Specifically, the Athens education system can be roughly divided into the following stages.
After the child is born, it is also strictly selected. Before he was 7 years old, he was raised by his parents at home. After the age of seven, girls continue to be cared for and educated by their mothers, so that they can learn skills such as spinning, sewing and embroidery, instead of going to school to study culture. From the age of seven, boys attend both grammar school (TheGrammatistSchoo 1) and music school (also known as piano school). Grammar schools teach children literature and simple knowledge, while Qin schools teach children to play the piano and sing. These schools are all private and charge fees. Children of freemen can afford tuition and go to school. The children of slave owners are accompanied by "apprentices" at school. Most teachers and servants are slaves of knowledge. Teachers are free men with political rights, and many of them are freed slaves. So at that time, teachers' status was very low, just like people who entertained along the street, and they were not respected. Grammar schools have no fixed curriculum, and generally only learn some basic knowledge of reading, writing and arithmetic. Reading, that is, literacy reading, first letters, then words. At that time, there was no stress (reading), no punctuation, and no spaces between words, so it was very difficult to learn to read. When I can read, I mainly read Homer's Epic and Aesop's Fables. It is not easy to write. First, practice with a hard sharp pen along the handwriting carved by the teacher on the wax board, then put the wax board on your knee to write, and finally write it on the parchment with ink, which is very slow to write. Arithmetic teaching is not common. With a little guidance from the teacher, students practice with their fingers or pebbles (sometimes with something similar to an abacus), which is extremely simple. The Qin school practiced musical instruments first, then taught simple religious poems and lyric poems, and then sang with musical instruments to accompany the poems. Finally, learn to sing Homer's epic fragments. Music education mainly lies in cultivating students' character and moral quality, not in becoming singers. Because this is considered a humble occupation, the children of slave owners disdain it.
12 to 13-year-olds, on the one hand, continue to study in music schools or grammar schools, and at the same time, begin to study in stadiums. Gymnastics school, also called "wrestling school", is a higher level school. In fact, the so-called gymnastics school is generally just an open space near the music school. As the name implies, gymnastics schools mainly focus on physical exercise. Before that, there were some preliminary sports activities in grammar schools or music schools, such as posture training of standing, walking and sitting. But after entering the gymnastics school, I should concentrate most of my time on gymnastics training under the guidance of the wrestling teacher. The contents of gymnastics training include: running, jumping, wrestling, discus throwing and javelin throwing (five events); And swimming, dancing and so on. Track and field, swimming and other five sports are common in physical training in Athens and Sparta, and there are some similarities in the purpose and requirements of curriculum, that is, they all pay attention to developing students' physical strength and making them strong people. But Athens has further requirements. In the eyes of the Athenians, this kind of gymnastics is of course very important and indispensable for physical exercise. But more important is the training of skills and will. Gymnastics, technically, requires brisk and agile steps and soft and beautiful posture; In terms of mental willpower, it is required to always be tough and resolute, be brave in making progress, be good at controlling temper and grasping emotions. Because the Athenians paid more attention to the training of spiritual will than skills. Therefore, in order to coordinate gymnastics activities with the study in grammar schools and harp schools, various gymnastics exercises are often accompanied by the performance of stringed instruments. Therefore, gymnastics schools not only engage in sports activities, but also cooperate with grammar schools and harpsichord schools to continue the study of students' cultural knowledge and music art (including literature).
In addition, in gymnastics schools, more attention is paid to the moral education of slave owners. Officials of slave-owning countries or the most respected and prestigious citizens often go to schools to have various conversations with students or host important activities such as gymnastics exercises.
By the age of fifteen to sixteen, most young people will not continue to go to school, but engage in other occupations. Only the children of a few powerful people can enter the state-sponsored gym to study. The National Stadium is actually a place for all-round education. As the primary educational content, physical education is guided by specialized physical education teachers. Pentathlon is still the main training event, especially running and wrestling. In addition, horse riding, driving and other activities have been added. The requirements of various activities are more stringent, so that more people can participate in the Olympic Games held at the foot of Olympia every four years. The study of cultural knowledge also occupies an extremely important position. Here we should focus on grammar, rhetoric and philosophy. These three subjects are also called "Three Arts". The "three arts" was originally advocated by the philosophy teacher "sophist" who lobbied everywhere, and was highly valued in Athens in the fifth century BC. These three subjects have a lot to do with the development of eloquence. The implementation of slave-owner democracy in Athens requires the National Stadium to pay attention to and strengthen the cultivation and improvement of young people's eloquence and speech skills so that they can better participate in the political activities of free people in the future. The National Gymnasium also often performs singing, playing, dancing and various cultural activities. Participating in religious ceremonies or various national celebrations is also regarded as an indispensable learning activity. We also need to know about legal rules, social life and civil life. The slave-owning country attaches great importance to this preparatory school for training primitive officials. Teachers are mostly people with high attainments in grammar, rhetoric, philosophy and physical education. The material conditions of the National Gymnasium are much superior to those of other schools. All these are conducive to training the talents needed by slave owners.
