A student's history of education

by Frank Pierrepont Graves

The Sophists and Their Training.—To meet these new demands, a set of teachers known as the sophists came into prominence. They professed to train young men for a political career, and some of them even claimed to teach any subject whatsoever, or how to defend either side of an argument. These pretensions, together with their charging a fee for their services, contrary to Athenian custom, seriously offended the more conservative of the citizens of Athens. But many of the first sophists afforded an honest and careful training. The effect of their teaching was especially felt by the adolescents in the gymnasium stage of education, since they were ambitious to distinguish themselves politically. The physical training that had hitherto dominated the gymnasium course gave way to a study of grammatical and rhetorical subtleties, and whenever a sophist appeared in the street, market-place, or house, the young men crowded about him to borrow from his store of experience and wisdom, and acquire his method of argument. To a less degree the same influence was felt in the lower schools and by the cadets and younger citizens. The exercises of the palaestra were no longer as rigorous, and existed for the sake of individual health and pleasure rather than for the making of citizens. The literary work of the didascaleum came to include, besides the Homeric epics, a wide range of didactic, reflective, and lyric poetry, with a superabundance of discussions. In music the old patriotic and religious songs sung to the simple Doric airs and accompanied upon the seven-stringed lyre, were replaced by rhythms of great difficulty, like the Lydian and Phrygian, and by complicated instruments of all sorts.

Reaction from the old subordination of the individual to the state.

Their Extreme Individualism.—All this inroad upon the time honored curriculum shows how fully the sophists embodied the individualism of the times. Although they held no body of doctrine common to them all, they were generally at one in their position of extreme individualism. They often went so far as to insist that there could not safely be any universal criteria in knowledge or morals; that no satisfactory interpretation of life could be made for all, but that every fact and situation should be subject to the judgment of the individual. No doubt the formula attributed to Protagoras, “Man (i. e. the individual) is the measure of all things, both of the seen and the unseen,” would have expressed the attitude common to most of them. They but carried to its legitimate conclusion the complete reaction from the old ideal of subordination of the individual to the state.

The Reactionaries and the Mediators.—Meanwhile, the conservative element was making its usual attempt to adjust the unsettled conditions by suggesting a return to the old. Various schemes had been advanced, even The attitude of Pythagoras and Aristophanes; before the sophists had come into prominence. Of these the most complete plan was that of Pythagoras (about 580-500 B. C.). By adopting an analogy from the ‘harmony’ of the celestial bodies and from the relation of the powers in the individual to each other, he arranged a definite hierarchy in society, so that each member should have his proper place, and complete harmony and social order should ensue. As the influence of the sophists began to be felt, later representatives of the reactionary movement, such as the matchless caricaturist, Aristophanes (445-380 B. C.), began to appear and inveigh against the new conditions. But the social process can never move backward, and reconstruction on some higher plane was needed to overcome the destructive tendencies of the times. To furnish this, was and of Socrates, Plato, and Aristotle. the task set themselves by Socrates, Plato, and Aristotle. Like the sophists, they recognized that the traditional beliefs and sanctions, the old social order, and the former ideals and content of education, had been outlived, and that the individual could not find truth and morality through an institutional system. At the same time they felt that the extreme individualism of the sophists was too negative a basis upon which to build, and that a more socialized standard of knowledge and morality must be sought.

The Method of Socrates.—This mediating effort was begun by Socrates (469-399 B. C.). While he started with the formula of Protagoras, he maintained that the ‘man’ indicated thereby was not the individual, but mankind as a whole. It is not the peculiar view of any individual that represents the truth, but the knowledge that is the same for everyone. The former, which the ‘Knowledge’ versus ‘opinion’. sophists considered ‘knowledge,’ Socrates held to be only ‘opinion,’ and declared that the reason men think so differently is because each sees but one side of the truth. He believed that everyone could get at universal knowledge by stripping off individual differences and laying bare the essentials upon which all men are agreed. He conceived it to be the mission of the philosopher or teacher to enable the individual to do this, and he endeavored to deal with the mind of all those with whom he The ‘dialectic’ of Socrates. came in contact, so that they would form valid conclusions. By his method, known as the dialectic, or ‘conversational,’ he first encouraged the individual to make a definite statement of his belief, and then, through a set of clever questions, caused the person to develop his thought, until he became so involved in manifest contradictions that he was forced to admit that his view had been imperfectly formed. He thus caused the individual to see that the view he had first expressed was mere ‘opinion’ and but a single phase of the universal truth. As Socrates further held that morality consists in right knowledge and made no distinction between the knowledge of an action and the impulse to perform it, he strove through his methods of developing knowledge to harmonize the individual welfare with that of the social group.

