History of
Education, theories, methods, and administration of schools and other
agencies of information from ancient times to the present. Education developed
from the human struggle for survival and enlightenment. It may be formal or
informal. Informal education refers to the general social process by which human
beings acquire the knowledge and skills needed to function in their culture.
Formal education refers to the process by which teachers instruct students in
courses of study within institutions.
Before the invention of reading and writing,
people lived in an environment in which they struggled to survive against
natural forces, animals, and other humans. To survive, preliterate people
developed skills that grew into cultural and educational patterns. For a
particular group’s culture to continue into the future, people had to transmit
it, or pass it on, from adults to children. The earliest educational processes
involved sharing information about gathering food and providing shelter; making
weapons and other tools; learning language; and acquiring the values, behavior,
and religious rites or practices of a given culture.
Through direct, informal education, parents,
elders, and priests taught children the skills and roles they would need as
adults. These lessons eventually formed the moral codes that governed behavior.
Since they lived before the invention of writing, 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, words, or signs to express their ideas. When these symbols grew into
pictographs and letters, human beings created a written language and made the
great cultural leap to literacy.
In ancient Egypt, which flourished from about
3000 bc to about 500 bc, priests in temple schools taught not
only religion but also the principles of writing, 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 well as
science, grammar, and philosophy. Formal education in China dates to about 2000
bc, though it thrived particularly
during the Eastern Zhou Dynasty, from 770 to 256 bc (see China: The Eastern
Zhou). The curriculum stressed philosophy, poetry, and religion, in
accord with the teachings of Confucius, Laozi
(Lao-tzu), and other philosophers.
Historians have looked to ancient Greece as
one of the origins of Western formal education. The Iliad and the
Odyssey, epic poems attributed to Homer and written 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, Homer’s epics served important educational
purposes. The legendary Greek warriors depicted in Homer’s work, such as
Agamemnon, Odysseus, and Achilles, were
heroes who served as models for the young Greeks.
Ancient Greece was 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 were 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 own
personal development. The education of women depended upon the customs of the
particular Greek city-state. In Athens, where women had no legal or economic
rights, most women did not attend school. Some girls, however, were educated at
home by tutors. Slaves and other noncitizens had either no formal education or
very little. Sparta, the chief political enemy of Athens, was a dictatorship
that used education for military training and drill. In contrast to Athens,
Spartan girls received more schooling but it was almost exclusively athletic
training to prepare them to be healthy mothers of future Spartan soldiers.
In the 400s bc, the Sophists, a group
of wandering teachers, began to teach in Athens. The Sophists claimed that they
could teach any subject or skill to anyone who wished to learn it. They
specialized in teaching grammar, logic, and rhetoric, subjects that eventually
formed the core of the liberal arts. The Sophists were more
interested in preparing their students to argue persuasively and win 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, who died in 399 bc, claimed that true knowledge existed
within 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, who had studied
under Socrates, established a school in Athens called the Academy.
Plato believed in an unchanging world of perfect ideas or universal concepts. He
asserted that since true knowledge 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 works of Western
philosophy. Plato’s Republic describes a model society, or republic,
ruled by highly intelligent philosopher-kings. Warriors make up the republic’s
second class of people. The lowest class, the workers, provide food and the
other products for all the people of the republic. In Plato’s ideal educational
system, each class would receive a different kind of instruction to prepare for
their various roles in society.
In 335 bc Plato’s student,
Aristotle, founded his own school in Athens called the Lyceum. Believing that human beings are
essentially rational, Aristotle thought people could discover natural laws that
governed the universe and then follow these laws in their lives. He also
concluded that educated people who used reason to make decisions would lead a
life of moderation in which 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 who could serve as government officials. Isocrates’s students studied
rhetoric, politics, ethics, and history. They examined model orations and
practiced public speaking. Isocrates’s methods of education directly influenced
such Roman educational theorists as Cicero and
Quintilian.
While the Greeks were developing their
civilization in the areas surrounding the eastern Mediterranean Sea, the Romans
were gaining control of the Italian peninsula and areas of the western
Mediterranean. The Greeks’ education focused on the study of philosophy. The
Romans, on the other hand, were preoccupied with war, conquest, politics, and
civil administration. As in Greece, only a minority of Romans attended school.
Schooling was for those who had the money to pay tuition and the time to attend
classes. While girls from wealthy families occasionally learned to read and
write 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, wealthy
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 how 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 law.
Quintilian, an influential Roman educator who
lived in the 1st century ad, wrote
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 student’s readiness
and ability to learn new material. He urged teachers to motivate students by
making learning interesting and attractive.
