Education
From Encyclopædia
Throughout history societies have sought to educate their people to produce goods and services, to respond effectively and creatively to their
world, and to satisfy their curiosity and aesthetic impulses. To achieve any of these objectives people need to acquire reliable knowledge and to think systematically. This article discusses education in the general sense, its history and
philosophy. Information on specific kinds of education and education in particular parts of the
world is provided in numerous separate articles; see, for example, ADULT EDUCATION,
African universities,
British education.HISTORY OF EDUCATIONOver the course of human history education has appeared in many forms, both formalized and informal. Major thinkers have always recognized the educational value of intellectual
exploration and of concrete experimentation. Most societies have attempted to standardize the behavior of their members. One form of education that they have used is the rituals by which the young are initiated into adulthood. Most societies have also had apprenticeship systems by which the young have learned to imitate the beliefs and behaviors of a given group. Teachers have worked within schools of thought, cults, monasteries, and other types of organizations to shape desired convictions, knowledge, and behavior. Such philosophical and religious leaders as the Buddha, Confucius, Pythagoras,
Jesus Christ,
saint Augustine, Moses, Muhammad, and Karl Marx instructed their disciples through informal organizations.Ancient EducationNear East. The nature of education in
Egypt and Sumer as early as the early 3d millennium BC is known from archaeological
evidence. Various
young people were selected to serve as
priests, clerics, builders, and political rulers. They were taught writing,
mathematics, astronomy,
architecture, and government in
temple schools by
priests, who also controlled education.Hebrew education centered on the study of the TORAH and the adherence to its
teachings and principles. The
Bible and other documents such as the
Dead Sea Scrolls have provided much information about education in ancient
Palestine. One Jewish
caste, the Levites, at an early time became
temple servants and teachers of the laws. Scholars known as scribes and later as rabbis taught the
Jews in the synagogues, although a major responsibility for the education of children fell on parents.China and India. In ancient China cultural leadership centered around the courts of the various kingdoms. Chinese historians have traditionally reported about the Hundred Schools of thought that emerged from these courts about 1000 BC. Up to about 600 BC, formal education was available only to rulers and nobles; after that time, it became more widespread among officials and members of the wealthier classes. By 400 BC education, largely conducted in private homes, had been shaped for the most part by four schools of thought:
Confucianism,
Taoism, Mohism, and Legalism.Accompanying the ascendancy of
Confucianism during the Han dynasty (202 BC-AD 220) was a strong surge of
interest in education and intellectual pursuits. In AD 124 a Grand College was set up to train candidates for civil service; they were selected by a rigorous examination system that prevailed in China into the 20th century. BUDDHISM and
Taoism have also been important educational forces throughout Chinese history.The older societies of India were largely conquered by
Aryan groups between 2000 and 1500 BC. The
Aryans developed the
Vedas, a body of scripture that divided society into
castes. Under the
caste system, which became a vital part of HINDUISM, social function was inherited; one was obliged not only to learn certain things, by formal instruction and apprenticeship, but, by the moral code, not to learn others. One member of the warrior
caste, Prince Siddhartha Gautama (c.560-480 BC), sought a spiritual life and developed the precepts that became known as Buddhism. By the 3d century BC his disciples, liv?ng as monks, exerted great influence across all of India. Between the 1st and 7th centuries AD Buddhism became a major religious and educational force in Tibet, China, Japan, and Southeast
Asia.Greece and Rome. In ancient Greece societal values were transmitted in various ways. The
epic poems the
Iliad and the Odyssey described the idealized behavior of people who were destined to conquer and to rule. Schools of thought were established by such teachers as THALES OF MILETUS, who is known as the first Western philosopher;
Pythagoras of Samos, who established a religiously oriented cult; and the statesman SOLON, who emphasized political
science and
economics.In the Greek
city-state of SPARTA state institutions trained boys almost exclusively in the military arts. Any academic learning was provided by private tutors. In other Greek
city-states boys received a general education before beginning military training. The Athenians in particular strove to educate the complete individual. Parents employed teachers in a variety of subjects including reading, writing,
poetry,
gymnastics,
mathematics,
philosophy, and
science.In 5th-century Athens the Sophists, teachers who took fees for their lessons, filled an educational gap. PROTAGORAS, who taught
mathematics, politics,
ethics, and metaphysics, was a philosopher and a rhetorician. He and other Sophists taught rhetoric, an important subject for aspiring statesmen. The great Athenian philosopher
Socrates went one step beyond the Sophists: he engaged his students in dialogues during the course of
teaching them
ethics and politics, and he asked no fees.The
academy, established by
Socrates' disciple
Plato about 387 BC, might be considered among the first universities, if one defines a
university as a place where scholars conduct rigorous research with their students. Another
university of this type was the
lyceum, founded by
Aristotle in 335 BC. The philosophies of
Plato and
Aristotle dominated educational thought for many centuries and continue to exert an influence on education today.Many Roman leaders sought education in Greece or, after the middle of the 3d century BC, in Roman schools that were modeled after Greek schools. Rome also produced teachers of engineering,
architecture, and law. In ancient Rome boys were given a general education that included the study of
literature,
linguistics, astronomy, geometry,
music,
logic, history, and
philosophy; girls received only an elementary education.The impact of Greek and Roman education was strong and long lasting in Western culture. In
medicine, a research-oriented school was led by HIPPOCRATES at Cos. He was followed much later by the Roman physician GALEN. For many centuries the medical
science of Hippocrates and Galen was the most advanced in the West. The rhetorical school of ISOCRATES became a model for such Romans as
Quintilian and has long influenced the study of humanities.Education among the early Christians was both religious and secular. Christians received the same classical secular instruction as did the Greeks and Romans among whom they lived. Early
Christianity developed theologies closely related to classical philosophies and pagan religions.Medieval Education, 600 to 1400After the fall of Rome in AD 476, the Eastern Roman Empire continued to thrive as an intellectual and educational center. In 313,
emperor Constantine had declared
Christianity to be the official religion of the empire and had established (330) Constantinople, formerly Byzantium, as the empire's capital. Classical Greek and Latin literary, philosophical, and scientific texts and traditions were preserved there, and the
teaching of these subjects was the basis of education until the fall of Constantinople to the Ottoman
Turks in 1453. Prominent among early Byzantine educators was Martianus Capella, whose book De Nuptiis Philologiae et Mercurii (mid-5th century) categorized knowledge into two areas, the trivium (
grammar,
logic, and rhetoric) and the quadrivium (arithmetic, astronomy, geometry, and
music), which are still consi?ered the "seven liberal arts." Today's legal scholars still study the Corpus Juris Civilis (Body of
civil law, 529-35), the codification of
Roman law sponsored by the
emperor JUSTINIAN.Western
Europe. During the
Dark Ages, which extended from the fall of Rome to the beginning of the Carolingian revival (c.770), education nearly came to a standstill in western
Europe. What formal education there was was religious in nature and was provided by monasteries, mainly in Ireland and northern England. CHARLEMAGNE, though, supported education in the hope of forming one great Christian empire of all the
Germanic peoples. He invited (c.781)
Alcuin, principal of the great cathedral school at York, England, to set up a palace school at
Aachen.
Alcuin's palace school became the model for other centers of learning in Charlemagne's empire.In early medieval
Europe a nobility skilled in warfare controlled some aspects of education. Under the system of
chivalry, which reached its zenith by the 13th century, a young man would serve as a page and then as a squire before he could become a
knight. He would read such
literature as the
chansons de geste and the legends of King Arthur in order to learn morality and courtly virtues.