Young people between the ages of eighteen and twenty belong to the stage of preparing citizens. You can enter the Youth Military Training Corps (Ephebia) for military training. The military training regiment is actually a national barracks. Athens is different from Sparta. Whether to join the military training regiment or not is entirely up to young people of this age to decide for themselves. It is not compulsory, but only the descendants of full citizens can enter. As soon as they entered the military camp, they gave each person a spear and a shield, and solemnly swore in the temple: never defile these weapons, and must obey officials, abide by the law, and fight for national interests; Then he served as a soldier in the city garrison for one year; The next year, I went to the border guard to guard the border and coastal defense. During this period, I will learn to sail and exercise, learn some political and legal knowledge, and swear absolute loyalty to the slave-owner country again and again. After the age of 20, after a certain ceremony, he accepted the title of full citizen and obtained full political rights. Only in this way can we be qualified to step into the ranks of official state officials.
If we compare the education in Athens and Sparta, on the one hand, we can see that there are similarities between them. For example, school education is mainly controlled by the slave class, education is not directly related to productive labor, and military sports drills are given priority. These are particularly obvious. On the other hand, we can see the characteristics of Athens education, that is, the implementation of physical, intellectual, aesthetic and moral education, and the cultivation of harmonious people are the most prominent and prominent characteristics of Athens education.
In Athens education, physical training should not only make students strong, but also require balanced development to lay the foundation for personal harmonious development. Intellectual education is indispensable for the implementation of slave owners' democratic politics. Athens regards knowledge education as the most important educational content to train political activists and slave-owning class officials. This is beyond Spartan education. Athens has much higher requirements for music education than Sparta. Sparta set up music singing only to boost morale on the battlefield, while music education in Athens mainly cultivated people's sense of rhythm, and then used it as a favorable weapon to express their thoughts and feelings. Music education in Athens is an important part of its harmonious education and elegant education.
It can be seen that the most important feature of Athens education is to require students to develop harmoniously in physical strength, intelligence, aesthetic feeling and moral character through education. This is not found in Spartan education.
Athens education is closely related to ancient Greek educational thought and ancient Roman education. Thinkers in ancient Greece directly absorbed the practical experience of Athens education as an important basis for their argumentation on educational issues. During the Roman Republic, the method of Athens education was almost completely adopted, even the school name, subject content and educational objectives were no exception.
In particular, the education of harmonious development in Athens was not only highly valued by Aristotle at that time, but also had a great influence on the development of western bourgeois progressive education thought.
Slavery society is the earliest class society in human history, and the exploitation and oppression of slaves by slave owners are extremely cruel. In this sense, slavery is indeed a cruel and barbaric exploitation system. Slavery and its educational system in ancient Greece undoubtedly had obvious class nature, but we must look at and analyze it historically and comprehensively. From the perspective of productivity and social development, the emergence of slavery is a phenomenon of historical progress, because "only slavery can make a greater division of labor between agriculture and industry possible, thus creating conditions for the prosperity of ancient culture, that is, Greek culture." Without the initial division of labor between mental work and manual work, and without some people getting rid of heavy manual work and specializing in the summary and research of cultural knowledge, it would be impossible to produce the prosperity of culture, science and art at that time. So this division of labor has promoted the development of history and civilization.
Slavery and education system in ancient Greece were not only of great significance to the emergence and development of culture, science and art at that time, but also made great contributions to the development of western culture and even the development of society in later generations. Engels said this. He said: "without slavery, there would be no Greek state, and there would be no Greek art and science;" Without slavery, there would be no Roman Empire, and without the foundation laid by Greek culture and Roman Empire, there would be no modern Europe. We should never forget that all our economic, political and intellectual development is based on the premise that slavery is recognized and necessary. In this sense, we have reason to say that there would be no modern socialism without ancient slavery. " It can be seen that it is necessary for us to study the history and cultural education of ancient slave society today.