Dr. John Keeney once told me, “We have a system that has worked for 2000 years, Why would we change it?” He was correct.
Just look at our school system today. It is a mess. All because we tried to “fix” it.
https://educationalroots.weebly.com/
Plato (427-347 BCE)
The quest to define what we know and how we know it however begins with Greek philosophers.
Plato, born in Athens, Greece, was the student of Socrates (469-399 BCE) and later the teacher of Aristotle. He wrote in the middle of the fourth century B.C.E. in ancient Greece.
Plato was influenced by his teacher and mentor Socrates in the same type of system of mentoring used today by experienced teachers who provide guidance to beginning teachers.
Socrates believed it is a teacher’s job to propose questions that draw ideas out of a student’s mind that are already there and make them think deeply about their beliefs.
Plato later founded the Academy in 387 B.C. E. where he also taught and became the founder of Western idealism. Plato believed the primary role of the teacher was to bring about an intellectual conversion experience in the learner, create a quiet educational environment that promotes contemplation and reflection and then ask leading questions that provoke critical thinking and self-examination in the students.
Now Plato’s thoughts were not without controversy. Plato believed in the state controlling a citizen’s education from birth to death. He believed children should be taken out of the home during early formation to be raised in state-operated nursery schools from birth to age six. (Much like the current administration is proposing with government day care).
Children aged 6-18 would then attend school with a curriculum of music, literature, mathematics, and gymnastics.
Plato’s method of education was as follows:
Elementary – All boys and girls would be educated together. They would study mathematics, literature, poetry, and music until they were eighteen
years of age.
Military Training – The next two years of the youth’s life would be devoted to physical education alone. Thereafter, the best youths would be selected for the higher education given to future guardians of the state.
Higher Education – Between the ages of 20-35, the future guardian would receive a higher education to prepare him for ruling the state. His studies would include mathematics, music, and literature. At the age of 30 he would have enough maturity to begin his study of philosophy.
At 35, his formal education would cease, and he would enter upon a minor administrative position, prior to undertaking more important governing positions.
Plato died in 347 BCE, leaving the Academy he founded to his sister’s son. The Academy remained a model for institutions of higher learning until it was closed in 529 BCE by the Emperor Justinian.
Next came Aristotle (384-322 BCE) Another ancient education innovator, who embraced the Greek version of a liberal arts curriculum and emphasized natural sciences, biology, botany, physiology, and zoology.
He studied with Plato for 20 years at the Academy and eventually joined him and Socrates in Western education history.
Aristotle was able to take Plato’s philosophical and educational ideas as a jumping off point changing them throughout his life to become his own personal philosophy.
Whereas Plato believed truth was found within the mind, Aristotle looked to the world outside the mind to find evidence of what was true.
Born in 384 BCE in Greece, Aristotle served as a tutor to Alexander the Great for seven years and eventually established a school in Athens known as the Lyceum.
Aristotle believed the purpose of school was to develop and exercise students’ potential for reasoning, form ethical character, and provide a skill and knowledge base.
He thought the purpose of schooling was to develop dispositions and habits that exercise reason and forming a human’s philosophy.
Schools were to prepare future citizens with more functional knowledge needed to conduct their political, social, and economic affairs.
His lifelong fascination with science and medicine is reflected in his philosophy of education with one of his biggest philosophies being his definition of humans as rational animals.
As a founder of Western science, he pioneered categorization of objects and was the founder of natural realism.
He can be seen as a forerunner of the modern university professor who believes research and teaching are inseparable. His writings span a wide range of disciplines including logic, metaphysics, philosophy of mind, ethics, political theory, aesthetics, and rhetoric.
They even delved into such primarily non-philosophical fields as empirical biology where he excelled at detailed plant and animal observation and taxonomy.
In all these areas, Aristotle’s theories provided illumination, met with resistance, sparked debate, and generally stimulated the sustained interest of his followers.
Like Plato, Aristotle recognized the importance of early childhood as a formative period of human development.
He divided schooling into three stages: primary, secondary, and higher education.
Ages 7-14 would attend primary and could consist of gymnastics, writing, reading, music, and drawing.
Ages 14-21 would attend secondary and would continue their primary studies while implementing literature, poetry, drama, choral music, and dancing.
The last four years would be spent in military drill, tactics, and strategy.
Higher studies would begin at age 21 and continue as long as the student was willing and able.
Higher education was for males only as Aristotle believed women were not capable of such complex studies.
It is believed Aristotle wrote 150 philosophical essays with the 30 that survive touching on an enormous range of philosophical problems, from biology and physics to morals to aesthetics (art) to politics.
However, many are thought to simply be “lecture notes” instead of complete essays and a few may not even be Aristotle’s but of members of his school.
One of the major discoveries that were made during the Crusades was that of Aristotle’s texts which had not been found up until that point.
With the discovery of these texts, the rise of Islam, and the spread of the Arab Empire, they became familiar to Muslim scholars who translated them into Arabic.
They then spread throughout the Islamic world including Spain. In the 12th century, scholars came from England, Paris, and Italy to seek them out and translate them into Latin.
