some of the topics of ancient philosophy, often by reading and discussing works of Plato or Aristotle. Rhetoric and philosophy formed the main content of higher education.
Elementary education was widely available throughout most of the empire’s existence, not only in towns but occasionally in the countryside as well. Literacy was therefore much more widespread than in western Europe, at least until the 12th century. Secondary education was confined to the larger cities. Pupils desiring higher education almost always had to go to Constantinople, which became the cultural centre of the empire after the loss to the Muslim Arabs of Syria, Palestine, and Egypt in the 7th century. Monasteries sometimes had schools in which young novices were educated, but they did not teach lay pupils. Girls did not normally attend schools, but the daughters of the upper classes were often educated by private tutors. Many women were literate, and some—such as the hymnographer Kasia (9th century) and the historian-princess Anna Comnena (1083–c. 1153)—were recognized as writers of distinction.
Elementary education
Elementary-school pupils were taught to read and write individual letters first, then syllables, and finally short texts, often passages from the Psalms. They probably also learned simple arithmetic at this stage. Teachers had a humble social status and depended on the fees paid by parents for their livelihood. They usually held classes in their own homes or on church porches but were sometimes employed as private tutors by wealthy households. They had no assistants and used no textbooks. Teaching methods emphasized memorization and copying exercises, reinforced by rewards and punishments.
Secondary education
The secondary-school teacher taught the grammar and vocabulary of Classical and ecclesiastical Greek literature from the Hellenistic and Roman periods and explained the elements of Classical mythology and history that were necessary for the study of a limited selection of ancient Greek texts, mainly poetry, beginning with Homer. The most commonly used textbook was the brief grammar by Dionysius Thrax; numerous and repetitive later commentaries on the book were also frequently used. From the 9th century on, these books were sometimes supplemented with the Canons of Theognostos, a collection of brief rules of orthography and grammar. The grammatikos might also make use of anonymous texts dating from late antiquity, which offered word-by-word grammatical explanations of Homer’s Iliad, or of similar texts on the Psalms by Georgius Choiroboscos (early 9th century). Pupils would not normally possess copies of these textbooks, since handwritten books were very expensive, but would learn the rules by rote from their teacher’s dictation. Beginning in the 11th century, much use was made in secondary education of schedē (literally, “sketches” or “improvisations”), short prose texts that often ended in a few lines of verse. These were specially written by a teacher to illustrate points of grammar or style. From the early 14th century on, much use was also made of erotemata, systematic collections of questions and answers on grammar that the pupil learned by heart.
Secondary schools often had more than one teacher, and the older pupils were often expected to help teach their juniors. Schools of this kind had little institutional continuity, however. The most lasting schools were those conducted in churches.
Higher education
The rhetorician’s textbooks included systematic handbooks of the art of rhetoric, model texts with detailed commentaries, and specimens of oratory by Classical or post-Classical Greek writers and by Church Fathers, in particular Gregory of Nazianzus. Many Byzantine handbooks of rhetoric survive from all periods. They are often anonymous and always derivative, mostly based directly or indirectly on the treatises of Hermogenes of Tarsus (late 2nd century CE). There is little innovation in the theory of rhetoric they expound. After studying models, pupils went on to compose and deliver speeches on various general topics.
Until the early 6th century there was a flourishing school of Neoplatonic philosophy in Athens, but it was repressed or abolished in 529 because of the active paganism of its professors. A similar but Christian school in Alexandria survived until the Arab conquest of Egypt in 640. For the next five centuries, philosophical teaching seems to have been limited to simple surveys of Aristotle’s logic. In the 11th century, however, there was a renewal of interest in the Greek philosophical tradition, and many commentaries on works of Aristotle were composed, evidently for use in teaching. In the early 15th century the philosopher George Gemistos Plethon revived interest in Plato, who until then had been neglected for Aristotle. All philosophical teaching in the Byzantine world was concerned with the explanation of texts rather than with the analysis of problems.
Because higher education provided learned and articulate personnel for the sophisticated bureaucracies of state and church, it was often supported and controlled officially, although private education always existed as well. There were officially appointed teachers in Constantinople in the 4th century, and in 425 the emperor Theodosius II established professorships of Greek and Latin grammar, rhetoric, and philosophy. However, these probably did not survive the great crisis of the Arab and Slav invasions of the 7th century. In the 9th century, the School of Magnaura—an institution of higher learning—was founded by imperial decree. In the 11th century, Constantine IX established new schools of philosophy and law at the Capitol School in Constantinople. Both survived until the 12th century, when the school under the control of the patriarch of Constantinople—with teachers of grammar, rhetoric, and biblical studies—gained predominance. After the interval of Western rule in Constantinople (1204–61), both emperors and patriarchs gave sporadic support to higher education in the capital. As the power, wealth, and territory of the empire were eroded in the 14th and 15th centuries, the church became the principal and ultimately the only patron of higher education.
Professional education
Teaching of such professional subjects as medicine, law, and architecture was largely a matter of apprenticeship, although at various times there was some imperially supported or institutionalized teaching.
Strangely, there is little sign of systematic teaching of theology, apart from that given by the professors of biblical studies in the 12th-century patriarchal school. Studious reading of works by the Church Fathers was the principal path to theological knowledge in Byzantium, both for clergy and for laymen. Nonetheless, religious orthodoxy—or faith—was Byzantium’s greatest strength. It held the empire together for more than 1,000 years against eastern invaders. Faith was also the Byzantine culture’s chief limitation, choking originality in the sciences and the practical arts. But within this limitation it preserved the literature, science, and philosophy of Classical Greece in recopied texts, some of which escaped the plunders of the Crusaders and were carried to southern Italy, restoring Greek learning there. Combined with the treasures of Classical learning that reached Europe through the Muslims, this Byzantine heritage helped to initiate the beginnings of the European Renaissance.
Mehdi K. NakosteenRobert BrowningEarly Russian education: Kiev and Muscovy
Properly, the term Russia applies only to the approximate region occupied by the empire or republic of Russia since the 18th century. It is sometimes less strictly employed, however—as in this section—to refer to that area from ancient times as well.
The influences of the Byzantine Empire and of the Eastern Orthodox Church made themselves strongly felt in Russia as early as the 10th century, when Kiev, the first east Slavic state, was firmly established. At that time, Prince Svyatoslav, a determined pagan, failed to maintain control of the route “from the Varangians to the Greeks” (south from Novgorod through Kiev, along the Dnepr River), and the Byzantine Empire expelled him from its Balkan possessions, which he was attempting to conquer. After his death in 972, the way lay open for sustained penetration of cultural influences emanating from Byzantium into the Kievan state, although formal relations between the two powers were seldom harmonious. Byzantine cultural materials entering the Kievan state were translated into Old Church Slavonic; thus, there was no language barrier. A famous tale in an early chronicle recounts how Grand Prince Vladimir in 988 ordered the people of Kiev to receive baptism in the Orthodox Christian rite. It is, however, highly dubious to claim that this event, which established Christianity as the predominant cultural force in the Kievan state, also marked the beginning of an institutionalized system of education. A few sources of the time spoke of “book learning,” but all this actually meant was that people were expected to be acquainted with the rudiments of Holy Writ.
The next epoch in Russian history is known as the appanage period. This period runs roughly from the decline of Kiev in the 11th century to the rise of the Grand Principality of Moscow (Muscovy) in the 14th century. It was characterized by the appearance of numerous autonomous fiefdoms and a population shift from southern plains to northern forests, brought about in large part by attacks from steppe nomads. Although the church and monasteries continued to acquire wealth and property, anarchic decentralization was not conducive to the development of any kind of widespread, uniform educational apparatus.
During this time of instability, in 1240 the Mongol (or Tatar) empire, known as the Golden Horde, sacked and devastated the European Russian Plain and imposed its control over the region—although with diminishing efficiency—until 1451. Mongol rule had a debilitating effect on all phases of Russian culture, including the church, which became more formalistic and ritualistic. What little can be learned about education at this time must be culled from later biographies of contemporary saints. It is not clear who served as teachers, how many there were, where they taught, or how many and what kind of pupils they had. What instruction they gave was of an uncompromisingly religious nature: seven-year-olds did little more than read aloud and chant devotional materials or, very rarely, recite the numbers from 1 to 100. Because students uttered their assignments simultaneously, the result was often chaotic.
By the time the Mongol rule came to an end, the welter of independent Russian principalities had been united under the authority of the Grand Principality of Moscow, which began a successful program of territorial expansion. Controversies over religious issues, particularly the respective roles of church and state, flared up but failed to bring about any real improvement in education. The church’s inability to provide adequate education was recognized, however, and in 1551 a church council known as the Hundred Chapters was convened at the initiative of the tsar Ivan IV the Terrible. The council heard many stories of clerical ignorance and licentiousness, and its deliberations made it clear that no effective system or institution existed to educate the clergy, the key class in the cultural establishment.
It is misleading to think of education solely in institutional terms, however. Another system existed in early Russia: the highly developed family system, within which from generation to generation parents handed on to their children skills and knowledge. Indeed, the very strength and tenacity of the family unit may well have retarded development of a more formal educational structure.
Things began to change in the 17th century. It is necessary to bear in mind that Kiev and much of western Ukraine had for centuries been under the control of the Roman Catholic Polish-Lithuanian state, where intellectual achievement and ferment—especially during the Renaissance and Reformation—had been considerably greater than in Muscovite Russia. The people of Ukraine were determined to preserve Orthodoxy from Roman Catholic pressure, which grew intense when the Jesuits employed their excellent schools as one means to spearhead the Counter-Reformation. Different Orthodox groups responded to the challenge by forming schools at many levels, culminating in the foundation of the Kievan Academy by Peter Mogila, the energetic metropolitan of Kiev, who strove to adapt Western educational techniques to defend Orthodoxy. It should be noted, however, that, although these schools adopted portions of the broader Western curriculum, their goal continued to be what it always had been: the inculcation of traditional religious values.
By the mid-17th century much of the western Ukraine had come under Muscovite control, enabling a number of educated Ukrainians—some trained in Poland, a few even in Rome—to come to Moscow. They arrived under the auspices of Patriarch Nikon, who was then engaged in correcting what he saw as errors in Orthodox church books, but their appearance aroused deep suspicion on the part of the Orthodox establishment, many of whose members displayed little interest in or sympathy for the establishment of schools, an undertaking the newcomers considered to be of primary importance. Educational reforms nevertheless continued, albeit slowly.
The reign of Peter I the Great (1682–1725) ushered in a new and more dynamic age, although even this ruler’s reforming zeal proved inadequate to the central task of creating a national school system, particularly at the elementary level. Religion was deemphasized as Peter strove to establish at least a few institutions that would provide graduates trained in practical subjects for government and military service. Church schools were brought under state control, and the Academy of Sciences was established. Nevertheless, the creation of a network of schools capable at all levels of responding to Russia’s rapidly changing priorities was a task that awaited the future.
Hugh F. GrahamThe Islamic Era
Influences on Muslim education and culture
The Greco-Byzantine heritage of learning that was preserved through the medium of Middle Eastern scholarship was combined with elements of Persian and Indian thought and taken over and enriched by the Muslims. It was initiated as early as the Umayyad caliphate (661–750), which allowed the sciences of the Hellenistic world to flourish in Syria and patronized Semitic and Persian schools in Alexandria, Beirut, Gondēshāpūr, Nisibis, Haran, and Antioch. But the largest share of Islam’s preservation of Classical culture was assumed by the ʿAbbāsid caliphate (750–c. 1100), which followed the Umayyad and encouraged and supported the translation of Greek works into Arabic, often by Nestorian, Hebrew, and Persian scholars. These translations included works by Plato and Aristotle, Hippocrates, Galen, Dioscorides, Alexander of Aphrodisias, Ptolemy, and others. The great mathematician al-Khwārizmī (flourished 9th century) compiled astronomical tables, introduced Hindu numerals (which became Arabic numerals), formulated the oldest known trigonometric tables, and prepared a geographic encyclopaedia in cooperation with 69 other scholars.
