United States or Finland ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
The responsibility again which attached to the paedagogus for the boy's morals must have been another inducement to the parents to renounce their proper work of supervision. And once more, the great majority of teachers were Greeks.
It has been well remarked that the friendship of Sokrates for him did not a little to increase his fame, seeing that Nikias, Demosthenes, Lamakus, Phormio, Thrasybulus, and Theramenes, were all men of mark in his lifetime, and yet we do not know the name of the mother of any one of them, while we know the name even of the nurse of Alkibiades, who was a Laconian, named Amykla, and that of Zopyrus, his paedagogus, one of which pieces of information we owe to Antisthenes, and the other to Plato.
But we may suppose that the ordinary boy of the upper classes went to school, under the care of a paedagogus, after the Greek fashion, rising before daylight, and submitting to severe discipline, which, together with the absolute necessity for a free Roman of attaining a certain level of acquirement, effectually compelled him to learn to read, write, and cipher.
A special servant went about with each of the other boys, to see that he attended his classes, was polite to his teachers, and did his work. But Horace had his own father to look after him, a thousand times better than any carping paedagogus.
Plutarch knew the naiue and character of Cato's paedagogus, Sarpedon, and tells us that he was an obedient child, but would ask for the reason of everything, in those questions beginning with "why" which are often embarrassing to the teacher.
Not only the schoolmaster himself, but the paedagogus who was responsible for the boy's conduct, was almost always either a slave or a freedman; and neither slave nor freedman could be an object of profound respect for a Roman boy.
"Educat nutrix, instituit paedagogus, docet magister." Thus, education, discipline, and instruction are three things as different in their purpose as the dame, the usher, and the teacher. But these distinctions are undesirable and the child should only follow one guide.
Word Of The Day