Education and Training in the Ancient World

Preliterate societies

In the ancient world, the majority of communities were preliterate. Structurally primitive, they were organized by family, clan, and tribe, contending constantly with their environment and other social groups in a harsh struggle for existence in which passing on social knowledge, religious knowledge, and physical and technical skills to the young was vital for survival. Informal education within the family, usually conducted by imitation of adult behaviors, was enough to pass on basic skills such as food gathering, cooking, and production of clothing. Sex differentiation of tasks was strict in most of these societies: There was women’s work and men’s work. Girls learned to perform work such as the gathering and preparing of food and the making of clothing. Boys learned to make weapons, hunt, and become warriors. Advanced technical skills, such as stone carving or blacksmithing, were passed down within families. A boy from outside a skilled family who wanted to learn a particular skill would have to leave his own family and go live with a knowledgeable family for a lengthy apprenticeship. Such formal schooling as existed focused on inculcation of the group’s religious beliefs and its history.

Oceania/Pacific Islands

For island dwellers, the sea and its ways conditioned enculturation of the young. Children had to understand not only the fire and the house but also the canoe and the sea. This made for an almost exaggerated concern for physical training, especially in swimming and prudent boat handling. Beyond that and training in respect for private property, children enjoyed a great latitude in behavior until puberty. At that point, girls lived among the adult women and learned the intricacies of adult behavior by observation. The boys became warriors until their mid-twenties and concerned themselves with raiding other villages. They then entered adult society and learned adult roles in the process of acquiring property and honor.

Australian Aboriginal groups kept children of both sexes among the women. There they could learn about nature and how to gather food. At age thirteen, girls were initiated into adult society by circumcision and marriage. At the same age, the boys began going on hunting trips and underwent the first of four initiation ceremonies that would span the period from age fifteen to thirty. Relationships, taboos, behavioral norms, and sex roles were taught and learned through daily life. The ceremonies surrounding puberty demonstrated the sacred significance of sex roles and set the whole experience of the community in the context of its specific religious beliefs.

Sub-Saharan Africa

Most preliterate groups educate their children by having the whole society teach the experiences of the tribe through example. Variations on the pattern are most often observable in the initiation rites and relate to the developmental stage of the group, the nature of its territory, or its historical experience.

In sub-Saharan Africa, for example, hunting tribes made initiation a straightforward ceremony celebrating the boy’s first kill. Having proven his competence in killing his own food, whatever his age, the boy received the congratulations of his elders, took on special dress, tattoos, or tribal scars, then married and took his place among the men. Among farming tribes, however, the process was much more elaborate and involved initiation schools that took all of the boys of the clan who were nine years old and spent a year teaching them morality, discipline, and tribal secrets. The process began and ended with ceremonies acting out a symbolic death to childhood and rebirth as an adult, involved circumcision and endurance of ordeals, and gave the child a thorough grounding in tribal law, custom, and religion. Through the initiation, the young man became fit to take his place as a responsible adult attuned to pleasing the harvest gods. Semi-nomadic tribes that herded animals needed to defend themselves against raiders, so their initiation training emphasized warlike behaviors and the hunting and killing of predators that would menace their animals.

The Americas

The numerous Native American tribes in North America displayed many interesting variations on the common practices of tribal education. Among the Indians of the Pacific Northwest, for example, the importance of family and genealogy, visible in the practice of erecting totem poles, meant that family history was too important to be left until puberty. Therefore, very young children would be constantly and repetitively told the story of the great deeds of the family, the relationships of family members for generations back, and the events of the larger world as they had affected the family. By the time children were ready to take on adult responsibility and start a family, they themselves would be ready to instruct a new generation in these vital matters. The Native Americans of the Southwest lived in desert areas and had to exercise great care in the conservation of water. The children had to be taught from infancy to use water wisely. Part of early childhood education was conditioning children to take responsibility for their younger siblings and spend time grinding corn, thereby freeing adults to make water containers and to carry water back to the settlement from distant places.

The Olmec civilization of Mesoamerica achieved a high degree of technological sophistication, expressed not only in great stone temples and artwork but also in rigid social stratification. A preliterate culture for most of its existence, the Olmec developed a rudimentary writing system even as it came to an end. This society developed military and priestly schools so that the children of its aristocrats would be prepared to inherit leadership. Lengthy and demanding apprenticeships fitted young men for careers as engineers and artisans. At the very end of the ancient period, the Maya emerged in Central America as a theocratic civilization in which hereditary priests ruled society. This culture evolved a writing system and a complex calendar, the knowledge of which, along with history, medicine, and religious ritual, formed the curriculum of the schools that prepared priests. As part of the training for leadership, the school required candidates to abstain from sex and the use of intoxicants and engage in group work projects.

