Where Do Schools Come From? by Ellie Sheeran

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We students and teachers alike have recently conglomerated for the school year yet again; and on the last days of summer, some of the more desperate among us may ask, "Why? Why does the world hurt me so? Why must I attend school?" This question also often rears its ugly head on standardized-test days-I should know.

Succinctly? Blame the Byzantine Empire. Some of the earliest schools are hypothesized to have been built and utilized as early as 450 A.D., most likely to educate military personnel. Byzantine schools most likely influence the first Greek schools of ancient Greece. There, philosopher Plato coined the term "academy" from his own school of philosophy, the 'Akademia', and set a precedent for places of education to come. Aside from Greece, Islam was a significant contributor to the invention of schools: at the beginning, mosques were used as houses of learning as well as worship.

However, in the end, a man named Horace Mann is often named "inventor of the modern school", so to speak. Born in 1796 Massachusetts, he was a college professor teaching Latin and Greek. The rest is, quite literally, history!
Right: School of Aristotle, Gustav Spangenberg

Comments

  1. DanielleSeptember 9, 2019 at 10:01 AM

    An interesting history of schools. I'd love to know more about why they began!

    ReplyDelete

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