History of education

His youthful scholarly pursuits included oil divination, mathematics, reading and writing as well as the usual horsemanship, hunting, chariotry, soldierliness, craftsmanship, and royal decorum.

The Mahabharata, part of which may date back to the 8th century BC,[23] discusses human goals (purpose, pleasure, duty, and liberation), attempting to explain the relationship of the individual to society and the world (the nature of the 'Self') and the workings of karma.

To enter this hierarchy, both literacy and knowledge of the increasing body of philosophy were required: "....the content of the educational process was designed not to engender functionally specific skills but rather to produce morally enlightened and cultivated generalists".

[43] The first medieval institutions generally considered to be universities were established in Italy, France, and England in the late 11th and 12th centuries for the study of arts, law, medicine, and theology.

After the Synod of Whitby in 664 AD, Roman church practices officially replaced the Celtic ones but the influence of the Anglo-Celtic style continued, the most famous examples of this being the Lindisfarne Gospels.

The Venerable Bede (673–735) wrote his Historia ecclesiastica gentis Anglorum (Ecclesiastical History of the English People, completed in 731) in a Northumbrian monastery, and much of it focuses on the kingdom.

[45] During the reign of Charlemagne, King of the Franks from 768 to 814 AD, whose empire united most of Western Europe for the first time since the Romans, there was a flowering of literature, art, and architecture known as the Carolingian Renaissance.

Brought into contact with the culture and learning of other countries through his vast conquests, Charlemagne greatly increased the provision of monastic schools and scriptoria (centers for book-copying) in Francia.

The capitulary states "that the priests establish schools in every town and village, and if any of the faithful wishes to entrust their children to them to learn letters, that they refuse not to accept them but with all charity teach them ... and let them exact no price from the children for their teaching nor receive anything from them save what parents may offer voluntarily and from affection" (P.L., CV., col. 196)[47][circular reference] Cathedral schools and monasteries remained important throughout the Middle Ages; at the Third Lateran Council of 1179 the Church mandated that priests provide the opportunity of free education to their flocks, and the 12th and 13th century renascence known as the Scholastic Movement was spread through the monasteries.

Drawing on Persian, Indian and Greek texts—including those of Pythagoras, Plato, Aristotle, Hippocrates, Euclid, Plotinus, Galen, Sushruta, Charaka, Aryabhata and Brahmagupta—the scholars accumulated a great collection of knowledge in the world, and built on it through their discoveries.

With the short and simple text arranged in three-character verses, children learned many common characters, grammar structures, elements of Chinese history, and the basis of Confucian morality.

The merit-based imperial examination system for evaluating and selecting officials gave rise to schools that taught the Chinese classic texts and continued in use for 1,300 years, until the end of the Qing dynasty, being abolished in 1911 in favor of Western education methods.

Theoretically, any male adult in China, regardless of his wealth or social status, could become a high-ranking government official by passing the imperial examination, although under some dynasties members of the merchant class were excluded.

[62] The chancellor of China at that time, Fan Zhongyan, issued an edict that would have used a combination of government funding and private financing to restore and rebuild all prefectural schools that had fallen into disuse and abandoned.

[62] Fan's trend of government funding for education set in motion the movement of public schools that eclipsed private academies, which would not be officially reversed until the mid-13th century.

Among the subjects taught were Art, Architecture, Painting, Logic, mathematics, Grammar, Philosophy, Astronomy, Literature, Buddhism, Hinduism, Arthashastra (Economics & Politics), Law, and Medicine.

The royal classes and a few specially chosen individuals from the provinces of the Empire were formally educated by the Amautas (wise men), while the general population learned knowledge and skills from their immediate forebears.

The Amautas did ensure that the general population learned Quechua as the language of the Empire, much in the same way the Romans promoted Latin throughout Europe; however, this was done more for political reasons than educational ones.

Paglayan [70] notes that Chinese news sources during this time cited the eradication of illiteracy as necessary “to open the way for development of productivity and technical and cultural revolution”.

Throughout the 19th century (and even up until today), the Danish education system was especially influenced by the ideas of clergymen, politicians, and poets N. F. S. Grundtvig, who advocated inspiring methods of teaching and the foundation of folk high schools.

The expansion of education provision under the Guizot law was largely motivated by the July Monarchy's desire to shape the moral character of future French citizens to promote social order and political stability.

Jules Ferry, an anti-clerical politician holding the office of Minister of Public Instruction in the 1880s, created the modern Republican school (l'école républicaine) by requiring all children under the age of 15—boys and girls—to attend.

One of the first demands of the emerging nationalist movement after World War II was the introduction of full metropolitan-style education in French West Africa with its promise of equality with Europeans.

The motivation behind this rapid expansion of primary education can largely be attributed to Stalin's interest in ensuring that everyone would have the skills and predisposition necessary to contribute to the state's industrialization and international supremacy goals.

In the organization of a planned society in the Soviet Union, education is regarded as one of the chief resources and techniques for achieving social, economic, cultural, and scientific objectives in the national interest.

Tremendous responsibilities are therefore placed on Soviet schools, and comprehensive support is provided for them” [100] An important aspect of the early campaign for literacy and education was the policy of "indigenization" (korenizatsiya).

From 1962 to the present day, the main structure of Italian primary (and secondary) education remained largely unchanged, even if some modifications were made: a narrowing of the gap between males and females (through the merging of the two distinct programs for technical education, and the optional introduction of mixed-gender gym classes), a change in the structure of secondary school (legge Berlinguer) and the creation of new licei, 'istituti tecnici' and 'istituti professionali', offering students a broader range of options.

In 2019, Education Minister Lorenzo Fioramonti announced that in 2020 Italy would become the first country in the world to make the study of climate change and sustainable development mandatory for students.

[109] Under subsequent Meiji leadership, this foundation would facilitate Japan's rapid transition from a feudal society to a modern nation that paid very close attention to Western science, technology, and educational methods.

Beginning in the 1980s, government, educators, and major employers issued a series of reports identifying key skills and implementation strategies to steer students and workers towards meeting the demands of the changing and increasingly digital workplace and society.