The transmission of Classical culture through Muslim channels can be divided into seven basic types: (1) works translated directly from Greek into Arabic, (2) works translated into Pahlavi, including Indian, Greek, Syriac, Hellenistic, Hebrew, and Zoroastrian materials, with the Academy of Gondēshāpūr as the centre of such scholarship (the works then being translated from Pahlavi into Arabic), (3) works translated from Hindi into Pahlavi, then into Syriac, Hebrew, and Arabic, (4) works written by Muslim scholars from the 9th through the 11th century but borrowed, in effect, from non-Muslim sources, with the line of transmission obscure, (5) works that amounted to summaries and commentaries of Greco-Persian materials, (6) works by Muslim scholars that were advances over pre-Islamic learning but that might not have developed in Islam had there not been the stimulation from Hellenistic, Byzantine, Zoroastrian, and Hindu learning, and, finally, (7) works that appear to have arisen from purely individual genius and national cultures and would likely have developed independently of Islam’s Classical heritage of learning.
Aims and purposes of Muslim education
Islam placed a high value on education, and, as the faith spread among diverse peoples, education became an important channel through which to create a universal and cohesive social order. By the middle of the 9th century, knowledge was divided into three categories: the Islamic sciences, the philosophical and natural sciences (Greek knowledge), and the literary arts. The Islamic sciences, which emphasized the study of the Qurʾān (the Islamic scripture) and the Ḥadīth (the sayings and traditions of the Prophet Muhammad) and their interpretation by leading scholars and theologians, were valued the most highly, but Greek scholarship was considered equally important, albeit less virtuous.
Early Muslim education emphasized practical studies, such as the application of technological expertise to the development of irrigation systems, architectural innovations, textiles, iron and steel products, earthenware, and leather products; the manufacture of paper and gunpowder; the advancement of commerce; and the maintenance of a merchant marine. After the 11th century, however, denominational interests dominated higher learning, and the Islamic sciences achieved preeminence. Greek knowledge was studied in private, if at all, and the literary arts diminished in significance as educational policies encouraging academic freedom and new learning were replaced by a closed system characterized by an intolerance toward scientific innovations, secular subjects, and creative scholarship. This denominational system spread throughout eastern Islam from Transoxania (roughly, modern-day Tajikistan, Uzbekistan, and southwest Kazakhstan) to Egypt, with some 75 schools in existence between about 1050 and 1250.
Organization of education
The system of education in the Muslim world was unintegrated and undifferentiated. Learning took place in a variety of institutions, among them the ḥalqah, or study circle; the maktab (kuttab), or elementary school; the palace schools; bookshops and literary salons; and the various types of colleges, the meshed, the masjid, and the madrasa. All the schools taught essentially the same subjects.
The simplest type of early Muslim education was offered in the mosques, where scholars who had congregated to discuss the Qurʾān began before long to teach the religious sciences to interested adults. Mosques increased in number under the caliphs, particularly the ʿAbbāsids: 3,000 of them were reported in Baghdad alone in the first decades of the 10th century; as many as 12,000 were reported in Alexandria in the 14th century, most of them with schools attached. Some mosques—such as that of al-Manṣūr, built during the reign of Hārūn al-Rashīd in Baghdad, or those in Isfahan, Mashhad, Ghom, Damascus, Cairo, and the Alhambra (Granada)—became centres of learning for students from all over the Muslim world. Each mosque usually contained several study circles (ḥalqah), so named because the teacher was, as a rule, seated on a dais or cushion with the pupils gathered in a semicircle before him. The more advanced a student, the closer he was seated to the teacher. The mosque circles varied in approach, course content, size, and quality of teaching, but the method of instruction usually emphasized lectures and memorization. Teachers were, as a rule, looked upon as masters of scholarship, and their lectures were meticulously recorded in notebooks. Students often made long journeys to join the circle of a great teacher. Some circles, especially those in which the Ḥadīth was studied, were so large that it was necessary for assistants to repeat the lecture so that every student could hear and record it.
Elementary schools (maktab, or kuttab), in which pupils learned to read and write, date to the pre-Islamic period in the Arab world. After the advent of Islam, these schools developed into centres for instruction in elementary Islamic subjects. Students were expected to memorize the Qurʾān as perfectly as possible. Some schools also included in their curriculum the study of poetry, elementary arithmetic, penmanship, ethics (manners), and elementary grammar. Maktabs were quite common in almost every town or village in the Middle East, Africa, Sicily, and Spain.
Schools conducted in royal palaces taught not only the curriculum of the maktabs but also social and cultural studies designed to prepare the pupil for higher education, for service in the government of the caliphs, or for polite society. The instructors were called muʾaddibs, or instructors in good manners. The exact content of the curriculum was specified by the ruler, but oratory, history, tradition, formal ethics, poetry, and the art of good conversation were often included. Instruction usually continued long after the pupils had passed elementary age.
The high degree of learning and scholarship in Islam, particularly during the ʿAbbāsid period in eastern Islam and the later Umayyads in western Islam, encouraged the development of bookshops, copyists, and book dealers in large, important Islamic cities such as Damascus, Baghdad, and Córdoba. Scholars and students spent many hours in these bookshop schools browsing, examining, and studying available books or purchasing favourite selections for their private libraries. Book dealers traveled to famous bookstores in search of rare manuscripts for purchase and resale to collectors and scholars and thus contributed to the spread of learning. Many such manuscripts found their way to private libraries of famous Muslim scholars such as Avicenna, al-Ghazālī, and al-Fārābī, who in turn made their homes centres of scholarly pursuits for their favourite students.
Fundamental to Muslim education though the circle schools, the maktabs, and the palace schools were, they embodied definite educational limitations. Their curricula were limited; they could not always attract well-trained teachers; physical facilities were not always conducive to a congenial educational environment; and conflicts between religious and secular aims in these schools were almost irreconcilable. Most importantly, these schools could not meet the growing need for trained personnel or provide sufficient educational opportunities for those who wished to continue their studies. These pressures led to the creation of a new type of school, the madrasa, which became the crown and glory of medieval Muslim education. The madrasa was an outgrowth of the masjid, a type of mosque college dating to the 8th century. The differences between these two institutions are still being studied, but most scholars believe that the masjid was also a place of worship and that, unlike the madrasa, its endowment supported only the faculty and not the students as well. A third type of college, the meshed (shrine college), was usually a madrasa built next to a pilgrimage centre. Whatever their particularities, all three types of college specialized in legal instruction, each turning out experts in one of the four schools of Sunni, or orthodox, Islamic law.
Madrasas may have existed as early as the 9th century, but the most famous one was founded in 1057 by the vizier Niẓām al-Mulk in Baghdad. The Niẓāmīyah, devoted to Sunni learning, served as a model for the establishment of an extensive network of such institutions throughout the eastern Islamic world, especially in Cairo, which had 75 madrasas; in Damascus, which had 51; and in Aleppo, where the number of madrasas rose from 6 to 44 between 1155 and 1260.
Important institutions also developed in western Islam, under the Umayyads, in the Spanish cities of Córdoba, Sevilla (Seville), Toledo, Granada, Murcia, Almería, Valencia, and Cádiz. The madrasas had no standard curriculum; the founder of each school determined the specific courses that would be taught, but they generally offered instruction in both the religious sciences and the physical sciences.
The contribution of these institutions to the advancement of knowledge was vast. Muslim scholars calculated the angle of the ecliptic; measured the size of the Earth; calculated the precession of the equinoxes; explained, in the field of optics and physics, such phenomena as refraction of light, gravity, capillary attraction, and twilight; and developed observatories for the empirical study of heavenly bodies. They made advances in the uses of drugs, herbs, and foods for medication; established hospitals with a system of interns and externs; discovered causes of certain diseases and developed correct diagnoses of them; proposed new concepts of hygiene; made use of anesthetics in surgery with newly innovated surgical tools; and introduced the science of dissection in anatomy. They furthered the scientific breeding of horses and cattle; found new ways of grafting to produce new types of flowers and fruits; introduced new concepts of irrigation, fertilization, and soil cultivation; and improved upon the science of navigation. In the area of chemistry, Muslim scholarship led to the discovery of such substances as potash, alcohol, nitrate of silver, nitric acid, sulfuric acid, and mercury chloride. It also developed to a high degree of perfection the arts of textiles, ceramics, and metallurgy.
Major periods of Muslim education and learning
The renaissance of Islamic culture and scholarship developed largely under the ʿAbbāsid administration in eastern Islam and later under the Umayyads in western Islam, mainly in Spain, between 800 and 1000. This latter period, the golden age of Islamic scholarship, was largely a period of translation and interpretation of Classical thoughts and their adaptation to Islamic theology and philosophy. The period also witnessed the introduction and assimilation of Hellenistic, Persian, and Hindu mathematics, astronomy, algebra, trigonometry, and medicine into Muslim culture.
Whereas the 8th and 9th centuries—mainly between 750 and 900—were characterized by the introduction of Classical learning and its refinement and adaptation to Islamic culture, the 10th and 11th were centuries of interpretation, criticism, and further adaptation. There followed a period of modification and significant additions to Classical culture through Muslim scholarship. Creative scholarship in Islam from the 10th to the 12th century included works by such scholars as Omar Khayyam, al-Bīrūnī, Fakhr al-Dīn al-Rāzī, Avicenna (Ibn Sīnā), al-Ṭabarī, Avempace (Ibn Bājjah), and Averroës (Ibn Rushd). During the 12th and 13th centuries, most of the works of Classical learning and the creative Muslim additions were translated from Arabic into Hebrew and Latin. These translations were instrumental in bringing about the early phases of the European intellectual awakening, which coincided with the decline of Muslim scholarship.
Influence of Islamic learning on the West
As Europe was absorbing the fruits of Islam’s centuries of creative productivity, signs of Latin Christian awakening were evident throughout the European continent. The 12th century was one of intensified traffic of Muslim learning into the Western world through many hundreds of translations of Muslim works, which helped Europe seize the initiative from Islam when political conditions in Islam brought about a decline in Muslim scholarship. By 1300, European scholars stood once again on the solid ground of Hellenistic thought, enriched or modified through Muslim and Byzantine efforts.
Mehdi K. NakosteenJoseph S. SzyliowiczEurope in the Middle Ages
The background of early Christian education
From the beginnings to the 4th century
Initially, Christianity found most of its adherents among the poor and illiterate, making little headway—as St. Paul observed (1 Corinthians 1:26)—among the worldly-wise, the mighty, and those of high rank. But during the 2nd century CE and afterward, it appealed more and more to the educated class and to leading citizens. These individuals naturally wanted their children to have at least as good an education as they themselves had, but the only schools available were the grammar and rhetoric schools with their Greco-Roman, non-Christian culture. There were different opinions among Christian leaders about the right attitude to this dilemma that confronted all Christians who sought a good education for their children. The Greek Fathers—especially the Christian Platonists Clement of Alexandria and Origen—sought to prove that the Christian view of the universe was compatible with Greek thought and even regarded Christianity as the culmination of philosophy, to which the way must be sought through liberal studies. Without a liberal education, the Christian could live a life of faith and obedience but could not expect to attain an intellectual understanding of the mysteries of the faith or expect to appreciate the significance of the Gospel as the meeting ground of Hellenism and Judaism. St. Augustine and St. Basil also tolerated the use of the secular schools by Christians, maintaining that literary and rhetorical culture is valuable so long as it is kept subservient to the Christian life. The Roman theologian Tertullian, on the other hand, was suspicious of pagan culture, but he admitted the necessity (though deploring it) of making use of the educational facilities available.
