![]() ![]() Without education, they would cause less trouble.Įven people of Athens, who were supposed to be more knowledgeable than other Greek communities had the same thought process. Rather he is supplying poison to a snake.” What it meant was that it was better not to educate girls. The thinking about educating girls at that time is aptly reflected in a line of a play by Menander which says, “He who teaches his wife to read and write does not do any good. Most of the girls were usually trained by their mothers on running the house and nothing beyond that. Girls were given the bare minimum education in Greece. Learn more about the complexity of Roman women’s roles in society. For example, in Athens, during the fifth century, pederasty was an offense for which the punishment was death. However, with time, the hostile attitude towards pederasty kept increasing. In fact, Zeus had abducted a young man named Ganymede as he wanted him to be his cupbearer on Mount Olympus. Zeus himself was a pederast and this might have given more legitimacy to it. The elite societies accepted the friendship between an older man and a young boy as perfectly fine, and some even appreciated it and more so if there was some teaching involved in it. One distasteful thing about growing up in Greece was that some Greeks accepted pederasty. It was essential to learn the nuances of rhetoric if they wanted to speak in political assemblies or courts or if they wanted to be noticed at informal drinking parties which were called symposia. Whosoever wanted to make a name for himself in the society, learning these subjects was necessary for him. They were mainly taught rhetoric and philosophy. When boys of rich families attained the age of 16, they were sent for what can be called tertiary education. (Image: Anselm Feuerbach / Public domain) Both of them contained a total of 27,000 lines.īoys of rich families in ancient Greece used to attend informal drinking parties. The Greek historian and philosopher Xenophon’s work called Symposium, has a character who says that his father made him learn the complete the Iliad and the Odyssey by heart. Learning to memorize was a very important part of education in Greece. For learning to write, students used a pen called a stylus with which they wrote on a wax tablet. The syllabus included learning to read and write, physical training, and learning some musical instruments. However, it looks like they didn’t enjoy much status and in all probability most of them were slaves. ![]() There is not much information about what type of people were teachers at that time. The natives of Athens started their education around the age of seven. And only a handful of Greeks could afford to educate their sons even during the fifth century. It is believed that prior to this, education in Greece was provided mainly through private tutors. There is no clear evidence of any schools in the ancient Greek world before the fifth century B.C. (Image: John Steeple Davis/Public domain) Sparta was one society in ancient Greece that believed in educating its girls. But how did they study? Who taught them? Ordinary people could not rise to such brilliance with the system of education prevalent at that time. By Robert Garland, Ph.D., Colgate University Greece has given us brilliant thinkers and philosophers like Pluto, Socrates, and Sophocles. ![]()
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