The History Of Education
The history of education is the history of teaching and learning. Each generation, since the beginning of human existence, has sought to pass on cultural and social values, traditions, morality, religion and skills to the next generation.
The passing on of culture is also known as enculturation and the learning of social values and behaviors is socialization. The history of the curricula of such education reflects human history itself, the history of knowledge, beliefs, skills and cultures of all civilizations that have preceded us. Show me the curriculum followed by seats of learning in a nation at any time in history, and i will share with you that country’s socio-political culture at the time that curriculum was built, and the then prevalent mental models of that nation’s denizens.
It is interesting to note how the dissemination of learning has evolved over the ages.
In very ancient societies, education was achieved orally and through observation and imitation. The young learned informally from their parents, extended family and grandparents. At later stages of their lives, they received instruction of a more structured and formal nature, imparted by people not necessarily related, in the context of initiation, religion or ritual.
Take the case of INDIA. Illustratively speaking, the great Indian epic (The Mahabharata) was in the mind of one person (the sage Vyas). He faced the problem of sharing that learning with the rest of humanity. So, he requested Ganapati to come down to earth to write the Mahabharata for him. Imagine if learning had to be disseminated the same way today, how restrictive it would be.
In EGYPT, education was motivated by fear. If students did not learn, they would be beaten up. The focus here was on learning by memorizing, which sort of mirrored the way people learned in that age in Egypt and at a deeper level was instructive about the power equations prevalent in that culture at that point in time.
In GREECE, in ancient Sparta, focus was on building warriors; hence education was orineted around that. From the age of 7 till the age of 17, students would go through all kinds of harsh physical education. In Athens in Greece, it was felt that an ideal citizen was someone who could be useful both in peace & war. Therefore, learning philosophy, science, arts and various other forms of education were the focus points.
In ROME, as a nation, the focus was on debate and public speaking and education was centered around this.
The difference between Greek & Roman education was that in Greece, the emphasis was on learning to be a good citizen. In ROME, it was to be a good public speaker. The result was that they disregarded such non utilitarian 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 it’s under emphasis on content, had the purpose of producing good orators.
In recent times, it has been observed that debate and seminars are a great way of not just disseminating learning but also sharing learning’s. Marketing people call this crowd sourcing. I call it an aggregation of collective wisdom. Put a bunch of intelligent & logical people in a room and you can conquer the world in most cases.
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