Education among the Jewish people also had a
profound influence on Western learning. The ancient Jews had great respect for
the printed word and believed that God revealed truth to them in the
Bible. Most information on ancient Jewish goals and methods of
education comes from the Bible and the Talmud, a book of religious
and civil law. Jewish religious leaders, known as rabbis, advised parents to
teach their children religious beliefs, law, ethical practices, and vocational
skills. Both boys and girls were introduced to religion by studying the
Torah, the most sacred document of Judaism. Rabbis
taught in schools within synagogues, places of worship and
religious study.
During the Middle Ages, or the
medieval period, which lasted roughly from the 5th to the 15th century, Western
society and education were heavily shaped by Christianity, particularly the
Roman Catholic Church. The Church operated parish, chapel, and
monastery schools at the elementary level. Schools in monasteries and cathedrals
offered secondary education. Much of the teaching in these schools was directed
at learning Latin, the old Roman language used by the church in its ceremonies
and teachings. The church provided some limited opportunities for the education
of women in religious communities or convents. Convents had libraries and
schools to help prepare nuns to follow the religious rules of their communities.
Merchant and craft guilds also maintained some schools that
provided basic education and training in specific crafts. Knights received
training in military tactics and the code of chivalry.
In the 10th and early 11th centuries, Arabic
learning had a pronounced influence on Western education. From contact with Arab
scholars in North Africa and Spain, Western educators learned new ways of
thinking about mathematics, natural science, medicine, and philosophy. The
Arabic number system was especially important, and became the foundation of
Western arithmetic. Arab scholars also preserved and translated into Arabic the
works of such influential Greek scholars as Aristotle, Euclid,
Galen, and Ptolemy. Because many of these works had
disappeared from Europe by the Middle Ages, they might have been lost forever if
Arab scholars such as Avicenna and Averroës had not
preserved them.
In the 11th century medieval scholars
developed Scholasticism, a philosophical and educational movement
that used both human reason and revelations from the Bible. Upon encountering
the works of Aristotle and other Greek philosophers from Arab scholars, the
Scholastics attempted to reconcile Christian theology with Greek philosophy.
Scholasticism reached its high point in the Summa Theologiae of Saint
Thomas Aquinas, a 13th century Dominican theologian who taught at the
University of Paris. Aquinas reconciled the authority of religious
faith, represented by the Scriptures, with Greek reason, represented by
Aristotle. Aquinas described the teacher’s vocation as one that combines faith,
love, and learning.
The work of Aquinas and other Scholastics
took place in the medieval institutions of higher education, the universities.
The famous European universities of Paris, Salerno, Bologna, Oxford, Cambridge,
and Padua grew out of the Scholastics-led intellectual revival of the 12th and
13th centuries. The name university comes from the Latin word
universitas, or associations, in reference to the associations that
students and teachers organized to discuss academic issues. Medieval
universities offered degrees in the liberal arts and in professional studies
such as theology, law, and medicine.
The Renaissance, or rebirth of
learning, began in Europe in the 14th century and reached its height in the 15th
century. Scholars became more interested in the humanist features—that is, the
secular or worldly rather than the religious aspects—of the Greek and Latin
classics. Humanist educators found their models of literary style in the
classics. The Renaissance was a particularly powerful force in Italy, most
notably in art, literature, and architecture. In literature, the works of such
Italian writers as Dante Aleghieri, Petrarch, and
Giovanni Boccaccio became especially important.
Humanist educators designed teaching
methods to prepare well-rounded, liberally educated persons. Dutch humanist
Desiderius Erasmus was particularly influential. Erasmus believed
that understanding and conversing about the meaning of literature was more
important than memorizing it, as had been required at many of the medieval
religious schools. He advised teachers to study such fields as archaeology,
astronomy, mythology, history, and Scripture.
The invention of the printing press in the
mid-15th century made books more widely available and increased literacy rates
(see Printing). But school attendance did not increase
greatly during the Renaissance. Elementary schools educated middle-class
children while lower-class children received little, if any, formal schooling.
Children of the nobility and upper classes attended humanist secondary schools.
Educational opportunities for women
improved slightly during the Renaissance, especially for the upper classes. Some
girls from wealthy families attended schools of the royal court or received
private lessons at home. The curriculum studied by young women was
still based on the belief that only certain subjects, such as art, music,
needlework, dancing, and poetry, were suited for females. For working-class
girls, especially rural peasants, education was still limited to training in
household duties such as cooking and sewing.
