Education
From Encyclopediak
Education. The term education has a popular meaning and a technical meaning. In the popular sense education and schooling are synonymous. In a technical sense all influences that modify an individual are educative. The changes that are produced in an individual constitute his education. Again, education is frequently considered as consisting of knowledge, information, skill, or technic which an individual receives or acquires. But those are in reality only learning or training. Education, according to the etymology of the word, educare, means to draw out or develop powers or potentialities which the individual possesses. In this article the practical aspect only as represented in the school is considered.
OBJECTIVES. The chief objectives of education are now considered to be to develop individuals physically, mentally and morally in order that they may achieve the most possible for themselves and render the highest service to society. Elementary education should promote health, put the individual in possession of the tools of knowledge, and give ideals of character and citizenship. Secondary education should in addition help the individual to discover his inherent interests and powers by enabling him to sample the great realms of knowledge. Higher technical and professional education should continue the secondary education and give intensive training in some chosen field to fit for life's work.
HISTORY OF EDUCATION Among primitive peoples and savages of all ages there has been some form of training and preparation of the young for adult activities. Such preparation, however, can scarcely be dignified by the name of education. Children and youths were instructed in the primitive arts and crafts related to the everyday life of the tribe. Boys were taught to fashion, implements for the hunt, the chase, and battle. They learned to capture and slay animals for food and to kill or put to flight their human enemies. Girls learned to gather herbs and roots to dry the plants and cure the meat brought in by the male members of the tribe to cook the food to fashion the primitive garments to provide the crude shelter to till the ground, and to care for the young. All of these ends were purely practical and utilitarian, and nowhere was there a conscious effort on the part of society to promote the welfare of the individual trained. Most of the training was taken on through purely imitative means. About the only formal education not connected with some art or craft was the initiation ceremonies. At about the age of 10 or 11, always in early adolescence, boys were required to go through initiations before being accepted as adult members of the tribe. The ceremonies for boys were usually conducted by the men and for the girls by the women. Sometimes the ordeals were exceedingly strenuous and painful. Then there were the ceremonies preceding the hunt, a military expedition, planting the crops, harvesting, storing of food, etc. These consisted of dancing, feasting, incantations, and various other forms of savage religious rites.
ANCIENT ORIENTAL EDUCATION.
China. The most conspicuous ancient oriental nation educationally was the Chinese. The beginning of their educational system can he traced for 23 centuries before the Christian Era, but was not well defined until about 700 B. C. R. E. Lewis says "Before Abraham left Ur of the Chaldees in the west of Asia an emperor of China had established a system of education in the east of Asia, which is still in existence and which has produced a race whose constant worship is bestowed upon those men, now deified, who taught them the beauty and power of the Chinese language." Paul Monroe believes that in no other country has formal education had such a marked influence in shaping the character of a people and in no other country has it been so greatly revered. Chinese education, like the civilization of the Chinese, seems to represent arrested development. The early start seems to have produced a self-satisfaction that stayed all progress. Worship of the past instead of struggle for betterment became an obsession. The works of Confucius became the main school books and have so remained until the last century. The methods became stereotyped and lifeless imagination, speculation, and invention was tabooed, and everything became dwarfed in conservatism. Whatever advancement the Chinese made, says F. P. Graves, has been mad in spite of themselves. However, a new day has dawned and the long dormant energies of a vast people will make them a force to be reckoned with in future ages.
Jewish Education. According to the Sacred Scriptures the Jewish Nation very early expressed high ideals of education. Some claim that the Jews were the earliest people of antiquity to recognize the aim of education as ethical and religious. The Scriptures abound in expressions showing that the training of the young in principles of righteousness and virtue was of great importance. The exact time of the introduction of schools is not authenticated. But as early as 1000 B. C. the Book of Proverbs appeared. That is a condensed expression of the fine ideals of their thinkers and may be regarded as a statement of educational as well as of religious and ethical ideals. It is said that under the influence of Ezra and Nehe-miali "the sacred writings became the spelling book, the community a school, religion an affair of teaching and learning." Later the synagogues became places for instruction and discussion.