In any event, most Christians who wanted their children to have a good education appear to have sent them to the secular schools; this practice continued even after 313, when the emperor Constantine, who had been converted to Christianity, stopped the persecution of Christians and gave them the same rights as other citizens. Christians also set up catechetical schools for the religious instruction of adults who wished to be baptized. Of these schools, the most famous was the one at Alexandria in Egypt, which had a succession of outstanding heads, including Clement and Origen. Under their scholarly guidance, it developed a much wider curriculum than was usual in catechetical schools, including the best in Greek science and philosophy in addition to Christian studies. Other schools modeled on that at Alexandria developed in some parts of the Middle East, notably in Syria, and continued for some time after the collapse of the empire in the west.
From the 5th to the 8th century
The gradual subjugation of the Western Empire by the barbarian invaders during the 5th century eventually entailed the breakup of the educational system that the Romans had developed over the centuries. The barbarians, however, did not destroy the empire; in fact, their entry was really in the form of vast migrations that swamped the existing and rapidly weakening Roman culture. The position of the emperor remained, the barbarians exercising local control through smaller kingdoms. Roman learning continued, and there were notable examples in the writings of Boethius—chiefly his Consolation of Philosophy. Boethius composed most of these studies while acting as director of civil administration under the Ostrogoths. Equally famous was his contemporary Cassiodorus (c. 490–c. 585), who, as a minister under the Ostrogoths, worked energetically at his vision of civilitas, a program of educating the public and developing a sound administrative structure. Thus, despite the political and social upheavals, the methods and program of ancient education survived into the 6th century in the new barbarian Mediterranean kingdoms; indeed, the barbarians were frequently impressed and attracted by things Roman. In Ostrogothic Italy (Milan, Ravenna, Rome) and in Vandal Africa (Carthage), the schools of the grammarians and rhetoricians survived for a time, and, even in those places where such schools soon disappeared—such as Gaul and Spain—private teachers or parents maintained the tradition of Classical culture until the 7th century. As in previous centuries, the culture bestowed was essentially literary and oratorical: grammar and rhetoric constituted the basis of the studies. The pupils read, reread, and commented on the Classical authors and imitated them by composing certain kinds of exercises (dictiones) with the aim of achieving a perfect mastery of their style. In fact, however, the practice was desultory, and the results were mechanical and poor. Greek was ignored more and more, and attempts to revive Hellenic studies were limited to a dwindling number of scholars.
Christianity, meanwhile, was becoming more formally organized, and in the Latin-speaking Western division of the empire the Catholic church (as it was beginning to be called, from the Greek katholikos, the “whole”) developed an administrative pattern, based upon that of the empire itself, for which learning was essential for the proper discharge of its duties. Schools began to be formed in the rudimentary cathedrals, although the main centres of learning from the 5th century to the time of Charlemagne in the 8th century were in the monasteries. The prototype of Western monasticism was the great monastery founded at Monte Cassino in 529 by Benedict of Nursia (c. 480–c. 547), probably on the model of Vivarium, the scholarly monastery established by Cassiodorus. The rule developed by Benedict to guide monastic life stimulated many other foundations, and one result was the rapid spread of Benedictine monasteries and the establishment of an order. The Benedictine monasteries became the chief centres of learning and the source of the many literate scribes needed for the civil administration.
The monastic schools, however, are no more significant in the history of education than the schools founded by bishops, usually in connection with a cathedral. These episcopal schools are sometimes looked upon as successors of the grammar schools of the Roman Empire. First specializing in the development of the clergy, they later admitted young laypeople when the small Roman schools had disappeared. At the same time, there were bishops who organized a kind of boarding school where the aspiring clergyman, living in a community, participated in duties of a monastic character and learned his clerical trade.
The influence of monasticism affected the content of instruction and the method of presenting it. Children were to be dutiful; as the Celtic and English monks Columban and Bede were to remark, “A child does not remain angry, he is not spiteful, does not contradict the professors, but receives with confidence what is taught him.” In the case of the adolescent destined for a religious profession, the monastic lawgiver was severe. The teacher must know and teach the doctrine, reprimand the undisciplined, and adapt his method to the different temperaments of the young monks. The education of young girls destined for monastic life was similar: the mistress of the novices recommended prayer, manual work, and study.
Between the 5th and 8th centuries the principles of education of the laity likewise evolved. The treatises on education, later called the “mirrors,” pointed to the importance of the moral virtues of prudence, courage, justice, and temperance. The Institutionum disciplinae of an anonymous Visigoth pedagogue expressed the desire that all young men “quench their thirst at the quadruple fountain of the virtues.” In the 7th and 8th centuries the moral concepts of antiquity completely surrendered to religious principles. The Christian Bible was more and more considered as the only source of moral life—as the mirror in which humans must learn to see themselves. A bishop addressing himself to a son of the Frankish king Dagobert (died 639) drew his examples from the books of the Hebrew Bible (Old Testament). The mother of Didier of Cahors addressed to her son letters of edification on the fear of God, on the horror of vice, and on penitence.
The Christian education of children who were not aristocrats or future clergymen or monks was irregular. Whereas in antiquity catechetical instruction was organized especially for the adult laity, after the 5th century more and more children and then infants received baptism, and, once baptized, a child was not required to receive any particular religious education. His parents and godparents assisted him in learning the minimum, if anything at all. Only by attending church services and listening to sermons did the child acquire his religious culture.
The Irish and English revivals
During the 5th and 6th centuries there was a renaissance of learning in the remote land of Ireland, introduced there initially by the patron saints of Ireland—Patrick, Bridget, and Columba—who established schools at Armagh, Kildare, and Iona. They were followed by a number of other native scholars, who also founded colleges—the most famous and greatest university being the one at Clonmacnois, on the River Shannon near Athlone. To these and lesser schools flocked Anglo-Saxons, Gauls, Scots, and Teutons from Britain and the Continent. From about 600 to 850 Ireland itself sent scholars to the Continent to teach, found monasteries, and establish schools.
Although the very earliest Irish scholars may have aimed primarily at propagating the Christian faith, their successors soon began studying and teaching the Greek and Roman classics (but only in Latin versions), along with Christian theology. Eventually there were additions of mathematics, nature study, rhetoric, poetry, grammar, and astronomy—all studied, it seems, very largely through the medium of the Irish language.
England was next to experience the reawakening, and, though there were notable schools at such places as Canterbury and Winchester, it was in Northumbria that the schools flourished most. At the monasteries of Jarrow and Wearmouth and at the Cathedral School of York, some of the greatest of early medieval writers and schoolmasters appeared, including the Venerable Bede and Alcuin. The latter went to France in 780 to become master of Charlemagne’s palace school.
The Carolingian renaissance and its aftermath
The cultural revival under Charlemagne and his successors
Charlemagne (742/743–814) has been represented as the sponsor or even creator of medieval education, and the Carolingian renaissance has been represented as the renewal of Western culture. This renaissance, however, built on earlier episcopal and monastic developments, and, although Charlemagne did help to ensure the survival of scholarly traditions in a relatively bleak and rude age, there was nothing like the general advance in education that occurred later with the cultural awakening of the 11th and 12th centuries.
Learning, nonetheless, had no more ardent friend than Charlemagne, who came to the Frankish throne in 768 distressed to find extremely poor standards of Latin prevailing. He thus ordered that the clergy be educated severely, whether by persuasion or under compulsion. He recalled that, in order to interpret the Holy Scriptures, one must have a command of correct language and a fluent knowledge of Latin; he later commanded, “In each bishopric and in each monastery let the psalms, the notes, the chant, calculation and grammar be taught and carefully corrected books be available” (capitulary of 789 CE). His promotion of ecclesiastical and educational reform bore fruit in a generation of churchmen whose morals and whose education were of a higher standard than before.
The possibility then arose of providing, for the brighter young clerics and perhaps also for a few laymen, a more advanced religious and academic training. It was perhaps to meet this modest need that a school grew up within the precincts of the emperor’s palace at Aachen. In order to develop and staff other centres of culture and learning, Charlemagne imported considerable foreign talent. During the 8th century England had been the scene of some intellectual activity. Thus, Alcuin, who had been the master of the school at York, and other English scholars were brought over to transplant to the Continent the studies and disciplines of the Anglo-Saxon schools. From Moorish Spain came Christian refugees who also contributed to this intellectual revival; disputations with the Muslims had forced them to develop a dialectic skill in which they now instructed Charlemagne’s subjects. From Italy came grammarians and chroniclers, men such as Paul the Deacon; the more formalistic Classical traditions in which they had been bred supplied the framework to discipline the effervescent brilliance of the Anglo-Saxons. Irish scholars also arrived. Thanks to these foreigners, who represented the areas where Classical and Christian culture had been maintained in the 6th and 8th centuries, the court became a kind of “academy,” to use Alcuin’s term. There the emperor, his heirs, and his friends discussed various subjects—the existence or nonexistence of the underworld and of nothingness; the eclipse of the sun; the relationship of Father, Son, and Holy Spirit; and so on. Recognizing the importance of manuscripts in the cultural revival, Charlemagne formed a library (the catalog of which is still extant), had texts and books copied and recopied, and bade every school to maintain a scriptorium. Alcuin developed a school of calligraphy at Tours, and its new script spread rapidly throughout the empire; this Carolingian minuscule was more legible and less wasteful of space than the uncial scripts hitherto employed.
Outside the court at Aachen were to be found here and there a few seats of culture—but not many. The archbishop of Lyon reorganized the schools of readers and choir leaders; Alcuin in Saint-Martin-de-Tours and Angilbert in Saint-Riquier organized monastic schools with relatively well-stocked libraries. It was necessary to wait for the second generation, or even the third, to witness the greatest brilliance of the Carolingian renewal. Under Charlemagne’s son Louis the Pious and especially under his grandsons, the monastic schools reached their apogee in France north of the Loire, in Germany, and in Italy. The most famous were at Saint-Gall, Reichenau, Fulda, Bobbio, Saint-Denis, Saint-Martin-de-Tours, and Ferrières. Unfortunately, the breakup of the Carolingian empire, following local rebellions and the Viking invasions, ended the progress of the Carolingian renaissance.
Influences of the Carolingian renaissance abroad
In England—at least in the kingdom of Wessex—King Alfred the Great stands out as another royal patron of learning, one who wanted to imitate the creativity of Charlemagne. When he came to the throne in 871, cultural standards had fallen to a low level, partly because of the turmoil of the Danish invasions. He was grieved to find so few who could understand Latin church services or translate a letter from Latin into English. To accomplish an improvement, he called upon monks from the Continent, particularly those of Saint-Bertin. Moreover, he attracted to his court certain English clergy and young sons of nobles. Since the latter did not know Latin, he had translated into Wessex English some works of Pope Gregory the Great, Boethius, the theologian and historian Paulus Orosius, Venerable Bede, St. Augustine, and others. He himself translated Boethius’s Consolation of Philosophy, Gregory the Great’s Pastoral Care, and Bede’s Ecclesiastical History of the English People. This promotion of learning was continued by Alfred’s successors and spread elsewhere in England; and in the reformed monasteries at Canterbury, York, and Winchester, the young monks renewed the study of religious and secular sciences. Among the master scholars of the late 10th century was the Benedictine monk Aelfric, perhaps the greatest prose writer of Anglo-Saxon times. In order to facilitate the learning of Latin for young monks, Aelfric composed a grammar, glossary, and colloquy, containing a Latin grammar described in Anglo-Saxon, or Old English, a glossary in which master and pupil could find a methodically classified Latin vocabulary (names of birds, fish, plants, and so forth), and a manual of conversation, inspired by the bilingual manuals of antiquity.