At that point, Aristotle’s texts had now spread into the intellectual centers of the West.
Aristotle’s work was rediscovered in the later Middle Ages and was adopted by medieval scholars becoming known as Ille Philosophus (The Philosopher), or “the master of them that know,” by his followers.
This is where we get the term Philosophes which refers to the writers and thinkers during the Age of Enlightenment beginning in the 17th century.
One of these philosophes was John Locke 1632-1704
John Locke was born August 29, 1632, in Wrington, Somerset, England. Regarded as one of the most influential Enlightenment thinkers, he was known as the Father of Classical Liberalism. (free market, Civil Liberties under rule of law, and limited government)
He was an economist, political operative, physician, Oxford scholar, and medical researcher as well as one of the great philosophers of the late 17th and early 18th centuries.
Locke created the philosophy that there was no legitimate government under the Divine Right of Kings theory, which emphasized that God chose some people to rule on earth in His will.
Therefore, the monarch’s actions were the will of God and to criticize the ruler meant you were challenging God. However, Locke did not believe in this theory and wrote his own to challenge it.
Locke’s writings also greatly influenced the founding fathers of the United States when writing the Constitution.
They implemented his idea that the power to govern was obtained from the permission of the people. He believed the purpose of government was to protect the natural rights of its citizens.
He stated that natural rights were life, liberty, and property, and that all people automatically earned these simply by being born.
When a government did not protect those rights, the citizen had the right to overthrow the government. These ideas were incorporated into the Declaration of Independence by Thomas Jefferson.
Once they took root in North America, the philosophy was adopted in other places as justification for revolution.
Locke believed that children are born with their mind a blank sheet of paper, a clean slate, a tabula rasa.
He also maintained that children are potentially free and rational beings, and that the realization of these human qualities tends to be disillusioned through imposition of the sort of prejudice that perpetuates oppression and fallacy.
Locke believed it was the upbringing and education that hindered the development of children’s humanity. Locke noted two consequences of the doctrine of the tabula rasa: equality and vulnerability.
Locke believed the purpose of education was to produce an individual with a sound mind in a sound body so as to better serve his country.
Locke thought that the content of education ought to depend upon one’s station in life.
The common man only required moral, social, and vocational knowledge. He could do quite well with the Bible and a highly developed vocational skill that would serve to support him in life and offer social service to others.
However, the education of gentlemen ought to be of the very highest quality. The gentleman must serve his country in a position of leadership.
For gentlemen, Locke believed that the he must have a thorough knowledge of his own language.
The schools of the Puritans in England broke with tradition completely. They sought to educate one for the society in which he would live. The schools were called, therefore, schools of social realism.
Locke held that the content of the curriculum must serve some practical end. He recommended the introduction of contemporary foreign languages, history, geography, economics, math and science.
Locke proposed the following for the education of the gentleman:
a. Moral Training. All Christians must learn to live virtuously.
b. Good Breeding. The gentleman must develop the poise, control and outward behavior of excellent manners. Education must aim, therefore, at developing correct social skills.
c. Wisdom. The gentleman ought to be able to apply intellectual and moral knowledge in governing his practical affairs.
d. Useful Knowledge. The gentleman must receive education which will lead to a successful life in the practical affairs of the society, as well as that which leads to the satisfaction derived from scholarship and good books.
Before his death, Locke saw four more editions of An Essay Concerning Human Understanding. He died at Oates in Essex on October 28, 1704, 72 years before Thomas Jefferson used his words in our Declaration of Independence.
Next on our list of historic educators is Jean-Jacques Rousseau (1712-1778)
Jean Jacques Rousseau was an 18th century philosopher who later became known as a revolutionary philosopher on education and a forerunner of idealism.
One of the most influential thinkers during the Enlightenment in 18th century Europe, his ideas concerning education and the role society plays in a child’s development/education was published in his famous work Emile, which caused some sparks to help light the French Revolution and eventually brought about his own exile from Paris.
Born at Geneva on June 28th, 1712, Rousseau’s ultimate belief was that people are born basically good, but are corrupted by society.
He also thought that individuals only learn these “bad habits” by living in the city, which is why he preferred a rural setting for children to learn.
He wanted to abandon society’s hypocrisy and pretentiousness. He believed that natural education promotes and encourages qualities such as happiness, spontaneity, and the inquisitiveness associated with childhood.
He wanted children to be shielded from societal pressures and influences so that the natural tendencies of each child could emerge and grow without any unwarranted corruption.
Rousseau’s greatest work was Émile, published in 1762. More a tract upon education with the appearance of a story than it is a novel, the book describes the ideal education which prepares Emile and Sophie for their eventual marriage.
Book One deals with the infancy of the child. The underlying thesis of all Rousseau’s writings stresses the natural goodness of man. It is society that corrupts and makes a man evil. Rousseau states that the tutor can only stand by at this period of the child’s development, ensuring that the child does not acquire any bad habits.
According to Rousseau’s Émile Book Two, the purpose of education consisted of the tutor preparing the child for no particular social institution, but to preserve the child from the baleful influence of society.
