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Education History

Education was very important to the Ancient Romans. The rich people in Ancient Rome put a great deal of faith in education. While the poor in Ancient Rome did not receive a formal education, many still learned to read and write. Children from rich families, however, were well schooled and were taught by a private tutor at home or went to what we would recognise as schools. In general, schools as we would recognise them, were for boys only. Also, Roman schools were rarely an individual building but an extension of a shop - separated from the crowd by a mere curtain!
Learning in Roman schools was based on fear. Boys were beaten for the slightest offence as a belief existed that a boy would learn correctly and accurately if he feared being caned if he got something wrong. For boys who continued to get things wrong, some schools had a policy of having pupils held down by two slaves while his tutor beat him with a leather whip.
There was not a great deal of subject choice in a Roman school. Therefore a boredom threshold must have been quickly reached by children. This must have been made worse, by the fact that the school day was longer than children now are used to. It seems likely that during the school day, a child would rise at sunrise (not wanting to be late as this would lead to a caning), work all day with a short break at lunch, and then home to be in bed by sunset for the next day. Lessons were simply learned by heart. Children did not need to know why something was right - only to know that it was right and that they would escape a beating. Lessons were also simply dictated as there were no books as they were simply too expensive.
There were two types of schools in Ancient Rome. The first type of school was for younger children aged up to 11 or 12 where they learned to read and write and to do basic mathematics. At these schools, children worked on an abacus to learn basic mathematics. For writing, they used a stylus and a wax tablet. Older children would...