A History of Education Before the Middle Ages

Franklin Pierrepont Graves

Dec 2005 · Cosimo, Inc.

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This education of the early Romans produced a nation of warriors and loyal citizens, but it inevitably tended to make them calculating, selfish, overbearing, cruel, and rapacious. They never possessed either lofty ideals or enthusiasm. Their training was best adapted to a small state, and became unsatisfactory when they had spread over the entire peninsula. -from "Rome and the Roman World" This 1909 classic of educational history surveys the evolution of teaching from humanity's primitive roots through the organization of Christian monastic schools in the Middle Ages. Aimed at educators but of interest to anyone fascinated by the course of human progress, this is the story of how social forces shaped the ever-increasing sphere of knowledge our ancestors sought to understand, how educational ideals and traditions both helped to form and were formed by the advance from nature to culture as the driver of civilization, and how systematic training shifted civic focus from the group to the individual. Egypt, Babylon, China, Persia, India, Greece, and Rome: the influence of all is explored, and the inestimable legacies of these ancient cultures on contemporary education frankly assessed. American educator and classical scholar FRANK PIERREPONT GRAVES (1869-1943) taught at Ohio State University and the Universities of Missouri and Pennsylvania. From 1921 till 1940, he was commissioner of education and president of the University of the State of New York.