History of Education Part 3

His training in the use of arms, in riding, and in other athletic exercises was continued. There were large public inst.i.tutions in which the boys were quartered, and simplest food and clothing were given them.

Besides the training for war, they were taught religious proverbs and prayers, and were led to practice truth and justice. This education continued until their fifteenth year. The teachers were men who had pa.s.sed their fiftieth year, and who were chosen for virtue as well as knowledge, that they might serve as models to their pupils.

2. The second period of education consisted of a military training, which occupied the ten years between the age of fifteen and twenty-five.

3. The final period was that of the soldier, which continued till the fiftieth year, when the Persian could retire from the army with honor.

The most competent were retained as teachers.

Reading and writing were taught to a limited degree, but the chief end of education was to prepare the citizen for war. The Magi were educated in astronomy, astrology, and alchemy, and many of the dervishes have ever been renowned for their acuteness, sense of justice, great powers of observation, and good judgment.

=Criticism of the Persian Education.=--1. The State robs the family of its inherent right to educate the children.

2. It neglects intellectual education, giving undue prominence to the physical and moral; and demands too great a part of the active life of man.

3. It makes the highest aim of education to prepare for war, and therefore does not cultivate the arts of peace.

4. It excludes woman from the benefits of education.

ZOROASTER[11]

Zoroaster, the founder of the Persian religion, was a great teacher. The exact date of his birth is unknown, but it is generally placed at about B.C. 600. The testimony of ancient cla.s.sic literature confirms the belief that he was an historical person. A tablet unearthed in Greece contains an account of his life and his doctrines. Pliny says that he laughed on the day of his birth and that for thirty years he lived in the wilderness on cheese. He was the founder of the Magi priesthood, but did not teach the worship of fire.

His philosophy is _dualistic_. There are two spirits or principles that rule the universe. These are Ormuzd, the principle of light, and Ahriman, the principle of darkness. These two opposing principles are in constant conflict, each striving for the mastery. Man is the center of the conflict, but Ormuzd as his creator has the greater power over him.

All influences are summoned to bring about the success of the good, and in the end it will surely prevail. No remission of sin is taught, but judgment is represented as a bridge over which those whose good deeds outweigh their evil deeds are allowed to pa.s.s to paradise: in case the evil deeds outweigh the good, the person is cast off forever; in case of a balance of good and evil deeds, there is another period of probation.

This dualism shows itself in nature as well as in the spiritual world.

Order is opposed to lawlessness, truth to falsehood, life to death, good to evil. It is a religion in which the ideas of guilt and merit are carried out to the extreme. Zoroaster believed that he was the prophet chosen to promulgate these doctrines, and his influence as a teacher upon the Persian nation was unquestionably great. Persia is now a Mohammedan country.

FOOTNOTES:

[11] North American Review, Vol. 172, p. 132.

CHAPTER V

THE JEWS

=Literature.=--_Hosmer_, Story of the Jews; _Clarke_, Ten Great Religions; _Durrell_, New Life in Education; _Myers_, Ancient History; Stoddard's Lectures; _Lord_, Beacon Lights of History; _Josephus_, Antiquities of the Jews; _Morrison_, The Jews under Roman Rule; _Larned_, History for Ready Reference; _Hegel_, Philosophy of History; Report of the United States Commissioner of Education, 1895; _Peters_, Justice to the Jew.

=Geography and History.=--The Jews were the ancient people of G.o.d, the "chosen people," whose history is recorded in the Old Testament Scriptures. They reached their greatest power and glory during the reigns of David and Solomon, and they occupied Palestine, with Jerusalem as their capital city. Within this small territory, some six thousand square miles in extent, have occurred some of the most important events of history, and the Jewish race has been the representative of G.o.d's purposes toward man. The Almighty communicated directly with his people, who were thus made acquainted with the divine will. The early Jews were nomadic in their habits, living in tents, and tending their flocks. The patriarch, who was at the head of a family or tribe, made laws for the people under him and governed them according to the command of G.o.d, whose representative he was. Because G.o.d directly or through the patriarch led and instructed the people, their education, like their government, is called _theocratic_.

The Jews lost their independence B.C. 63 in becoming subject to the Romans, and in A.D. 70 Jerusalem was destroyed and the Jews were dispersed. Since that time they have been wanderers on the face of the earth, and there is no part of the world where they are not to be found. They have maintained their racial characteristics with remarkable purity. They were an agricultural people until the Babylonian captivity, after which they became a commercial people. Persecutions, which have universally followed them, making the acquirement of fixed property unsafe, had much to do with this change.

=The Home.=--The Jewish family was the purest of antiquity. In general, monogamy was practiced, and the wife was regarded as the companion and equal of the husband. Children being accepted as the gift of G.o.d, the father stood in the same relation to his children as Jehovah stood to man. Therefore the father's highest aim was to bring up his children in the knowledge and service of the Lord. We have here the highest and best type of family training to be found in history, a characteristic that still holds in Jewish families wherever they exist, and that has contributed largely to the maintenance of the strong racial peculiarities of the Jews. The father taught his boys reading and writing, and the mother taught the girls household duties; but the latter were not entirely excluded from intellectual training.

