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Academy Resources Glossary of Philosophical Terms Timeline of Philosophy A Timeline of American Philosophy Diagram: Development of Philosophic Thought Diagram: Divisions of Philosophy The Philosophy Resource Center The Religion Resource Center Books about Philosophy in The Radical Academy Bookstore Books about Religion in The Radical Academy Bookstore Click Here for New & Used College Textbooks at Discount Prices Click Here for College Education Information & Study Resources Shop Amazon Stores in the Radical Academy Bookstore Magazine Outlet Music Store Classical Music Store Video Store DVD Store Computer Store Camera & Photo Store Computer/Video Games Software Store Musical Instruments Outlet Store Cellular Phones Toys & Games Tools & Hardware Automotive Store Outdoor Living Consumer Electronics Home & Garden Kitchen & Housewares Baby Superstore Apparel & Accessories Gourmet Food Grocery Store Sporting Goods Jewelry & Watches Health & Personal Care Beauty Store		The American Teacher and the Restoration of Society (Continued)   The Greek Legacy Our culture makes much -- or at least used to -- of the contributions of the ancient Greeks, Athens, primarily. Certainly, we owe them much, as per Shelley's famous quote, "We are all Greeks. Our laws, our literature, our religion, our art, have their root in Greece." But the Hellenic revival within which Shelley wrote tended to emphasize only those aspects of ancient Greek culture which were consonant with its idealized aesthetic vision of the historical (Gaull). Infanticide, pedophilia, and frequent wars between the polies were less celebrated, as was the Greek attitude toward the teacher. But our society's attitude toward the teacher owes something to ancient Greece, as surely as do the façades of our banks. Sparta had a strict rigid tradition of public education, with a single state official in charge (Amos & Lang, p. 161). Children were considered the property of the state. The purpose of a Spartan education was to produce great soldiers. Toward this end, boys were subjected to rigorous physical excercise and severe training designed to innure them to hardship. With our permissive, student-centered schools, "sensitive" to the "needs" of the student, it appears we have chosen to disregard the fact that Montaigne, Rousseau, and other important educational thinkers both admired the Spartan system and were strongly influenced by it. Sparta's great rival, Athens, on the other hand, left the organization in private hands. Although there was probably no law compelling parents to educate their sons at school, it was certainly a strong tradition to do so. The state paid for the schooling of some children, whose fathers had died fighting for the city. There were some laws relating to education: parents had to make sure that journeys to and from school took place in daylight; unauthorized persons were banned from school property in school hours, so that pupils might be protected from bad influences. Otherwise the state did not much interfere. (Amos & Lang, p. 161) In Athens, the "primary" stage of education for a boy began at about seven and lasted until he was about fourteen years old (Amos & Lang, p. 161). A boy's teacher was called a grammatistes (Amos & Lang, p. 161). Of him, Amos and Lang say: The teaching of the grammatistes must have been extremely dull. He certainly made no deliberate effort to make it interesting.  Learning by heart and continual reciting were stock methods. Reading was made more difficult by the fact that there was no punctuation, nor were there any spaces between written words. All reading was aloud, as the Greeks did not practise silent reading. (p. 163) Figuring prominently in the young Athenian boy's education was not only the grammatistes, but the paidagogos, from which we get the words "pedagogue" and "pedant": The boy was constantly attended by a paidagogos, a slave whose duties were to supervise him at home and at school, where he generally sat in on the actual lessons, besides escorting him to and from school, and carrying his satchel. He was responsible for teaching the boy good manners and could cane him if he thought fit. In fact he was an ever-present representative of the boy's father, his owner. Of course, the suitability of such slaves for their job varied widely, and many were not at all suitable. They were generally despised. Pericles, on seeing a slave fall from a tree and break his leg, is reported to have said, 'There you are.  He's only fit to be a paidagogos now.' (Amos & Lang, pp. 161-162) In addition to the grammatistes and the paidagogos, there was what Amos and Lang call the "schoolmaster." They tell us that the status, and often the ability, of the schoolmaster was very low. In addition, the schoolmasters' "pay was poor, and they dared not offend the parents on whom they depended for their fees" (Amos & Lang, p. 162). Demosthenes gives us an idea of the reputation of the schoolmaster in his speech against his political opponent Aischines: "Your childhood was spent in an atmosphere of great poverty. You had to help your father in his job as assistant teacher -- preparing the ink, washing down the benches, sweeping out the class-room, and taking the rank of a slave rather than of a freeborn boy . . .". As an added insult, Demosthenes remarks, "You were a teacher. I went to school" (Amos & Lang, p. 162). Amos and Lang speculate that corporal punishment, which was, of course, accepted as normal, "must often have appeared the only way for a desperate schoolmaster, given little respect by anybody" (p. 162). As for the education of girls, so far as scholars can tell, "their upbringing took place almost entirely in their own homes. Some managed to learn to read and write, but they did not receive the same formal education as the boys" (Amos & Lang, p. 161). In general, young Athenian girls were taught by their mothers "the skills necessary for running a home -- weaving, spinning and so on -- as well as correct behavior. Whatever they learnt beyond that was picked up by their own efforts. There were certainly those who managed to become cultured and well-informed" (Amos & Lang, p. 161). Our culture's lack of respect for the teacher -- which, like our language, is part of our Greek cultural inheritance -- is exemplified by the cliche, "Those who can, do. Those who can't, teach. (And those who can't teach, teach gym.  