HIST 3305 Lecture 7: social-history-of-education-apuntes-examen
1. EDUCATION IN ACIENT TIMES.
Education of Greek women: Sparta and Athens. The education was very different in Sparta
and Athens as in the other ancient Greek city-states. SPARTA: In ancient Sparta, the purpose of
education was to produce a well-drilled, well-disciplined marching army. Spartans believed in a
life of discipline, self-denial, and simplicity. They were very loyal to the state of Sparta. Every
Spartan, male or female, was required to have a perfect body. When babies were born in ancient
Sparta, Spartan soldiers would come by the house and check the baby. If the baby did not appear
healthy and strong, the infant was taken away, and left to die on a hillside, or taken away to be
trained as a slave (a helot). Babies who passed this examination were assigned membership in a
brotherhood or sisterhood, usually the same one to which their father or mother belonged.
WOMEN: In Sparta, girls also went to school at age 6 or 7. They lived, slept and trained in
their sisterhood's barracks. No one knows if their school was as cruel or as rugged as the boys
school, but the girls were taught wrestling, gymnastics, and combat skills. Some historians
believe the two schools were very similar, and that an attempt was made to train the girls as
thoroughly as they trained the boys. In any case, the Spartans believed that strong young women
would produce strong babies. At age 18, if a Sparta girl passed her skills and fitness test, she
would be assigned a husband and allowed to return home. If she failed, she would lose her
rights as a citizen, and became a perioikos, a member of the middle class. In most of the other
Greek city-states, women were required to stay inside their homes most of their lives. They
could not go anywhere or do anything without their husband's permission. They could not even
visit a woman who lived next door. They had no freedom. But in Sparta, things were very
different for women who were citizens. They were free to move around, and visit neighbors
without permission. No marvelous works of art or architecture came out of Sparta, but Spartan
military force was regarded as terrifying. Thus, the Spartans achieved their goal. MEN: (I wrote
about men also because I thought it was correctly although the work is about women, now we
can compare women and men). Spartan boys were sent to military school at age 6 or 7. They
lived, trained and slept in the barracks of their brotherhood. They were taught survival skills and
other skills necessary to be a great soldier. School courses were very hard and often painful.
Although students were taught to read and write, those skills were not very important to the
ancient Spartans. Only warfare mattered. The boys were not fed well, and were told that it was
fine to steal food as long as they did not get caught stealing. If they were caught, they were
beaten. The boys marched without shoes to make them stronger. It was a brutal training period.
ATHENS: In ancient Athens, the purpose of education was to produce citizens trained in the
arts, and to prepare citizens for both peace and war. MEN: Until age 6 or so, boys were taught
at home by their mother or by a male slave. From age 6 to 14, boys went to a neighborhood
primary school or to a private school. Books were very expensive and rare, so subjects were
read out-loud, and the boys had to memorize everything. To help them learn, they used writing
tablets and rulers. In primary school, they had to learn two important things - the words
of Homer, a famous Greek epic poet, and how to play the lyre. Their teacher, who was always a
man, could choose what additional subjects he wanted to teach. He might choose to teach
drama, public speaking, government, art, reading, writing, math, and how to play another
ancient Greek instrument - the flute. Following that, boys attended a higher school for four more
years. When they turned 18, they entered military school for two additional years. At age 20,
they graduated. WOMEN: Girls were not educated at school, but many learned to read and
write at home in the comfort of their courtyard.
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2. EDUCATION IN ANCIENT GREECE:
More than 2000 years ago the greeks developed the basic forms of the arts and sciences, of
literature, and of philosophy. They were the first to study subjects of ethics, politics, and
education. The Greeks were the first to use the school as a means of preparing citizens for
citizenship. Sparta and Athens developed the two best known types of ancient Greek education.
The practices and philosophies were, different, but their basic purposes were similar. Both took
for their chief aims the training and education of strong and courageus soldiers and loyal
citizens. Neither intended to give much freedom to the individual, althoguh Athens gave far
more attention to intelectual an aesthetic elements and allowed more individual liberty than
Sparta.
A) SPARTA: There were 3 classes of people in Sparta: 1- The Spartiates, or Spartans proper,
who were descendants of the Dorian conquerors and were the citizens. 2- The Perioeci who
tilled the land in a shore of feudal economy, and who were free but had no political rights. 3-
The Helots, who were public slaves owned by the state. The Spartiates were the descendants of
the ancient inhabitants of the land. They were freed from all manual and menial labor to devote
themselves to military and civil activities. The economy system was a form of state
communism. The characteristics fact about the Spartans education is that is was carried out on
military lines. The aim was to develop courage, military skill, obedience to law and custom, and
reverence for the elders. They shared the Greek religion and the Greek language and its great
literary monuments, the Homeric poems, with all the Hellenes. Only ealthy children could be
used by such state, and all others were by legal command exposed to die or were adopted by the
Helots or Perioeci. Every vigorous little boy who was approved by the elders was brught up at
home by his mother until the age of 7, when he was transfered to barracs for public training in a
company of abaut 60 cadets of his own age. At the head of each company there was an Eiren, a
young man of 20 or more who had completed his training. A general superintendent, the
paidonomos, ruled very strictly over the whole system. The physical education was intended to
toughen the mental and moral fiber and stamina. In the final test for citizenship, gymnastic
exercices and sports were among the chiev means of education, pentathlon, the javelin,
wrestling, and the pancratium. Older boys were trained in the use of arms. Reading and writing
were not included in the public education. These were sometimes taught privately. All adult men
had the right and the duty to take part in the education. At 30, when full adulthood was finally
attained, came the liberty and obligation to stablish a home and rise a family. From 30 until 45
they were enlisted in the national army and until 60 in the home guards. Girls were given a
similar public athletic training. Women´s highest duty was the bearing of healthy children for
the state. Like the boys they were organized by ages into troops and exercised in jumping,
running, wrestling, and throwing the discus. But the lived at home, not in a public institution.
