School of Athens

“ An Athenian School.—Leaving the worthy citizen’s home, where we have lingered long chatting on many of the topics the house and its denizens suggest, we will turn again to the streets to seek the school where one of the young sons of the family has been duly conducted (possibly, one may say, driven) by his pedagogue. We have not far to go. Athenian schools have to be numerous, because they are small. To teach children of the poorer classes it is enough to have a modest room and a few stools ”

“ Those of the rich remained in school until their twentieth year. The course of study of the latter included music, rhetoric, grammar, and philosophy. At twenty the youth's education was regarded as completed, and the young man became a citizen. Teachers were paid fees and not fixed salaries.
It was the atmosphere of Athens, more than the discipline of the school, that fostered culture and inspired learning. The aim of education was the beautiful, and the ideal was the aesthetic in mind and body. ”

“ These men really shaped out the first form which university education took in Europe, meaning by university education that higher general training which, coming after school discipline, trains men for the duties of social and political as well as scientific and literary life.
In the city life of the Greeks, when residence in any foreign place entailed great inconvenience, it was evident that this university teaching could not occupy a fixed place. It was not till the amalgamation of the Greek nation under Roman sway that Athens became (like Alexandria) strictly a university town. ”

“ However, this corresponds to the practice of Greek tragedy, which had fixed costumes for certain characters. In reality the paidagogoi probably dressed much like other citizens.
The instruction at Athens is divided into two headings: music and gymnastics. Let us first consider the former. It appears to have been very rare for boys to be taught at home by private teachers. They were usually sent to some school conducted by an elementary teacher. We know very little about the arrangement and curriculum of these schools. ”

“ Athens was great as a State and as a school so long as she embodied that ideal, so long as she distributed power and honor in accordance with worth (ἀρετή) intellectual, moral, practical; in a word, so long as the State was governed by the best citizens (ἄριστοι) , and the rest acknowledged their right to do so. Not [92] withstanding the contention of Grote and others, it is strictly true that Athens was great because, and so long as, she was aristocratic (in the ancient sense) , and perished when she abandoned her fundamental ideal by becoming democratic. ”

“ We alone do good to our neighbours not upon a calculation of interest, but in the confidence of freedom and in a frank and fearless spirit. To sum up; I say that Athens is the school of Hellas, and that the individual Athenian in his own person seems to have the power of adapting himself to the most varied forms of action with the utmost versatility and grace. ”

“ At Athens these schools were not provided by the state. They were private speculations, and each master was regulated in his charges by the reputation he had acquired and the fortunes of his pupils. Some appear to have been extremely moderate in their demands. ... The earliest task to be performed at school was to gain a knowledge of the Greek characters, large and small, to spell next, next to read. ... In teaching the art of writing their practice nearly resembled our own. ”

“ Probably no Greek town of any importance was destitute of one of these schools of exercise. Athens boasted three public gymnasia,—the Cynosarges, the Lyceum, and the Academy. These were the daily resort of young and old alike, though certain penal laws forbade them from exercising together at the same hour.
The school-boy frequented them as part of his daily task; the young man of leisure, as an agreeable lounging-place; the scholar, to listen to the master in philosophy ”

“ The increasing interest in archæological studies which is being manifested in the universities and schools of the country warrants the hope that, when the school has been established at Athens, facilities will be afforded to students desirous of proceeding thither for the purpose of supplementing the knowledge derived from books by a direct acquaintance with the scenes and monuments of Greek life. ”

“ The best policed people have not felt called upon to abandon this instrument of government. If education was severe in Sparta, where children were submitted early to the most difficult exercises, it was hardly any milder at Athens, if we are to judge by this description of Greek customs. ‘Hardly had a child escaped from the tyranny of his nurse, when he fell into the hands of the teacher, the grammarian, and the musician, and these took turns at flogging him to teach him their art. As he grows up, there arrive the arithmetician, the geometer, and the riding-master. ”

“ There is no limit to the number of students. Anyone is received who has had a thorough classical training at an American college. It is important that applicants should gain as great command as possible of the German, French and modern Greek languages before entering the school in order that they may enjoy the full benefit of their opportunities. The tuition fee is nominal, and the cost of living at Athens is anything that one may choose to make it. ”

“ But for the celebrity of her professors, the Athens possesses no advantages as the locality of a medical school. From the nature and pursuits of the Athenian society, there is neither that variety of patients, nor that variety of cases, which is found in cities even of equal population, where a large portion of the people are engaged in manufactures. That it is as good in this respect as Glasgow begins to be doubted, as a considerable number of medical students now attend the Glasgow college in preference ”

“ Yesterday I went to the Greek school to attend the first day of the annual examination of the boys, which takes place in the presence of the Archbishop. The school is a large, well-ventilated building, with an excellent head master, who gives me a lesson in modern Greek every day. The masters at Mytilene have been of late years rather distinguished scholars; they are natives of the island who have finished their education at Athens. ”

“ Many travellers have seen the new university at Athens, and visited its respectable library, and they can bear testimony to the simplicity and good sense displayed in the building.
One of the most remarkable features of the great moral improvement which has taken place in the population, is the eagerness displayed for the introduction of a good system of female education. The first female school established in Greece was founded at Syra, in the time of Capo d'Istria, by that excellent missionary the late Rev. Dr Korck, who was sent to Greece by the Church Missionary Society. ”

