History of education

Education first started in 3500 BC in Egypt. Egyptian writing used

to be drawings. They wrote on flexible paper called papyrus. This
type of paper was made by a material found in River Neil.
Education then moved on to the Ancient Chinese in the 1400
BC.The Chinese people used to scratch on stone tablets and clay
tablets to write. This way of learning is still used in some parts of
China! Chinese education first started in the Shang Dynasty and
then move on to the Qing Dynasty. Education in the past helped
the Chinese Economy and technology grow.In my writing firstly i
summerize the whole history after that we will find it in brief.
The Romans and the Greeks used to teach their students
philosophy, greek, religion, sword fighting, history and many more
subjects. Bad children used to be beaten by a long thick eel skin
strap which would hurt a lot to say the truth.
In the 6th century the medieval people started to develop a lot
due to severe education policies. Most kingdoms had a law that
children have to get educated even though it took money.
Education in the 21st century is education in technology. Most
educational systems are told in the present are using technology
such as the internet, printers, computers and many more
advanced education technology. In the past people used to write
but now in the present, we type in the computer more than
writing. Some people think this is an improvement but other other
think that this invention wasnt a good idea. Now in Bangladesh,
many people are getting educated thanks to UN and other major
NGO. The UN is a modern NGO which helps education and many
more global problems. One of UNs education goals are set in
Bangladesh.
Ancient Egypt

About 1000 years ago in Ancient Egypt, almost no one in the

world could read, write or study, but the people who were able to
read and write were boys. The people who studied and got
educated were the ones who got the chance to do the necessary
jobs.

Ancient China
In Ancient China, only rich children went to school. More people
started to get educated, but still most of the population was not
educated. During that time there wasnt any paper. Many schools
were free, paid by the Emperor. In school, the boy who did the
government test and scored highest would get a good job in the
Chinese government.

Middle Ages
Children were taught by nuns and monks in the Middle Ages, but
they only taught children whose parents could pay them. The
classes were extremely strict at that time. Only 5% of the
population could read and write. There were three types of
schools in the middle ages. The elementary song-school, monastic
school and grammar school. The elementary song-school was
connected to a church nearby, and over there boys learned to
sing songs.
If an educated priest would be there then they would learn how to
read and write. In monastic schools, boys were trained for church.
Sometimes, local boys from poor families were given the the
chance to learn in a monastic school but they had to work in
servants in return if they couldnt pay. Lastly, grammar schools
were a part of the large church.

1500-1800
In the 1500-1800s, poor children who couldnt afford to go to
school worked. Most of the poor children worked in factories. Rich
children were going to school. Children who didnt study properly
in class or didnt pay attention got severe punishments.

20th Century
More children got enrolled in school in the 20th century and more
technology started appearing in schools. Students started
learning more about art, music, P.E etc. They started learning
about things outside of the basics. More schools were being built
and teachers were being trained to give students education.

Education started in 3500 B.C in Egypt. Education has developed

through time. Before only rich kids only could go to school. The
black and white kids were sent to different school. First people
used drawing to express their thinking. Then the Greeks started
using some marks instead of drawing. Girls didnt go to school
that time because people thought girls should stay at home and
work. The alphabet was developed by Egyptians. People used to
write with ink back then. Then pencil was created and it made
writing easier. In 21st Century people don't use even quite often.
They use technology which was created in 19th century. I guess
people use computer because people are too lazy to move their
hand. I think writing is really a good exercise for our hand. If we
use computer for writing , our handwriting will get ruined.
Nowadays people read in computer and do maths in them. Im
pretty much sure that the Egyptian are sad because nobody uses
their writing invention often nowadays. The teachers used to work
in churches. In Bangladesh a lady called Rokeya Begum fought for
girls education. She thought girls education is really important

because if boys and girls are educated together then they can
achieve lots of goals together. Some countries who were ruled by
the church used to teach the people religious stuff most of the
time. Nelson Mandela fought for black people's rights so they can
lead a better life. The black people didnt get proper education
because the white people thought black people can be their slave.
But Nelson Mandela thought of educating black people for better
life. In the middle ages teachers were very strict. They used to
beat children if they were unable to memorize their study. Before
there were only a few books and paper for the children to read
and write. Nowadays making a paper is really easy. People never
knew what was going to be there in the future. Today kids who are
in poverty ( not much) uses technology in different ways. We
should be happy that we all can go to school. If you notice
something that white people invented most of the stuff that we
use. Because they got better education facilities than black
people. We should all concentrate on our studies for making the
future a better place.
Ancient Rome
Long time ago at Ancient Rome education was known to be only
for boys. If girls were taught to do anything that would have been
either been cooking, house chores or to clean. Girls were always
known to being weak and instead boys were known to be more
knowledgeable and strong. Did you know that at the olden days
boys would get tutored by their father instead of going to school
and if they would do something wrong they would get hit straps.
Ancient Greece
In Greece education was only meant to be for kids from rich
families. Even though some girls were from rich families they
were still not allowed to go.
Middle Ages

During the Middle Ages kids were taught by nuns and monks but
nuns only taught kids from wealthy families.But at the middle
ages classes were done in strict ways.
In brief now we will dicuss the history of eduaction
The systematic provision of learning techniques to most children,
such as literacy, has been a development of the last 150 or 200
years.With the gradual rise of more complex civilizations in the
river valleys of Egypt and Babylonia, knowledge became too
complicated to transmit directly from person to person and from
generation to generation. To be able to function in complex
societies, man needed some way of accumulating, recording, and
preserving his cultural heritage. So with the rise of trade,
government, and formal religion came the invention of writing, by
about 3100 BC.
Because firsthand experience in everyday living could not teach
such skills as writing and reading, a place devoted exclusively to
learning--the school--appeared. And with the school appeared a
group of adults specially designated as teachers--the scribes of
the court and the priests of the temple. The children were either
in the vast majority who continued to learn exclusively by an
informal apprenticeship or the tiny minority who received formal
schooling.
The method of learning was memorization, and the motivation
was the fear of harsh physical discipline. On an ancient Egyptian
clay tablet discovered by archaeologists, a child had written:
"Thou didst beat me and knowledge entered my head."