The Celts

From their origins in central Europe, the Celts spread throughout Western Europe and by the end of the ancient era were particularly well-established in Brittany, Ireland, Wales, and Scotland. Their priestly class, or Druids, were rigorously trained for years not only in theology but also in intricate liturgical formulas that had to be perfectly memorized. Even when they made the transition to literacy, it was forbidden to write down the prayers and rituals, preserving their priestly training methods intact. The Celtic lawyers and judges, brehons, were similarly trained, having to memorize an entire corpus of law and legal tradition. Unlike the religious formulas, the brehon laws were recorded in writing when Celtic society became literate, leaving brehon education to concentrate its rigor on the exploration of legal casuistry.

Literate societies

Schools emerge when a culture is large enough to need public reinforcement of private training in civic virtue. Another important factor in the emergence of schools is the introduction of basic accounting and the keeping of written records, for those require precision and consistency that are best produced by group instruction. It is safe to say that once a society and its schools become literate, the arts of literacy (and numeracy) dominate the curriculum even to the point of altering the ways in which moral and religious knowledge is communicated. Ancient Egypt and Babylonia, both literate societies, simultaneously developed the earliest school systems in recorded history.

Egypt and Babylon

As early as in the second millennium b.c.e., Egypt had produced a coherent system of schools for children of priests and of the wealthy. These were attached to temples and taught by the priests. By copying texts and taking dictation, boys age four to fourteen learned the skills necessary to become scribes who would carry on state business. Though they were constantly exhorted to love ideas and practice virtue, the real emphasis was on acquiring writing skills by rote memorization and practice. At the outset, boys transcribed moral maxims, laboriously learning proficiency in calligraphy and orthography, then moved on to lengthier moral writings. They also learned simple arithmetic and used it to solve set problems. The nature of discipline in these schools is summed up in a teacher’s saying: “The ears of a boy are upon his back, and if you beat him, he will listen.” Those who performed best at writing could go on to a school of government run by the state treasury and upon graduation be apprenticed to a public official to begin a distinguished career in the state bureaucracy.

Of course, schools such as these were not the only available mode of training for every person or every occupation. For very low-level positions in the government bureaucracy, a certain amount of training by a parent or relative might be enough when combined with an apprenticeship, especially in a department headed by a family member. Even in the case of more important positions, an apprenticeship of indeterminate length in which a candidate both learned and demonstrated the requisite skills might be enough to enable a candidate to take the place of an official who died or retired, providing he was not ambitious to go higher. Those who were to enter their father’s business or profession usually learned it by apprenticeship because most professions in ancient Egypt maintained a cloak of secrecy around their specialized knowledge.

The Babylonian school was also oriented to the production of scribes and relied heavily on memorization but also taught mathematics, grammar, literature, and religious ideas inherited from the Sumerians. “Elder brothers,” or older students, did a great deal of the teaching of younger students, and among the teachers was one known as the “man in charge of the whip.” As in Egypt, scribes might be simply copyists or public secretaries but might also rise to be military planners, royal counselors, or government department heads. Therefore, school examinations covered music, land measurement and allocation, weights and measures, drawing, and other subjects. Two universities, at Nippur and Babylon, provided advanced training. The only women to acquire an education were those who would learn to be priestesses in the cults of some goddesses.

Israel

From the time Israel established itself in Canaan to the onset of the Babylonian captivity (c. 1000-587 b.c.e.), Jewish parents conducted in their homes the crucial task of giving their children a moral and religious education based on the doctrinal heritage of their Exodus from Egypt and the wisdom of judges and prophets. This heritage saw the origins of the community in a contract with God: The community would prosper by adhering to the contract (that is, obeying God’s laws) and suffer by straying from it. The obligation for instructing children was primarily the family’s, and schools could only be adjuncts to their work. In fact, only a few schools existed in the larger towns. Apprenticeship supplied training in practical arts. The emergence of a class of scribes, not government officials but preservers and interpreters of the Jewish scriptures and religious traditions, resulted in the love of learning as a form of worship becoming one of the highest ideals of the community.