Plato’s System of Education for the Three Classes of Society.—But the believers in the old traditions and institutional morality felt that Socrates was atheistic and immoral. They persuaded Athens to give him the hemlock, and thus destroyed the man who might have proved her savior. A pupil, Plato (427-347 B. C.), undertook to continue his work, but his aristocratic birth and temperament caused him to underestimate the intelligence of the masses. He held that they were incapable of attaining to ‘knowledge’—that they possessed only ‘opinion.’ In his most famous dialogue, In the Republic government was to be by the intellectual class. The Republic, he endeavors to show that the ideal state can exist only when the entire control of the government is entrusted to the ‘philosophers,’ or intellectual class, who alone possess ‘real knowledge.’ Those who are to compose the three classes of society Plato would have selected during the educational process on the basis of their ability. For all boys up to eighteen years of age he prescribes an education similar to that in vogue in the palaestra, didascaleum, and gymnasium, except that he Early education. would somewhat expurgate the literary element, and would confine the musical training to the simpler melodies and instruments. The youths who prove capable of going beyond this lower education are next to take up Cadet training. the cadet training between eighteen and twenty, but those who are incapable of further education are to be relegated to the industrial class. During the cadet period are to be determined those capable of going on with the higher education of philosophers, while those who here reach their limit become members of the military class.

As Athenian education did not extend beyond the twentieth year, Plato is here obliged to invent a new course of study that will enable the future philosophers Higher education for philosophers: to acquire the habit of speculation. This additional course, he declares, should also be graded, in order that a further test of intellectual and moral qualities may be made. Arithmetic, plane and solid geometry, music, and (1) mathematical subjects; astronomy, are to occupy the first ten years of the course. These subjects, however, are not to be studied for calculation or practical purposes of any sort, but entirely from the standpoint of theory or the universal relations underlying them, since only thus can they furnish a capacity for abstract thought. After this, at thirty, the young men who can go no further, are to be placed in the minor offices of the state, while those who have (2) dialectic. shown themselves capable of the study of dialectic, go on with that subject for five years longer. It then becomes the duty of these highest philosophers to guide and control the state until they have reached the age of fifty, when they may be allowed to retire.

The Weakness of Plato’s System.—Thus, where Socrates found the basis of universal truth in everyone, Plato held that only one class of people, the most intellectual, could attain to real knowledge. He, therefore, maintained that the philosophers should absolutely guide the conduct of the state, and that education should be organized with that in view. Plato’s ideal state would Return to subordination of the individual; thus become a sort of intellectual oligarchy, and in a way was a return to the old principle of subordinating the individual to society. The Republic thus quite neglected neglect of human will; human will as a factor in society and assumed that men can be moved about in life like pieces upon failure to see all human traits in each individual; the chess board. Plato failed to see, too, that each individual really possesses all human characteristics. The workers have reason, and the philosophers have passions, and a human being is not a man unless all these functions are his. But even if his scheme had been a no means of evolution. happy one, the treatise provided no method of evolution from current conditions, and if it were further granted that this order of things could be established at once. Plato put the ban upon all innovation or change, and so closed the door to progress.

Hence The Republic was viewed as a visionary conception, and had no immediate effect upon education or any other institution of Athens. So in his declining years, without denying The Republic as ideal, he wrote The Laws offered a more practical and traditional system of education. the more practical dialogue known as The Laws. In it he welded elements from the educational systems of Sparta and older Athens, and reverted to traditions and ideals not dissimilar to the doctrines of Pythagoras. He replaced the philosophers with priests, an hereditary ruler, a superintendent of education, and various other officials; and the course of study reached its height with the subject of mathematics, while dialectic was not mentioned.

His Influence upon Educational Theory and Practice.—Thus the efforts of Socrates, as continued by Plato, to obtain the benefit of the growing individualism for society and education without disrupting them, had seemingly come to naught. Nevertheless, Plato has had considerable influence upon the thought and practice of men since the Greek period. The ideal society where everything is well managed and everyone is in the position for which nature intended him, has ever since the day of The Republic been a favorite theme for writers, as Model for later Utopias. witness More’s Utopia and the New Atlantis of Bacon. A specific movement that shows the impress of Plato, as we shall see later, is the formulation of the more advanced studies of the mediæval ‘seven liberal arts’ The ‘quadrivium’ and ‘formal discipline.’ under the name of the ‘quadrivium.’ It is even possible that the whole conception of ‘liberal’ studies, and so the doctrine of ‘formal discipline’ (see p. 182), may be traced back to Plato’s idea that the mathematical subjects in the course for philosophers should never be studied from a practical point of view. On the whole, Plato has been a factor in educational theory and practice that cannot be overlooked.