Among the other Saxons—those of the Continent who presided over the destinies of Germany—there were also significant gatherings of masters and students at selected monasteries, such as Corvey and Gandersheim. In any case, wherever teaching became important in the 10th century, it concentrated largely on grammar and the works of the Classical authors. Thus, when Gerbert of Aurillac, after a course of instruction in Catalonia, came to teach dialectic and the arts of the quadrivium (geometry, arithmetic, harmonics, and astronomy) at Reims, he aroused astonishment and admiration. His renown helped in his later election as Pope Sylvester II. The first half of the 11th century contained the first glimmerings of a rediscovered dialectic. A new stage in the history of teaching was beginning.
Education of the laity in the 9th and 10th centuries
The clergy who dominated society thought it necessary to give laymen some directives about life comparable to those offered in monastic rules and thus issued what were called miroirs (“mirrors”), setting forth the duties of a good sovereign and exalting the Christian struggle. Already the image of the courtly and Christian knight was beginning to take shape. It was not a question of governing a state well but, rather, of governing oneself. The layman must struggle against vice and practice virtue; he must emphasize his religious heritage. Alcuin became indignant when he heard it said that the reading of the Gospel was the duty of the clergy and not that of the layman. Huoda, wife of Bernard, duke of Septimania, addressed a manual to her 16-year-old son, stressing the reading and praying that a young man should do. In the libraries of the laity, the volumes of the Old Testament and New Testament took first place, along with prayer books, a kind of breviary designed for day-to-day use.
If a minority of aristocrats could receive a suitable moral and religious education, the masses remained illiterate and preferred a military apprenticeship to study. “He who has remained in school up to twelve years without mounting a horse is no longer good for anything but the priesthood,” wrote a German poet. Writers of hagiographic texts were fond of contrasting the mother of the future saint, anxious to give education to her son, and the father, who wanted to harden his son at an early age to the chase or to war. The Carolingian tradition, however, was not totally forgotten by princes and others in high places. In Germany, Otto I and his successors, who wished to re-create the Carolingian empire, encouraged studies at the court: Wipo, the preceptor of Henry III, set out a program of education for the laity in his Proverbia. Rediscovering the ancient moralists, chiefly Cicero and Seneca, he praised moderation as opposed to warlike brutality or even the ascetic strength of the monks. The same tendency is found in other writings.
The medieval renaissance
The era that has been called the “renaissance of the 12th century” corresponds to a rediscovery of studies originating in the 11th century in a West in the process of transformation. The church cast off the tutelage of lay power, and there was general acceptance of the authority of the church in matters of belief, conduct, and education; the papacy took over the direction of Christianity and organized the Crusades to the East; the monarchies regrouped the political and economic forces of feudal society; the cities were reanimated and were organized into communes; the merchants traced out the great European trade routes and, before long, the Mediterranean ones. Soon, contact with the East—by trade and in the Crusades—and with the highly cultivated Moors in Spain further stimulated intellectual life. Arabic renderings of some of the works of Aristotle, together with commentaries, were translated into Latin, exercising a profound influence on the trend of culture. It was inevitable that the world of education would take on a new appearance.
Changes in the schools and philosophies
Monastic schools
In the first place, the monastic reformers made the decision to close their schools to those who did not intend to enter upon a cloistered life. According to their idea of solitude and sanctity, recalling the words of St. Jerome, “The monk was not made to teach but to mortify himself.” Divine works were to be the only object of study and meditation, and Pierre de Celle asserted that “divine science ought to mould rather than question, to nourish conscience rather than knowledge.”
The scholarly monks completed their studies before being admitted to the monastery—the age of entrance in Benedictine houses, for instance, being fixed at 15 years at Cîteaux and 20 years at Cluny. If there were admitted a few oblates (laymen living in monasteries under modified rules), they were given an ascetic and moral education and were taught to read the Holy Writ and, what was still more desirable, to “relish” it. In the Carthusian monastery, the four steps of required spiritual exercise were reading, meditation, prayer, and contemplation. Thus there existed a monastic culture, but there were no truly monastic studies such as those that had existed in the 9th and 10th centuries. The rich libraries of the monasteries served only a few scholarly abbots, while the monks searched for God through prayer and asceticism.
Urban schools
In the cities, on the contrary, the schools offered to all the clergy who so desired the means of satisfying their intellectual appetite. More and more of them attended these schools, for the studies were a good means of social advancement or material profit. The development of royal and municipal administrations offered the clergy new occupations. Hence the success of the schools for notaries and the schools of law. These schools were organized under the protection of the collegiate churches and the cathedrals. The schools for secular subjects were directed by an archdeacon, chancellor, cantor, or cleric who had received the title of scholasticus, caput scholae, or magister scholarum and who was assisted by one or more auxiliary masters. The success of the urban schools was such that it was necessary, in the middle of the 12th century, to define the teaching function. Only those who were provided with the licencia docendi conferred by the bishop—or, more often, by the scholasticus—could teach. Those who were licensed taught within the limits of the city or the diocese, whose clerical leaders supervised this monopoly and intervened if a cleric set himself up as master without having the right. The popes were sufficiently concerned about licensing that the Lateran Council of 1179 gave this institution universal application.
New curricula and philosophies
The pupils who attended these urban schools learned in them their future occupation as clerics; they learned Latin, learned to sing the various offices, and studied Holy Writ. The more gifted ones extended their studies further and applied for admission to the liberal arts (the trivium, made up of grammar, rhetoric, and logic; and the quadrivium, including geometry, arithmetic, harmonics, and astronomy) and subsequently to philosophy. Philosophy had four branches: theoretical, practical, logical, and mechanical. The theoretical was divided into theology, physics, and mathematics; the practical consisted of morals or ethics (personal, economic, political). The logical, which concerned discourse, consisted of the three arts of the trivium. Finally, the mechanical included the work of processing wool, of navigation, of agriculture, of medicine, and so on. This was an ambitious humanistic program. In fact, the students became specialized in the study of one art or another according to their tastes or the presence of a renowned master, such as Guillaume de Champeaux at Paris and St. Victor for rhetoric and theology; Peter Abelard at Paris for dialectic and theology; Bernard de Chartres for grammar; William of Conches at Chartres for grammar, ethics, and medicine; and Thierry de Chartres for rhetoric. In particular, teachers of the “literary” arts, grammar and rhetoric, always had great success in a period of enthusiasm for the ancient authors. It may be noted that Bernard de Chartres organized his literary teaching in this fashion: grammatical explanations (declinatio), studies of authors, and each morning the correction of the exercises given the day before.
The third art of the trivium, logic (or dialectics), was nevertheless a strong competitor of the other two, grammar and rhetoric. Since the 11th century, Aristotle’s Posterior Analytics, which had been translated centuries earlier by Boethius, had developed the taste for reasoning, and, by the time Abelard arrived in Paris around 1100, interest in dialectics was flourishing. The written words of the Scriptures and of the Fathers of the Church were to be subjected to the scrutiny of human reason; a healthy skepticism was to be the stepping-stone to knowledge, aided by an understanding of critical logic.
While dialectic reigned in Paris, the masters at Chartres offered a study of the whole of the quadrivium. This interest in the sciences, which had been manifest at Chartres since the early 11th century, had been favoured by the stimulus of Greco-Arabic translations. The works of Euclid, Ptolemy, Hippocrates, Galen, and other Hellenic and Hellenistic scholars, as preserved in the Arabic manuscripts, were translated in southern Italy, Sicily, and Spain and were gradually transmitted northward. The scientific revival allowed the Chartrians to Christianize Greek cosmology, to explain Genesis according to physics, and to rediscover nature.
Another revival was that of law. The conflicts in the second half of the 12th century between the church and the lay powers encouraged on both sides a new activity in the juridical field. The princes found in the Corpus Juris Civilis, the 6th-century Roman code of the emperor Justinian, the means of legitimizing their politics, and the papacy likewise used Roman sources to promote its claims.
Thomist philosophy
In the long view, the greatest educational and philosophical influence of the age was St. Thomas Aquinas, who in the 13th century made a monumental attempt to reconcile the two great streams of the Western tradition. In his teaching at the University of Paris and in his writings—particularly the Summa theologiae and the Summa contra gentiles—Aquinas tried to synthesize reason and faith, philosophy and theology, university and monastery, and activity and contemplation. In his writings, however, faith and theology ultimately took precedence over reason and philosophy because the former were presumed to give access to truths that were not available through rational inquiry. Hence, Aquinas started with assumptions based on divine revelation and went on to a philosophical explication of man and nature. The model of the educated man that emerged from this process was the Scholastic, whose rational intelligence had been vigorously disciplined for the pursuit of moral excellence and whose highest happiness was found in contemplation of the Christian God.
The Scholastic model greatly affected the development of Western education, especially in fostering the notion of intellectual discipline. Aquinas’s theological-philosophical doctrine was a powerful intellectual force throughout the West, being officially adopted by the Dominican order (of which Aquinas was a member) in the 13th century and by the Jesuits in the 17th century. Known as Thomism, this doctrine came to constitute the basis of official Roman Catholic theology from 1879. Although Aquinas made an important place in his hierarchy of values for the practical uses of reason, later Thomists were often more exclusively intellectual in their educational emphasis.
The development of the universities
The Middle Ages were thus beset by a multiplicity of ideas, both homegrown and imported from abroad. The multiplicity of students and masters, their rivalries, and the conflicts in which they opposed the religious and civil authorities obliged the world of education to reorganize. To understand the reorganization, one must review the various stages of development in the coming together of students and masters. The first stage, already alluded to, occurred when the bishop or some other authority began to accord to other masters permission to open schools other than the episcopal school in the neighbourhood of his church. A further stage was reached when a license to teach, the jus ubique docendi—granted only after a formal examination—empowered a master to carry on his vocation at any similar centre. A further development came when it began to be recognized that, without a license from pope, emperor, or king, no school could be formed possessing the right of conferring degrees, which originally meant nothing more than licenses to teach.
Students and teachers, as clerici (“clerks,” or members of the clergy), enjoyed certain privileges and immunities, but, as the numbers traveling to renowned schools increased, they needed additional protection. In 1158 Emperor Frederick I Barbarossa of the Holy Roman Empire granted them privileges such as protection against unjust arrest, trial before their peers, and permission to “dwell in security.” These privileges were subsequently extended and included protection against extortion in financial dealings and the cessatio—the right to strike, discontinue lectures, and even to secede to protest against grievances or interference with established rights.
In the north of Europe, licenses to teach were granted by the chancellor, scholasticus, or some other officer of a cathedral church; in the south, it is probable that the guilds of masters (when these came to be formed) were at first free to grant their own licenses, without any ecclesiastical or other supervision. Gradually, however, toward the end of the 12th century a few great schools, from the excellence of their teaching, came to assume more than local importance. In practice, a doctor of Paris or Bologna would be allowed to teach anywhere and those great schools began to be known as studia generalia—that is, places resorted to by scholars from all parts. Eventually the term came to have a more definite and technical significance. The emperor Frederick II in 1225 set the example of attempting to confer upon his new school at Naples, by an authoritative bull, the prestige that the earlier studia had acquired by reputation and general consent. Pope Gregory IX did the same for Toulouse in 1229, and he added to its original privileges in 1233 a bull by which anyone who had been admitted to the doctorate or mastership in that university should have the right to teach anywhere without further examination. Other studia generalia were subsequently founded by papal or imperial bulls, and in 1292 even the oldest universities—Paris and Bologna—found it desirable to obtain similar bulls from Pope Nicholas IV. From this time, the notion began to prevail that the essence of the studium generale was the privilege of conferring a universally valid teaching license and that no new studium could acquire that position without a papal or imperial bull. There were, however, a few studia generalia (such as Oxford), the position of which was too well established to be questioned, even though they had never obtained such a bull; these were held to be studia generalia by repute. A few Spanish universities founded by royal charter were held to be studia generalia for the kingdom.
