Further, individual education has an advantage over education in common, as
individual medical treatment has; for while in general rest and abstinence
from food are good for a man in a fever, for a particular man they may not
be; and a boxer presumably does not prescribe the same style of fighting
to all his pupils. It would seem, then, that the detail is worked out with
more precision if the care is particular to individuals; for each person
is more likely to get what suits his case.
— Aristotle, Nicomachean Ethics, Bk. 10, 1180b
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Well, have you any against the laws which deal with children's
upbringing and education, such as you had yourself? Are you not
grateful to those of us laws which were instituted for this end,
for requiring your father to give you a cultural and physical education?
— Plato, Crito, 50d-50e
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This is the way I see the true statesman dealing with those who rear
and educate children according to the educational laws. He keeps
the power of direction
to himself. The only form of training he will permit is the one by
which the educator produces the type of character fitted for his
own task of weaving
the web of state. He bids the educator encourage the young in these
activities and no others. Some pupils cannot be taught to be courageous
and moderate
and to acquire the other virtuous tendencies, but are impelled to
godlessness and to vaunting pride and injustice by the drive of an
evil nature. These
the king expels from the community. He puts them to death or banishes
them or else he chastises them by the severest public disgrace.
— Plato, Statesman, 308e–309a
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That education should be regulated by law and should be an affair
of state is not to be denied, but what should be the character
of this public education, and how young persons should be educated,
are questions which remain to be considered. As things are, there
is disagreement about the subjects. For men are by no means agreed
about the things to be taught, whether we look to excellence
or the best life. Neither is it clear whether education is more concerned
with intellectual or with moral excellence. The existing practice
is perplexing; no one knows on what principle we should proceed– should
the useful in life, or should excellence, or should the higher
knowledge, be the aim of our training?- all three opinions have
been entertained. Again, about the means there is no agreement;
for different people, starting with different ideas about the
nature of excellence, naturally disagree about the practice of
it. There
can be no doubt that children should be taught those useful things
which are really necessary, but not all useful things; for occupations
are divided into liberal and illiberal, and to young children
is imparted only such kinds of knowledge as will be useful to
them
without making mechanics out of them. And any occupation, art,
or science, which makes the body or soul or mind of the freeman
less fit for the practice of exercise or excellence, is mechanical;
wherefore we call those arts mechanical which tend to deform
the body, and likewise all paid employments, for they absorb
and degrade
the mind. There are also some liberal arts quite proper for a
freeman to acquire, but only in a certain degree, and if he attends
to
them too closely, in order to attain perfection in them, the
same harmful effects will follow. The object also which a man
sets before
him makes a great difference; if he does or learns anything for
the sake of others, the very same action will be thought menial
or servile. The received subjects of instruction, as I have already
remarked, are partly of a liberal and partly of an illiberal
character.
— Aristotle, Politics, Bk. 8, 1337a–1337b
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Why, I believe the argument is bringing us back for the third
or fourth time to our old position, that education is, in fact,
the drawing and leading of children to the rule which has been
pronounced right by the voice of the law, and approved as truly
right by the concordant experience of the best and oldest men.
That the child's soul, then, may not learn the habit of feeling
pleasure and pain in ways contrary to the law and those who have
listened to its bidding, but keep them company, taking pleasure
and pain in the very same things as the aged– that, I hold,
proves to be their real purpose of what we call our “songs.” They
are really spells for souls, directed in all earnest to the production
of the concord of which we have spoken, but as the souls of young
fold cannot bear earnestness, they are spoken of a “play” and “song,” and
practiced as such. Just so, in the case of the physically invalid
and infirm, the practitioner seeks to administer wholesome nutriment
and in palatable articles of meat and drink, but unwholesome
in unpalatable, to accustom the patient to accept the one and
reject
the other, as he should. In the same fashion a true lawgiver
likewise will persuade, or if persuasion fails, will compel,
the man of
poetic gifts to compose as he ought, to employ his noble and
fine-filed phrases to represent by their rhythms the bearing,
and by their
melodies the strains, of men who are pure, valiant, and in a
word, good.
