The History Of Education by Ellwood P. Cubberley (epub e reader .txt) 📖

practical lines, [2] and to elevate law and orderly procedure among the people. The later extension of the Empire to include many distant lands—how vast the Roman Empire finally became may be seen from the map on the following page—called still more for a combination of force, leadership, tolerance, patience, executive power, and insight into the psychology of subject people to hold such a vast empire together. Only a great, creative people, working along very practical lines, could have used and used so well the opportunity which came to Rome [3]

 

[Illustration: FIG. 18. THE GREAT EXTENT OF THE ROMAN EMPIRE

The map shows the Roman Empire as it was by the end of the first century A.D., and the tribes shown beyond the frontier are as they were at the beginning of the fourth century A.D. It was 2500 miles, air line, from the eastern end of the Black Sea to the western coasts of Spain, 1400 miles from Rome to Palestine, and 1100 miles from Rome to northern Britain. To maintain order in this vast area Rome depended on the loyalty of her subjects, the strength of her armies, her military roads, and a messenger service by horse, yet throughout this vast area she imposed her law and a unified government for centuries.]

 

THE GREAT MISSION OF ROME. Had Rome tried to impose her rule and her ways and her mode of thought on her subject people, and to reduce them to complete subjection to her, as the modern German and Austrian Empires, for example, tried to do with the peoples who came under their control, the Roman Empire could never have been created, and what would have saved civilization from complete destruction during the period of the barbarian invasions is hard to see. Instead, Rome treated her subjects as her friends, and not as conquered peoples; led them to see that their interests were identical with hers; gave them large local independence and freedom in government, under her strong control of general affairs; opened up her citizenship [4] and the line of promotion in the State to her provincials; [5] and won them to the peace and good order which she everywhere imposed by the advantages she offered through a common language, common law, common coinage, common commercial arrangements, common state service, and the common treatment of all citizens of every race. [6] In consequence, the provincial was willingly absorbed into the common Roman race [7]—absorbed in dress, manners, religion, political and legal institutions, family names, and, most important of all, in language.

As a result, race pride and the native tongues very largely disappeared, and Latin became the spoken language of all except the lower classes throughout the whole of the Western Empire. Only in the eastern Mediterranean, where the Hellenic tongue and the Hellenic civilization still dominated, did the Latin language make but little headway, and here Rome had the good sense not to try to impose her speech or her culture.

Instead she absorbed the culture of the East, while the East accepted in return the Roman government and Roman law, and Latin in time became the language of the courts and of government.

 

Having stated thus briefly the most prominent characteristics of the Roman people, and indicated their great work for civilization, let us turn back and trace the development of such educational system as existed among them, see in what it consisted, how it modified the life and habits of thinking of the Roman people, and what educational organization or traditions Rome passed on to western civilization.

 

II. THE PERIOD OF HOME EDUCATION

 

THE EARLY ROMANS AND THEIR TRAINING. In the early history of the Romans there were no schools, and it was not until about 300 B.C. that even primary schools began to develop. What education was needed was imparted in the home or in the field and in the camp, and was of a very simple type. Certain virtues were demanded—modesty, firmness, prudence, piety, courage, seriousness, and regard for duty—and these were instilled both by precept and example. Each home was a center of the religious life, and of civic virtue and authority. In it the father was a high priest, with power of life and death over wife and children. He alone conversed with the gods and prepared the sacrifices. The wife and mother, however, held a high place in the home and in the training of the children, the marriage tie being regarded as very sacred. She also occupied a respected position in society, and was complete mistress of the house (R. 17).

 

The religion of the city was an outgrowth of that of the home. Virtue, courage, duty, justice—these became the great civic virtues. Their religion, both family and state, lacked the beauty and stately ceremonial of the Greeks, lacked that lofty faith and aspiration after virtue that characterized the Hebrew and the later Christian faith, was singularly wanting in awe and mystery, and was formal and mechanical and practical [8] in character, but it exercised a great influence on these early peoples and on their conceptions of their duty to the State.

 

The father trained the son for the practical duties of a man and a citizen; the mother trained the daughter to become a good housekeeper, wife, and mother. Morality, character, obedience to parents and to the State, and whole-hearted service were emphasized. The boy’s father taught him to read, write, and count. Stories of those who had done great deeds for the State were told, and martial songs were learned and sung. After 450 B.C. every boy had to learn the Laws of the Twelve Tables (R. 12), and be able to explain their meaning (R. 13). As the boy grew older he followed his father in the fields and in the public place and listened to the conversation of men. [9] If the son of a patrician he naturally learned much more from his father, by reason of his larger knowledge and larger contact with men of affairs and public business, than if he were the son of a plebeian. Through games as a boy, and later in the exercises of the fields and the camps, the boy gained what physical training he received. [10]

