Aristotle and Ancient Educational Ideals — Aristotle — John Shaqi
Aristotle and Ancient Educational Ideals
Aristotle · en
As husband, father, master in the family, and as legislator, officer,
judge in the State, each member of the governing class found his proper
range of activities; and he did wrong, degrading himself to the level of
the serving class, if he sought any other. This view, in a more or less
conscious form, pervades the whole ancient world, conditioning all its
notions and theories of education; and Paul the Apostle only echoed it
when he said to wives: "Wives, be in subjection to your own husbands as
to the Lord"; to children: "Children, obey your parents in the Lord: for
this is right"; and to slaves: "Slaves, be obedient unto them that
according to the flesh are your masters with fear and trembling, in
singleness of heart, as unto Christ."
CHAPTER V
EDUCATION AS INFLUENCED BY TIME, PLACE, AND CIRCUMSTANCES
The peculiar character of each form of government is what
establishes it at the beginning and what usually preserves it....
Since the whole State has but one end, it is plainly necessary that
there should be one education for all the citizens.--Aristotle.
Education among the Greeks, as among every other progressive people,
varied with times and circumstances. The education of the Homeric Greeks
was not that of the Athenians in the days of Aristotle, nor the latter
the same as the education of the contemporary Spartans or Thebans.
Moreover, the education actually imparted was not the same as that
demanded or recommended by philosophers and writers on pedagogics. It is
true that the aim was always the same; Worth, Excellence,
Fair-and-Goodness (ἀρετή, καλοκἀγαθία); but this was differently
conceived and differently striven after at different times and in
different places.