In the second century B. C. the Greek gymnasium was introduced along with a study of the Greek language and literature. About that time academies like the ones at Jabnech, Sepphoris, Tiberias, Sora, and Nehardea were established. In these were discussed the laws, literature, and rituals. The Talmud expressed the educational ideals which prevailed down to the Middle Age period. The school became quite common and the curriculum more definite. Teaching was recognized as a vocation and methods were crystallized. Of necessity most instruction was oral. According to Graves, school attendance was made compulsory by Simon, son of Shetach, and Joshua, son of Gamaliel, in all provinces and towns. Joshua required that schools having more than 40 pupils should have two teachers. These schools were known as rabbinical scliools after the fall of Jerusalem. From the early Middle Agesi to the present, education has been a matter of great concern among the Jewish people. They have promoted both private and public education and have contributed to science, philosophy, and literature. Graves remarks that "the education of the Jews was the typical religious and moral training of antiquity, and through it they became the religious people par excellence."
GREECE. This was the first country to recognize education as a real science and art. Before the time of Alexander music and gymnastics were the main subjects of instruction. Some Greek writer said, "He who does not know swimming and his letters is an ignoramus." Gradually the seven arts or encyclopaedia were taught. They included grammar, rhetoric, philosophy or dialectic, arithmetic, music, geometry, and astronomy. In the Roman period the first three composed the Twilini, the last four the Quadrlini. Schooling began at about the age of 7 and lasted until about 20. Of course, education was not universal. The Greek pedagogue was a slave who accompanied the boy. Education in Sparta was very rigid. Boys were placed in public institutions at seven years of age. Training for the service of the state was the sole ideal. They probably learned little of the school arts. Girls lived at home but were given rigorous physical training. At 18 the Spartan boy began his military education. The main objective of Spartan education was military service for state protection. In the early Athenian period education was quite similar to that in Sparta. In the later period it was much more liberal and cultural. Individualism and independence developed many fine thinkers and scholars such as Socrates 469 B. C., Plato 429 B. C., Aristotle 384 B. C.three of the greatest men the world has known. The old Athenian ideals of independence have become symbolic of the highest type of scholarship, morality, and citizenship. Universities were established at Pergamum, Tarsus and Rhodes, and at Alexandria.
ROME. Roman education was practical, not scholastic. The Roman citizen with his rugged nature reverenced the utilitarian. The refined pleasures of literature and art were subordinated to the construction of highways and aqueducts, framing laws, and leading armies. The objective was efficiency in work for the state. The apprenticeship was the main means of education in ancient Rome. In the age of Augustus under Greek influence a brilliant literary era prevailed. Primary and secondary schools were established. Greek, poetry, oratory, history, and philosophy were studied. Practical politics was studied in the Forum. The best schools were private. Cicero, Seneca and Quintilian were the outstanding educational thinkers and writers of Rome. Graves says that the "education of the early Romans produced a nation of warriors and loyal citizens. but it inevitably tended to make them calculating, selfish, overbearing, cruel, and rapacious." Roman law is the foundation of law everywhere.
BEGINNINGS OF EDUCATION IN THE CHRISTIAN ERA. Through the teachings of Christ wholly new ideals of life were promulgated. The brotherhood and equality of men were new religious, philosophical, and educational concepts. True, they met determined opposition, but gradually they have triumphed as guiding ideals of all civilization. Coming as a religious philosophy it was natural that for centuries all education was developed through the church or became a means of promoting church welfare. For nearly 16 centuries of the Christian Era education was to only a small degree secular. By uniting the struggling private schools developed in Greece, Rome, and Judea or by establishing new schools, the churches and the monasteries kept learning and education from extinction. Elementary schools, secondary schools, and even many of the universities owe their origin and continuance to church beneficence. Instruction was necessary as a preliminary to church membership. Hence the development of catechumenal schools which were the forerunners of parochial schools. Episcopal and cathedral schools were direct progeny of the church. Latin was the language of the schools because it was the language of the church. Memoriter methods prevailed. Apart from religion and morality the content was very barren. Authority, not independence in thinking, prevailed. Had not religious interest tanned the flickering flame, the methods of scholasticism would have extinguished the torch of learning, lighted by ancient Judea, Greece, and Rome.