Of the ancient peoples of the Middle East, the Jews were the most
insistent that all children--regardless of class--be educated. In the
1st century AD, the historian Flavius Josephus wrote: "We take
most pains of all with the instruction of the children and esteem

the observance of the laws and the piety corresponding with them
the most important affair of our whole life." The Jews established
elementary schools where boys from about 6 to 13 years of age
probably learned rudimentary mathematics and certainly learned
reading and writing. The main concern was the study of the first
five books of the Old Testament--the Pentateuch--and the
precepts of the oral tradition that had grown up around them. At
age 13, brighter boys could continue their studies as disciples of a
rabbi, the "master" or "teacher." So vital was the concept of
instruction for the Jews that the synagogues existed at least as
much for education as for worship.
Ancient Greece
The Greek gods were much more down-to-earth and much less
awesome than the remote gods of the East. Because they were
endowed with human qualities and often represented aspects of
the physical world--such as the sun, the moon, and the sea--they
were closer to man and to the world he lived in. The Greeks,
therefore, could find spiritual satisfaction in the ordinary,
everyday world. They could develop a secular life free from the
domination of a priesthood that exacted homage to gods remote
from everyday life. The goal of education in the Greek city-states
was to prepare the child for adult activities as a citizen. The
nature of the city-states varied greatly, and this was also true of
the education they considered appropriate. The goal of education
in Sparta, an authoritarian, military city-state, was to produce
soldier-citizens. On the other hand, the goal of education in
Athens, a democratic city-state, was to produce citizens trained in
the arts of both peace and war.
Sparta. The boys of Sparta were obliged to leave home at the age
of 7 to join sternly disciplined groups under the supervision of a
hierarchy of officers. From age 7 to 18, they underwent an
increasingly severe course of training. They walked barefoot, slept
on hard beds, and worked at gymnastics and other physical

activities such as running, jumping, javelin and discus throwing,

swimming, and hunting. They were subjected to strict discipline
and harsh physical punishment; indeed, they were taught to take
pride in the amount of pain they could endure.
At 18, Spartan boys became military cadets and learned the arts
of war. At 20, they joined the state militia--a standing reserve
force available for duty in time of emergency--in which they
served until they were 60 years old.
The typical Spartan may or may not have been able to read. But
reading, writing, literature, and the arts were considered
unsuitable for the soldier-citizen and were therefore not part of his
education. Music and dancing were a part of that education, but
only because they served military ends.
Unlike the other Greek city-states, Sparta provided training for
girls that went beyond the domestic arts. The girls were not
forced to leave home, but otherwise their training was similar to
that of the boys. They too learned to run, jump, throw the javelin
and discus, and wrestle. The Athenians apparently made sport of
the physique prized in Spartan women, for in a comedy by the
Athenian playwright Aristophanes a character says to a Spartan
girl:
How lovely thou art, how blooming thy skin, how rounded thy
flesh! What a prize! Thou mightest strangle a bull.
Athens. In Athens the ideal citizen was a person educated in the
arts of both peace and war, and this made both schools and
exercise fields necessary. Other than requiring two years of
military training that began at age 18, the state left parents to
educate their sons as they saw fit. The schools were private, but
the tuition was low enough so that even the poorest citizens could
afford to send their children for at least a few years.

Boys attended elementary school from the time they were about
age 6 or 7 until they were 13 or 14. Part of their training was
gymnastics. The younger boys learned to move gracefully, do
calisthenics, and play ball and other games. The older boys
learned running, jumping, boxing, wrestling, and discus and
javelin throwing. The boys also learned to play the lyre and sing,
to count, and to read and write. But it was literature that was at
the heart of their schooling. The national epic poems of the
Greeks--Homer's 'Odyssey' and 'Iliad'--were a vital part of the life
of the Athenian people. As soon as their pupils could write, the
teachers dictated passages from Homer for them to take down,
memorize, and later act out. Teachers and pupils also discussed
the feats of the Greek heroes described by Homer. The education
of mind, body, and aesthetic sense was, according to Plato, so
that the boys "may learn to be more gentle, and harmonious, and
rhythmical, and so more fitted for speech and action; for the life
of man in every part has need of harmony and rhythm."
At 13 or 14, the formal education of the poorer boys probably
ended and was followed by apprenticeship at a trade. The
wealthier boys continued their education under the tutelage of
philosopher-teachers. Until about 390 BC there were no
permanent schools and no formal courses for such higher
education. Socrates, for example, wandered around Athens,
stopping here or there to hold discussions with the people about
all sorts of things pertaining to the conduct of man's life. But
gradually, as groups of students attached themselves to one
teacher or another, permanent schools were established. It was in
such schools that Plato, Isocrates, and Aristotle taught.
The boys who attended these schools fell into more or less two
groups. Those who wanted learning for its own sake studied with
philosophers like Plato who taught such subjects as geometry,
astronomy, harmonics (the mathematical theory of music), and
arithmetic. Those who wanted training for public life studied with