— Plato, Laws, Bk. 2, 659c–660b
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It is evident, then, that there is a sort of education in which
parents should train their sons, not as being useful or necessary,
but because it is liberal and noble. Whether this is of one
kind only, or of more than one, and if so, what they are, and how they
are
to be imparted, must hereafter be determined. Thus much we
are already in a position to say; for the ancients bear witness to
us– their opinion may be gathered from the fact that
music is one of the received and traditional branches of education.
Further,
it is clear that children should be instructed in some useful
things– for
example, in reading and writing, not only for their usefulness,
but also because many other sorts of knowledge are acquired
through them. With a like view they may be taught drawing,
not to prevent
their making mistakes in their own purchases, or in order that
they may not be imposed upon in the buying or selling of articles,
but perhaps rather because it makes them judges of the beauty
of the human form. To be always seeking after the useful does
not
become free and exalted souls. Now it is clear that educational
practice must be used before theory, and the body be trained
before the mind; and therefore boys should be handed over to
the trainer,
who creates in them the proper habit of body, and to the wrestling
master, who teaches them their exercises.
— Aristotle, Politics, Bk. 8, 1338a–1338b
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Later on when they send the children to school, their instructions
to the masters lay much more emphasis on good behavior than on
letters or music. The teachers take good care of this, and when
boys have learned their letters and are ready to understand the
written word as formerly the spoken, they set the works of good
poets before them on their desks to read and make them learn them
by heart, poems containing much admonition and many stories, eulogies
and panegyrics of the good men of old, so that the child may be
inspired to imitate them and long to be like them.
— Plato, Protagoras, 325d–326a
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The music masters by analogous methods instill self-control and
deter the young from evil-doing. And when they have learned to
play the lyre, they teach them the works of good poets of another
sort, namely the lyrical, which they accompany on the lyre, familiarizing
the minds of the children with the rhythms and melodies. By this
means they become more civilized, more balanced, and better adjusted
in themselves and so more capable in whatever they say or do, for
rhythm and harmonious adjustment are essential to the whole of
human life.
— Plato, Protagoras, 326a–326c
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All this is done by those best able to do it–that is, by
the wealthy–and it is their sons who start their education
at the earliest age and continue it the longest. When they have
finished with teachers, the state compels them to learn the laws
and use them as a pattern for their life, lest left to themselves
they should drift aimlessly. You know how, when children are
not yet good at writing, the writing master makes them follow
the lines
as a guide in their own writing; well, similarly the state sets
up the laws, which are inventions of good lawgivers of ancient
times, and compels the citizens to rule and be ruled in accordance
with them. Whoever strays outside the lines, it punishes, and
the name given to this punishment both among yourselves and in
many
other places is correction, intimating that the penalty corrects
or guides.
— Plato, Protagoras, 326c–326e
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Don't you understand, I said, that we begin by telling children
fables, and the fable is, taken as a whole, false, but there
is truth in it also? And we make use of fable with children before
gymnastics.
— Plato, Republic, Bk. 2, 377a
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Your instructions, we have said, are deficient, in the first place,
as to reading and writing. Now what is the defect of which we
complain? It is that you have so far not been told whether the lad
who would
be a decent citizen must attain to a finished mastery of the
study, or must leave it wholly alone, and the same is true of the
lyre.
Well, we tell you now these studies must not be left alone. For
reading or writing three years or so, from the age of ten, are
a fair allowance of a boy's time, and if the handling of the
lyre is begun at thirteen, the three following years are long enough
to spend on it. No boy and no parent shall be permitted to extend
or curtail this period from fondness or distaste for the subjects:
to spend either more or less time upon them shall be an infraction
of the law, and the disobedience shall be visited by exclusion
from the school distinctions we shall shortly describe. But what
more specifically is to be learned by the children and taught
by
the masters during these years? That is the very question to
which you are first to hear our answer. They must, of course, carry
their
study of letters to the point of capacity to read and write,
but perfection of rapid and accomplished execution should not be
insisted
on in cases where the natural progress within the prescribed
term of years has been slower. As the study of written compositions
without musical accompaniment, whether written in meter or without
rhythmical subdivisions–in fact, compositions in simple prose
with no embellishments of rhythm or melody–difficult problems
are raised by some of the works bequeathed to us by our numerous
authors in this kind. How then will you deal with them, reverend
curators of law? Or what would be the right injunction for the
legislator to lay upon you as to their treatment? I can conceive
they will cause him no little perplexity.