After the return from exile (c. 538 b.c.e.), the Jews became more urbanized, and schools became common after 200 b.c.e. Their curriculum and methods were shaped by the scribal class’s custodianship of religious ideas. Elementary schools taught the basics of reading, writing, and arithmetic but also instructed children in social and religious doctrine by close reading of the scriptural writings richest in lore about the law and religious rituals. Such secondary schools as existed delved more deeply into religious law and the methods of understanding and interpreting it. Emphasis was always on preservation of the letter and spirit of the law by both knowledge and careful observance. Teachers were seen as responsible for perpetuating the community’s highest ideals and teaching pupils to fear and love God.

China and India

Ancient Chinese education was a sorting machine that produced an intellectual elite for high positions in government service, ensuring that the public business would be in the hands of scholars and making intellectual power the most highly prized achievement in society. This was done by subjecting candidates to three stages of progressively more difficult examinations that focused not only on writing, mathematics, music, and knowledge of rituals but also on archery and charioteering. Because the examinations were open to anyone who could pass preliminary screening, some social mobility was possible even though it was unlikely that poor children could attain enough education to compete successfully. Schools were available throughout the land, culminating in a national university that enrolled about thirty thousand students by the second century c.e. This national university and other Chinese universities were magnets for scholars from other parts of Asia. Over time, the examination system became more and more rigid and backward-looking, centered on literary and philosophical classics to the exclusion of all else.

In India, the educational system emphasized the development of character and discipline through the study of the Vedas, the Hindu scriptures. Children attended a village school from age five to eight. Those fortunate enough to continue their education then studied with their own personal teacher, or guru, until they were twenty, concentrating on mastery of grammar, logic, philosophy, practical arts, and medicine. Ancient India produced six great universities, the greatest of which, Nalanda, founded in the fourth century b.c.e., was the capstone of the Buddhist schools that sprang up as an alternative to Hindu education. Its students undertook a twelve-year course of study, during which they had to remain celibate.

The Spartan ideal

Sparta was a totalitarian garrison state in which the citizens were constantly endangered by rebellions among the more numerous population of slaves (helots). Supported by the labor of slaves they despised and feared, citizens were expected to serve the military needs of the community and were trained accordingly. Newborn male children were judged by a council; ill-formed and weak ones were abandoned to die of exposure. Those accepted spent from ages seven to eighteen organized in packs learning to live off the land by foraging and stealing, learning endurance by physical hardship, and learning to kill by ambushing stray helots. At age eighteen, they became ephebes, took an oath of allegiance to the state, and were recruited into private armed bands that competed with one another constantly in gymnastics, hunting, and pitched battles using real weapons. At age twenty, those who had proven themselves worthy were allowed to join Sparta’s army and spend ten years on active service. At age thirty, they left active service as full citizens who were part of a military reserve for life.

The Athenian ideal

The Athenians led the other Greek states in elaborating a notion of citizenship that found its models in the mythic figures of Achilles and Odysseus. Achilles epitomized the strong, skilled, and single-minded warrior, and Odysseus added to the strength of the warrior a clever and supple strategic mind and a taste for experience and new knowledge. Thus, Athenian education would produce military prowess but add to it development of a broad culture rooted in the study of literature and philosophy.

Until about 500 b.c.e., Athens was a kingdom whose aristocrats were educated almost exclusively in physical skills and heroic ideals. As Athens developed into a democracy and nonaristocrats began asserting themselves in public life, a school system emerged for those who could not afford to employ private teachers. After home training until age seven, during which the child had a master or pedagogue to guide his basic moral development, the child went to primary school to learn the basics of reading, writing, counting, and drawing. During primary schooling or just after it, the Athenian boys undertook physical education under the direction of a private teacher known as a paidotribe. The boy then went to a music school until age fifteen to learn not only singing and playing the lyre but also poetry and mythology. The capstone of the Athenian education was study at the gymnasium, an institution for advanced physical training. The five gymnasia in Athens each included a stadium, practice fields, baths, wrestling pits, meeting rooms, and gardens.

By the fifth century b.c.e., ephebic training had become the culmination of Athenian education. At age eighteen, boys could petition to become ephebes. If accepted, they received military training, and those successful could take an oath of allegiance and complete two years of military service as a gateway to citizenship. In time, ephebic training was extended to embrace advanced intellectual training.

As society continued to democratize, the practical study of oratory became more and more important. Citizens were expected to carry out the public business in assemblies, and the ability to express oneself with clarity and power came to be highly prized. Teachers able to produce effective orators did very well for themselves.