philosophers like Isocrates who taught primarily oratory and

rhetoric. In democratic Athens such training was appropriate and
necessary because power rested with the men who had the ability
to persuade their fellow senators to act. Most Athenian girls had a
primarily domestic education. The most highly educated women
were the hetaerae, or courtesans, who attended special schools
where they learned to be interesting companions for the men who
could afford to maintain them.
Ancient Rome
The military conquest of Greece by Rome in 146 BC resulted in
the cultural conquest of Rome by Greece. As the Roman poet
Horace said, "Captive Greece took captive her rude conqueror and
brought the arts to Latium." Actually, Greek influence on Roman
education had begun about a century before the conquest.
Originally, most if not all of the Roman boy's education took place
at home. If the father himself were educated, the boy would learn
to read and would learn Roman law, history, and customs. The
father also saw to his son's physical training. When the boy was
older, he sometimes prepared himself for public life by a kind of
apprenticeship to one of the orators of the time. He thus learned
the arts of oratory firsthand by listening to the debates in the
Senate and in the public forum. The element introduced into
Roman education by the Greeks was book learning.
When they were 6 or 7 years old, boys (and sometimes girls) of all
classes could be sent by their parents to the ludus publicus, the
elementary school, where they studied reading, writing, and
counting. At age 12 or 13, the boys of the upper classes attended
a "grammar" school where they learned Latin or Greek or both
and studied grammar and literature. Grammar consisted of the
study of declensions and conjugations and the analysis of verbal
forms. Both Greek and Latin literature were studied. The teacher
would read the work and then lecture on it, while the students
took notes that they later memorized. At age 16, the boys who

wanted training for public service went on to study public

speaking at the rhetoric schools.
The graded arrangement of schools established in Rome by the
middle of the 1st century BC ultimately spread throughout the
Roman Empire. It continued until the fall of the empire in the 5th
century AD.
Although deeply influenced by Greek education, Roman education
was nonetheless quite different. For most Greeks, the end of
education was to produce a good citizen, and a good citizen
meant a well-rounded individual. The goal of Roman education
was the same, but for the Romans a good citizen meant an
effective speaker. The result was that they disregarded such
nonutilitarian Greek studies as science, philosophy, music,
dancing, and gymnastics, basing their education instead on
literature and oratory. Even their study of literature, with its
overemphasis on the technicalities of grammar and its
underemphasis on content, had the purpose of producing good
orators.
When the Roman Republic became an empire, in 31 BC, the
school studies lost even their practical value. For then it was not
the orator in the Senate but the emperor who had the power.
Because of the emphasis on the technical study of language and
literature and because the language and literature studied
represented the culture of a foreign people, Roman education was
remote from the real world and the interests of the schoolboys.
Vigorous discipline was therefore necessary to motivate them to
study. And the Roman boys were not the last to suffer in this
situation. When the empire fell, the education that was originally
intended to train orators for the Roman Senate became the model
for European education and dominated it until the 20th century.
The Romans also left the legacy of their language. For nearly a
thousand years after the fall of the empire, Latin continued to be

the language spoken in commerce, public service, education, and

the Roman Catholic church. Most books written in Europe until
about the year 1200 were written in Latin.
The Middle Ages
The invading Germanic tribes that moved into the civilized world
of the West and all but destroyed ancient culture provided
virtually no formal education for their young. In the early Middle
Ages the elaborate Roman school system had disappeared.
Mankind in 5th-century Europe might well have reverted almost to
the level of primitive education had it not been for the medieval
church, which preserved what little Western learning had survived
the collapse of the Roman Empire. In the drafty, inhospitable
corridors of church schools, the lamp of learning continued to
burn low, though it flickered badly.
Cathedral, monastic, and palace schools were operated by the
clergy in parts of Western Europe. Most students were future or
present members of the clergy, though a few lay students were
trained to be clerks. Unlike the Greek and Roman schools, which
sought to prepare men for this life, the church schools sought to
prepare men for life beyond the grave through the contemplation
of God during their life on Earth. The schools taught students to
read Latin so that they could copy and thereby preserve and
perpetuate the writings of the Church Fathers. Students learned
the rudiments of mathematics so that they could calculate the
dates of religious festivals, and they practiced singing so that
they could take part in church services.
Unlike the Greeks, who considered physical health a part of
education, the church considered the human body a part of the
profane world and therefore something to be ignored or harshly
disciplined. The students attended schools that were dreary and
cold, and physical activity was severely repressed.

Schools were un-graded--a 6-year-old and a 16-year-old (or an

adult for that matter) sometimes sharing the same bench.
Medieval education can be understood better if one realizes that
for thousands of years childhood as it is known today literally did
not exist. No psychological distinction was made between child
and adult. The medieval school was not really intended for
children. Rather, it was a kind of vocational school for clerks and
clergymen. A 7-year-old in the Middle Ages became an integral
part of the adult world, absorbing adult knowledge and doing a
man's work as best he could during what today would be the
middle years of elementary education. It was not until the 18th
century that childhood was recognized; not until the 20th that it
began to be understood.
The 12th and 13th centuries, toward the end of the Middle Ages,
saw the rise of the universities. The university curriculum in about
1200 consisted of what were then called the seven liberal arts.
These were grouped into two divisions. The first was the
preparatory trivium: grammar, rhetoric, and logic. The second,
more advanced division was the quadrivium: arithmetic,
geometry, music, and astronomy.
Like the Romans, the scholars of the Middle Ages took over the
content of Greek education and adapted it to their own culture.
The traditional subjects were clouded with religious assumptions.
Astronomy, for example, was permeated by astrology, and
arithmetic was full of mystical meaning:
There are 22 sextarii in a bushel because God in the beginning
made 22 works; there are 22 generations from Adam to Jacob;
and 22 books of the Old Testament as far as Esther and 22 letters
of the alphabet out of which the divine law is composed.
For the Middle Ages knowledge was an authoritative body of
revealed truth. It was not for the scholar to observe nature and to
test, question, and discover truth for himself but to interpret and