— Plato, Laws, Bk. 7, 809e–810e
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To proceed with our subject, we have already arranged for three
public schools with attached training grounds within the city,
and three training grounds and ample exercising ground outside
it for horses, suitably equipped for the use of the bow and
other long-range weapons, where our young people may both learn and
practice these accomplishments; or if adequate arrangements have
not been already
made they must be introduced into our theory and the corresponding
code at this point. They shall all be adequately staffed with
paid resident and salaried masters in the various subjects, who
must be non-citizens, and must give a complete course of instruction
alike in the arts of war and in that of music to the boys who
attend
their classes. A boy is not to attend if his father so desires,
but otherwise to be exempted from this education. Education
is, if possible, to be, as the phrase goes, compulsory for every
mother's son, on the ground that the child is even more the property
of
the state than of his parents. And, mind you, my law will apply
in all respects to girls as much as to boys; the girls must
be trained exactly like the boys. And in stating my doctrine I intend
no reservation on any point of horsemanship or physical training,
as appropriate for men but not for women. In fact, I give full
credit to the tales I have heard of ancient times, and I actually
know that living round the Black Sea–Sarmatian women,
they are called–on whom not horsemanship only but familiarity
with bows and other weapons is enjoined no less than it is
on their husbands, and by whom it is equally cultivated. Besides,
here is
a consideration I would submit to you. If such results are
feasible,
then I say the present practice in our part of the world is
the same pursuits with all their energies. In fact, almost
every
one of our cities on our present system is, and finds itself
to be,
only the half of what it might be at the same cost in expenditure
and trouble. And yet, what an amazing oversight in a legislator!
— Plato, Laws, Bk. 7, 804c–805b
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Right Logic: Education is my theme. I'll tell how it was
in
days gone by
When Sobriety was its goal, and truth like mine was rated
high.
Children then had no license to chatter; gravely they
marched to school,
The boys of a village all in a body, simplicity was the rule,
Not muffled in wraps though it snowed a blizzard, striding
with legs apart,
Singing some old and martial strain just as their elders had
taught.
If anyone ventured to corrupt the tune with trills
or syncopations,
As Phrynis' followers are wont to do with freakish
innovations,
His hide would be trounced on the Muses' account as
crassly irreverent.
Before the master they modestly sat, not sprawlingly
impudent.
No part unseemly could ever be seen; when they rose
they smoothed the soil,
Their bodies' impress to erase and drooling lovers to foil.
No lad was anointed below the belt, but like the velvety
peach
Free and unconstricted bloomed the natural furze of the
breech.
They did not modulate the voice a lecherous ear to entice,
Nor sway their hips and flaunt themselves to attract
lecherous eyes.
From radish heads they all abstained and such fare
aphrodisiac
Anise and parsley left untouched to supply the old men's lack.
No sea-food dainties and no guzzling, or twining legs
behind one's back.
Wrong Logic: Chewing tobacco, revival meetings, chatau-
quas,
Hoopskirts, fascinators, antimacassars!
Right Logic: Yet ‘twas that antique discipline which
Marathon heroes did nurture:
In long warm cloaks those softies go to whom you teach
your culture.
When in the Panathenaic dances they are called on to
perform,
Behind their shields they huddle close and insult the
Triton-born;
Choked am I with indignation at the spectacle so tragic.
Wherefore choose me, my brave young friend, choose me,
the better Logic.
The market place you'll learn to hate, from hot baths to
abstain,
Of shameful deeds to be ashamed, flouting scorners to
disdain;
To yield your seat to honored elders, your parents never
to vex,
No disgrace to perpetrate, to mold in yourself as in wax
The image chaste of modesty, not to loiter and not to stare
At the naked dancing girls—you'd shatter reputation fair
By accepting their invitation; nor show your father im-
pertinence,
Reviling as a fogy the very source of youthful sustenance.
— Aristophanes, Clouds, p. 127
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The wretched tablet, which I tire myself waxing each month, lies orphaned before
the bed-post next the wall, except when he looks at it as if it were Hades
and writes nothing good, but scrapes it all smooth.
— Herodas, Third Mime
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In your childhood you were reared in abject poverty. You helped
your father in the drudgery of grammar school, grinding the ink,
sponging the benches, and sweeping the schoolroom.
— Demosthenes, De Corona, 258
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