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CHAPTER II

THE EDUCATION OF THE GREEKS

OUTLINE

The Spartan training was intended to serve the state by making warriors, and little attention was paid to intellectual education.

At first the Athenian education was also mainly concerned in serving the state. For the earliest stage of the boy's education, there were schools of two types,-one for intellectual training, as well as one for physical; from fifteen to eighteen a more advanced physical training was given; and then, for two years, a preparation for military life.

After the Persian wars, the Athenians adopted ideals of education affording a larger recognition of individualism. The sophists introduced the new educational practices, and went to an extreme in their individualism.

The systematic philosophers,-Socrates, Plato, and Aristotle, tried to mediate the outworn institutional education and the extreme individualism. Socrates held that the sophistic 'knowledge' was only 'opinion,' and that the more universal knowledge could be reached in every person by stripping off his individualistic opinion.

But Plato maintained that only the intellectual class could attain to knowledge. For them he formulated a new course of study, in addition to that in vogue, consisting of mathematical subjects and dialectic. Aristotle held that the training for every one before seven should be bodily; up to fourteen, the irrational soul should be trained; and until twenty-one, the rational. While Plato and Aristotle had little effect upon educational practice at the time, they have since greatly influenced education.

After Aristotle, there arose individualistic schools of philosophy

and formal schools of rhetoric, and out of them universities sprang up. Then Greek culture and education spread throughout the world.

ment of indi

Greeks.

Progressive Nature of Greek Education.-Real educaFirst develop- tional progress began with the Greeks. In their training viduality ap gradually appeared considerable regard for individuality. peared among They were the first people whose outlook seems to have been toward the future rather than the past, and they first made a serious attempt to promote human development in accordance with a remote ideal progressively revealed. As a result, they not only gave a wonderful impetus to educational practice in their own time, but ever since then the world has had constant recourse to them for inspiration and counsel. While this intellectual emancipation did not appear to any extent before its development among the Athenians in the middle of the fifth century B. C., well-planned systems of education existed in Greece several centuries before this and paved the way for the system in Athens during the Age of Pericles.

Spartan Education: Its Aim and Early Stages.-Among the states of ancient Greece, Sparta possessed the earliest education of which we have any extended information. Its citizens dwelt in the midst of hostile peoples they had subjugated, and this made it necessary to produce a race of hardy and patriotic warriors. Strength, courage, and obedience to the laws were held as the aim of education. Service to state The Spartan educational system was intended to serve the state, and the rights of the individual were given little or no consideration. State control began with birth. The infant was immediately inspected by a council of

the object.

elders, and, if he were sickly or deformed, he was 'ex- Exposure of sickly infants. posed' to die in the mountains; but if he appeared physically promising, he was formally adopted by the state and left with his mother for rearing until seven. At that age the boys were placed in charge of a state officer and ate and slept in a kind of public barracks. Here their life became one of constant drill and discipline. In addition to hard beds, scanty clothing, and little food, they were given a graded course in gymnastics. Barracks training of Besides ball-playing, dancing, and the pentathlum— boys. running, jumping, throwing the discus, casting the javelin, and wrestling-the exercises included boxing, and even the brutal pancratium, in which any means of overcoming one's antagonist-kicking, gouging, and biting, as well as wrestling and boxing-was permitted.

Little intellec

The Spartan boys, however, received only a little informal training in the way of intellectual education. tual or moral They simply committed to memory and chanted the training. laws of Lycurgus and selections from Homer, and they listened to the conversation of the older men during the meals at the common table, and were themselves exercised in giving concise and sensible answers to questions put to test their wisdom. Every adult was also required to choose as his constant companion or 'hearer' a youth to whom he might become an 'inspirer.'

Training in Youth and Manhood: Results.-When a youth reached eighteen, he began the distinctive study of warfare. For two years he was trained in the use of arms and skirmishing, and every ten days had his courage and his physique tested by being whipped before the altar of Artemis. Then he regularly entered the army, and for ten years guarded some border fortress and lived training.

Military

Similar education of girls.

upon the coarsest of fare. When he became thirty, he was considered a man and forced to marry at once, but even then he could visit his wife only clandestinely and was still obliged to live in common with the boys and assist in their training.

The education of women was very like that of the men. While the girls were allowed to live at home, they were given a similar physical training in the hope that they would become the mothers of sturdy sons. Thus the Spartan education was shaped entirely with reference to the welfare of the state. Their educational system served well its purpose of creating strong warriors and devoted citizens, but it failed to make for the highest manhood. Sparta developed practically no art, literature, or philosophy, and produced little that tended to promote civilization. She has left to the world little but examples of heroism and foolhardiness alike.

Old Athenian Education: Its Aim and Early Training. For many centuries the Athenian education was not unlike the Spartan in promoting the welfare of the state without much consideration of individual interests. But even in early days Athens felt that the state was best served when the individual secured the most complete personal development. Hence, the Athenian boys Two types of schools: (1) the began to receive at seven years of age two kinds of trainpalaestra, fur- ing,- (1) the pentathlum and other physical exercises in the palaestra (Fig. 3) or exercising ground, and (2) singing and playing upon the flute or lyre, and reading and writing at the didascaleum (Fig. 4.) or music school. After the boy had learned his letters by tracing them in the sand, he was taught to copy verses and selections from wellknown authors, at first upon wax-tablets with a stylus,

nishing physi-
cal training;
(2) the didasca-

leum, furnishreading, and

ing music,

writing.

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Fig. 4. The didascaleum. (Reproduced from illustrations taken from old vases by Freeman in his Schools of Hellas.)

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