As soon as he is able, the child should go to school. Home education is objectionable on many accounts, especially for boys intended for orators. These, above all others, must learn sociability, tact, and esprit de corps, and form school-friendships. Many moral lessons can be learnt, and many motives employed, in the school, that are not possible in the family. Among the latter is ambition, which "though itself a vice, is the parent of many virtues," and therefore ought to be freely used. Hardly any motive is so powerful.
When a boy is sent to school, his teacher's first business is to investigate his character and capacity. The chief marks of ability are memory and power of imitation. Imitation is not mimicry, which is always a sign of low nature. Slowness, though objectionable, is better than precocity, which should be discouraged in every way. Different treatment is required for different boys: some need the bit, some the spur. The best boy is the one "whom praise excites, whom glory pleases, who cries when he is beaten. Such a one may be nourished with emulation; reproach will sting him; honor will rouse him." Boys ought to have seasons of rest and play, neither too short to afford recreation, nor too long to encourage idleness. Games of question and answer are good for sharpening the wits. In play an excellent opportunity is offered to the teacher for learning the character of his pupils. Corporal punishment is altogether to be deprecated, and, indeed, is unneeded when the teacher does his duty.
What boys learn in school is grammar; but this must be supplemented by music and astronomy. Without the former it will be impossible to scan verse; without the latter, to understand certain allusions and modes of fixing dates in the poets. A little philosophy is necessary for the sake of understanding such poets as Empedocles and Lucretius; geometry, in order to give practice in apodictic reasoning, as well as for practical uses. Thus the curriculum of school education will consist of Grammar, Music, Astronomy, Philosophy, and Geometry.
Grammar consists of two parts, (1) Methodics, or the art of correct speaking, (2) Historics (German Realien), the interpretation of poets, historians, philosophers, etc. Methodics—grammar in the modern sense—should aim at enabling a boy to speak and write with correctness, clearness, and elegance. All barbarisms (i.e. foreign words and idioms), solecisms, affectations, and careless pronunciations are to be avoided. In the use of language, four things are to be taken into account, (1) reason, (2) antiquity, (3) authority, (4) custom. In reading, the boy must be taught "where to draw his breath, where to divide a verse, where the sense is complete, where it begins, where the voice is to be raised, where lowered, what inflections to use, what is to be uttered slowly, what rapidly, what forcibly, what gently." "That he may be able to do all this, he must understand. Reading must above all be manly and grave, with a certain sweetness." Poetry must not be read either as prose, nor yet in a sing-song way. All theatrical personification, and all gesticulation smacking of the comedian, are to be avoided.
For Histories the teacher must be very careful in his selection of texts. Homer and Virgil are best to begin with. Though their full import cannot be understood by youth, they awake enthusiasm for what is noble and spirited, and will often be read in later life. "Tragedies are useful. There is nourishment in the lyric poets"; but they must be used with caution and in selections, from which everything relating to love must be excluded. Even Horace must be expurgated. Satire and comedy, though of the utmost value for the orator, must be deferred till the moral character is sufficiently established not to be injured by them. Passages from the poets ought to be committed to memory. In all reading, the utmost care ought to be taken to promote purity and manliness (sanctitas et virilitas).
After reading a piece of poetry, boys must be made to analyze and scan it, to point out peculiarities of language and rhythm, to enumerate the different meanings of words, to name and explain the various figures of speech. But far more important than all this it is, that the teacher should impress on their minds the importance of systematic arrangement and propriety of description, "showing what is suitable for each rôle, what is commendable in thought, what in expression, where diffuseness is proper, and where brevity." In giving collateral information, whether in history, mythology, or geography, he should keep within bounds, giving only what is necessary and rests on respectable authority. "It is one of the virtues of a schoolmaster to be ignorant of some things."
As regards lessons in composition, the teacher should begin by making his pupils write out from memory the Fables of Æsop, in pure, simple, direct, and unadorned language. He should then call upon them to turn poetry into prose, and to paraphrase it, either briefly or diffusely. He should then make them write out proverbs, apophthegms, aphorisms, short, brilliant anecdotes, etc. Famous stories related by the poets may be used as subjects for composition, but chiefly for the sake of information. Beyond this the schoolmaster should not go in the matter of composition. The rest should be left to the rhetorician.
It is of great importance in youthful education that several subjects should be studied at the same time. Boys like and need variety, and, when they get it, it is truly astonishing how much they can accomplish. "There is not the slightest reason for fearing that boys will shrink from the labor of study. No age is less easily fatigued." ... "Boys are naturally more inclined to hard work than young men."
Such, in brief, is Quintilian's school-programme. It has no place for physical science (except Astronomy), for manual training, or for physical exercise. Play is, indeed, permitted as a necessary recreation, and gymnastics and physical training (παιδοτρίβεια) are recommended in so far as they are necessary to enable the budding orator to move and to gesticulate gracefully; but that is all. "Nothing can please that is not becoming."
As soon as he is ready, the young aspirant for oratorical fame passes into the hands of the rhetorician, under whom he learns all the arts, and acquires all that knowledge, necessary to fit him for his profession. No kind of knowledge, and no moral excellence ought to be foreign to the orator. Quintilian is very severe upon the philosophers for claiming, in their title, to be, in an exceptional way, lovers of wisdom, and maintains that the true orator is the truly wise and good man. He is surely superior to the philosopher, who turns his back upon the world and manifests no interest in human affairs. Moreover, "philosophy may be simulated; eloquence cannot."