The word universitas originally applied only to the scholastic guild (or guilds)—that is, the corporation of students and masters—within the studium, and it was always modified, as universitas magistrorum, or universitas scholarium, or universitas magistrorum et scholarium. In the course of time, however, probably toward the latter part of the 14th century, the term began to be used by itself, with the exclusive meaning of a self-regulating community of teachers and scholars whose corporate existence had been recognized and sanctioned by civil or ecclesiastical authority.
The Italian universities
The earliest studia arose out of efforts to provide instruction beyond the range of the cathedral and monastic schools for the education of priests and monks. Salerno, the first great studium, became known as a school of medicine as early as the 9th century and, under the teaching of Constantine the African (died 1087), its fame spread throughout Europe. In 1231 it was licensed by Frederick II as the only school of medicine in the kingdom of Naples. It remained a medical school only.
The great revival of legal studies that took place at Bologna about the year 1000 had been preceded by a corresponding activity at Pavia and Ravenna. In Bologna a certain Pepo was lecturing on parts of the Corpus Juris Civilis about the year 1076. The secular character of this new study and its close connection with the claims and prerogatives of the Western emperor aroused papal suspicion, and for a time Bologna and its students were regarded by the church with distrust. The students found their first real protector in the emperor Frederick I Barbarossa. The immunities and privileges he conferred eventually extended to all the other universities of Italy.
The first university of Bologna was not constituted until the close of the 11th century—the “universities” there being student guilds, formed to obtain by combination that protection and those rights that they could not claim as citizens. As the number of students increased, the number of universitates, or societies of scholars, increased, each representing the national origin of its members (France, England, Provence, Spain, Italy). These confederations were presided over by a common head, the rector scholarium, and the different nations were represented by their consiliarii, a deliberative assembly with which the rector habitually took counsel. The practice at Bologna was adopted as other studia generalia arose.
The students at Bologna were mostly of mature years. Because civil law and canon law were, at first, the only branches of study offered, the class they attracted was often composed of lawyers already filling office in some department of the church or state—archdeacons, heads of schools, canons of cathedrals, and like functionaries. About 1200, the two faculties of medicine and philosophy were formed. The former was developed by a succession of able teachers, among whom Thaddeus Alderottus was especially eminent. The faculty of arts, down to the 14th century, scarcely attained equal eminence.
At Bologna the term “college” long had a meaning different from the ordinary modern one. The masters formed themselves into collegia (that is, organizations), chiefly for the conferment of degrees. Places of residence for students existed at Bologna at a very early date, but it was not until the 14th century that they possessed any organization; the humble domus, as it was termed, was at first designed solely for needy students who were not natives of Bologna; a separate house, with a fund for the maintenance of a specified number of scholars, was all that was originally contemplated.
From the 13th to the 15th century, a number of universities in Italy originated from migrations of students; others were established by papal or other charters. Almost all the schools taught civil or canon law or both. Of these institutions the most important were Padua, Piacenza, Pavia, Rome, Perugia, Pisa, Florence, Siena, and Turin.
The French universities
The history of the University of Paris well illustrates the fact that the universities arose in response to new needs. The schools out of which the university arose were those attached to the Notre-Dame Cathedral on the Île de la Cité in Paris and presided over by its chancellor. Although, in the second decade of the 13th century, some masters placed themselves under the jurisdiction of the abbot of the monastery of Sainte-Geneviève on the Left Bank of the Seine, it was around the bestowal of the license by the chancellor of Notre-Dame that the university grew. It is in this license that the whole significance of the master of arts degree was contained; for admission to that degree was the receiving of the chancellor’s permission to “incept,” and by “inception” was implied the master’s formal entrance upon the functions of a duly licensed teacher and his recognition as such by his brethren in the profession. The stage of bachelordom had been one of apprenticeship for the mastership; and his emancipation from this state was symbolized by the placing of the magisterial cap (biretta) upon his head. The new master gave a formal inaugural lecture, and he was then welcomed into the society of his professional brethren with set speeches and took his seat in his master’s chair.
Sometime between 1150 and 1170, the University of Paris came formally into being. Its first written statutes were not, however, compiled until about 1208, and it was not until long after that date that it possessed a “rector.” Its earliest recognition as a legal corporation belongs to about the year 1211, when a brief of Innocent III empowered it to elect a proctor to be its representative at the papal court. With papal support, Paris became the great transalpine centre of orthodox theological teaching. Successive pontiffs, down to the Great Schism of 1378, cultivated friendly relations with the university and systematically discouraged the formation of theological faculties at other centres. In 1231 Gregory IX, in the bull Parens scientiarum (“Mother of Learning”), gave full recognition to the right of the several faculties to regulate and modify the constitution of the university. The fully developed university was divided into four faculties: three superior, those of theology, canon law, and medicine; and one inferior, that of arts, which was divided into four student confederations, or nations (French, Picard, Norman, and English), including both professors and scholars from the respective countries. The head of each faculty was the dean; of each nation, the proctor. The rector in the first instance head of the faculty of arts eventually became the head of the collective university.
After the close of the Middle Ages, Paris came to be virtually reduced to a federation of colleges, though at Paris the colleges were less independent of university authority than was often the case elsewhere. Other major French universities of the Middle Ages were Montpellier, Toulouse, Orléans, Angers, Avignon, Cahors, Grenoble, Orange, and Perpignan.
The English universities
The University of Paris became the model for French universities north of the Loire and for those of central Europe and England; Oxford would appear to have been the earliest. Certain schools, opened early in the 12th century within the precincts of the dissolved nunnery of St. Frideswide and of Oseney Abbey, are supposed to have been the nucleus around which it grew. But the beginning may have been a migration of English students from Paris about 1167 or 1168. Immediately after 1168, allusions to Oxford as a studium and a studium generale begin to multiply. In the 13th century, mention first occurs of university “chests,” which were benefactions designed for the assistance of poor students. Halls, or places of licensed residence for students, also began to be established. Against periodic vicissitudes, such as student dispersions and plagues, the foundation of colleges proved the most effective remedy. The earliest colleges were University College, founded in 1249; Balliol College, founded about 1263; and Merton College, founded in 1264.
The University of Cambridge, although it came into existence somewhat later than Oxford, may reasonably be held to have had its origin in the same century. In 1112 the canons of St. Giles crossed the River Cam and took up their residence in the new priory in Barnwell, and their work of instruction acquired additional importance. In 1209 a body of students migrated there from Oxford. Then, about 1224, the Franciscans established themselves in the town and, somewhat less than half a century later, were followed by the Dominicans. At both the English universities, as at Paris, the mendicants and other religious orders were admitted to degrees—a privilege that, until the year 1337, was extended to them at no other university. Their interest in and influence at these three centres were consequently proportionately great.
In 1231 and 1233 royal and papal letters afford satisfactory proof that the University of Cambridge was already an organized body, with a chancellor at its head. Although both Oxford and Cambridge were modeled on Paris, their higher faculties never developed the same distinct organization; and, while the two proctors at Cambridge originally represented north and south, the nations are scarcely to be discerned. An important step was made, however, in 1276, when an ordinance was passed requiring everyone who claimed to be recognized as a scholar to have a fixed master within 15 days of his entry into the university. The traditional constitution of the English universities was in its origin an imitation of the Parisian, modified by the absence of the cathedral chancellor. But the feature that most served to give permanence and cohesion to the entire community at Cambridge was, as at Oxford, the institution of colleges. The earliest of these was Peterhouse, in 1284. All the early colleges were expressly designed for the benefit of the secular clergy.
Universities elsewhere in Europe
From the 13th to the 15th century, studia generalia or universities proliferated in central and northern Europe and were usually modeled on the University of Paris. Although the earliest was Prague, which existed as a studium in the 13th century and was chartered by Pope Clement VI in 1348, perhaps no medieval university achieved a more rapid and permanent success than Heidelberg. The University of Heidelberg, the oldest in the German realm, received its charter in 1386 from Pope Urban VI as a studium generale and contained all the recognized faculties—theology, canon law, medicine, and the arts, as well as civil law. In the subsequent 100 years, universities were founded at Cologne, Erfurt, Leipzig, Rostock, Freiburg, Tübingen, Ofen (Budapest), Basel, Uppsala, and Copenhagen.
Spain was also an important scene of developments in higher education. Valladolid received its charter in 1346 and attained great celebrity after it obtained the rank of studium generale and a universitas theologiae by a decree of Pope Martin V in 1418. Salamanca was founded in 1243 by Ferdinand III of Castile with faculties of arts, medicine, and jurisprudence, to which theology was added through the efforts of Martin V. The College of St. Bartholomew, the earliest founded at Salamanca, was noted for its ancient library and valuable collection of manuscripts. Other important early Spanish and Portuguese schools were Sevilla, Alcalá, and Lisbon.
General characteristics of medieval universities
Generally speaking, the medieval universities were conservative. Alexander Hegius and Rodolphus Agricola carried on their work as reformers at places such as Deventer in the Netherlands, remote from university influences. A considerable amount of mental activity went on in the universities; but it was mostly of the kind that, while giving rise to endless controversy, turned upon questions in connection with which the implied postulates and the terminology employed rendered all scientific investigation hopeless. At almost every university, the realists and nominalists represented two great parties occupied with an internecine struggle.
In Italian universities such controversies were considered endless and their effects pernicious. It was resolved, accordingly, to expel logic and allow its place to be filled by rhetoric, thereby effecting that important revolution in academic studies that constituted a new era in university learning and largely helped to pave the way for the Renaissance. The professorial body in the great Italian universities attained an almost unrivaled reputation throughout Europe. For each subject of importance there were always two—and sometimes three—rival chairs. While other universities became sectarian and local, those of Italy continued to be universal, and foreigners of all nations could be found among the professors.
The material life of the students was difficult. In order to aid the poorest, some colleges founded by clerical or lay benefactors offered board and lodging to a number of foundationers. Courses, too, could occasionally be difficult. The courses in theology were particularly long—eight years at the minimum (one could not be a teacher of theology in Paris before the age of 35). Many students preferred the more rapid and more lucrative paths of law and medicine. Others led the life of perpetual students, vagabond clerics, or disputatious goliards—the objects of repeated but ineffectual condemnation.
The methods of teaching are particularly well known in the case of Paris. The university year was divided into two terms: from St. Remi (October 1) to Lent and from Easter to St. Pierre (June 29). The courses consisted of lectures (collatio) but more often of explications of texts (lectio). There were also discussions and question periods. Examinations were given at the end of each term. The student could receive three degrees: the determinatio, or baccalaureate, gave him the right to teach under the supervision of a master; the licencia docendi was literally the “license to teach” and could be obtained at 21 years of age; and the doctorate, which marked his entrance into mastership and which involved a public examination.
Lay education and the lower schools
The founding of universities was naturally accompanied by a corresponding increase in schools of various kinds. In most parts of western Europe, there were soon grammar schools of some type available for boys. Not only were there grammar schools at cathedrals and collegiate churches, but many others were founded in connection with chantries and craft and merchant guilds and a few in connection with hospitals. It has been estimated, for example, that toward the close of the Middle Ages there were in England and Wales approximately 400 grammar schools for a population of about 2.5 million—although the number of their enrollments was generally quite small.
