The History Of Education | Page 7

profoundly modified all subsequent progress and
development. To these four main sources we have made many
additions in modern times, building an entirely new superstructure on
the old foundations, but the groundwork of our civilization is composed
of these four foundation elements. For these reasons a history of even
modern education almost of necessity goes back, briefly at least, to the
work and contributions of these ancient peoples.
Starting, then, with the work of the Greeks, we shall state briefly the
contributions to the stream of civilization which have come down to us
from each of the important historic peoples or groups or forces, and
shall trace the blending and assimilating processes of the centuries.
While describing briefly the educational institutions and ideas of the
different peoples, we shall be far less concerned, as we progress down

the centuries, with the educational and philosophical theories advanced
by thinkers among them than with what was actually done, and with the
lasting contributions which they made to our educational practices and
to our present-day civilization.
The work of Greece lies at the bottom and, in a sense, was the most
important of all the earlier contributions to our education and
civilization. These people, known as Hellenes, were the pioneers of
western civilization. Their position in the ancient world is well shown
on the map reproduced opposite. To the East lay the older political
despotisms, with their caste-type and intellectually stagnant
organization of society, and to the North and West a little-known
region inhabited by barbarian tribes. It was in such a world that our
western civilization had its birth. These Greeks, and especially the
Athenian Greeks, represented an entirely new spirit in the world. In
place of the repression of all individuality, and the stagnant conditions
of society that had characterized the civilizations before them, they
developed a civilization characterized by individual freedom and
opportunity, and for the first time in world history a premium was
placed on personal and political initiative. In time this new western
spirit was challenged by the older eastern type of civilization. Long
foreseeing the danger, and in fear of what might happen, the little
Greek States had developed educational systems in part designed to
prepare their citizens for what might come. Finally, in a series of
memorable battles, the Greeks, led by Athens, broke the dread power of
the Persian name and made the future of this new type of civilization
secure. At Marathon, Salamis, and Plataea the fate of our western
civilization trembled in the balance. Now followed the great creative
period in Greek life, during which the Athenian Greeks matured and
developed a literature, philosophy, and art which were to be enjoyed
not only by themselves, but by all western peoples since their time. In
these lines of culture the world will forever remain debtor to this small
but active and creative people.
[Illustration: FIG. I. THE EARLY GREEK CONCEPTION OF THE
WORLD The World according to Hecataeus, a geographer of Miletus,
Asia Minor. Hecataeus was the first Greek traveler and geographer.
The map dates from about 500 B.C.]
The next great source of our western civilization was the work of Rome.

Like the Greeks, the Romans also occupied a peninsula jutting
southward into the Mediterranean, but in most respects they were far
different in type. Unlike the active, imaginative, artistic, and creative
Greeks, the Romans were a practical, concrete, unimaginative, and
executive people. Energy, personality, and executive power were in
greatest demand among them.
The work of Rome was political, governmental, and legal--not artistic
or intellectual. Rome was strong where Greece was weak, and weak
where Greece was strong. As a result the two peoples supplemented
one another well in laying the foundations for our western civilization.
The conquests of Greece were intellectual; those of Rome legal and
governmental. Rome absorbed and amalgamated the whole ancient
world into one Empire, to which she gave a common language, dress,
manners, religion, literature, and political and legal institutions.
Adopting Greek learning and educational practices as her own, she
spread them throughout the then-known world. By her political
organization she so fixed Roman ideas as to law and government
throughout the Empire that Christianity built firmly on the Roman
foundations, and the German barbarians, who later swept over the
Empire, could neither destroy nor obliterate them. The Roman conquest
of the world thus decisively influenced the whole course of western
history, spread and perpetuated Greek ideas, and ultimately saved the
world from a great disaster.
To Rome, then, we are indebted most of all for ideas as to government,
and for the introduction of law and order into an unruly world. In all
the intervening centuries between ancient Rome and ourselves, and in
spite of many wars and repeated onslaughts of barbarism, Roman
governmental law still influences and