expound accepted doctrines. Thus the medieval scholar might

debate about how many angels could stand on the head of a pin,
but he did not question the existence of angels.
To the credit of medieval education, by the 12th century the
education of women was no longer ignored, though only a small
percentage of girls actually attended schools. Most convents
educated women, as is shown by the famous letters of the French
nun Heloise, who received a classical education at the nunnery of
Argenteuil before becoming its abbess. Early in the 12th century,
girls from noble families were enrolled at Notre Dame de Paris in
the classes of the French theologian and philosopher Peter
Abelard
Medieval education had its problems. There were many dropouts;
the influence of the church sometimes drugged rather than
enlivened the mind; and scholars were often expected to accept
the unreasoned and the unproved. Materials were few and poor.
Many university libraries had fewer than a hundred volumes.
Because books were so scarce, lessons had to be dictated and
then memorized. Nevertheless, medieval schooling ended the
long era of barbarism, launched the careers of able men, and
sharpened the minds and tongues of the thoughtful and ambitious
students.
For youngsters of the aristocracy in the Middle Ages of the 13th
century, there was chivalric education. This was a kind of
secondary education that young men received while living in the
homes of nobles or at court. It included some poetry, national
history, heraldry, manners and customs, physical training,
dancing, a little music, and battle skills. Chivalric, secular
education was governed by a code rather than a curriculum. Boys
of the lower classes could learn a trade through apprenticeship in
a craftsman's shop.
The Renaissance

The essence of the Renaissance, which began in Italy in the 14th

century and spread to northern European countries in the 15th
and 16th centuries, was a revolt against the narrowness and
otherworldliness of the Middle Ages. For inspiration the early
Renaissance humanists turned to the ideals expressed in the
literature of ancient Greece. Like the Greeks, they wanted
education to develop man's intellectual, spiritual, and physical
powers for the enrichment of life.
The actual content of the humanists' "liberal education" was not
much different from that of medieval education. To the seven
liberal arts, the humanists added history and physical games and
exercises. Humanist education was primarily enlivened by the
addition of Greek to the curriculum and an emphasis on the
content of Greek and Roman literature. After nearly a thousand
years grammar at last was studied not as an end in itself but
because it gave access to the vital content of literature. In
keeping with their renewed interest in and respect for nature, the
humanists also gradually purged astronomy of many of the
distortions of astrology.
Along with the changed attitudes toward the goals and the
content of education, in a few innovative schools, came the first
signs of a change in attitude toward educational methods. Rather
than bitter medicine to be forced down the students' throats,
education was to be exciting, pleasant, and fun.
The school that most closely embodied these early Renaissance
ideals was founded in Mantua, Italy, in 1423 by Vittorino da Feltre.
Even the name of his school, Casa Giocosa (Happy House), broke
with the medieval tradition of cheerless institutions in which
grammar--along with Holy Writ--was flogged into the learner's
memory.
The school served children from age six to youths in their midtwenties. The pupils studied history, philosophy, arithmetic,

geometry, music, and astronomy, but the basis of the curriculum

was the study of Greek and Roman literature. Physical
development was encouraged through exercise and games.
The humanist ideal did not affect the lower classes, who remained
as ignorant as they had been in the Middle Ages. Its impact was
appreciable, however, on the secondary education that was
provided for the upper classes. This is not to say that there was a
proliferation of Happy Houses. Unlike Vittorino's school, the other
Latin grammar schools that introduced Greek and Roman
literature into the curriculum soon shifted the emphasis--as the
Romans had done--from the study of the content of the literature
to the form of the language. The physical development so
important to the early humanist ideal of the well-rounded man
found no place in the curriculum. Instead of the joy of learning,
there was harsh, repressive discipline.
The Reformation
The degeneration in practice of the early humanists' educational
goals and methods continued during the 16th-century
Reformation and its aftermath. The religious conflict that
dominated men's thoughts also dominated the "humanistic"
curriculum of the Protestant secondary schools. The Protestants'
need to defend their new religion resulted in the further sacrifice
of "pagan" content and more emphasis on drill in the mechanics
of the Greek and Latin languages. In actual practice, then, the
humanistic ideal deteriorated into the narrowness and
otherworldliness that the original humanists had opposed.
The Protestants emphasized the need for universal education and
established elementary vernacular schools in Germany where the
children of the poor could learn reading, writing, and religion. This
innovation was to have far-reaching effects on education in the
Western world.
17th- and 18th-Century Europe

The vast majority of schools remained in a state of stagnation

during the 17th and 18th centuries. By and large, the teachers
were incompetent and the discipline cruel. The learning methods
were drill and memorization of words, sentences, and facts that
the children often did not understand. Most members of the lower
classes got no schooling whatsoever, and what some did get was
at the hands of teachers who often were themselves barely
educated.
In the secondary Latin grammar schools and the universities the
linguistic narrowness and otherworldliness of classical studies
persisted. By the 17th century the study of Latin removed
students even farther from real life than it had in the 16th,
because Latin had ceased to be the language of commerce or the
exclusive language of religion. In the 17th century it also slowly
ceased to be even the exclusive language of scholarly discourse.
Yet most humanist schools made no provision for studying the
vernacular and clung to Latin because it was thought to "train"
the mind. The scientific movement--with its skeptical, inquiring
spirit--that began to permeate the Western world in the 17th
century was successfully barred from both the Catholic and
Protestant schools, which continued to emphasize classical
linguistic studies.
Although the general state of education was retrogressive, there
were some advanced educators and philosophers. Their ideas
about learning pointed toward the educational revolution of the
20th century.
The 17th century. One of the educational pioneers of great stature
was John (Johann) Amos Comenius (1592-1670). Effective
education, Comenius insisted, must take into account the nature
of the child. His own observations of children led him to the
conclusion that they were not miniature adults. He characterized
the schools, which treated them as if they were, as "the
slaughterhouses of minds" and "places where minds are fed on