Great attention was given to the rites and ceremonies of the tabernacle and the Jewish law. History was also taught as a means of stimulating patriotism. The Jewish child was early made acquainted with the Scriptures, and history, law, and prophecy became familiar to every Jew.

As there were no schools, this was all done in the home by the parents.

Religion was the central thought of all education, and preparation for the service of the tabernacle and the worship of G.o.d was early given to every child. Thus in an atmosphere of love and piety the Jew discharged his sacred duty with care and faithfulness. Obedience to the commands of parents, veneration for the aged, wholesome respect for their ancestors, and familiarity with the Jewish law were instilled into the minds of all children. Music and dancing were taught in every household, not for pleasure, but as a means of religious expression. By prayer and holy living, by precept and example, by word and deed, the father discharged the duty committed to him by G.o.d, leading his children by careful watchfulness toward the ideal manhood which was revealed to him by the teachings of Holy Writ.

There were no castes among the Hebrews, and the same kind of training was given to the children of rich and poor, high and low, alike. No other race of people has given such careful home training to its children, from earliest times to the present.

=The Jewish School.=--There were no elementary Jewish schools until after the destruction of the nation and the loss of their civil liberty.

After the defeat at Jena the Prussians turned to education as the sole means of retrieving their national greatness; the same was true of the Austrians after the defeat of Sadowa, and of the French after the fall of the empire at Sedan. But the Jewish people had set this example eighteen centuries before. Dittes says, "If ever a people has demonstrated the power of education, it is the people of Israel."

The rabbis required, A.D. 64, that every community should support a school, and that attendance should be compulsory. This is the first instance of compulsory education on record. If a town was divided by a stream without a connecting bridge, a school was supported in each part. Not more than twenty-five pupils could be a.s.signed to one teacher, and where the number was greater an a.s.sistant was employed. If there were forty pupils, there were two teachers. It will thus be seen that the Jews put into practice eighteen centuries ago a condition of things which, owing to the complexity of our civilization, is with us to-day largely an unrealized ideal.

Teachers were respected even more than parents, for it was held that parents prepared their children for the present, but teachers for the future. None but mature married men were employed as teachers. It was said that "he who learns of a young master is like a man who eats green grapes, and drinks wine fresh from the press; but he who has a master of mature years is like a man who eats ripe and delicious grapes, and drinks old wine."

The child entered school at six. Previous to that age physical exercise and bodily growth were to be the ends sought. "When he enters school,"

says the Talmud, "load him like an ox." Other authorities, however, encouraged giving him tasks according to his strength. The subjects taught were reading, writing, natural history, arithmetic, geometry, and astronomy. The Scriptures were taught to all the children, and all were versed in religious rites.

The methods were good and attractive, great effort being made to lead the children to understand, even though it might be necessary to repeat four hundred times. The discipline was humane. According to the Talmud, "children should be punished with one hand and caressed with two."

Corporal punishment was administered only to children over eleven years of age.

=The Schools of the Rabbis.=--Karl Schmidt says: "Culture in a people begins with the creation of a literature and the use of writing." The oldest monument of writing among the Israelites is found in the tables of stone containing the Ten Commandments. Moses, David, Solomon, and Isaiah, and the other prophets were the founders of the Hebrew literature.

Among the instrumentalities of higher education were the Schools of the Prophets, which taught philosophy, medicine, poetry, history, and law to the sons of prophets and priests, and of leading families. These schools were influential in stimulating the production of the historical, poetical, and prophetic books of the Old Testament.

But more important as direct means of higher education were the Schools of the Rabbis. These sprang up in Alexandria, Babylon, and Jerusalem in the early centuries of the Christian era. They were private inst.i.tutions founded by celebrated teachers. Doubtless it was in such a school as this that St. Paul was brought up at the feet of Gamaliel. The princ.i.p.al subjects studied were theology and law,--politics, history, mathematics and science being excluded. The collection of the sayings and discussions was begun in the second century A.D. and afterward took form in the Talmud.

=Criticism of Jewish Education.=--1. It exalted the home and insisted on the control of children by their parents.

2. It gave to woman an honored place in the home.

3. It gave an intelligent interpretation of the school and its functions. In regard to school attendance, the number of pupils under one teacher, the respect due to teachers, the course of study, and many other matters, it showed practical wisdom.

4. It taught obedience, patriotism, and religion.

5. It provided only for Jewish children.

6. It was mild and generally wise in discipline, though mistaken in forbidding corporal punishment before the eleventh year, while admitting its use after that.

7. It developed an honest, intelligent, progressive, G.o.d-fearing people.

8. It produced some of the greatest poets and historians of the world.

THE TALMUD[12]

This book, as we have seen, is the outgrowth of the discussions of the rabbis, whose sayings, collected from the second to the sixth century A.D., are herein contained. It proclaims with great minuteness rules of life which the faithful Jew still rigidly observes. It has aided in perpetuating Jewish laws, ceremonies, customs, and religion, and has been the most potent means of preserving the national and racial characteristics of the Jews for nearly two thousand years. Driven from one country to another, they have always carried the Talmud with them and have been guided and kept united by its teachings. During the last quarter of the nineteenth century the study of the Talmud has been revived, not only among the Jews, but also among Christians and students of all cla.s.ses.

EXTRACTS FROM THE TALMUD

1. Even if the gates of heaven are shut to prayer, they are open to tears.