And those who can't teach gym, teach teachers.)" Toward the end of the seventeenth century, John Locke wrote a widely-read and influential treatise on education, Thoughts on Education, which somewhat attempted to reform the traditional image of the teacher, but it was Jean-Jacques Rousseau in the next century who elevated the teacher to his proper position. Indeed, he held the teacher to be so exceptional and extraordinary a person that he doubted one could be found, not only because of the natural abilities and education required, but also the demands of the disciplined life that must be lived: There is much discussion as to the characteristics of a good tutor. My first requirement, and it implies a good many more, is that he should not take up his task for reward. There are callings so great that they cannot be undertaken for money without showing our unfitness for them; such callings are those of the soldier and the teacher . . . A tutor! What a noble soul! Indeed for the training of a man one must either be a father or more than a man . . . Can such a one be found? I know not. In this age of degradation who knows the height of virtue to which a man's soul may attain? But let us assume that this prodigy has been discovered. (Emile, p. 19) Along with Plato's Republic, Rousseau's Emile is the most provocative and fruitful book on education ever written. In his Confessions, Rousseau states he considers Emile his greatest work, the result of twenty years of thinking on the subject of education (p. 360) and the synthesis and consummation of the major works which preceded it (p. 523). With them, Emile contributed toward making Rousseau the most influential philosopher of the eighteenth century. It has been said that we are all children of Rousseau, and, indeed, it was Rousseau who gave us back our childhood. Although Locke in his Thoughts "wanted learning to be an enjoyable process, based as far as possible on interest, and warned against trying to teach children too much before their reason was sufficiently developed" (Jimack, xxvi), it was Rousseau who proposed the unprecedented doctrine that "every stage of human growth -- from birth to adulthood -- is not only valid for future development, but valid in itself. Such is the impact of this doctrine upon educational practice that it seems today mere commonsense" (Back cover of Emile). Although Rousseau was successful in this regard, as well as in getting mothers to nurse their own babies and release them from the bonds of swaddling clothes (Jimack, xxxix), he was less successful in gaining society's respect for the teacher. There are several reasons for this. First, by Rousseau's own admission, Emile was more a philosophical treatise, like the Republic, and less a practical handbook on education. [2] Second, Rousseau's experience as private tutor was disappointing. Third, he gave all five of his children to an orphanage. And fourth, while education "a la Jean-Jacques" was quite popular for a while, history records that most such attempts were unsuccessful (Jimack, xl; Gaull, pp. 54-55). But Rousseau -- who was not known for his modesty -- did not even consider himself qualified to be a teacher (Emile, p. 20). Never before, or since, has the Western teacher been accorded such respect. The contemporary American conception of the teacher is, of course, far from what Rousseau had in mind. Today's teachers are shown little respect by students, parents, administration or school board. And in a democratic society, this is not surprising. Indeed, Plato taught that trying to be a teacher in a democracy was an exercise in futility and warned against even the attempt (Republic, 492-494). Like his Greek predecessors, the modern American public school teacher must take care that he does not offend the wrong people, often sacrificing truth, virtue and effective teaching techniques for expediency, enduring a mechanical daily grind of disrespect, insubordination, overwork and unappreciation. A vignette circulating on the Internet expresses a contemporary teacher's despair: A TEACHER IN THE 21ST CENTURY Let me see if I've got this right. You want me to go into that room with all those kids and fill their every waking moment with a love for learning.   Not only that, I'm to instill a sense of pride in their ethnicity, behaviorally modify disruptive behavior, observe them for signs of abuse and T-shirt messages.   I am to fight the war on drugs and sexually transmitted diseases, check their backpacks for guns and raise their self-esteem. I'm to teach them patriotism, good citizenship, sportsmanship and fair play, how and where to register to vote, how to balance a checkbook and how to apply for a job.   I am to check their heads occasionally for lice, maintain a safe environment, recognize signs of potential anti-social behavior, offer advice, write letters of recommendation for student employment and scholarships, encourage respect for the cultural diversity of others, and, oh yeah, always make sure that I give the girls in my class 50 percent of my attention.   I'm required by my contract to be working on my own time summer and evenings at my own expense toward advance certification and a master's degree; and after school, I am to attend committee and faculty meetings and participate in staff development training to maintain my employment status.   I am to be a paragon of virtue larger than life, such that my very presence will awe my students into being obedient and respectful of authority.   I am to pledge allegiance to supporting family values, a return to the basics, and to my current administration. I am to incorporate technology into the learning, and monitor all Web sites while providing a personal relationship with each student.   I am to decide who might be potentially dangerous and/or liable to commit crimes in school or who is possibly being abused, and I can be sent to jail for not mentioning these suspicions.   I am to make sure all students pass the state and federally mandated testing and all classes, whether or not they attend school on a regular basis or complete any of the work assigned. Plus, I am expected to make sure that all of the students with handicaps are guaranteed a free and equal education, regardless of their mental or physical handicap.   I am to communicate frequently with each student's parent by letter, phone, newsletter and grade card.  I'm to do all of this with just a piece of chalk, a computer, a few books, a bulletin board, a 45 minute more-or-less plan time and a big smile, all on a starting salary that qualifies my family for food stamps in many states. Is that all?"   And you want me to do all of this and expect me not to pray? -- Printed in The Marietta Daily Journal on March 26, 2000; Written by the Rev. Nelson Price -- This state of affairs is an extreme case of cultural idiocy, and we can, in general, say that today's American high school teacher is given little more respect than the poor schoolmaster of ancient Athens. -- Next Page -- [2] Cf. Plato: "Does practice ever square with theory?  Is it not in the nature of things that, whatever people think, practice should come less close to truth than theory?" (Republic, 473) Return Enrich Your Life With a Philosophy Book... Enrich Your Life With a Philosophy Magazine... Academy Showcase Specials Philosophy Resource Center Main Page
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