words." Comenius believed that understanding comes "not in the

mere learning the names of things, but in the actual perception of
the things themselves." Education should begin, therefore, with
the child's observation of actual objects or, if not the objects
themselves, models or pictures of them. The practical result of
this theory was Comenius' 'Orbis Pictus' (The World in Pictures),
the first--and for a long time the only--textbook in the Western
world that had illustrations for children to look at. Although the
ideas on which it was based were at first ridiculed, Comenius'
book was widely used by children for about 200 years.
In the 17th century philosophers, too, were beginning to develop
theories of learning that reflected the new scientific reliance on
firsthand observation. One of the men whose theories had the
greatest impact on education was the English philosopher John
Locke (1632-1704). According to Locke (who did not originate the
idea but gave impetus to it), the mind at birth is a blank tablet
(tabula rasa). That is, it has no innate, God-given knowledge. But
it does have a number of powers or faculties, such as perceiving,
discriminating, comparing, thinking, and recalling. Locke believed
that knowledge comes when these faculties are exercised upon
the raw material of sense impressions received from objects in
the external world. Once the mind has passively received such
sense impressions, its faculties go to work--discriminating among
and comparing them, sifting and sorting them until they take
shape as "knowledge."
One aspect of Locke's theory--the notion that the mind is made up
of "faculties"--was interpreted to mean that the function of
schooling was to "train" the various mental faculties. Latin and
mathematics, for example, were thought to be especially good for
strengthening reason and memory. This idea clung to educational
practice well into the 20th century--long after "faculty"
psychology had been proved invalid.

The more significant aspect of the theory, in terms of educational

reform, was the insistence upon firsthand experience with its
implicit protest against the mere book learning of the Middle Ages
and the humanists. If the raw material of knowledge comes from
the impressions made upon the mind by natural objects, then
education cannot function without objects. Eventually, the effect
of this part of the theory was reflected in the introduction into the
schools of pictures, models, field trips, and other manifestations
of education's increased respect for firsthand observation. By the
mid-19th century it had become fashionable to introduce into
schools objects that provided firsthand sense impressions and
that filled out, supplemented, and gave interest to abstract book
learning. The materials and the methods of traditional book
learning were not radically revised, however, for another 75
years.
The 18th century. It was the delayed shock waves of the ideas of
an 18th-century Frenchman that were to crack the foundations of
education in the 20th century and cause their virtual upheaval in
the United States. The man was Jean-Jacques Rousseau (171278). The child, as Rousseau saw him, unfolds or develops-intellectually, physically, and emotionally--much like a plant.
He believed, moreover, that the child is innately good but that all
social institutions, including schools, are evil, distorting the child
into their own image. He doubted, therefore, that there should be
formal schools at all. Whether there were or not, however, he
believed that the aim of education should be the natural
development of the learner.
Rousseau's observations and their educational ramifications were
a complete reversal of the educational theories and practices of
the 1700s. The prevailing theory was that the child differs from
the adult in the quantity of his mind. The child, presumably, is
born with the same, but weaker, mental faculties as the adult. To
bring his faculties up to an adult level, education must cultivate

them through exercise--that is, through drill and memorization.

Rousseau, however, believed that the child differs from the adult
in the quality of his mind, which successively unfolds in different
stages of growth. "We are always looking for the man in the
child," he said, "without thinking what he is before he becomes a
man."
"Children," observed Rousseau, "are always in motion: a
sedentary life is injurious." From age 2 to 12, therefore, Rousseau
envisioned the cultivation of the body and the senses, not the
intellect. When the youngster's intellect begins to develop, at
about 12 to 15, he can begin the study of such things as science
and geography.
The study, however, should begin not with an organized body of
abstract knowledge but with the things that interest the child in
the world around him. He must learn not by memorizing but by
firsthand experience. "He is not to learn science: he is to find it
out for himself," Rousseau said. Only when he is 15 should book
learning begin. So much for the entire Latin school if one
accepted Rousseau.
Rousseau also attacked the teaching methods of his time. The
theory of mental faculties recognized no innate differences among
children. It was thought that children are born with the same
faculties, and that the differences among them depend on their
education--that is, on the amount of "exercise" their faculties
receive. For Rousseau such exercise stunts "the true gifts of
nature".
Since Rousseau believed that the child is innately good and that
the aim of education should be his natural development, there
was little for the teacher to do except stand aside and watch.
Rousseau's overemphasis of the individuality and freedom of the
child and his underemphasis of the needs of the child as a social
being represent a reaction against the repressive educational

practices of the time. Those who were influenced by Rousseau

tried to create schools that would provide a controlled
environment in which natural growth could take place and at the
same time be guided by society in the person of the teacher.
Ironically, shortly after Rousseau's death Prussia became the first
modern state to create a centrally controlled school system. For
more than a century it operated on principles almost diametrically
opposed to those of Rousseau.
Colonial America
While the schools that the colonists established in the 17th
century in the New England, Southern, and Middle colonies
differed from one another, each reflected a concept of schooling
that had been left behind in Europe. Most poor children learned
through apprenticeship and had no formal schooling at all. Those
who did go to elementary school were taught reading, writing,
arithmetic, and religion. Learning consisted of memorizing, which
was stimulated by whipping. The secondary school, attended by
the wealthier children, was, as in most of Europe, the Latin
grammar school. The teachers were no better prepared, and
perhaps less so, than the teachers in Europe.
Harvard College, which traces its history to 1636, had as its
primary purpose the training of Latin school graduates for the
ministry. Like most of the colleges in Europe, its curriculum was
humanist.
Most of the books used in the elementary and secondary schools
were also used in Europe: Bibles, psalters, Latin and Greek texts,
Comenius' 'Orbis Pictus', and the hornbook, which was widely
used in England at the end of the 16th century. Not really a book
at all, the hornbook was a paddle-shaped board. A piece of
parchment (and, later, paper) with the lesson written on it was
attached to the board and covered with a transparent sheet of
horn to keep it clean.

