Concept
Classical education
Overview
Classical education may refer to:
Modern, educational practices and educational movements:
An education in the Classics, especially in Ancient Greek and Latin
Classical education movement, based on the trivium (grammar, logic, rhetoric) and quadrivium (astronomy, arithmetic, music and geometry)
Classical Christian education, an application of the classical education movement with an emphasis on the Christian faith
Classical Islamic education, see:
Madrasah
Ijazah
Historical, educational practices and values:
Education in ancient Greece
Education in ancient Rome
The curriculum of the Middle Ages, see Medieval university
Classical Chinese education, see:
Imperial examination
Scholar-bureaucrats
Overview adapted from Wikipedia (CC BY-SA 4.0; see the article history for authors).
In the original texts
Passages from public-domain books where Classical education is discussed.
"Classical education" · what do people see in it? Something that is useless beyond rendering a period of military service unnecessary and securing a degree![5] When I observe how all countries are now promoting the advancement of classical literature I say to myself,…
Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche, We Philologists
names the idea; states what it is; opens on it
"Not a suspicion of this possible relationship between our classics and classical education seems to have pierced the antique walls of public schools. Philologists seem much more eagerly engaged in introducing Homer and Sophocles to the young souls of their pupils, in their own style, calling the result simply by the unchallenged euphemism: 'classical education.' Let every one's own experience tell him what he had…
Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche, On the Future of our Educational Institutions
names the idea; opens on it
Even in purely intellectual matters it is possible to have a constructive or a destructive bias. A classical education is almost entirely critical: a boy learns to avoid mistakes, and to despise those who commit them. This tends to produce a kind of cold correctness, in which originality is replaced by respect for authority. Correct Latin is fixed once for all: it is that of Vergil and Cicero.
Bertrand Russell, Education and the good life
states what it is; names the idea
This controversy, however, is carried on in an empirical manner, with no reference to an ascertained criterion; and the question at issue is insignificant when compared with the general question of which it is part. To suppose that deciding whether a mathematical or a classical education is the best is deciding what is the proper _curriculum_, is much the same thing as to suppose that the whole of dietetics lies in…
Herbert Spencer, Essays on education and kindred subjects
states what it is; names the idea
One defect, however, does seem inherent in a purely classical education--namely, a too exclusive emphasis on the past. By the study of what is absolutely ended and can never be renewed, a habit of criticism towards the present and the future is engendered.
Bertrand Russell, Mysticism and Logic and Other Essays
opens on it; names the idea
Related ideas
Place in the tradition
Part of Philosophy of education.