Emile is educated away from city or town; living in the country close to nature should allow him to develop into a benevolent, good adult. The child learns by using his senses in direct experience. He lives in Spartan simplicity.
Book Three describes the intellectual education of Emile. Again, this education is based upon Emile’s own nature. When he is ready to learn and is interested in language, geography, history and science, he will possess the inner direction necessary to learn.
This learning would grow out of the child’s activities. He will learn languages naturally through the normal conversational activity. Rousseau assumes that Emile’s motivation leads to the purposive self-discipline necessary to acquire knowledge.
Finally, Emile is taught the trade of carpentry in order to prepare him for an occupation in life.
Book Four describes the social education and the religious education of Emile. The education of Sophie is considered and the book concludes with the marriage of Emile and Sophie.
Emile is permitted to mingle with people in society at the age of 16. He is guided toward the desirable attitudes that lead to self-respect. Emile’s earlier education protects him from the corrupting influence of society.
The revelation and dogma of organized religion are unnecessary for man. The fundamental tenets of any religion affirm the existence of God and the immortality of the soul and these are known through the heart only.
His views of monarchy and governmental institutions outraged the powers that be and his ideas on natural religion, unorthodox to both Catholics and Protestants, forced him to flee to Prussia (Germany) under the protection of Frederick the Great. There Rousseau studied botany and eventually accepted an invitation to settle in England where he wrote most of his autobiographical Confessions.
Rousseau’s philosophical ideas on the education of children were very risqué and created quite the uproar.
Rousseau’s powerful influence on the European Romantic movement and after was due to his vision of a regenerated human nature.
His philosophy revealed a striking combination of idealistic and realistic elements which constantly seemed to open the possibility of a better world.
This optimistic outlook was transmitted through a particularly eloquent and persuasive style, giving the impression of intense sincerity.
Rousseau’s great challenge was to convince the humblest of men that they should never feel ashamed to call themselves human beings.
Rousseau ultimately left the city of Paris to live in the country. He had become completely disillusioned with the norms of society in the city, especially that of the monarchy, and had even become disgusted with his own friends.
He felt that children more fully learned right and wrong by experiencing the consequences of their actions firsthand rather than being physically punished as most people in his day did.
Rousseau firmly believed that nature is kind and man essentially is not; humans have the potential to be kind, but oftentimes choose not to.
Now, having introduced you to some of the greatest historical figures in the development of modern education, I have saved the best for last.
18th Century Advice: Thomas Jefferson on Education Reform
Elena Segarra / April 14, 2013
The original “Man of the People,” Thomas Jefferson, was born on April 13 in 1743.
Jefferson is best known for drafting the Declaration of Independence, but he also wrote prolifically and prophetically on education. “If a nation expects to be ignorant and free, in a state of civilization, it expects what never was and never will be,” he wrote in a letter to a friend.
Jefferson understood that freedom depends on self-government: the cultivation of self-reliance, courage, responsibility, and moderation.
Education contributes to both the knowledge and virtues that form a self-governing citizen.
By proposing a bill in Virginia that would have established free schools every five to six square miles, Jefferson sought to teach “all children of the state reading, writing, and common arithmetic.” With these skills, a child would become a citizen able to “calculate for himself,” “express and preserve his ideas, his contracts and accounts,” and “improve, by reading, his morals and faculties.”
Jefferson viewed this basic education as instrumental to securing “life, liberty, and pursuit of happiness” (Locke) for Americans because it helps an individual “understand his duties” and “know his rights.”
Once taught reading and history, people can follow the news and judge the best way to vote. If the government infringes on their liberties, educated citizens can express themselves adequately to fight against it.
By providing equal access to primary schools, Jefferson hoped to teach children “to work out their own greatest happiness, by showing them that it does not depend on the condition of life in which chance has placed them, but is always the result of a good conscience, good health, occupation, and freedom in all just pursuits.”
While Jefferson supported the idea of public education, he would not have placed schools under government supervision. Instead, he argued for the placement of “each school at once under the care of those most interested in its conduct.” He would put parents in charge.
But if it is believed that these elementary schools will be better managed by…[any] general authority of the government, than by the parents within each ward, it is a belief against all experience.… No, my friend, the way to have good and safe government, is not to trust it all to one, but to divide it among the many, distributing to every one exactly the functions he is competent to.
Taxpayers would provide the resources for public education; the community would arrange the schooling. Although we today face a very different set of challenges than Jefferson, his reasoning remains relevant: Those most concerned with the school’s performance, i.e., parents, will best manage education.
We spend more than enough on our struggling education system. Empowering parents with control over dollars, instead of increasing the amount spent on schools, will improve educational outcomes.
During his lifetime, Thomas Jefferson had little success with his efforts to reform the American education system. Yet the principles he promoted hold true today: Our freedom depends on delivering a quality education to future generations.
So, there you have it folks. Perhaps if we should make this show required listening for the Federal Department of Education, DESE, and our School Administrators. Maybe, they could learn something from our past.