The religious Reformation of
the 16th century marked a decline in the authority of the Catholic Church and
contributed to the emergence of the middle classes in Europe. Protestant
religious reformers, such as John Calvin, Martin
Luther, and Huldreich Zwingli, rejected the authority of the
Catholic pope and created reformed Christian, or Protestant, churches. In their
ardent determination to instruct followers to read the Bible in their native
language, reformers extended literacy to the masses. They established vernacular
primary schools that offered a basic curriculum of reading, writing, arithmetic,
and religion for children in their own language. Vernacular schools in England,
for example, used English to teach their pupils. As they argued with each other
and with the Roman Catholics on religious matters, Protestant educators wrote
catechisms—primary books that summarized their religious doctrine—in a question
and answer format.
While the vernacular schools educated both
boys and girls at the primary level, upper-class boys attended preparatory and
secondary schools that continued to emphasize Latin and Greek. The
gymnasium in Germany, the Latin grammar school in
England, and the lycee in France were preparatory schools that taught
young men the classical languages of Latin and Greek required to enter
universities.
Martin Luther believed the state, family,
and school, along with the church, were leaders of the Reformation. Since the
family shaped children’s character, Luther encouraged parents to teach their
children reading and religion. Each family should pray together, read the Bible,
study the catechism, and practice a useful trade. Luther believed that
government should assist schools in educating literate, productive, and
religious citizens. One of Luther’s colleagues, German religious reformer
Melanchthon, wrote the school code for the German region of
Württemberg, which became a model for other regions of Germany and influenced
education throughout Europe. According to this code, the government was
responsible for supervising schools and licensing teachers.
The Protestant reformers retained the
dual-class school system that had developed in the Renaissance. Vernacular
schools provided primary instruction for the lower classes, and the various
classical humanist and Latin grammar schools prepared upper-class males for
higher education.
Educators of the 17th century developed new
ways of thinking about education. Czech education reformer Jan Komensky, known
as Comenius, was particularly influential. A bishop of the
Moravian Church, Comenius escaped religious persecution by taking
refuge in Poland, Hungary, Sweden, and The Netherlands. He created a new
educational philosophy called Pansophism, or universal knowledge, designed to
bring about worldwide understanding and peace. Comenius advised teachers to use
children’s senses rather than memorization in instruction. To make learning
interesting for children, he wrote The Gate of Tongues Unlocked
(1631), a book for teaching Latin in the student’s own language. He
also wrote Orbis Sensualium Pictus (1658; The Visible World in
Pictures, 1659) consisting of illustrations that labeled objects in both
their Latin and vernacular names. It was one of the first illustrated books
written especially for children.
The work of English philosopher John
Locke influenced education in Britain and North America. Locke examined
how people acquire ideas in An Essay Concerning Human Understanding
(1690). He asserted that at birth the human mind is a blank slate, or tabula
rasa, and empty of ideas. We acquire knowledge, he argued, from the
information about the objects in the world that our senses bring to us. We begin
with simple ideas and then combine them into more complex ones.
Locke believed that individuals acquire
knowledge most easily when they first consider simple ideas and then gradually
combine them into more complex ones. In Some Thoughts Concerning
Education (1697), Locke recommended practical learning to prepare people to
manage their social, economic, and political affairs efficiently. He believed
that a sound education began in early childhood and insisted that the teaching
of reading, writing, and arithmetic be gradual and cumulative. Locke’s
curriculum included conversational learning of foreign languages, especially
French, mathematics, history, physical education, and games.
The Age of Enlightenment in the
18th century produced important changes in education and educational theory.
During the Enlightenment, also called the Age of Reason, educators believed
people could improve their lives and society by using their reason, their powers
of critical thinking. The Enlightenment’s ideas had a significant impact on the
American Revolution (1775-1783) and early educational policy in the
United States. In particular, American philosopher and scientist Benjamin
Franklin emphasized the value of utilitarian and scientific education in
American schools. Thomas Jefferson, the third president of the
United States, stressed the importance of civic education to the citizens of a
democratic nation. The Enlightenment principles that considered education as an
instrument of social reform and improvement remain fundamental characteristics
of American education policy.
The foundations of modern education were
established in the 19th century. Swiss educator Johann Heinrich
Pestalozzi, inspired by the work of French philosopher Jean Jacques
Rousseau, developed an educational method based on the natural world and
the senses. Pestalozzi established schools in Switzerland and Germany to educate
children and train teachers. He affirmed that schools should resemble secure and
loving homes.
Like Locke and Rousseau, Pestalozzi
believed that thought began with sensation and that teaching should use the
senses. Holding that children should study the objects in their natural
environment, Pestalozzi developed a so-called “object lesson” that involved
exercises in learning form, number, and language. Pupils determined and traced
an object’s form, counted objects, and named them. Students progressed from
these lessons to exercises in drawing, writing, adding, subtracting,
multiplying, dividing, and reading.
