Author: Kenneth John Freeman

Publisher: Theclassics.Us

Published: 2013-09

Total Pages: 86

ISBN-13: 9781230238425

This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can usually download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1908 edition. Excerpt: ... CHAPTER V SECONDARY EDUCATION: I. THE SOPHISTS At fourteen or soon after, it was usual for the ordinary course of letters and lyre-playing to terminate: the gymnastic lessons might be carried on till old age interrupted them. During the first three-quarters of the fifth century, the lad, on leaving school, was left to live more or less as he pleased, if he was rich enough not to have to work for his living: the sons of poorer citizens at this age, if not before, settled down to learn a trade or engaged in merchandise. Rich boys, no doubt, spent most of their time in athletic pursuits; riding and chariot-driving were favourite amusements. But with the Periclean age arose a violent desire for a further course of intellectual study, and a system of secondary education arose, to occupy the four years which elapsed between the time when the lad finished his primary education and the time when the State summoned him to undergo his two years of military training. Many of the primary schools of the better sort started courses of study for lads, providing, no doubt, separate class-rooms, or else the younger boys attended at different hours from those at which the elder pupils assembled. Probably some such provision had been made much earlier for those who -.wished to obtain a more advanced knowledge of literature and music than was offered by the primary schools. But in the time of Sokrates many masters seemed to have held classes for lads as well as for boys. On entering the schools of Dionusios,1 the master of letters, Sokrates finds a class of lads assembled here.2 They all belong to noble families: the poor were no doubt unable to afford education of this sort. Two of the lads were busy discussing a point of astronomy, and were quoting the...