The Education Of Classical Athens And Its Effects

Human being develops and refreshes himself by education that is very attractive to a lot of thinkers and educationists. They spend their lifetime and pay great energy in exploring and practicing education. Research on classical Greek education from the 5th BC to the middle of the 4th BC is important. It can not only deepen the understanding and cognition to this theme, but also enlighten the development of present-day education. Classical Athenian consisted of three parts, namely family education, school education and public education, among which the development of the school education was the most important event. Family education covered from the birth to seven years old. Children got knowledge through listening to story and playing games. According to Athenian system, civil boys should go to school at the age of seven to learn how to read and write. The teachers instructed them with the work of Homer, Hesiod and so on. They studied reading aloud and practised speeches to get prepared for future social life. Later, they entered music school to study music. In Athens, music education included extremely broad range. Teenagers entered palaestra at the age of twelve. They studied sports artifice, did exercises to prepare for the service in the army. After this palaestra, most of them left to earn a living and only the rich children went to the gymnasium to continue their studies.The sophists tended to dominate our picture of fifth-century education, but the"revolution"they set in motion depended on other more widespread and fundamental changes in Greek paideia through the fifth century. Among these were a general increase of formal schooling among non-artisan classes and a basic transformation by which the teaching of reading and writing was first introduced into and eventually came to dominate the traditional mousikêand gymnastikê. Isocrates held the first rhetorical school in Athens in 329 BC. However, after the Peloponnesian War, the downtrodden social crisis had been revealed. Facing these problems, the Athenian philosopher Socrates stood up bravely. In his opinion, education could resolve these problems. He decided to engage in educational work and find out how to train people more powerfully. Moreover, his successors, Plato and Aristotle, held their own schools that were named Academy and Lyceum. They built a relatively entire educational ideological system based on their own educational activities.Various kinds of public activities, such as festival contest, the assembly, the heliastic court, military training and drama festival had certain education effect on all of Athenian citizens. The government educated its citizens by encouraging them join in these public activities.The reasons why the education of classical Athens was so flourish are many. The warm natural environment made the Athenians like talking with others in the open air, and they could study in the process of exchange. Longer coastline put them in touch with the eastern civilizations earlier than others and provided a good condition to the development of Athens. The development of democratic politics and the prosperity of commerce economy also had a great effect on the education of Athens.The classical Athenian education had as follows characteristics. First, completeness that embodied in two aspects, education covered all Athenian citizens and the contents of the education were overall; secondly, Athenian civil education was inseparable from Athenian city-state system; thirdly,"Harmony"was one of the most important contents in the education of Athens; fourthly, the physical punishments were very broadly used. The education of classical Athens had an important position in the ancient Greek culture history. Its rich education practice activities provided important bases on which the educationalists could conclude the ideas of ancient Greek education. Moreover, the Greek thinkers had drawn nutrition from Athenian education practice. That could resolve the question of the Greek education. As an example of the west education in ancient times, Athenian education had great influence on the education of Athens, ancient Rome and bourgeois in modern times.In short, the Athenian education was prosperous from the 5th century BC to the 4th century BC. It was closely related to the prosperity of politics, economy and culture. The Athenian education could make the ability, inclination, personality of people sufficiently develop. It was unique in ancient times. You could find a parallel neither in ancient eastern countries, nor in other Greek city-states. It also had great enlightenments on modern education.