In fulfillment of its responsibility for education, the church from the 11th century onward made the establishment of an effective education system a central feature of ecclesiastical policy. During the papacy of Gregory VII (1073–85), all bishops had been asked to see that the art of grammar was taught in their churches, and a Lateran Council in 1215 decreed that grammar-school masters should be appointed not only in the cathedral church but also in others that could afford it. Solicitude at the centre for the advancement of education did not, however, result in centralized administration. It was the duty of bishops to carry out approved policy, but it was left to them to administer it, and they in turn allowed schools a large measure of autonomy. Such freedom as medieval schools enjoyed was, however, always subject to the absolute authority of the church, and the right to teach, as earlier noted, was restricted to those who held a bishop’s license. This device was used to ensure that all teachers were loyal to the doctrines of the church.
Knowledge of the teaching provided in the grammar schools at this period is too slight to justify an attempt at a description. No doubt the curriculum varied, but religion was all-important, with Latin as a written and spoken language the other major element in the timetable. There might have been instruction in reading and writing in the vernacular but, in addition to the grammar schools, there were writing and song schools and other schools of an elementary type. Elementary teaching was given in many churches and priests’ houses, and children who did not receive formal scholastic instruction were given oral teaching by parish priests in the doctrines and duties of the faith. The evidence of accounts, bills, inventories, and the like suggests that there was some careful teaching of writing and of an arithmetic that covered the practical calculations required in ordinary life. Literacy, however, was limited by the lack of printed materials; until the 15th century (when typesetting developed), books were laboriously cut page by page on blocks (hence they were known as block books) and consequently were rare and expensive. From the mid-15th century on, literacy increased as typeset books became more widely available.
Educational provision for girls in medieval society was much more restricted. Wealthy families made some provision in the home, but the emphasis was primarily on piety and secondarily on skills of household management, along with artistic “accomplishments.” Neither girls nor boys of the lowest social ranks—peasants or unskilled urban dwellers—were likely to be literate. Nor were girls of the artisan classes until the 16th century, when female teaching congregations such as the Ursulines, founded by Angela Merici, began to appear. There were, however, provisions for boys of the artisan class to receive sufficient vernacular schooling to enable them to be apprenticed to various trades under the auspices of the guilds.
There was an entirely different training for boys of high rank, and this created a cultural cleavage. Instead of attending the grammar school and proceeding to a university, these boys served as pages and then as squires in the halls and castles of the nobility, there receiving prolonged instruction in chivalry. The training was designed to fit the noble youth to become a worthy knight, a just and prudent master, and a sensible manager of an estate. Much of this knowledge was gained from daily experience in the household, but, in addition, the page received direct instruction in reading and writing, courtly pastimes such as chess and playing the lute, singing and making verses, the rules and usages of courtesy, and the knightly conception of duty. As a squire, he practiced more assiduously the knightly exercises of war and peace and acquired useful experience in leadership by managing large and small bodies of men. But this was a type of education that could flourish only in a feudal society; though some of its ideals survived, it was outmoded when feudalism was undermined by the growth of national feeling.
Pierre RichéJames BowenEducation in Asian civilizations: c. 700 to the eve of Western influence
India
During its medieval period, India was ruled by dynasties of Muslim culture and religion. Muslims from Arabia first appeared in the country in the 8th century, but the foundation of their rule was laid much later by Muḥammad Ghūri, who established his power at Delhi in 1192. The original Muslim rule was replaced successively by that of the Muslim Pashtuns and Mughals.
The foundations of Muslim education
Muslim educational institutions were of two types—a maktab, or elementary school, and a madrasa, or institution of higher learning. The content of education imparted in these schools was not the same throughout the country. It was, however, necessary for every Muslim boy at least to attend a maktab and to learn the necessary portions of the Qurʾān required for daily prayers. The curriculum in the madrasa comprised Ḥadīth (the study of Muslim traditions), jurisprudence, literature, logic and philosophy, and prosody. Later on, the scope of the curriculum was widened, and such subjects as history, economics, mathematics, astronomy, and even medicine and agriculture were added. Generally, not all the subjects were taught in every institution. Selected madrasas imparted postgraduate instruction, and a number of towns—Agra, Badaun, Bidar, Gulbarga, Delhi, Jaunpur, and a few others—developed into university centres to which students flocked for study under renowned scholars. The sultans and amirs of Delhi and the Muslim rulers and nobles in the provinces also extended patronage to Persian scholars who came from other parts of Asia under the pressure of Mongol inroads. Delhi vied with Baghdad and Córdoba as an important centre of Islamic culture. Indian languages also received some attention. The Muslim rulers of Bengal, for example, engaged scholars to translate the Hindu classics the Ramayana and the Mahabharata into Bengali.
Under the Pathan Lodis, a dynasty of Afghan foreigners (1451–1526), the education of the Hindus was not only neglected but was often adversely affected in newly conquered territories. The rulers generally tolerated Sanskrit and vernacular schools already in existence but neither helped the existing ones financially nor built new ones. At early stages, the maktabs and madrasas were attended by Muslims only. Later, when Hindus were allowed into high administrative positions, Hindu children began to receive Persian education in Muslim schools.
The Mughal period
The credit for organizing education on a systematic basis goes to Akbar (1542–1605), a contemporary of Queen Elizabeth I of England and undoubtedly the greatest of Mughal emperors. He treated all his subjects alike and opened a large number of schools and colleges for Muslims as well as for Hindus throughout his empire. He also introduced a few curricular changes, based on students’ individual needs and the practical necessities of life. The scope of the curriculum was so widened as to enable every student to receive education according to his religion and views of life. The adoption of Persian as the court language gave further encouragement to the Hindus and the Muslims to study Persian.
Akbar’s policy was continued by his successors Jahāngīr and Shah Jahān. But his great-grandson Aurangzeb (1618–1707) changed his policy with regard to the education of the Hindus. In April 1669, for instance, he ordered the provincial governors to destroy Hindu schools and temples within their jurisdiction; and, at the same time, he supported Muslim education with a certain religious fanaticism. After his death, the glory of the Mughal empire began gradually to vanish, and the whole country was overrun by warlords.
During the Mughal period, girls received their education at home or in the house of some teacher living in close proximity. There were special arrangements for the education of the ladies of the royal household, and some of the princesses were distinguished scholars. Vocational education was imparted through a system of apprenticeship either in the house of ustāds (teachers) or in kārkhānahs (manufacturing centres).
Muslim rulers of India were also great patrons of literature and gave considerable impetus to its development. Akbar ordered various Hindu classics and histories translated into Persian. In addition, a number of Greek and Arabic works were translated into Persian. Literary activities did not entirely cease even in the troubled days of later rulers. Men of letters were patronized by such emperors as Bahādur Shah and Muḥammad Shah and by various regional officials and landlords.
Such is the history of Muslim education in India. It resembles ancient Indian education to a great extent: instruction was free; the relation between the teachers and the taught was cordial; there were great centres of learning; the monitorial system was used; and people were preoccupied with theology and the conduct of life. There were, however, several distinctive features of Muslim education. First, education was democratized. As in mosques, so in a maktab or madrasa all were equal, and the principle was established that the poor should also be educated. Second, Muslim rule influenced the system of elementary education of the Hindus, which had to accommodate itself to changed circumstances by adopting a new method of teaching and by using textbooks full of Persian terms and references to Muslim usages. Third, the Muslim period brought in many cultural influences from abroad. The courses of studies were both widened and brought under a humanistic influence. Finally, Muslim rule produced a cross-cultural influence in the country through the establishment of an educational system in which Hindus and Muslims could study side by side and in which there would be compulsory education in Persian, cultivation of Sanskrit and Hindi, and translation of great classics of literature into different languages. Ultimately, it led to the development of a common medium of expression, Urdu.
Education in the Muslim era was not a concerted and planned activity but a voluntary and spontaneous growth. There was no separate administration of education, and state aid was sporadic and unsteady. Education was supported by charitable endowments and by lavish provision for the students in a madrasa or in a monastery.
The Muslim system, however, proved ultimately harmful. In the early stages genuine love of learning attracted students to the cultural centres, but later on “the bees that flocked there were preeminently drones.” The whole system became stagnant and stereotyped as soon as cultural communication was cut off from the outside world because of political disturbances and internecine wars. The Indian teachers were reduced to dependence on their own resources, and a hardening tradition that became increasingly unreceptive to new ideas reduced the whole process to mere routine.
S.N. MukerjiChina
The Tang dynasty (618–907 CE)
The Tang was one of China’s greatest dynasties, marked by military power, political stability, economic prosperity, and advance in art, literature, and education. It was an age in which Buddhist scholarship won recognition and respect for its originality and high intellectual quality and in which China superseded India as the land from which Buddhism was to spread to other countries in East Asia.
The Tang was known for its literature and art and has been called the golden age of Chinese poetry. There were thousands of poets of note who left a cultural legacy unsurpassed in subsequent periods and even in other lands. Prose writers also flourished, as did artists whose paintings reflected the influences of Buddhism and Daoism.
One of China’s greatest gifts to the world was the invention of printing. Block printing was invented in the 8th century and movable type in the 11th century. The first book printed from blocks was a Buddhist sutra, or set of precepts, in 868. Printing met the demand created by the increase in the output of literature and by the regularized civil service examination system. It also met the popular demand for Buddhist and Daoist prayers and charms. One historian (Kenneth Scott Latourette) noted that “as late as the close of the eighteenth century the [Chinese] Empire possibly contained more printed books than all the rest of the world put together.”
Education in the Tang dynasty was under the dominant influence of Confucianism, notwithstanding the fact that Buddhism and Daoism both received imperial favours. A national academic examination system was firmly established, and officials were selected on the basis of civil service examinations. But Confucianism did not dominate to the extent of excluding other schools of thought and scholarship. Renowned scholars were known to spurn public office because they were not satisfied with a narrow interpretation of Confucianism. Artists and poets were, in general, rebellious against traditional Confucianism.
An emperor in the 5th century ordered the establishment of a “School of Occult Studies” along with the more commonly accepted schools of Confucian learning. It was devoted to the study of Buddhism and Daoism and occult subjects that transcended the practical affairs of government and society. Such schools were often carried on by the private effort of scholars who served as tutors for interested followers.
The schools of Tang were well organized and systematized. There were schools under the central government, others under local management, and private schools of different kinds. Public schools were maintained in each prefecture, district, town, and village. In the capital were “colleges” of mathematics, law, and calligraphy, as well as those for classical study. There was also a medical school.
Semiprivate schools formed by famous scholars gave lectures and tutelage to students numbering in the hundreds. Students from Korea and Japan came to study in China and took back the lunar calendar and the Buddhist sects, as well as the examination system and the Confucian theories of government and social life. Chinese culture also penetrated Indochina.
The examination system was at this time given the form that remained essentially unchanged until the 20th century. Examinations were held on different levels, and for each a corresponding academic degree was specified. Interestingly, there was provision for three degrees, not unlike the bachelor’s, master’s, and doctor’s degrees of modern times. The first degree was the xiucai (“cultivated talent”), the second the mingjing (“understanding the classics”), and the third the jinshi (“advanced scholar”). The name of the second degree was in later periods changed to juren (“recommended man”). An academy of scholars later known as the Hanlin Academy was established for select scholars whom the emperor could call upon for advice and expert opinion on various subjects. Membership in this institution became the highest honour that could be conferred upon those who passed the jinshi degree with distinction. To be appointed a Hanlin scholar was to be recognized as one of the top scholars of the land. Among the services that they rendered were the administration and supervision of examinations and the explanation of difficult texts in literature, classics, and philosophy.
