The History of Pedagogy

by Gabriel Compayré

In accord with all his contemporaries, Aristotle includes grammar, gymnastics, and music, among the elements of instruction. To these he adds drawing. But he is chiefly preoccupied with music, by reason of the moral influence which he attributes to it. He shared the prepossession which caused the Greeks to say, that to relax or to reform the manners of a people, it suffices to add a string to the lyre or to take one from it.[39]

Aristotle was strongly preoccupied with moral education. Like Plato, he insists on the greatest care in forming the moral habits of early life. In his different writings on ethics he has discussed different human virtues in a spirit at once wise, practical, and liberal. No one has better sung the praises of justice, of which he says, “Neither the evening nor the morning star inspires as much respect as justice.”

It would do Aristotle injustice to seek for a complete expression of his thoughts on education in the incomplete and curtailed statements of theory which are found in his Politics. In connection with these, we should recall the admirable instruction which he himself gave in the Lyceum, and which embraced almost all the sciences in its vast programme. He excluded from it only the sciences and the arts which have a mechanical and utilitarian character. Enslaved on this point to the prejudices of antiquity, he regarded as servile and unworthy of a free man whatever has a direct bearing on the practical and material utilities of life. He recommended to his hearers only studies of the intellectual type, those whose sole purpose is to elevate the mind and to fill it with noble thoughts.[40]

41. Faults in the Pedagogy of Aristotle, and in Greek Pedagogy in General.—It must be said in conclusion, that whatever admiration we may feel for the pedagogy of Aristotle, it was wrong, like that of all the Greek writers, in being but an aristocratic system of education. The education of which Plato and Aristotle dreamed was restricted to a small minority, and was even made possible only because the majority was excluded from it. The slaves, charged with the duty of providing for the sustenance of their superiors, and of creating for them the leisure claimed by Aristotle, had no more participation in education than in liberty or in property. In the century of Pericles, at the most glorious period of the Athenian republic, let us not forget that there were at Athens nearly four hundred thousand slaves to do the bidding of twenty thousand free citizens. To indulge in an easy admiration for Greek pedagogy, we must detach it from its setting, and consider it in itself, apart from the narrow plan on which the Greek states were constructed, and apart from that social régime which assured the education of some, only by perpetuating the oppression of the many.

[42. Analytical Summary.—1. A leading conception in Greek education is that of symmetry, or harmony; the ideal man, in Plato’s phrase, must be “harmoniously constituted”; all opposing tendencies must be reconciled; and while the physical, the intellectual, and the moral must each be made the subject of systematic training, there must be no disproportionate development in either direction.

2. The preoccupation of the Greek teacher was discipline or culture, rather than the communication of useful knowledge; and the final aim was a life of contemplation, rather than a life of action; ethical rather than practical; “good conduct” rather than mastery over what is material.

3. Physical training received great emphasis, not as an end in itself, but as a means towards mental and spiritual health; and knowledge was valued chiefly as the means for attaining moral excellence.

4. The staple of instruction was wisdom, i.e., ethical and prudential knowledge, which was the basis of right action; and teaching, especially according to the Socratic conception of it, consisted in causing the pupil’s mind to react on the materials supplied by his own mind. Socrates, says Lewes, “believed that in each man lay the germs of wisdom. He believed that no science could be taught; only drawn out.”