The Hellenistic world

When Alexander the Great followed the conquest of Greece by leading Macedonian and Greek armies in the conquest of Egypt and the Persian Empire, Greek educational ideas and forms were exported to the new kingdoms that emerged. The cities of the new kingdoms were not free and autonomous as the Greek city-states had been and lacked the driving civic spirit that fostered organization and community in those cities. Education was vital to promote the interests of the conquerors by inculcating the ideals of the heroic past of the Greeks. Yet the core ideas of freedom, responsibility, and civic virtue that were central in Athenian education rang hollow in the Hellenistic cities. The practice of oratory was now directed to display and exhibition rather than to decision making.

Cultural transmission of a vanished past became the task of the schools. Elementary schools were mandated for all free children in the Hellenistic world. They concentrated on reading, writing, and counting, gradually moving away from drawing and music. Unfortunately, children were treated very harshly and learned almost nothing. Students who persevered could go on to secondary school when they were about twelve. There they studied the literary techniques of the classic authors, especially Homer, grammar, geometry, arithmetic, astronomy, and music. In addition, most cities had higher education in the form of advanced schools of rhetoric and philosophy. In some places there were ephebic schools, no longer concerned with military arts but with broad literary culture. A few medical schools existed, and advanced scientific training was obtainable at museums. The beginnings of the specialization of education institutions into elementary, secondary, and higher education took place in the Hellenistic world.

Rome

For the first five centuries of its existence, Roman education aimed at preparing the youth for public life in the service of the community. This meant a family education that implanted civic virtue by constant repetition of the stories of the gods and Roman heroes, proceeded to memorization of the Twelve Tables of the Roman law, and concluded with a public apprenticeship. After 272 b.c.e., Rome annexed Greece and parts of Asia, becoming a bilingual empire. Greek culture became popular in Rome, and Greek teachers were welcomed. A dual system of schools, one committed to classic Roman culture and the other to classic Greek culture, emerged. Elementary schools took children of both sexes from ages seven to twelve. They taught reading, writing, arithmetic, and moral virtue. The children of the upper classes could then go on to a secondary school for about three years to study literature and grammar, whether in Greek or of Greek authors translated into Latin (or worthy Latin authors after the first century b.c.e.). Of course, purely Greek schools were the norm throughout Greece and Asia, the Latin schools being common only in Italy, Spain, Gaul, and North Africa.

Higher education institutions and curriculum throughout the Roman Empire were those of the Hellenistic world. The core of the experience was the study of oratory. As had been the case in the Greek experience, oratory became an important study at about the time public deliberative oratory became superfluous, when the free political institutions of the Roman Republic gave way to the dictatorship and the emergence of the Roman Empire. The only truly distinctive feature of Roman education lay in the development of law schools, organized when the law and its interpretation became so complex as to be beyond the skill of individual teachers.

Christianity

The earliest Christians, convinced that the world would end at any moment, had little use for schools that taught classic culture. Families provided religious formation for their own children, and catechetical schools taught basic doctrines to persons seeking to become Christians. Those who wanted a classical education had plenty of schools available but had to wrestle with the problem of how to acquire classical learning without imbibing paganism along with it. Some catechetical schools emerged in which Christian teachers taught the classics to other Christians. These gave rise to other catechetical schools that were devoted entirely to exploring Christian doctrine more deeply and extensively than the catechumenal schools. Still another type of catechetical school prepared candidates for clergy positions. These faded away as bishops formed cathedral schools to train boys for the priesthood.

The end of the ancient world

With the collapse of the Western Roman Empire in the fifth century c.e., the old Roman schools largely disappeared in Western Europe and North Africa, apart from some secondary schools in northern Italy that remained in existence until the Great Renaissance. The Visigoths in Spain maintained a vigorous intellectual culture, including vibrant schools, for three more centuries. However, the transition from the world of Rome to barbarian successor states was a calamity for education, and the most numerous and visible schools in Western Europe from the sixth to the eighth centuries c.e. would be the cathedral schools. In the Eastern Empire, Hellenistic and Christian educational institutions continued to evolve until the fall of the Eastern Empire in 1453 c.e.

Bibliography

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Chaube, S. P. Education in Ancient and Medieval India: A Survey of the Main Features and a Critical Evaluation of Major Trends. New Delhi, India: Vikas Publishing House, 1999.

Crenshaw, James L. Education in Ancient Israel: Across the Deadening Silence. New York: Doubleday, 1998.

Kennell, Nigel M. The Gymnasium of Virtue: Education and Culture in Ancient Sparta. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1995.

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Too, Yun Lee. The Pedagogical Contracts: The Economics of Teaching and Learning in the Ancient World. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2000.