“ I do not mean that education which is given, or attempted to be given, at schools and colleges, but that which is produced by the contact and collision of those with whom young men associate at that important period when they are beginning to think and to act for themselves. There is no doubt that more of the character of society in the Athens depends upon this circumstance than upon any thing else, as, so far as my observation extended, there is more peculiarity in the treatment of the Athenian youth at this period than in any other city of the British empire. ”

“ Those times have, however, gone by, and the Athenian university, pressed down by the general circumstances of the Athens, and yet more by the peculiar circumstances of its own patronage, has sunk to rise no more.
Universities, indeed, have much of the general character of stars,—they shine brightest when all else is dark, and fade, if they do not disappear, when illumination becomes general. While the people, generally speaking, are ignorant, they are lights in the path of learning; but when the people become generally well informed, they are not much better than lumber. ”

“ Fortunately, the mischief was not very great; but the manner in which it was done was enough to show the superior tactics, and consequently superior danger of an Athenian mob.
It is not, however, the education of politicians, of professional men, or of the populace, which constitutes that peculiar course of discipline which deserves to be designated, as “the education of the Athens.” That education is a training of the [283] manners more than of the mind,—an initiation into the practices of life, rather than the principles of any art, or of any science. ”

“ The females of Greece are suffered to grow up in ignorance. One who can read and write is rarely found. The school has commenced fortunately at the most favourable moment. The government was in process of change, and an innovation was unnoticed in the confusion that at a later period might have been opposed by the prejudices of custom. The King and the President of the Regency, Count Armansperg, visited the school frequently during their stay in Athens, and expressed their thanks to Mrs. ”

“ Nor was this all that a University required, and found in Athens. No one, even there, could live on poetry. If the students at that famous place had nothing better than bright hues and soothing sounds, they would not have been able or disposed to turn their residence there to much account. Of course they must have the means of living, nay, in a certain sense, of enjoyment; if Athens was to be an Alma Mater at the time, or to remain afterwards a pleasant thought in their memory. And so they had: be it recollected Athens was a port, and a mart of trade, perhaps the first in Greece ”

“ One hundred drachmæ were probably considered an adequate fee for a complete course; and if it be true that a popular teacher could often command one hundred pupils, even though the course occupied more than one year, the endowment was considerable.
The desire of procuring free education for poorer lads with literary tastes is, however, an interesting and permanent feature in the Greek mind. At the present moment the University of Athens provides free education for every Greek, and is wholly supported by a State subsidy. ”

“ As long as a Spartan lived in his own country he behaved well, but the vices that the system produced showed themselves unpleasantly in any dealings with others. To the rest of Greece the vices seemed more than to counterbalance the virtues, and the Athenian ideal of education became the model for most of the other Greek States.
At Athens, everything was left to the individual parent and to the private schoolmaster. The State recognized its responsibility for the maintenance of children, and if a man died in battle his orphans were reared at the public expense ”

“ It is natural that this "Old Education" of Athens should have a special interest for us, inasmuch as it seems, in great measure, to have solved the problem that must be uppermost with every true educator and friend of education, viz. How can strong, wise, and good men be produced? For this reason, as also because we are the better informed regarding the educational system of Athens than that of any other Greek state, it seems proper to devote special attention to it, treating it as preëminently Greek education. ”

“ If we would know what a university is, considered in its most elementary idea, we must betake ourselves to the first and most beautiful home of European civilization, to the bright and beautiful Athens,—Athens, whose schools drew to her bosom, and then sent back to the business of life, the youth of the Western world for a long thousand years. ”

“ The Athenian community, through its political eminence, its intellectual character, so original and diversified, its culture,—such that almost every citizen was qualified for civil office,—has no parallel in history. It is the elevation, not of a select class of the citizens, but of the whole society, which gives to Athens its unique distinction. Public spirit and enterprise, which made her navy dominant in the Aegean and over the sea-coast of Asia Minor, went hand in hand with delight in eloquence and in the creations of genius. ”

“ With the Athenians philosophy was not a thing apart from the occupations of life and the events of history—it was not the monopoly of a few studious minds, but was cultivated as a fashion by the young and the well-born, the statesman, the poet, the man of pleasure, the votary of ambition 250. It was inseparably interwoven with their manners, their pursuits, their glory, their decay. The history of Athens includes in itself the history of the human mind. ”

“ The infant scribes are set loose at an early hour in the evening, and as the professors in the Athens are said to be far more strict in looking after their own fees than after the attendance of the students, the whole of this mass of young persons are left to govern themselves and each other for nearly the half of every day in the week, and almost the whole of Saturday and Sunday. Athenian apprentices to the law are seldom lodged in the families of their masters; and it is a rare thing indeed for an Athenian student to be boarded with his professor. ”

“ Most species of education imply some sort of restraint; but the Athenian education is chiefly taken up with removing the restraints that have been imposed in other places, and by other systems; and the rapidity with which students make proficiency in it is without parallel in any of the ordinary schools or colleges. A mere boy shall come from the remotest glen or island of Scotland, as timid as a hare, as modest as a maiden, and as honest as a man of five feet in a mill-stone quarry ”