Encyclopaedia Britannica Online
Education
Alternative Title: instruction
Table of Contents
Introduction
Education in primitive and early civilized cultures
Education in classical cultures
Education in Persian, Byzantine, early Russian, and Islamic civilizations
Europe in the Middle Ages
Education in Asian civilizations: c. 700 to the eve of Western influence
European Renaissance and Reformation
European education in the 17th and 18th centuries
Western education in the 19th century
Education in the 20th century
Revolutionary patterns of education
Patterns of education in non-Western or developing countries
Global trends in education
Education, discipline that is concerned with methods of teaching and learning in schools or school-like environments as opposed to various nonformal and informal means of socialization (e.g., rural development projects and education through parent-child relationships).
Education can be thought of as the transmission of the values and accumulated knowledge of a society. In this sense, it is equivalent to what social scientists term socialization or enculturation. Children—whether conceived among New Guinea tribespeople, the Renaissance Florentines, or the middle classes of Manhattan—are born without culture. Education is designed to guide them in learning a culture, molding their behaviour in the ways of adulthood, and directing them toward their eventual role in society. In the most primitive cultures, there is often little formal learning—little of what one would ordinarily call school or classes or teachers. Instead, the entire environment and all activities are frequently viewed as school and classes, and many or all adults act as teachers. As societies grow more complex, however, the quantity of knowledge to be passed on from one generation to the next becomes more than any one person can know, and, hence, there must evolve more selective and efficient means of cultural transmission. The outcome is formal education—the school and the specialist called the teacher.
As society becomes ever more complex and schools become ever more institutionalized, educational experience becomes less directly related to daily life, less a matter of showing and learning in the context of the workaday world, and more abstracted from practice, more a matter of distilling, telling, and learning things out of context. This concentration of learning in a formal atmosphere allows children to learn far more of their culture than they are able to do by merely observing and imitating. As society gradually attaches more and more importance to education, it also tries to formulate the overall objectives, content, organization, and strategies of education. Literature becomes laden with advice on the rearing of the younger generation. In short, there develop philosophies and theories of education.
This article discusses the history of education, tracing the evolution of the formal teaching of knowledge and skills from prehistoric and ancient times to the present, and considering the various philosophies that have inspired the resulting systems. Other aspects of education are treated in a number of articles. For a treatment of education as a discipline, including educational organization, teaching methods, and the functions and training of teachers, see teaching; pedagogy; and teacher education. For a description of education in various specialized fields, see historiography; legal education; medical education; science, history of. For an analysis of educational philosophy, see education, philosophy of. For an examination of some of the more important aids in education and the dissemination of knowledge, see dictionary; encyclopaedia; library; museum; printing; publishing, history of. Some restrictions on educational freedom are discussed in censorship. For an analysis of pupil attributes, see intelligence, human; learning theory; psychological testing. Education in primitive and early civilized cultures Prehistoric and primitive cultures
The term education can be applied to primitive cultures only in the sense of enculturation, which is the process of cultural transmission. A primitive person, whose culture is the totality of his universe, has a relatively fixed sense of cultural continuity and timelessness. The model of life is relatively static and absolute, and it is transmitted from one generation to another with little deviation. As for prehistoric education, it can only be inferred from educational practices in surviving primitive cultures.
The purpose of primitive education is thus to guide children to becoming good members of their tribe or band. There is a marked emphasis upon training for citizenship, because primitive people are highly concerned with the growth of individuals as tribal members and the thorough comprehension of their way of life during passage from prepuberty to postpuberty.
Because of the variety in the countless thousands of primitive cultures, it is difficult to describe any standard and uniform characteristics of prepuberty education. Nevertheless, certain things are practiced commonly within cultures. Children actually participate in the social processes of adult activities, and their participatory learning is based upon what the American anthropologist Margaret Mead called empathy, identification, and imitation. Primitive children, before reaching puberty, learn by doing and observing basic technical practices. Their teachers are not strangers but rather their immediate community.
Margaret MeadCornell Capa/Magnum
In contrast to the spontaneous and rather unregulated imitations in prepuberty education, postpuberty education in some cultures is strictly standardized and regulated. The teaching personnel may consist of fully initiated men, often unknown to the initiate though they are his relatives in other clans. The initiation may begin with the initiate being abruptly separated from his familial group and sent to a secluded camp where he joins other initiates. The purpose of this separation is to deflect the initiate’s deep attachment away from his family and to establish his emotional and social anchorage in the wider web of his culture.
The initiation “curriculum” does not usually include practical subjects. Instead, it consists of a whole set of cultural values, tribal religion, myths, philosophy, history, rituals, and other knowledge. Primitive people in some cultures regard the body of knowledge constituting the initiation curriculum as most essential to their tribal membership. Within this essential curriculum, religious instruction takes the most prominent place. Education in the earliest civilizations The Old World civilizations of Egypt, Mesopotamia, and North China
The history of civilization started in the Middle East about 3000 bce, whereas the North China civilization began about a millennium and a half later. The Mesopotamian and Egyptian civilizations flourished almost simultaneously during the first civilizational phase (3000–1500 bce). Although these civilizations differed, they shared monumental literary achievements. The need for the perpetuation of these highly developed civilizations made writing and formal education indispensable. Egypt
Egyptian culture and education were preserved and controlled chiefly by the priests, a powerful intellectual elite in the Egyptian theocracy who also served as the political bulwarks by preventing cultural diversity. The humanities as well as such practical subjects as science, medicine, mathematics, and geometry were in the hands of the priests, who taught in formal schools. Vocational skills relating to such fields as architecture, engineering, and sculpture were generally transmitted outside the context of formal schooling.
Egyptians developed two types of formal schools for privileged youth under the supervision of governmental officials and priests: one for scribes and the other for priest trainees. At the age of 5, pupils entered the writing school and continued their studies in reading and writing until the age of 16 or 17. At the age of 13 or 14 the schoolboys were also given practical training in offices for which they were being prepared. Priesthood training began at the temple college, which boys entered at the age of 17; the length of training depending upon the requirements for various priestly offices. It is not clear whether or not the practical sciences constituted a part of the systematically organized curriculum of the temple college.