The first "basic textbook"--'The New England Primer'--was

America's own contribution to education. Used from 1690 until the
beginning of the 19th century, its purpose was to teach both
religion and reading. The child learning the letter a, for example,
also learned that "In Adam's fall, We sinned all."
As in Europe, then, the schools in the colonies were strongly
influenced by religion. This was particularly true of the schools in
the New England area, which had been settled by Puritans and
other English religious dissenters. Like the Protestants of the
Reformation, who established vernacular elementary schools in
Germany in the 16th century, the Puritans sought to make
education universal. They took the first steps toward governmentsupported universal education in the colonies. In 1642 Puritan
Massachusetts passed a law requiring that every child be taught
to read. And in 1647 it passed the "Old Deluder Satan Act," so
named because its purpose was to defeat Satan's attempts to
keep men, through an inability to read, from the knowledge of the
Scriptures. The law required every town of 50 or more families to
establish an elementary school and every town of 100 or more
families to maintain a grammar school as well.
Puritan or not, virtually all of the colonial schools had clear-cut
moral purposes. Skills and knowledge were considered important
to the degree that they served religious ends and, of course,
"trained" the mind.
18th-Century United States
As the spirit of science, commercialism, secularism, and
individualism quickened in the Western world, education in the
colonies was called upon to satisfy the practical needs of seamen,
merchants, artisans, and frontiersmen. The effect of these new
developments on the curriculum in American schools was more
immediate and widespread than its effect in European schools.

Practical content was soon competing vigorously with religious

concerns.
The academy that Benjamin Franklin helped found in 1751 was
the first of a growing number of secondary schools that sprang up
in competition with the Latin schools. Franklin's academy
continued to offer the humanist-religious curriculum, but it also
brought education closer to the needs of everyday life by
teaching such courses as history, geography, merchant accounts,
geometry, algebra, surveying, modern languages, navigation, and
astronomy. By the mid-19th century this new diversification in the
curriculum characterized virtually all American secondary
education.
After the Revolutionary War new textbooks--mostly American
histories and geographies--began to appear. Often they were
written with a strong nationalistic flavor. Also, beginning in 1783
'The New England Primer' began to share its supremacy with what
was to become an even more popular schoolbook, Noah Webster's
'American Spelling Book'. This work standardized American
spelling and emancipated it from English spelling. It also exposed
American schoolchildren to more than a century of grueling drill.
The speller was used until the end of the 19th century, but the
stress on spelling accuracy and the spelling-bee craze continued
to grip the schools into the early years of the 20th century.
19th-Century Europe
In the 19th century the spirit of nationalism grew strong in Europe
and, with it, the belief in the power of education to shape the
future of nations as well as individuals. Other European countries
followed Prussia's example and eventually established national
school systems. France had one by the 1880s, and by the 1890s
the primary schools in England were free and compulsory.
The attitude toward women, too, was slowly changing. By the last
half of the 19th century both France and Germany had

established secondary schools for women. Only the most liberal

educators, however, entertained the notion of coeducation.
By and large, European elementary schools in the 19th century
were much like those of the 16th, 17th, and 18th centuries. They
were attended by children of the lower classes until, at the latest,
age 10 or 11, when schooling terminated for all but a few of the
"brightest" among them. The usual subjects were reading, writing,
religion, and, if the teacher had mastered it himself, arithmetic.
The teacher was often poorly informed; frequently, he taught
because he was unable to get any other kind of work. School
might still be held in apprentice shops, industrial plants, living
rooms, kitchens, or outdoor areas, though regular classrooms
were becoming the rule. If the teacher could maintain order at all,
it was by bullying, beating, and ridiculing the children. Perhaps
the best description of the children who attended such schools is
by the English novelist Charles Dickens:
Pale and haggard faced, lank and bony figures, children with the
countenances of old men. . . . There was childhood with the light
of its eyes quenched, its beauty gone, and its helplessness alone
remaining.
It is no wonder then that Johann Heinrich Pestalozzi's (1746-1827)
school at Yverdon, Switzerland, created international attention
and attracted thousands of European and American visitors. What
they saw was a school for children--for real children, not miniature
adults. They saw physically active children--running, jumping, and
playing. They saw small children learning the names of numbers
by counting real objects and preparing to learn reading by playing
with letter blocks. They saw older children engaged in object
lessons--progressing in their study of geography from observing
the area around the school, to measuring it, making their own
relief maps of it, and finally seeing a professionally executed map
of it.

This was the school and these were the methods developed by
Pestalozzi in accordance with his belief that the goal of education
should be the natural development of the individual child, and
that educators should focus on the development of the child
rather than on memorization of subject matter that he was unable
to understand. Pestalozzi's school also mirrored the idea that
learning begins with firsthand observation of an object and moves
gradually toward the remote and abstract realm of words and
ideas. The teacher's job was to guide--not distort--the natural
growth of the child by selecting his experiences and then
directing those experiences toward the realm of ideas.
The German educator Friedrich Wilhelm Froebel (1782-1852) is
the father of the Kleinkinderbeschaftig-ungsanstalt (institution
where small children are occupied). The name, too long even for
the Germans, quickly shrank to Kindergarten (garden for
children).
Froebel wanted his school to be a garden where children unfolded
as naturally as flowers. Like Pestalozzi, with whom he had studied,
he felt that natural development took place through self-activity,
activity springing from and sustained by the interests of the child
himself. The kindergarten provided the free environment in which
such self-activity could take place.
It also provided the materials for self-activity. For example, blocks
in different shapes and sizes led the child to observe, compare
and contrast, measure, and count. Materials for handwork--such
as drawing, coloring, modeling, and sewing--helped develop
motor coordination and encourage self-expression.
For another of Pestalozzi's admirers, the German philosopher and
psychologist Johann Friedrich Herbart (1776-1841), education was
neither the training of faculties that exist ready-made in the mind
nor a natural unfolding from within. Education was instruction-literally a building into the mind from the outside. The building