Examinations were given for students of medicine and for military degrees. The study of medicine included acupuncture and massage, as well as the treatment of general diseases of the body and those of eye, ear, throat, and teeth.
The Song (960–1279)
The Song was another dynasty of cultural brilliance. Landscape painting approached perfection, and cultural achievement was stimulated by the invention of movable type (first made of earthenware, then of wood and metal). This advance from the older method of block printing led to the multiplication of books; the printing of a complete set of the classics was a boon to literary studies in schools.
The rulers of Song were receptive to new ideas and innovative policies. The outstanding innovator of the dynasty was Wang Anshi, prime minister from 1068 to 1076. He introduced a comprehensive program of reform that included important changes in education; more emphasis was subsequently placed on the study of current problems and political economy.
Wang’s reforms met with opposition from conservatives. The controversy was only a phase of a deeper and more far-reaching intellectual debate that made the philosophical contributions of the Song scholars as significant as those of the Hundred Schools in the Zhou dynasty over a millennium earlier. Confucianism and the dominant mode of Chinese thinking had been subject to the challenge of ideas from legalism, Daoism, and Buddhism, and, despite the resistance of conservatives, the traditional views had to be modified. Outstanding Confucian scholars of conservative bent argued vigorously with aggressive proponents of new concepts of man, of knowledge, and of the universe. The result was Neo-Confucianism, or what some prefer to call rational philosophy. The most eminent Neo-Confucianist was Zhu Xi, a Confucian scholar who had studied Daoism and Buddhism. His genius lay in his ability to synthesize ideas from a fresh point of view. Song scholars distinguished themselves in other fields, too. Sima Guang’s Zizhi tongjian (“Comprehensive Mirror for Aid in Government”) was a history of China from the 5th century BCE to the 10th century CE. The result of 20 years of painstaking research, it consisted of 1,000 chapters prepared under imperial direction. A volume on architecture was produced that is still used today as a basic reference work, and a treatise on botany contained the most ancient record of varieties of citrus fruits then known in China. No less worthy of mention is an encyclopaedia titled Taiping yulan.
The general pattern of the school system remained essentially the same, with provision for lower schools, higher schools, and technical schools, but there was a broadening of the curriculum. A noteworthy development was the rise of a semiprivate institution known as the shuyuan, or academy. With financial support coming from both state grants and private contributions, these academies were managed by noted scholars of the day and attracted many students and lecturers. Often located in mountain retreats or in the woods, they symbolized the influence of Daoism and Buddhism and a desire to pursue quiet study far away from possible government interference.
The Mongol period (1206–1368)
The Mongols were ferocious fighters but inept administrators. Distrustful of the Chinese, they enlisted the services of many nationalities and employed non-Chinese aliens. To facilitate the employment of these aliens, the civil service examinations were suspended for a number of years. Later, when a modified form of examinations was in effect, there were special examinations for Mongol candidates to make sure of their admission into high offices.
The Mongols despised the Chinese and placed many limitations on them. Consequently, an aftermath of Mongol rule was a strong antiforeign reaction on the part of the Chinese, accompanied by an overanxious desire to preserve the Chinese heritage.
Despite the setback in Chinese culture under Mongol rule, the period was not devoid of positive cultural development. The increase in foreign contacts as a result of travel to and from China brought new ideas and new knowledge of other lands and other peoples. Mathematics and medicine were further influenced by new ideas from abroad. The classics were translated into the Mongol language, and the Mongol language was taught in schools.
Private schools and the academies of the Song dynasty became more popular. As a result of a decrease in opportunities for government appointment, scholars withdrew into the provinces for study and tutoring. Relieved of the pressure of preparing for the examinations, they applied their talents to the less formal but more popular arts and literary forms, including the drama and the novel. Instead of the classical form, they used the vernacular, or the spoken, language. The significance of this development was not evident until the 20th century, when a “literary revolution” popularized the vernacular tongue.
The Ming period (1368–1644)
The Ming dynasty restored Chinese rule. Ming was famous for its ceramics and architecture. There were excellent painters too, but they were at best the disciples of the Tang and Song masters. The outstanding intellectual contribution of the period was the novel, whose development was spurred by increases in literacy and in the demand for reading materials. Ming novels are today recognized as masterpieces of popular vernacular literature. Also of note was the compilation of Pencao kangmu (“Great Pharmacopoeia”), a valuable volume on herbs and medicine that was the fruit of 26 years of labour.
Of considerable scholarly and educational importance was the Yongle dadian (“The Great Canon of the Yongle Era”), which marked a high point in the Chinese encyclopaedic movement. It was a gigantic work resulting from the painstaking efforts of 2,000 scholars over a period of five years. It ran into more than 11,000 volumes, too costly to print, and only two extra copies were made.
The examination system remained basically the same. In the early period of the dynasty, the schools were systematized and regularized. In the latter part of the dynasty, however, the increasing importance of the examination system relegated the schools to a secondary position. The decline of the state-supported schools stimulated the further growth of private education.
The Manchu period (1644–1911/12)
Except for two capable emperors, who ruled for a span of 135 years at the beginning, the Manchu dynasty was weak and undistinguished. Under Emperors Kangxi and Qianlong, learning flourished, but there was little originality. The alien Manchu rulers concentrated on the preservation of what seemed best for stability and the maintenance of the status quo. They wanted new editions of classical and literary works, not creative contributions to scholarship.
Distrust of the Chinese by the Manchus and a feeling of insecurity caused the conquerors to erect barriers between themselves and the Chinese. The discriminatory policy was expressed in the administration of the examinations. To assure the appointment of Manchus to government posts, equal quotas were set aside for the Manchus and the Chinese, although the former constituted only about 3 percent of the population. The Chinese thus faced the keenest competition in the examinations, and those who passed tended to be brilliant intellects, whereas the Manchus could be assured of success without great effort.
Schools were encouraged and regulated during the early period of the dynasty. The public school system consisted of schools for nobles, national schools, and provincial schools. Separate schools were maintained for the Manchus, and for their benefit Chinese books were translated into the Manchu language. Village and charitable schools were supported by public funds, but they were neglected in later years so that, by the end of the dynasty, private schools and tutoring had overshadowed them.
At the threshold of the modern era, China had sunk into political weakness and intellectual stagnation. The creativity and originality that had brightened previous periods of history were now absent. Examinations dominated the educational scene, and the content of the examinations was largely literary and classical. Daoism and Buddhism had lost their intellectual vigour, and Confucianism became the unchallenged model of scholarship.
Much could be said for the Chinese examination system at its best. It was instrumental in establishing an intellectual aristocracy whereby the nation could be sure of a cultural unity by entrusting government to scholars reared in a common tradition, nurtured in a common cultural heritage, and dedicated to common ideals of political and social life. It established a tradition of government by civilians and by scholars. It made the scholars the most highly esteemed people of the land. The examinations provided an open road to fame and position. Chinese society was not without classes, but there was a high degree of social mobility, and education provided the opportunity for raising one’s position and status. There were no rigid prerequisites and no age limits for taking the examinations. Selection was rigorous, but the examinations were on the whole administered with fairness. The names of the candidates did not appear on the examination papers, and the candidates were not permitted to have any outside contacts while writing them.
Nevertheless, the system had serious drawbacks. The content of the examinations became more and more limited in scope. The Confucianist classics constituted the core, and a narrow and rigid interpretation prevailed. In early times, Chinese education was broad and liberal, but by the 19th century art, music, and science had been dropped on the wayside; even arithmetic was not accorded the same importance as reading and writing. Modern science and technology were completely neglected.
After alien rule by the Mongols, the Chinese were obsessed with restoring their heritage; they avoided deviating from established forms and views. This conservatism was accentuated under Manchu rule and resulted in sterility and stagnation. The creativity and original spirit of classical education was lost. The narrow curriculum was far removed from the pressing problems and changing needs of the 19th century.
Theodore Hsi-en ChenJapan
The ancient period to the 12th century
The Japanese nation seems to have formed a unified ancient state in the 4th century CE. Society at that time was composed of shizoku, or clans, each of which served the chōtei (“the imperial court”) with its specialized skill or vocation. People sustained themselves by engaging in agriculture, hunting, and fishing, and the chief problem of education was how to convey the knowledge of these activities and provide instruction in the skills useful for these occupations.
The influence of the civilizations of China and India had a profound effect on both the spiritual life and the education of the Japanese. Toward the 6th century the assimilation of Chinese civilization became more and more rapid, particularly as a result of the spread of Confucianism. Buddhism was also an important intellectual and spiritual influence. Originating in India and then spreading to China, Buddhism was transmitted to Japan through the Korean peninsula in the mid-6th century.
A monarchic state system with an emperor as its head was established following a coup d’état in 645. The subsequent Taika (Great Reform) era saw the beginning of many new institutions, most of which were primarily imitations of institutions of the Tang dynasty of China. In the field of education, a daigakuryō, or college house, was established in the capital, and kokugaku, or provincial schools, were built in the provinces. Their chief aim was to train government officials. The early curriculum was almost identical to that of the Tang dynasty of China but by the 8th and 9th centuries had been modified considerably to meet internal conditions, particularly as regarded the educational needs of the nobility.
Through the Nara and the Heian eras (8th–12th century), the nobility (kuge) constituted the ruling class, and learning and culture were the concern primarily of the kuge and the Buddhist monks. The kuge lived an artistic life, so that the emphasis of education came to be placed on poetry, music, and calligraphy. Teaching in the daigakuryō gradually shifted in emphasis from Confucianism to literature, since the kuge set a higher value on artistic refinement than on more spiritual endeavours. Apart from the daigakuryō, other institutions were established in which families of influential clans lodged and developed their intellectual lives.
The feudal period (1192–1867)
Education of the warriors
Toward the mid-12th century, political power passed from the nobility to the buke, or warrior, class. The ensuing feudal period in Japan dates from the year 1192 (the establishment of the Kamakura shogunate) to 1867 (the decline of the Tokugawa shogunate).
The warrior’s way of life was quite unlike that of the nobility, and the aims and content of education in the warrior’s society inevitably differed. The warrior constantly had to practice military arts, hardening his body and training his will. Education was based on military training, and a culture characteristic of warriors began to flourish. Some emphasis, though, was placed on spiritual instruction. The warrior society, founded on firm master–servant relations and centring on the philosophy of Japanese family structure, set the highest value on family reputation and on genealogies. Furthermore, because the military arts proved insufficient to enable warriors to grasp political power and thereby maintain their ruling position, there arose a philosophy of bumbu-kembi, which asserted the desirability of being proficient in both literary and military arts. Thus, the children of warriors attended temples and rigorously trained their minds and wills. Reading and writing were the main subjects.
Temples were the centres of culture and learning and can be said to have been equivalent to universities, in that they provided a meeting place for scholars and students. Education in the temple, originally aimed at instructing novitiates, gradually changed its character, eventually providing education for children not destined to be monks. Thus, the temples functioned as institutions of primary education.
Education in the Tokugawa era
In 1603 a shogunate was established by a warrior, Tokugawa Ieyasu, in the city of Edo (present Tokyo). The period thence to the year 1867—the Tokugawa, or Edo, era—constitutes the later feudal period in Japan. This era, though also dominated by warriors, differed from former ones in that internal disturbances finally ended and long-enduring peace ensued. There emerged a merchant class that developed a flourishing commoner’s culture. Schools for commoners thus were established.
