History of Education

Education began in prehistory, as adults trained the young in the knowledge and skills deemed necessary in their society. In pre-literate societies, this was achieved orally and through imitation. Storytelling passed knowledge, values, and skills from one generation to the next. As cultures began to extend their knowledge beyond skills that could be readily learned through imitation, formal education developed. Schools existed in Egypt at the time of the Middle Kingdom.

The invention of writing changed everything. Suddenly, knowledge didn’t die with its keepers. Libraries became power. The printing press democratized that power.

Ancient Civilizations

Plato founded the Academy in Athens, the first institution of higher learning in Europe. The city of Alexandria in Egypt, established in 330 BCE, became the successor to Athens as the intellectual cradle of Ancient Greece. There, the great Library of Alexandria was built in the 3rd century BCE.

In China, Confucius (551-479 BCE) was the country’s most influential ancient philosopher, whose educational outlook continues to influence the societies of China, Korea, Japan, and Vietnam. His Analects were written down by followers and have continued to influence education in East Asia into the modern era.

The Middle Ages and Renaissance

After the Fall of Rome, the Catholic Church became the sole preserver of literate scholarship in Western Europe. The church established cathedral schools in the Early Middle Ages as centers of advanced education. Some of these ultimately evolved into medieval universities, including the University of Bologna – founded in 1088 and considered the oldest continually operating university.

Elsewhere during the Middle Ages, Islamic science and mathematics flourished under the Islamic caliphate established across the Middle East, extending from the Iberian Peninsula in the west to the Indus in the east.

The Renaissance in Europe ushered in a new age of scientific and intellectual inquiry. Around 1450, Johannes Gutenberg developed a printing press, which allowed works of literature to spread more quickly. The European Age of Empires saw European ideas of education spread across the globe. Missionaries and scholars brought back new ideas from other civilizations.

The Enlightenment saw the emergence of a more secular educational outlook in Europe. Fast forward to Horace Mann’s push for public education in the 1800s and the GI Bill’s postwar boom of college access, and we began shaping modern systems to reflect the belief that education should be a right, not a privilege.

Modern Compulsory Education

In most countries today, full-time education is compulsory for all children up to a certain age. Due to this proliferation of compulsory education, combined with population growth, UNESCO has calculated that in the next 30 years more people will receive formal education than in all of human history thus far.