 

[Illustration: FIG. 19. A ROMAN FATHER INSTRUCTING HIS SON

(From a Roman Sarcophagus)]

 

EDUCATION BY DOING. It was largely an education by doing, as was that of the old Greek period, though entirely different in character. Either by apprenticeship to the soldier, farmer, or statesman, or by participation in the activities of a citizen, was the training needed imparted. Its purpose was to produce good fathers, citizens, and soldiers. [11] Its ideals were found in the real and practical needs of a small State, where the ability to care for one’s self was a necessary virtue. To be healthy and strong, to reverence the gods and the institutions of the State, to obey his parents and the laws, to be proud of his family connections and his ancestors, to be brave and efficient in war, to know how to farm or to manage a business, were the aims and ends of this early training. It produced a nation of citizens who willingly subordinated themselves to the interests of the State, [12] a nation of warriors who brought all Italy under their rule, a calculating, practical people who believed themselves destined to become the conquerors and rulers of the world, and a reserved and proud race, trained to govern and to do business, but not possessed of lofty ideals or large enthusiasms in life (Rs. 15, 16).

 

III. THE TRANSITION TO SCHOOL EDUCATION

 

BEGINNINGS OF SCHOOL EDUCATION. Up to about 300 B.C. education had been entirely in the home, and in the activities of the fields and the State.

It was a period of personal valor and stern civic virtue, in a rather primitive type of society, as yet but little in contact with the outside world, and little need of any other type of training had been felt. By the end of the third century B.C., the influence of contact with the Greek cities of southern Italy and Sicily (Magna Graecia), and the influence of the extensive conquests of Alexander the Great in the eastern Mediterranean (334-323 B.C.), had begun to be felt in Italy. By that time Greek had become the language of commerce and diplomacy throughout the Mediterranean, and Greek scholars and tradesmen had begun to frequent Rome. By 303 B.C. it seems certain that a few private teachers had set up primary schools at Rome to supplement the home training, and had begun the introduction of the pedagogue as a fashionable adjunct to attract attention to their schools. These schools, however, were only a fad at first, and were patronized only by a few of the wealthy citizens. Up to about 250 B.C., at least, Roman education remained substantially as it had been in the preceding centuries. Reading, writing, declamation, chanting, and the Laws of the Twelve Tables still constituted the subject-matter of instruction, and the old virtues continued to be emphasized.

 

By the middle of the third century B.C. Rome had expanded its rule to include nearly all the Italian peninsula (see Figure 16), and was transforming itself politically from a little rural City-State into an Empire, with large world relationships. A knowledge of Greek now came to be demanded both for diplomatic and for business reasons, and the need of a larger culture, to correspond with the increased importance of the State, began to be felt by the wealthier and better-educated classes.

Greek scholars, brought in as captured slaves from the Greek colonies of southern Italy, soon began to be extensively employed as teachers and as secretaries.

 

About 233 B.C., Livius Andronicus, who had been brought to Rome as a slave when Tarentum, one of the Greek cities of southern Italy, was captured, [13] and who later had obtained his freedom, made a translation of the Odyssey into Latin, and became a teacher of Latin and Greek at Rome. This had a wonderful effect in developing schools and a literary atmosphere at Rome. The Odyssey at once became the great school textbook, in time supplanting the Twelve Tables, and literary and school education now rapidly developed. The Latin language became crystallized in form, and other Greek works were soon translated. The beginnings of a native Latin literature were now made. Greek higher schools were opened, many Greek teachers and slaves offered instruction, and the Hellenic scheme of culture, as it had previously developed in Attica, soon became the fashion at Rome.

 

CHANGES IN NATIONAL IDEALS. The second century B.C. was even more a period of rapid change in all phases and aspects of Roman life. During this century Rome became a world empire, annexing Spain, Carthage, Illyria, and Greece, and during the century that followed she subjugated northern Africa, Egypt, Asia Minor, and Gaul to the Elbe and the Danube (see Figure 18). Rome soon became mistress of the whole Mediterranean world. Her ships plied the seas, her armies and governors ruled the land. The introduction of wealth, luxuries, and slaves from the new provinces, which followed their capture, soon had a very demoralizing influence upon the people.

Private and public religion and morality rapidly declined; religion came to be an empty ceremonial; divorce became common; wealth and influence ruled the State; slaves became very cheap and abundant, and were used for almost every type of service. From a land of farmers of small farms, sturdy and self-supporting, who lived simply, reared large families, feared the gods, respected the State, and made an honest living, it became a land of great estates and wealthy men, and the self-respecting peasantry were transformed into soldiers for foreign wars, or joined the rabble in the streets of Rome. [14] Wealth became the great desideratum, and the great avenue to this