The Spartan matron had more influence in family and state than the more oriental Athenian
hausfrau. Spartan life and education was thus directed almost exclusively toward military
success at home and abroad, and the individual´s personal desires were given little
consideration. Sparta produced soldiers and politicians. Spartan education is hisorically
important because it influenced the thought of the great Greek philosopher Plato.
B) ATHENS: The city-state of Attica, for which the name Athens. The state enjoyed and income
for the rich silver mines of Laurium, which were worked by slave labor. Persian Wars, Athens
had become a wealthy and highly cultured city, and the leader of the Greek city-states. Greece
was a strong cultura unity based upon language, religion, similar customs, and the conciousness
of a common origin and history. Athens was the great center of this cultural development. The
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spirit of the Athens of that epoch is portrayed in a famous speech of Pericles as reported or
composed by the historian Thucydides. Thucydides makes Pericles, in the ´Funeral Oration`,
praise the people and the polity of his city as follows: Our form of government does not enter
into rivalry. We do not copy our neighbours, but are an example to them. We are called a
democracy, for the administrarion is in the hands of many and not of the few. Our military
training is in many respects superior to that of our adversaries (The Spartans).
C) The Athenian Schools: in wealthy families, nurses who were usually slaves cared for the
children in the infant years; and for this purpose Spartans were often preferred because they
were consired specially capable. Athenian parents loved and indulged their children is shown in
literature in many inscriptions. Formal education began at the age of 7. Each family had a
pedagogue whose duty it was to escort the boys to school were he waited until their lessons
were done when he conducted them home again. The girls were given domestic education by
the mother at home. There were three separate elementary schools for boys in Athens: 1- The
letters school for reading, writing, and the elements of arithmetic 2- The music school which
taught lyric poetry and the mastery of the seven-stringed lyre 3- The gymnastic school or
palaestra. All of these were private schools and the parents paid by the month. The social
standing of the teacher were low. The boys commonly attended the letters school or the music
school in the morning and the palaestra in the afternoon. Athenian schooling for boys extended
from the age of 7 until they went to work in early adolescence. In the later period of Greek
history the young man of the upper classes were enrolled in the ephebic corps and served as
frontier patrols for 2 years between the ages of between and 20. In Athenian education,
literature, including reading and writing, were the concern of the Muses, all intellectual studies
were considered forms of music. The aim of mental and physical education, was moral
excellence. The letters school taught first alphabet, syllables, words, reading and writing. The
master was called a grammatist. The teaching methods were mechanical. The teacher
pronounced the name of the letter or the word; the pupil pronounced after him. The school had
little equipment. Books were costly and with the form of a roll. The children were required to
memorize long passages from Homer and other poets. When sufficient skill had been attained
the master dictated a text which the pupil worte down and memorized. Arithmetic was little
taught in schools. The Greeks had a poor and difficult method of writing numbers. Although
they counted by tens, they used 27 or more characters in the arithmetical notation. Instruction in
music usually began after some progress had been made in reading, and both were taught by the
same teacher in early times; but later a separate school and teacher. Singing and the playing of
the lyre, and the asiatic pipe (the flute) were taught. Among the Greeks music was and essential
element of education. Dancing was an important element in religious and civic festivals and in
the theatre. Gymnastic was older and just as important as music. The pentathlon provided the
basic exercises. The boxing tongs, the jumping weights, the punching bag, the jumping pit, the
pickax for loosening the ground, the spear, the discus, and the strigil for cleaning the body after
exercise. The Greeks aimed at health, strenght, and endurance, and also at skill, grace, and
beauty of figure. Gymnastics further had a moral aim, to develop courage. Physical education
was taught in a special school, the palaestra, under special teacher and continued in adolescence
and throughout life in the public gymnasiums of which almost every Greek city had one or
more. Between the ages of 18 and 20, the boy as an ephebos received military training and
patrolled the frontiers of Attica. At 20 years of age, having received a set of weapons and having
sworn the famous ephebic oath, he became a full athenian citizen. Marriage and the family were
closely regulated by law and custom. The women and girls lived in separate apartments. It was
the athenian wife´s primary function to bear strong, healthy children. If the marriage proved to
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Document Summary
The education was very different in sparta and athens as in the other ancient greek city-states. In ancient sparta, the purpose of education was to produce a well-drilled, well-disciplined marching army. Spartans believed in a life of discipline, self-denial, and simplicity. They were very loyal to the state of sparta. Spartan, male or female, was required to have a perfect body. Sparta, spartan soldiers would come by the house and check the baby. If the baby did not appear healthy and strong, the infant was taken away, and left to die on a hillside, or taken away to be trained as a slave (a helot). Babies who passed this examination were assigned membership in a brotherhood or sisterhood, usually the same one to which their father or mother belonged. Women: in sparta, girls also went to school at age 6 or 7. They lived, slept and trained in their sisterhood"s barracks.
