..., preliterate people used an oral tradition, or story telling, to pass on their culture and history from one generation to the next. By using language, people learned to create and use symbols, ords, or signs to express their ideas. hen these symbols gre into pictographs and letters, human beings created a ritten language and made the great cultural leap to literacy. Education In Ancient Africa And Asia In ancient Egypt, hich flourished from about 3000 BC to about 500 BC, priests in temple schools taught not only religion but also the principles of riting, the sciences, mathematics, and architecture. Similarly in India, priests conducted most of the formal education. Beginning in about 1200 BC Indian priests taught the principles of the Veda, the sacred texts of Hinduism, as ell as science, grammar, and philosophy. Formal education in China dates to about 2000 BC, though it thrived particularly during the Eastern Zhou Dynasty, from 770to 256 BC. The curriculum stressed philosophy, poetry, and religion, in accord ith the teachings of Confucius, Laozi Lao-tzu, and other philosophers. Education In Ancient Greece Historians have looked to ancient Greece as one of the origins of estern formal education. The Iliad and the Odyssey, epic poems attributed to Homer and ritten sometime in the 8th century BC, created a cultural tradition that gave the Greeks a sense of group identity. In their dramatic account of Greek struggles, Homers epics served important educational purposes. The legendary Greek arriors depicted in Homers ork, such as Agamemnon, Odysseus, and Achilles, ere heroes ho served as models for the young Greeks. Ancient Greece as divided into small and often competing city-states, or poleis, such as Athens, Sparta, and Thebes. Athens emphasized a humane and democratic society and education, but only about one-third of the people in Athens ere free citizens. Slaves and residents from other countries or city-states made up the rest of the population. Only the sons of free citizens attended school. The Athenians believed a free man should have a liberal education in order to perform his civic duties and for his on personal development. The education of omen depended upon the customs of the particular Greek city-state. In Athens, here omen had no legal or economic rights, most omen did not attend school. Some girls, hoever, ere educated at home by tutors. Slaves and other noncitizens had either no formal education or very little. Sparta, the chief political enemy of Athens, as a dictatorship that used education for military training and drill. In contrast to Athens, Spartan girls received more schooling but it as almost exclusively athletic training to prepare them to be healthy mothers of future Spartan soldiers. In the 400s BC, the Sophists, a group of andering teachers, began to teach in Athens. The Sophists claimed that they could teach any subject or skill to anyone ho ished to learn it. They specialized in teaching grammar, logic, and rhetoric, subjects that eventually formed the core of the liberal arts. The Sophists ere more interested in preparing their students to argue persuasively and in arguments than in teaching principles of truth and morality. Unlike the Sophists, the Greek philosopher Socrates sought to discover and teach universal principles of truth, beauty, and goodness. Socrates, ho died in 399 BC, claimed that true knoledge existed ithin everyone and needed to be brought to consciousness. His educational method, called the Socratic method, consisted of asking probing questions that forced his students to think deeply about the meaning of life, truth, and justice. In 387 BC Plato, ho had studied under Socrates, established a school in Athens called the Academy. Plato believed in an unchanging orld of perfect ideas or universal concepts. He asserted that since true knoledge is the same in every place at every time, education, like truth, should be unchanging. Plato described his educational ideal in the Republic, one of the most notable orks of estern philosophy. Platos Republic describes a model society, or republic, ruled by highly intelligent philosopher-kings. arriors make up the republics second class of people. The loest class, the orkers, provides food and the other products for all the people of the republic. In Platos ideal educational system, each class ould receive a different kind of instruction to prepare for their various roles in society. In 335 BC Platos student, Aristotle, founded his on school in Athens called the Lyceum. Believing that human beings are essentially rational, Aristotle thought people could discover natural las that governed the universe and then follo these las in their lives. He also concluded that educated people ho used reason to make decisions ould lead a life of moderation in hich they avoided dangerous extremes. In the 4th century BC Greek orator Isocrates developed a method of education designed to prepare students to be competent orators ho could serve as government officials. Isocratess students studied rhetoric, politics, ethics, and history. They examined model orations and practiced public speaking. Isocratess methods of education directly influenced such Roman educational theorists as Cicero and Quintilian. Education In Ancient Rome hile the Greeks ere developing their civilization in the areas surrounding the eastern Mediterranean Sea, the Romans ere gaining control of the Italian peninsula and areas of the estern Mediterranean. The Greeks education focused on the study of philosophy. The Romans, on the other hand, ere preoccupied ith ar, conquest, politics, and civil administration. As in Greece, only a minority of Romans attended school. Schooling as for those ho had the money to pay tuition and the time to attend classes. hile girls from ealthy families occasionally learned to read and rite at home, boys attended a primary school, called aludus. In secondary schools boys studied Latin and Greek grammar taught by Greek slaves, called pedagogues. After primary and secondary school, ealthy young men often attended schools of rhetoric or oratory that prepared them to be leaders in government and administration. Cicero, a 1st century BC Roman senator, combined Greek and Roman ideas on ho to educate orators in his book De Oratore. Like Isocrates, Cicero believed orators should be educated in liberal arts subjects such as grammar, rhetoric, logic, mathematics, and astronomy. He also asserted that they should study ethics, military science, natural science, geography, history, and la. Quintilian, an influential Roman educator ho lived in the 1st century AD, rote that education should be based on the stages of individual development from childhood to adulthood. Quintilian devised specific lessons for each stage. He also advised teachers to make their lessons suited to the students readiness and ability to learn ne material. He urged teachers to motivate students by making learning interesting and attractive...
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