Mason

02/23/02

Education

Mr. Burnett, G

Early Education of Girls

• Moms taught their daughters.
• Girls learned to spin, weave, and sew.

Education of Girls

• Lower class girls didn’t go to school.
• Upper class girls went to elementary school.
• Taught to read and write.
• Didn’t go on to higher learning like the boys.

Early Education of Boys

• Fathers taught their sons.
• If the father knew how to read and write his son would learn.
• He would also teach his son Roman law, history, and physical training, to prepare for battle.
• The most important lessons were respect for the Roman Gods, respect for the law and honesty

Education of Boys

• Boys went to a primary school called a ludus.
• Boys also went to secondary school where they learned Greek and Latin taught by Greek slaves called pedagogues.
• After primary and secondary school rich boys also attended schools to help public speaking and speech making.
• This was useful when they entered politics.

Improvements on Education By Cicero

• A 1^st century Roman senator, Cicero, combined Greek and Roman education systems on educating orators.
• Wrote a book on this, De Oratore.
• He believed that they should be educated in grammar, math, logic, astronomy, ethics, military science, natural science, geography, history, and law.

Improvements on Education By Quintilian

• Quintilian was an important Roman educator during the 1^st century.
• He wrote that education should be based on the student developmental stage.
• Quintilian also told teachers to teacher according to the student’s ability to learn something new and his readiness.
• He made lesson plans for the different age groups.

Goal of Education

• The goal was to be a good and articulate speaker.

Day-To-Day School Day

• The normal school day started before dawn like the workday.
• The students would bring candles to see with and extinguish it at dawn.
• The students would get off for lunch and the afternoon siesta and they would go back and work till the late afternoon.
• The end of the school year is a bit unclear but it probably differed from school to school.
• School always started on the 24^th of March no matter what school you went to.

Roman and Greek Education

• At about 200 BC the Romans began to use Greek ideas of how to educate.
• The Romans added many subjects.
• With their father’s authorization, boys and sometimes girls went to school at the age of 6 or 7.

At School

• They studied reading writing and counting.
• The blackboards and notebooks back then was boards covered with wax.
• They counted using pebbles.
• Very smart slaves taught the out-of-school students.
• The poor kids didn’t have slaves and they didn’t receive an education.

Bibliography

• "Education, History of," Microsoft® Encarta® Online Encyclopedia 2001
  http://encarta.msn.com © 1997-2000 Microsoft Corporation. All Rights Reserved.

• "Roman Empire," Microsoft® Encarta® Online Encyclopedia 2001
  http://encarta.msn.com © 1997-2000 Microsoft Corporation. All Rights Reserved.

• "Ancient Roman Education". http://www.crystalinks.com/romeducation.html