Ancient Roman Education.pptx for the subject Foundations of Education

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1. Ancient Roman Education

2. According to Quintilian, a teacher in the 1st Century AD. " The teacher must decide how to deal with his pupil. Some boys are lazy, unless forced to work; others do not like being controlled; some will respond to fear but others are paralysed by it. Give me a boy who is encouraged by praise, delighted by success and ready to weep over failure. Such a boy must be encouraged by appeals to his ambitions .“ He recognized the importance of starting education as early as possible, noting that " memory not only exists even in small children but is specially retentive at that age”.  

3. Time Prior to the 3 rd century BC, Roman system of education was closely bound to the Roman social institution of  patria potestas , in which the father acted as head of the household (pater familias ) , and had, according to law, the absolute right of control over his children. It was the father's duty to educate his children and should he be unable to fulfil this duty, the task was assumed by other family members. In the 3 rd century BC, Greek captive from Tarentum named Livius Andronicus  was sold as a slave and employed as a tutor for his master's children. After obtaining his freedom, he continued to live in Rome and became the first schoolmaster (private tutor) to follow Greek methods of education. Romans were exposed to a strong influence of Greek thought and lifestyle and found leisure to study the arts.

4. The School The size of a school appears to have varied greatly. The teacher sat in a large chair with his students sitting in a semicircle around him, or in rows before him. The usual seating for students in the classroom space was backless stools. School desks did not exist, and the student placed his tablet on his knees to work. A class may contain students of different ages and abilities, and they tended to work independently. The teacher did not teach his class as a whole; each student would come individually to him to receive instructions and to read out his completed lessons. Teachers had access to limited teaching materials, books were rare, and   writing  materials were expensive. They recited passages, which the students memorised for study purposes. Children learned to recite from memory poetry, grammatical treatises, and obscure words and their meanings.

5. A teacher with three  discipuli (pupils) , relief found in Neumagen near Trier, c. 180-185 CE. Photo of casting in Pushkin Museum, Moscow.

6. Students Education for children began proper at seven years of age. Most pupils were boys, but girls did attend, especially at primary level; girls rarely advanced beyond the first level as they tended to be married in their early teens. Children within rich families were well schooled and taught by a private tutor or went out to school. Schools equivalent to today were usually only for boys. There was strict discipline in public schools, including caning for even the smallest infraction. This was done to promote the idea that boys who were constantly afraid of making mistakes would learn things more quickly and precisely. For pupils who continually got things wrong, they were held down by two slaves and beaten by the tutor with a leather whip. Girls were only allowed to learn reading and writing while boys received lessons in honorability and physical training to prepare them for a man’s role in society. Girls from rich families received a home education to learn how to be a good wife and run a good household, with tasks such as music, sewing and the running of a kitchen.

7. Curriculum There were three levels of education: the basic Three Rs was the first stage. The  literator  was responsible for teaching the younger children. Lessons included teaching the child to form and write letters; the teacher carving the alphabet  into a wooden board and then having the child trace the letters. The tablets used by children were usually small enough to fit in one hand, and as a consequence would not hold a lot of text . Students learned the shapes and names of the letters, then the syllables, and finally the construction of words and sentences. Ancient books were more difficult to read as most texts had no spaces between the words, no distinction between capital and lower-case letters, no paragraphs, and no punctuation. Arithmetic for the students began with counting on their fingers and with pebbles ( calculi ), and then they moved on to using an abacus. They also learned their addition and multiplication by chanting. Many children did not advance any further than this stage.

8. Curriculum When they were given the toga of manhood, students who were sometimes as young as 15 years, could move onto the third stage, which would require a teacher of rhetoric. A  rhetor  trained students in public speaking,  Roman law  and politics, astronomy, geography,  literature , philosophy, music, and  mythology . Students would study with their  rhetor  until the age of 20 or even later. The  rhetor  was tasked with educating them to become skilful orators; they were given exercises to develop their skills, which included declamations, a rhetorical piece on an invented theme for political and forensic oratory. The declamation exercises tackled scenarios of familial or social disorder by reasserting the commonly held views of the Roman elite in the still impressionable minds of the young . There were not many subject choices in Rome, so children probably became bored quite quickly. The days were also much longer than modern day schools, beginning from sunrise with a short lunch break during the day, then arriving home by sunset. Lessons were learned off by heart and without question - the children only needed to know facts to escape beatings. Books were too expensive so lessons were generally dictated to the class.

9. Discipline Although physical punishment was used by many teachers as a way of disciplining, some teachers employed different methods as incentives to stave off boredom and distraction. Education was not made compulsory. Many would have remained illiterate. Those boys of the poorer classes, whose parents could afford to send them to school, did not go any further than primary education, having learned the practical skills that they required to be able to find employment. Girls, too, having had a basic education, could begin work at this early age. The child from the wealthier classes was afforded the luxury of a full education which prepared them for positions in upper-class society. It was not uncommon for some young men to continue their studies abroad in places like  Athens , with Greek masters.

10. Equipment Students brought with them to their place of learning, waxed tablets and equipment which included a sponge for erasing, a knife for sharpening reed, and a ruler; these items were carried in a small case known as a  theca . More commonly, exercises were written on  ostraca  – broken pieces of pottery. Teachers also used large  ostraca  for writing out long passages or collections of moral maxims. Wooden tablets were also used, and some would come in notebook form. Tablets could have a surface coated in wax on which a sharp stylus made of metal, wood, or bone was used for writing, or the surface could be unwaxed on which pen and ink were used.  

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