History of Education, Levi Seeley [short novels in english txt] 📗
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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 God, 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 God 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 God, 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 assigned to one teacher, and where the number was greater an assistant 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 institutions 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 principal 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, God-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 classes.
EXTRACTS FROM THE TALMUD
1. Even if the gates of heaven are shut to prayer, they are open to tears.
2. Teach thy tongue to say, "I do not know."
3. If a word spoken in its time is worth one piece of money, silence is worth two.
4. Not the place honors the man, but the man the place.
5. The world is saved by the breath of school children.
FOOTNOTES:[12] See Peters, "Justice to the Jew."
Literature.—Maspero, Egyptian Archaeology; Wilkinson, The Ancient Egyptians; Stoddard's Lectures; Myers, Ancient History; Routledge, The Modern Wonders of the World; Johonnot, Geographical Reader; Edwards, A Thousand Miles up the Nile; Knox, Egypt and the Holy Land; Ballou, Due West; Clarke, Ten Great Religions; Ebers, Uarda; and Egyptian Princess; Curtis, Nile Notes of a Howadji.
Geography and History.—Egypt consists of a narrow strip of land about six hundred miles long, lying in the northeastern part of Africa. Its geographical importance is due to the river Nile, which flows through it, and which, by its annual overflow, enriches the soil, and makes one of the most productive portions of the globe. For many centuries reservoirs for the storage of water in time of the overflow, and irrigation canals for its later distribution, have secured the country against drought, and thus abundant harvests were always assured "independent of the seasons and the skies." This, with the mild climate and exceedingly rich soil, made food attainable with slight labor, furnishing an abundance, not only for its own population, but making Egypt the granary of the Mediterranean countries. We learn from the Scriptures, of the visits of the sons of Jacob to Egypt to buy corn of Joseph when famine existed in their own land. These conditions, which made living so cheap, were doubtless the main causes of the early settlement of the valley of the Nile, and the rapid increase in its population. In confirmation of the foregoing we have the testimony of Diodorus Siculus, a Greek writer, who visited Egypt nearly two thousand years ago. He tells us that the entire cost to bring up a child to manhood was not more than twenty drachmas (less than four dollars of our money).[13]
Of the antiquity of Egyptian history we have abundant evidence. Swinton says, "Egypt is the country in which we first find a government and political institutions established. Egypt itself may not have been the oldest nation, but Egyptian history is certainly the oldest history. Its monuments, records, and literature surpass in antiquity those of Chaldea and India, the two next oldest nations."[14] The records of the history of Egypt are found in abundance carved on her monuments, tombs, buildings, implements, etc. They were written in hieroglyphics, the meaning of which was unknown until the discovery of the "Rosetta stone," which furnished the key to their interpretation.
The ancient Egyptians excelled in mechanics and arts. It is doubtful whether to-day we know as much of certain sciences as they did four thousand years ago. Their applications of mechanics, engineering, dyeing, and embalming still remain to us "lost arts." The wisdom of the Egyptians was proverbial, and the great scholars of other countries made pilgrimages to Egypt to study philosophy, literature, law, and science.
The Caste System.—The caste system existed also in Egypt, but in no such strict sense as in India. The first and highest caste consisted of the priests, who represented the learning and wealth of the country. They owned one third of the land, upon which they paid no tax. They held all the offices, were the surveyors, engineers, teachers,—indeed, their caste alone furnished all the higher professions. They ruled the land with an iron hand. Concerning their influence, Swinton says, "The priests were the richest, most powerful, and most influential order. It must not be supposed, however, that the modern word 'priest' gives the true idea of this caste. Its members were not limited to religious offices; they formed an order comprising many occupations and professions. They were distributed all over the country, possessing exclusively the means of reading and writing, and the
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