How was the education system in ancient Athens?

The education of youth in ancient Athens

The education of the young in ancient Athens resembles the education of the young in other Greek cities, with the exception of Sparta. In the Athenian family, education was provided by the father, who was also the head of the family. However, care could be delegated to others. Until the age of 7, boys and girls grew up together in the women's quarters and played various fun games together. From the age of 7, boys went to school accompanied by the educator. The educator was elderly and a trusted slave of the family. As for the girls, they stayed at home and their mother taught them reading, writing, music, dancing and housekeeping.

Women in those days were concerned with the household and family and not with any profession. They had no political rights, for like slaves they lacked the education necessary in a democracy. In ancient Athens, men were the ones who worked and provided for the family and, being intellectually educated, participated in political decision-making. The position of women, with the exception of Sparta and Minoan Crete, was mediocre in ancient Greece, as in other countries of the time.

Parents had to pay a teacher to look after their children. The lessons were not held in a school but in the teacher's house. So the minors were taught basic education by 4 teachers: the "philologist", the music teacher, the gymnast and the choreographer. The children were taught to read and write by the philologist. In addition, the children were taught poetry, such as that of Homer and Hesiod, and learned to memorize poetry from the beginning of their education. When they learned to read and write, they read and memorized poems by great poets of the time. In addition to reading, writing, and introducing the texts of the sages of that time to the young, music was considered an essential element of their education.

In ancient Greece, the man who knew about music was considered an educated person. As is well known, the teaching of music in ancient Greece preceded that of other things. Music lessons included learning to play a musical instrument, singing and dancing. Children were taught to play the lyre or the flute. The playing of the lyre was accompanied by the recitation of lyrics of lyrical poems or songs, often singing of heroic deeds. This was the origin of lyric poetry.

Greek youth amused themselves in the playgrounds, in public gymnasiums, and celebrations. At the Panathenae of Athens, a feast in honor of the patron goddess Athena, they even took part as riders on horseback in the procession of her veil to the Erechtheion, filling the Athenian citizens with great pride. The young people had no right to enter the market (place of assembly of the Athenians), nor in Iliaia (court of Athens).

The youth of Athens participated in the feasts of the city with dances and choirs. These festivals were compulsorily financed by sponsors who were rich Athenians. The sponsors, the rich people of the city, paid at their own expense dance teachers who taught the young people to dance and sing lyrical poems, which they presented in theaters and at various feasts.

In ancient Athens, the citizen had a child-mother relationship with the state and enjoyed its goods such as education and its philosophical schools, theaters, games, feasts, sports and culture in general. Therefore, as mentioned above, the Athenians sacrificed themselves in war, not only so as not to lose the goods of their city themselves, but also so as not to deprive future generations of them. This was the result of ancient Greek education: the harmonious, dialectical relationship of the citizen to the state and the formation of the new generation.

Young people in Athens received higher education after their basic education. They learned geometry, mathematics, physics, astronomy, medicine, rhetoric, philosophy, and various arts. In ancient Athens, young people could learn alongside a philosopher or sophist. They taught for a fee, with some exceptions like Socrates and Diogenes.

Sophists and philosophers usually taught in galleries. In ancient Athens, there was the Academy of Plato, the School of Aristotle, the Rhetorical School of Isocrates, the School of Epicurus, the Stoa of Zeno, the Cynic School of Antisthenes, the Cyrenean School of Aristippus of Cyrene (Greek ), and the Megarian School of Euclid of Megara. Medical schools existed on the island of Kos - under the direction of Hippocrates, at Pergamum (a Greek city in Central Asia), at Cyrenia, at Kroton (Greek colony in Lower Italy) under the direction of Alkmaeon, and elsewhere.

The aim of ancient Greek education was the acquisition of the good and the beautiful, that is, the development of mind, soul, and body. Thus, the state aimed at the formation of mature citizens with moral cultivation and physical well-being. Moreover, the Athenian citizens of the 5th century BC decided the fate of the city through the community and the Parliament of the Five Hundred.

The education of Athenian youths also included the art of war, for they were the future soldiers who would protect the city from its enemies.

Thus, the people defined the "pedophiles" and special teachers who taught the youths to fight like hoplites and trained them on the weapons (sword, spear, lance, bow, slingshot).

The training of young people in Athens lasted until they reached the age of 18. At 18, young people became Athenian citizens (if their parents were Athenians), acquired political rights, and joined the city's armed forces.

Upon reaching the age of 18, the Athenian youth took the "vow of youth" at the sanctuary of Aliavros, located north of the Acropolis.

The vow of the teens stated:

"I will not shame my sacred weapons, I will not abandon my comrades-in-arms in battle, I will fight for my sanctuaries and my city, and I will hand them over, not smaller than I received them, but bigger and stronger if my forces and my fellow citizens help me. I will obey the rulers and the laws, both those that are in force and those that will be enacted in the future. If anyone tries to overthrow the laws, I will stop him vigorously and with the help of my fellow citizens. I will always honor my fathers (ancestors) and take as my witnesses: the gods, the borders of my homeland, the grains, the vines, the olives, the figs, the barley, and all the goods it offers''.

Ancient Athens took financial care of the widows and orphans of those who had fallen in war. It is noted that Athens was the only city where the majestic honorary procession of the "Epitaph" took place for those killed in battle, who were buried in a glorious tomb and whose sacrifice to the city was the greatest honor for their family and descendants.

As for the education of the orphans of the fallen, it began with the death of the father and lasted until they were 18 years old. The state then became the guardian of the orphans. The end of this patronage was with a public event in the theater of Dionysus, during the feast of the Great Dionysians.

According to the Athenian orator Aeschylus (389 - 314 BC), before the dramatic struggles of the poets began in the theater (drama, which originated in ancient Greece, includes tragedy, comedy and satirical drama), a preacher introduced the orphans who were already adults to the audience. These young men held in their hands the armor of the hoplite, which the state had honorably given them. The preacher then announced the end of guardianship by the state and said that these young people could go on with their lives by their own, with the love of all their Athenian fellow citizens.