Pestalozzi employed the following
principles in teaching: (1) begin with the concrete object before introducing
abstract concepts; (2) begin with the immediate environment before dealing with
what is distant and remote; (3) begin with easy exercises before introducing
complex ones; and (4) always proceed gradually, cumulatively, and slowly.
American educator Henry Barnard, the first U.S. Commissioner of
Education, introduced Pestalozzi’s ideas to the United States in the late 19th
century. Barnard also worked for the establishment of free public high schools
for students of all classes of American society.
German philosopher Johann
Herbart emphasized moral education and designed a highly structured
teaching technique. Maintaining that education’s primary goal is moral
development, Herbart claimed good character rested on knowledge while misconduct
resulted from an inadequate education. Knowledge, he said, should create an
“apperceptive mass”—a network of ideas—in a person’s mind to which new ideas can
be added. He wanted to include history, geography, and literature in the school
curriculum as well as reading, writing, and arithmetic. Based on his work,
Herbart’s followers designed a five-step teaching method: (1) prepare the pupils
to be ready for the new lesson, (2) present the new lesson, (3) associate the
new lesson with ideas studied earlier, (4) use examples to illustrate the
lesson’s major points, and (5) test pupils to ensure they had learned the new
lesson.
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A. |
Kindergarten |
German educator Friedrich
Froebel created the earliest kindergarten, a form of
preschool education that literally means “child’s garden” in German. Froebel,
who had an unhappy childhood, urged teachers to think back to their own
childhoods to find insights they could use in their teaching. Froebel studied at
Pestalozzi’s institute in Yverdon, Switzerland, from 1808 to 1810. While
agreeing with Pestalozzi’s emphasis on the natural world, a kindly school
atmosphere, and the object lesson, Froebel felt that Pestalozzi’s method was not
philosophical enough. Froebel believed that every child’s inner self contained a
spiritual essence—a spark of divine energy—that enabled a child to learn
independently.
In 1837 Froebel opened a kindergarten in
Blankenburg with a curriculum that featured songs, stories, games, gifts, and
occupations. The songs and stories stimulated the imaginations of children and
introduced them to folk heroes and cultural values. Games developed children’s
social and physical skills. By playing with each other, children learned to
participate in a group. Froebel’s gifts, including such objects as spheres,
cubes, and cylinders, were designed to enable the child to understand the
concept that the object represented. Occupations consisted of materials children
could use in building activities. For example, clay, sand, cardboard, and sticks
could be used to build castles, cities, and mountains.
Immigrants from Germany brought the
kindergarten concept to the United States, where it became part of the American
school system. Margarethe Meyer Schurz opened a German-language kindergarten in
Watertown, Wisconsin, in 1855. Elizabeth Peabody established an
English-language kindergarten and a training school for kindergarten teachers in
Boston, Massachusetts, in 1860. William Torrey Harris,
superintendent of schools in St. Louis, Missouri, and later a U.S. commissioner
of education, made the kindergarten part of the American public school
system.
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B. |
Social
Darwinism |
British sociologist Herbert
Spencer strongly influenced education in the mid-19th century with social
theories based on the theory of evolution developed by British naturalist
Charles Darwin. Spencer revised Darwin’s biological theory into
social Darwinism, a body of ideas that applied the theory of
evolution to society, politics, the economy, and education. Spencer maintained
that in modern industrialized societies, as in earlier simpler societies, the
“fittest” individuals of each generation survived because they were intelligent
and adaptable. Competition caused the brightest and strongest individuals to
climb to the top of the society. Urging unlimited competition, Spencer wanted
government to restrict its activities to the bare minimum. He opposed public
schools, claiming that they would create a monopoly for mediocrity by catering
to students of low ability. He wanted private schools to compete against each
other in trying to attract the brightest students and most capable teachers.
Spencer’s social Darwinism became very popular in the last half of the 19th
century when industrialization was changing American and Western European
societies.
Spencer believed that people in
industrialized society needed scientific rather than classical education.
Emphasizing education in practical skills, he advocated a curriculum featuring
lessons in five basic human activities: (1) those needed for self-preservation
such as health, diet, and exercise; (2) those needed to perform one’s occupation
so that a person can earn a living, including the basic skills of reading,
writing, computation, and knowledge of the sciences; (3) those needed for
parenting, to raise children properly; (4) those needed to participate in
society and politics; and (5) those needed for leisure and recreation. Spencer’s
ideas on education were eagerly accepted in the United States. In 1918 the
Cardinal Principles of Secondary Education, a report issued by the
National Education Association, used Spencer’s list of activities in its
recommendations for American education.
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