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The gymnasium: Greek university
The gymnasium was a special kind of school complex, effectively a kind of sporting university. In Athens, for example, there were three great public gymnasia, named Academy, Lyceum and Cynosarges. The gymnasium trained men from the age of 18 in bodily health, the best of whom would represent the city in the Olympic Games (see page 44). It was named gymnasium because the competitors exercised, wrestled and boxed without clothes on (gymnos means naked). It was also a place where they bathed together (a bit like Roman baths).
The gymnasium developed because the Greeks thought highly of perfect physical bodies, exercise and health. But it was also a place where the students could listen to the great thinkers of the day.
The gymnasium did not survive Greek times. Although the Romans took on many things that the Greeks valued, they did not continue with the gymnasium because they did not think it was useful as army training. However, the word gymnasium remains in many European countries as a place of teaching excellence. In the UK it is used simply to mean a place of exercise.
F 2 Spartan children were taught fighting and survival skills (see page 32). Only after this were there extra classes in reading and writing.
When they reached 18 years of age, all boys had to go into military school
until the age of 20.
Schooling in Sparta
Sparta was proud of its simple, tough life, with none of what they saw as the
sloppiness of Athens. The Spartans put self-defence before other
kinds of education.
Spartans didn’t believe
they could support weak citizens of a city, so if a baby was weak it was allowed to die on the mountains, or perhaps trained to be a slave.
Early schooling was done at home, as in Athens, but at about 6 years of age both boys and girls started school, living in army barracks (picture 2).
At about 18, when the Athenians were about to start army training, the Spartans would have been in the army for 12 to 13 years and were ready to face their passing-out test. Only those who passed this test became full citizens and Spartan soldiers. Spartan girls who passed the test could return home and become married to a Spartan soldier.
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