| Jul. 6th, 2005 @ 11:30 pm What Public Schools Should Be... |
|---|
Current Mood:  contemplative
Current Book: Dorothy Schrader - Arithmetic of the Medieval Universities
"The Greeks were concerned with the education of free men as future citizens. Plato, whose plan was a theoretical one probably never put into actual practice but nevertheless reflecting the spirit and ideal of his period, conceived of such education as the sole occupation of the first thirty-five years of a man's life. He would have the first twenty years spent on gymnastics, music and grammar, the next ten on arithmetic, geometry, astronomy and harmony, and the next five on philosophy. Only then would a man be equipped to take his rightful place as a useful member of society. [...] Philo Judaeus, about A.D. 30, suggested grammar, music, arithmetic, geometry, astronomy, dialectic and rhetoric as elementary studies, and philosophy as the one higher study. Sextus Empiricus, in the first half of the third century, mentioned grammar, rhetoric, geometry, astronomy, music and arithmetic as elementary subjects, reserving dialectic for advanced work."
"It was Marianus Capella in his De nuptus philologia et mercurii, written about A.D. 330, who set the number of liberal arts at seven and named them: grammar, dialectic, rhetoric, arithmetic, music, geometry and astronomy. Capella rejected medicine and architecture as purely technical subjects, pursued only for practical and not speculative ends and so unworthy of free men. By the fourth century, this curriculum of the seven liberal arts, as Capella named them, was established in the pagan schools." |
![[info]](http://l-stat.livejournal.com/img/userinfo.gif){kind=small}
bilbo_sama's journal
thirsty
blank
drained
amused
dumbfounded
Words cannot describe my anger
tired
full
chipper
hungry
World domination after my nap!
blah
aggravated
pleased