blocks were the materials of instruction--the subject matter. The

builder was the teacher. The job of the teacher was to form the
child's mind by building into it the knowledge of man's cultural
heritage through the teaching of such subjects as literature,
history, science, and mathematics. Since the individual mind was
presumably formed by building into it the products of the
collective mind, methods of instruction were concerned wholly
with how this was to be done. Herbart's interest lay in
determining how knowledge could be presented so that it would
be understood and therefore retained. He insisted that education
must be based on psychological knowledge of the child so that he
could be instructed effectively.
The psychology on which Herbart based his teaching methods
was later proved incorrect. His systematized lesson plans,
however, guiding the teacher in what he considered the proper
manner and sequence of presenting subject matter to pupils,
were a real innovation in education. By denying that the mind
consists of inborn faculties that can be exercised on any kind of
material, Herbart drew the attention of educators to the subject
matter itself, to the content of the material. He took the emphasis
off memorizing--at least in theory--and put it on understanding.
He also transformed the image of the teacher. No longer an
ignorant bully beating knowledge into children, the teacher
became a person trained in effective methods of imparting
knowledge. He controlled the learning situation through
psychological insight, not physical force. The teacher inspired the
child's "interest" in the material because he knew how to present
it.
Before arriving at his own educational theory, Herbart had
visited--and been impressed by--Pestalozzi's school in Switzerland.
The teaching methods Herbart evolved represented an attempt to
create in the German schools the same joy of learning that

animated Pestalozzi's school. That is why he insisted on the need

to study the child to determine his interests.
Herbart's educational goal was different from Pestalozzi's,
however, and his teaching methods created a different kind of
school. Herbart was working within the framework of a statecontrolled school system. For him the goal of education was to
create individuals who were part of the sociopolitical community.
While Pestalozzi emphasized the individuality that makes men
distinct from one another, Herbart emphasized their common
cultural heritage. Herbart's school created an intellectual
environment, conducive to the child's absorption of formulated,
authoritative bodies of knowledge, while Pestalozzi's school
created a physical environment, conducive to the child's physical
activity and firsthand learning experiences. While "interest"
resided in the physical activity that Pestalozzi's child engaged in
and was to be encouraged for the sake of his natural
development, "interest" for Herbart's child was stimulated by the
teacher for the purpose of instruction. While Pestalozzi's teacher
unobtrusively guided the natural development of the individual
child's innate powers, Herbart's teacher built knowledge into the
child's mind through a systematic method of instruction that was
uniform for all pupils. Thus, the instruction in Europe and the
United States that was influenced by Herbart's theories was
teacher- and curriculum-centered; that influenced by Pestalozzi,
child-centered.
The concern of some educators in the late 19th century for the
welfare and development of the individual eventually began to
encompass children previously considered ineducable. One of the
first to become interested in educating the mentally retarded,
who were then called "idiot children," was the Italian physician
Maria Montessori (1870-1952). The techniques and materials she
devised for educating mentally retarded children were so effective
that many learned to read and write almost as well as normal

children. While Italian educators wondered at the progress of her

pupils, Montessori wondered at the lack of progress of the normal
children who attended schools for the poor. She concluded that
the educational techniques used in these schools stifled
development, whereas those that she had developed encouraged
it.
In the early 1900s Montessori was put in charge of the Case dei
Bambini (Children's Houses), schools for 3- to 7-year-olds
established in newly built tenement buildings in Rome. In these
schools she emphasized freedom and individual development. Her
idea of freedom, however, was a very special one. To be free,
children must be as independent of other people as possible. So
they learned to perform everyday, practical tasks, such as
dressing themselves and keeping their schoolroom clean. They
were also free to choose the materials they wanted to work with
and the places where they wanted to work. To make them as
independent of the teacher as possible, the children were given
materials that allowed them to see and correct their own
mistakes--such as variously shaped pegs to be fitted into
matching holes.
Like Froebel, Montessori believed in the value of self-activity,
sense training through the handling of physical objects, and the
importance of the child's growth as an individual. For Montessori,
however, growth was primarily cognitive rather than emotional. In
her schoolroom, self-activity manifested itself mostly in
contemplative self-absorption. In Froebel's schoolroom, it
manifested itself mostly in the robust physical and social activity
of songs and games.
Because the development of cognition was a more specific goal
for Montessori than for Froebel, many of the physical objects she
designed for the children led directly to such cognitive ends as
reading and writing. If a child wanted to learn to write, for
example, he could begin by literally getting the feel of the

letters--running his hand over letters made of sandpaper. In this

way, 4- and 5-year-olds learned to write, read, and count.
19th-Century United States
America came into its own educationally with the movement
toward state-supported, secular free schools for all children, which
began in the 1820s with the common (elementary) school. The
movement gained impetus in 1837 when Massachusetts
established a state board of education and appointed the lawyer
and politician Horace Mann (1796-1859) as its secretary. One of
Mann's many reforms was the improvement of the quality of
teaching by the establishment of the first public normal (teachertraining) schools in the United States. State after state followed
Massachusetts' example until by the end of the 19th century the
common-school system was firmly established. It was the first
rung of what was to develop into the American educational
ladder.
After the common school had been accepted, people began to
urge that higher education, too, be tax supported. As early as
1821 the Boston School Committee established the English
Classical School (later the English High School), which was the
first public secondary school in the United States. By the end of
the century, such secondary schools had begun to outnumber the
private academies.
The original purpose of the American high school was to allow all
children to extend and enrich their common-school education.
With the establishment of the land-grant colleges after 1862, the
high school also became a preparation for college--the step by
which students who had begun at the lowest rung of the
educational ladder might reach the highest. In 1873, when the
kindergarten became part of the St. Louis, Mo., school system,
there was a hint that in time a lower rung might be added.