Charlemagne 742-814 with the help of Alcuin 735-804 stimulated education in the cathedral, monastic, and parish schools. In 787 he issued a capitulary "to the bishops urging diligence in the pursuit of learning and the selection of teachers who are able, willing, and zealous to learn themselves and to teach others." Reading, writing, computation, singing, and the Scriptures were foundational, but many studied grammar, rhetoric and dialectic. In the "Palace School" the Latin poets, arithmetic, astronomy, and theology were studied.
THE RISE OF UNIVERSITIES. These institutions grew out of the old cathedral and monastic schools. Civilization was progressing, men were becoming more inquiring. While theology was the main interest, yet a scientific awakening was appearing. The universities were organized largely upon the models of the trade guilds and consequently divorced themselves from church and state and became self-governing as they have remained in Europe. See UNIVERSITIES.
BEGINNINGS OF MODERN EDUCATION. The Renaissance, beginning in the 13th century and culminating in the Reformation in the 16th century, marks the real beginnings of modern education. Factors functionally leading up to the Renaissance included the Crusades llth and 12th centuries, the growth of cities, improvement in navigation, the gradual, development of arts, crafts, and sciences, and manufacturing and commerce. Elementary schools in connection with the church and as private enterprises had become quite numerous in central Europe by the 14th century and, according to Hastings Rashdall, Latin grammar schools were rather common. E. P. Cubberley says that "In England, for example, some two hundred and fifty Latin grammar schools are known to have been in existence by 1500." Cubberley writes further, "In the commercial cities of the North, however, though often only after quite a struggle with the local church authorities, which throughout the Middle Ages had maintained a monoply of all instruction as a protection to orthodoxy, different types of vernacular schools had been developed to meet local commercial needs, such as writing schools to train writers, and reckoning schools to train young men to handle accounts." Some other cities developed schools mainly of the Latin type. Up to the Reformation there was almost no instruction in the vernacular outside of the commercial cities. Previous to that time the common people felt no need of learning. Those who were to be scholars, statesmen, diplomats, or clergy had to acquire the learned language of the time, Latin. With the Reformation and the need felt for independence in religious thinking the necessity for schools was tremendously emphasized. Wycliffe, Huss, Zwingli, Luther, Calvin, and Knox all insisted on ability to read the Bible. Luther translated the Bible and prepared two catechisms for adults and one for children. Luther demanded that the State furnish schools. He outlined a system for Germany consisting of a) Primary Vernacular Schools, b) Latin Secondary Schools, c) Universities. Melanchthon outlined a system for Saxony, partially under the Lutheran church. Wiirttemberg in 1559 was the first German state to organize a complete system. Cubberley says, "This marks the real beginning of the German state school system." In fact, this was the beginning of real state education for the world. The one factor making real schools possible and universal was the invention of printing. In 1423 Coster of Harlem made the first engraved single page in 1438 Gutenberg invented movable wooden types in 1450 Scheiffer and Faust cast the first metal type in 1456 the first complete book, the Bible, was printed in Latin by Gutenberg and Faust in 1563 the first newspaper was printed in Venice. With printing and books the sciences developed rapidly. Copernicus 1543, published a new theory of the universe Kepler 1571-1630 proved the truth of the Copernican theory and stated his famous three laws of planetary motion Galileo 1564-1642 developed a telescope Newton 1642-1728 announced his laws of motion and he and Leibnitz 1646-1716 were co-inventors of the calculus in mathematics Harvey 1578-1657 discovered the circulation of the blood. In this new-Renaissance period there had been invented the barometer, thermometer, air pump, pendulum clock, and the telescope. Chemistry was becoming a real science and the foundations for modern medicine were laid by Sydenham 1624-1689. See also EDUCATION, NATIONAL SYSTEMS OF. Consult Compayre, Gabriel, Abelard and the Rise of Universities Cubberley, E. P., The History of Education Graves, F. P., A History of Education Before the Middle Ages A History of Education During the Middle Ages and A History of Education In Modern Times Haskins, C. H., The Rise of Universities and Monroe, Paul, Text-Book in the History of Education and Cyclopedia of Education. Frederick E. Bolton.