Representative of such schools were the terakoya (temple schools), deriving from the earlier education in the temple. As time passed, some terakoya used parts of private homes as classrooms. Designed to be one of the private schools, or shijuku, the terakoya developed rapidly in the latter half of the Tokugawa era, flourishing in most towns and villages. Toward the end of the era they assumed the characteristics of the modern primary school, with emphasis on reading, writing, and arithmetic. Other shijuku—emphasizing Chinese, Dutch, and national studies, as well as practical arts—contributed to the diversification of learning and permitted students with different class and geographic backgrounds to pursue learning under the guidance of the same teacher. Their curricula were free from official control.
The shogunate established schools to promote Confucianism, which provided the moral training for upper-class samurai that was essential for maintaining the ideology of the feudal regime. Han, or feudal domains, following the same policy, built hankō, or domain schools, in their castle towns for the education of their own retainers.
The officially run schools for the samurai were at the apex of the educational system in the Tokugawa era. The Confucian Academy, which was known as the Shōheikō and was administered directly by the shogunate, became a model for hankō throughout Japan. The hankō gradually spread after about 1750, so that by the end of the era they numbered over 200.
The curriculum in the hankō consisted chiefly of kangaku (the study of books written in Chinese) and, above all, of Confucianism. Classics of Confucianism, historical works, and anthologies of Chinese poems were used as textbooks. Brush writing, kokugaku (study of thought originating in Japan), and medicine were also included. Later, in the last days of the shogunate, yōgaku, or Western learning, including Western medicine, was added in several institutions.
Both hankō for samurai and terakoya for commoners were the typical schools after the middle of the Tokugawa era. Also to be found, however, were gōgaku, or provincial schools, for samurai as well as commoners. They were founded at places of strategic importance by the feudal domain.
The various shijuku became centres of interaction among students from different domains when such close contact among residents of different areas was prohibited. They served as centres of learning and dialogue for many of those who later constituted the political leadership responsible for the Meiji Restoration of 1868.
Effect of early Western contacts
The Europeans who first arrived in Japan were the Portuguese, in 1543. In 1549 the Jesuit Francis Xavier visited Japan and, for the first time, the propagation of Christianity began. Many missionaries began to arrive, Christian schools were built, and European civilization was actively introduced.
In 1633 the shogunate, in apprehension of further Christian infiltration of Japan, banned foreign travel and prohibited the return of overseas Japanese. Further, in 1639, the shogunate banned visits by Europeans. This was the so-called sakoku, or period of national isolation. From that time on, Christianity was strictly forbidden, and international trade was conducted with only the Chinese and the Dutch. Because contact with Europeans was restricted to the Dutch, Western studies developed as rangaku, or learning through the Dutch language.
It is noteworthy that the Tokugawa period laid the foundation of modern Japanese learning. As a result of the development of hankō and terakoya, Japanese culture and education had developed to such an extent that Japan was able to absorb Western influences and attain modernization at a remarkably rapid pace after the Meiji Restoration.
Arata NakaNobuo ShimaharaEuropean Renaissance and Reformation
The channels of development in Renaissance education
The Muslim influence
Western civilization was profoundly influenced by the rapid rise and expansion of Islam from the 7th until the 15th century. By 732 CE, 100 years after the death of Muhammad, Islam had expanded from western Asia throughout all of northern Africa, across the Strait of Gibraltar into Spain, and into France, reaching Tours, halfway from the Pyrenees to Paris. Muslim Spain rapidly became one of the most advanced civilizations of the period, where much of the learning of the past—Oriental, Greek, and Roman—was preserved and further developed. In particular, Greek and Latin scholarship was collected in great libraries in the splendid cities of Córdoba, Sevilla (Seville), Granada, and Toledo, which became major centres of advanced scholarship, especially in the practical arts of medicine and architecture.
Inevitably, scholarship in the adjacent Frankish—and subsequent French—kingdom was influenced, leading to a revitalization of western Christian scholarship, which had long been dormant as a result of the barbarian migrations. The doctrines of Aristotle, which had been assiduously cultivated by the Muslims, were especially influential for their emphasis on the role of reason in human affairs and on the importance of the study of humankind in the present, as distinct from the earlier Christian preoccupation with the cultivation of faith as essential for the future life. Thus, Muslim learning helped to usher in the new phase in education known as humanism, which first took definite form in the 12th century.
The secular influence
The word humanism comes from studia humanitatis (“studies of humanity”). Toward the end of the Middle Ages, there was a renewed interest in those studies that stressed the importance of man, his faculties, affairs, worldly aspirations, and well-being. The primacy of theology and otherworldliness was over. The reductio artium ad theologiam (freely, “reducing everything to theological argument”) was rejected since it no longer expressed the reality of the new situation that was developing in Europe, particularly in Italy. Society had been profoundly transformed, commerce had expanded, and life in the cities had evolved. Economic and political power, previously in the hands of the ecclesiastical hierarchy and the feudal lords, was beginning to be taken over by the city burghers. Use of the vernacular languages was becoming widespread. The new society needed another kind of education and different educational structures; the burghers required new instruments with which to express themselves and found the old medieval universities inadequate.
The educational institutions of humanism had their origin in the schools set up in the free cities in the late 13th and the 14th centuries—schools designed to answer to the needs of the new urban population that was beginning to have greater economic importance in society. The pedagogical thought of the humanists took these transformations of society into account and worked out new theories that often went back to the Classical Greek and Latin traditions; it was not, however, a servile imitation of the pedagogical thought and institutions of the Classical world.
The Renaissance of the Classical world and the educational movements it gave rise to were variously expressed in different parts of Europe and at various times from the 14th to the 17th century; there was a connecting thread, but there were also many differences. What the citizens of the Florentine republic needed was different from what was required by princes in the Renaissance courts of Italy or in other parts of Europe. Common to both, however, was the rejection of the medieval tradition that did not belong in the new society they were creating. Yet the search for a new methodology and a new relation with the ancient world was bitterly opposed by the traditionalists, who did not want renewal that would bring about a profound transformation of society; and, in fact, the educational revolution did not completely abolish existing traditions. The humanists, for example, were not concerned with extending education to the masses but turned their attention to the sons of princes and rich burghers.
The humanists had the important and original conception that education was neither completed at school nor limited to the years of one’s youth but that it was a continuous process making use of varied instruments: companionship, games, and pleasure were part of education. Rather than suggesting new themes, they wanted to discover the method by which the ancient texts should be studied. For them, knowledge of the Classical languages meant the possibility of penetrating the thought of the past; grammar and rhetoric were being transformed into philological studies not for the sake of pedantic research but in order to acquire a new historical and critical consciousness. They reconstructed the past in order better to understand themselves and their own time.
The humanistic tradition in Italy
Early influences
One of the most influential of early humanists was Manuel Chrysoloras, who came to Florence from Constantinople in 1396. He introduced the study of Greek and, among other things, translated Plato’s Republic into Latin, which were important steps in the development of the humanistic movement.
Inspired by the ancient Athenian schools, the Platonic Academy established in Florence in the second half of the 15th century became a centre of learning and diffusion of Christian Platonism, a philosophy that conceived of all forms as the creative thoughts of God and that inspired considerable artistic innovation and creativity. Marsilio Ficino and Pico della Mirandola were two of the most original of the scholars who taught there. Florence was the first city to have such a centre, but Rome and Naples soon had similar academies, and Padua and Venice also became centres of culture.
A famous early humanist and professor of rhetoric at Padua was Pietro Paolo Vergerio (1370–1444). He wrote the first significant exclusively pedagogical treatise, De ingenuis moribus et liberalibus studiis (“On the Manners of a Gentleman and on Liberal Studies”), which—though not presenting any new techniques—did set out the fundamental principles by which education should be guided. He gave pedagogical expression to the ideal of harmony, or equilibrium, found in all aspects of humanism, and underlined the importance of the education of the body as well as of the spirit. The liberal arts were emphasized (“liberal” because of the liberation they reputedly brought). The program outlined by Vergerio focused upon eloquence, history, and philosophy but also included the sciences (mathematics, astronomy, and natural science) as well as medicine, law, metaphysics, and theology. The later subjects were not studied in depth; humanism was by its nature against encyclopaedism, but it brought out the relations between the disciplines and enabled students to know many subjects before they decided in which to specialize. Learning was not to be exclusively from books, and emphasis was placed on the advantages of preparing for social life by study and discussion in common. Vergerio felt that education should not be used as a means of entering the lucrative professions; medicine and law, especially, were looked on with suspicion if one’s aim in studying them was merely that of gaining material advantages.
Emergence of the new gymnasium
As a result of the renewed emphasis on Greek studies, early in the 15th century a definite sequence of institutions emerged. The gymnasium was the principal school for young boys and was preparatory to further liberal studies in the major nonuniversity institution of higher learning, the academy. Both terms, gymnasium and academy, were Classical revivals, but their programs were markedly different from those of ancient Greece. The gymnasiums appeared in ducal courts; they were created for the liberal education of privileged boys and as the first stage of the studia humanitatis. Outstanding among these early gymnasiums was the school conducted by Gasparino da Barzizza in Padua from 1408 to 1421, which was considered a model for later institutions, and more particularly the gymnasium of Guarino Veronese (1374–1460) and that of his contemporary Vittorino da Feltre (1378–1446).
Guarino had first established a school in 1415 in Venice, where he was joined by Vittorino. He subsequently moved to Ferrara where, from 1429 to 1436, he assumed responsibility for the humanist education of the young son of Nicolò d’Este, the lord of Ferrara. Guarino wrote no treatises, but something may be learned about his work and methods from his large correspondence and from De ordine docendi et studendi (1485; “On the Order for Teaching and Studying”), written by his son Battista. Guarino organized his students’ courses into three stages: the elementary level, at which reading and pronunciation were primarily taught, followed by the grammatical level, and finally the highest level, concentrating on rhetoric. The education given in his schools was perhaps the best example of the humanistic ideals, since it underlined the importance of literary studies together with a harmonious development of body and spirit, to the exclusion of any utilitarian purpose.
Vittorino was a disciple of both Barzizza and Guarino. He conducted boarding schools at Padua and Venice and, most importantly, from 1423 to 1446 one at Mantua, where he had been invited by the reigning lord, Gianfrancesco Gonzaga. This last school, known as La Giocosa (literally, “The Jocose, or Joyful”), soon became famous. At La Giocosa only those who had both talent and a modest disposition were accepted; wealth was neither necessary nor sufficient to gain admission. In fact, the school was one of the few efforts made during this period to extend education to a wider public. The program of study at La Giocosa was perhaps closer to the medieval tradition than that of the other boarding schools but, in any case, the spirit was different. Studies were stimulating; mathematics was taught pleasantly—Vittorino going back to very ancient traditions of practicing mathematics with games. After having studied the seven arts of the trivium (grammar, rhetoric, and logic) and the quadrivium (geometry, arithmetic, harmonics, and astronomy), students completed the cycle by a study of philosophy and then, having mastered this discipline, could go on to higher studies leading to such professions as medicine, law, philosophy, and theology. Italian was completely ignored at Vittorino’s school; all instruction was given in Latin, the study of which, along with Greek, reached a high level of excellence. Great importance was given to recreation and physical education; his concern for the health of his students did not come to an end with the scholastic year, for during the summers, when the cities became unhealthy, he would arrange for his students to go to Lake Garda or to the hills outside Verona.
Vittorino’s educational philosophy was inspired by a profound religious faith and moral integrity, which contrasted with the general relaxation of standards within the church itself; but, if he was severe with himself, he was very open and tolerant with his pupils. The school continued only for a while after his death because, more than in the case of the other schools, La Giocosa was identified with the personality of the founder.
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