The Education of Children in Antiquity (1)

It seems to us that in antiquity only the scribes (soferim) knew how to read and write. Educating children in schools and preparing them for life was a duty for those who lived in the big cities. In the countryside, children helped their parents as they grew up.

When the children became young men they took the place of their father, who was considered the patriarch. Only the sons benefited from this education. The daughters were prepared to marry, have children and look after the home.

Among the children who were born, baby girls had little chance of surviving. They were often left in the street to die of hunger if the parents did not have enough income to support them.

In ancient Greece the sons of wealthy families went to schools where as much importance was given to the training of the body as to the training of the spirit. But on the island called Lesbos (Midilli), a woman named Sappho wrote many poems. She said: 'A man is handsome when you look at him, but the wise man is always more handsome and good.' 'Gold is the child of Jupiter. Neither moth nor worm can harm gold, which so marvellously quickens the intelligence of mortals.' She wrote poems that were very feminist and progressive for her time.

The intellectuals of Plato's era said that education should serve to form those who would govern the country. Moreover, only men could be citizens; women had no right to govern or to vote. Let us not forget that even France gave women the vote only after the Second World War, and Switzerland much later, in the 1970s.

The children who received an education were the sons of rulers or of the aristocracy. Besides physical training, they had to learn the laws of respect towards their parents, the gods and strangers.

The young men dreamed of being like the heroes of Homer's Iliad and Odyssey, of mastering intelligence and morality.

In the century of Socrates, the philosophers were the best teachers to give this instruction to pupils aged 16 or 17. The young men also had to prepare themselves to be good soldiers. Today too, the soldiers who defend a country are young men with hot blood! The education received at home came from their mothers, their grandmothers, the nannies or the slaves.

The head of the family was the father, who had no part in the work of the house but above all busied himself with politics or military life. When the father's friends came to the house, they had to gather in a private part of it, like what we used to call the 'selamlık'. Only men could be in that part of the house.

School began when the child was 6 or 7 years old (almost as in our day). Of course there were no public schools as there are today. Families came together to form a school. Those who ran these schools were called 'paidagogos', pedagogues. It was often an elderly man or a slave who taught good manners of living: how to walk along the road, how to dress, how to sit correctly, how to keep quiet, and so on.

(to be continued next week)