America's educational ladder was unique. Where public school

systems existed in European countries such as France and
Germany, they were dual systems. When a child of the lower and
middle classes finished his elementary schooling, he could go on
to a vocational or technical school. The upper-class child often did
not attend the elementary school but was instead tutored until he
was about 9 years old and could enter a secondary school,
generally a Latin grammar school. The purpose of this school was
to prepare him for the university, from which he might well
emerge as one of the potential leaders of his country. Instead of
two separate and distinct educational systems for separate and
distinct classes, the United States provided one system open to
everyone.
As in mid-19th-century Europe, women were slowly gaining
educational ground in the United States. "Female academies"
established by such pioneers as Emma Willard (1787-1870) and
Catharine Beecher (1800-78) prepared the way for secondary
education for women. In 1861 Vassar--the first real college for
women--was founded. Even earlier--in 1833--Oberlin College was
founded as a coeducational college, and in 1837 four women
began to study there.
In the mid-19th century there was yet another change in
education. The secondary-school curriculum that had been slowly
expanding since the founding of the academies in the mid-18th
century virtually exploded in the mid-19th.
A new society, complicated by the latest discoveries in the
physical and biological sciences and the rise of industrialism and
capitalism, called for more and newer kinds of knowledge. By
1861 as many as 73 subjects or branches thereof were being
offered by the Massachusetts secondary schools. People still
believed that the mind could be "trained," but they now thought
that science could do a better job than could the classics. The

result was a curriculum that was top-heavy with scientific

instruction.
The mid-19th-century knowledge explosion also modestly
affected some of the common schools, which expanded their
curricula to include such courses as science and nature study. The
content of instruction in the common school, beyond which few
students went, consisted of the material in a relatively small
number of books: assorted arithmetic, history, and geography
texts, Webster's 'American Spelling Book', and two new books
that appeared in 1836--the 'First' and 'Second' in the series of
'McGuffey's Eclectic Readers'. Whereas 'The New England Primer'
admonished children against sin, the stories and poems in the
readers pressed for the moral virtues. Countless children were
required to memorize such admonitions as "Work while you work,
play while you play. One thing each time, that is the way."
In the early days the common schools, like those in Europe,
consisted of one room where one teacher taught pupils ranging in
age from 6 to about 13--and sometimes older. The teacher
instructed the children separately, not as a group. The good
teacher had a strong right arm and an unshakable determination
to cram information into his pupils.
Once the fight to provide free education for all children had been
substantially won, educators turned their attention to the quality
of that education. To find out more about learning and the
learning process, American normal schools looked to Europe. In
the 1860s they discovered--and for about 20 years were
influenced by--Pestalozzi. The general effect on the common
schools was to shift the emphasis from memorization of abstract
facts to the firsthand observation of real objects.
Pestalozzi's diminishing influence roughly coincided with the rapid
expansion of the cities. By the 1880s the United States was
absorbing several million immigrants a year, a human flood that

created new problems for the common school. The question

confronting educators was how to impart the largest amount of
information to the greatest number of children in the shortest
possible time. The goal of educators and the means through
which they attained it were reflected in the new schools they built
and in the new teaching practices they adopted.
Expediency dictated, particularly in the cities, that the one-room
common school be replaced by larger schools. To make it easier
and faster for one teacher to instruct many students, there had to
be as few differences between the children as possible. Since the
most conspicuous difference was age, children were grouped on
this basis, and each group had a separate room. To discourage
physical activity that might disrupt discipline and interrupt the
teaching process, to encourage close attention to and absorption
of the teacher's words, and to increase eye contact, the seats
were arranged in formal rows. For good measure, they frequently
were bolted to the floor.
It is not surprising, at about this time, when the goal of education
was to expedite the transfer of information to a large number of
students, that the normal schools began to fall under the
influence of Herbart. The essence of his influence probably lay not
so much in his carefully evolved five-step lesson plan but in the
basic idea of a lesson plan. Such a plan suggested the possibility
of evolving a systematic method of instruction that was the same
for all pupils. Perhaps Herbart's emphasis on the importance of
motivating pupils to learn--whether through presentation of the
material or, failing that, through rewards and punishments--also
influenced the new teaching methods of the 1880s and 1890s.
The new methods, combined with the physical organization of the
school, represented the antithesis of Pestalozzi's belief that the
child's innate powers should be allowed to unfold naturally.
Rather, the child must be lopped off or stretched to fit the
procrustean curriculum bed. Subjects were graded according to

difficulty, assigned to certain years, and taught by a rigid daily

timetable. The amount of information that the child had absorbed
through drill and memorization was determined by how much
could be extracted from him by examinations. Reward or
punishment came in the form of grades.
At the end of the 19th century the methods of presenting
information had thus been streamlined. The curriculum had been
enlarged and brought closer to the concerns of everyday life.
Book learning had been supplemented somewhat by direct
observation. And psychological flogging in the form of grades had
perhaps diminished the amount of physical flogging. In one
respect, however, the schools of the late 19th century were no
different from those, say, of the Middle Ages: they were still based
on what adults thought children were or should be, not what they
really were.