The
Schools Of Hellas
Wherever it occurred, schooling through the
eighteenth and nineteenth centuries (up until the last third of the nineteenth) heavily invested its hours
with language, philosophy, art,
and the life of the classical civilizations of
Greece and Rome. In the
grammar schools of the day, little
pure grammar as we understand it existed; they were places of classical learning. Early America rested easily
on a foundation of classical understanding, one subversive to the normal standards of British class society.
The lessons of antiquity were so
vital to the construction of every American institution it's hardly possible to
grasp how deep the gulf between
then and now is without knowing a little about those lessons. Prepare yourself for a surprise.
For a long time, for
instance, classical Athens distributed its most responsible public positions by lottery: army
generalships, water supply, everything. The implications are awesome — trust in everyone's
competence was assumed; it was their version of universal driving. Professionals existed but did not make
key decisions; they were only
technicians, never well regarded because prevailing opinion held that
technicians had enslaved their own
minds. Anyone worthy of citizenship was expected to be able to think clearly and to welcome great
responsibility. As you reflect on this, remember our own unvoiced assumption that anyone can
guide a ton of metal traveling at high speed with three sticks of dynamite sloshing around in its tanks.
When we ask what kind of schooling was
behind this brilliant society which has
enchanted the centuries ever since, any honest reply can be carried in
one word: None. After writing a
book searching for the hidden genius of Greece in its schools, Kenneth Freeman concluded his unique study The
Schools of Hellas in 1907 with this summary, "There were no schools in Hellas." No place boys
and girls spent their youth attending
continuous instruction under command of strangers. Indeed, nobody did
homework in the modern sense; none
could be located on standardized tests. The tests that mattered came in living, striving to meet ideals that
local tradition imposed. The word skole itself means leisure, leisure in a formal garden to think and reflect.
Plato in The Laws is the first to
refer to school as learned discussion.
The most famous
school in Athens was Plato's Academy, but in its physical manifestation it had no classes or
bells, was a well-mannered hangout for thinkers and seekers, a generator of good conversation and good friendship,
things Plato thought lay at the
core of education. Today we might call such a phenomenon a salon.
Aristotle's Lyceum was pretty much
the same, although Aristotle delivered two lectures a day — a tough one in the morning for intense
thinkers, a kinder, gentler version of the same in the afternoon for less ambitious minds.
Attendance was optional. And the famous
Gymnasium so memorable as a forge for German leadership later on was in
reality only an open training
ground where men sixteen to fifty were free to participate in high- quality, state- subsidized instruction
in boxing, wrestling, and javelin.
The idea of schooling
free men in anything would have revolted Athenians. Forced training was for slaves. Among free
men, learning was self-discipline, not the gift of experts. From such notions Americans derived their own academies,
the French their lycees, and the
Germans their gymnasium. Think of it: In Athens, instruction was unorganized even though the city-state
was surrounded by enemies and its own society engaged in the difficult social experiment of sustaining a participatory
democracy, extending privileges
without precedent to citizens, and maintaining literary, artistic, and legislative standards which remain to
this day benchmarks of human genius. For its 500- year history from Homer to Aristotle, Athenian civilization
was a miracle in a rude world;
teachers flourished there but none was grounded in fixed buildings with
regular curricula under the thumb
of an intricately layered bureaucracy.
There were no schools in Hellas. For the
Greeks, study was its own reward. Beyond that few cared to go.
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