CLASSIC SCHOOLING RESEARCH

Understandably, researchers interested in studying classroom instruction couldn’t help questioning the broader relevance of the classic laboratory investigations of undergraduates paid to memorize nonsense syllables. They felt a need to study children actually being taught in a classroom setting.

Thus, they tended to do their research based upon what real teachers did with real students within real classrooms. In so doing, these researchers both gained and lost something. What they gained was the ability to observe learning in the real-life school settings in which they were primarily interested and to which they aspired to generalize their research.

What they lost was any real degree of control over the research setting, in the sense that they had to deal with (a) much more diverse students who, unlike the undergraduates participating in paired-associate experiments, could not always read or understand directions; (b) teachers who potentially could vary in their instructional ability and conscientiousness; and (c) tests that weren’t designed to match what students were taught (i.e., standardized achievement measures). Still, some of this research, much of it conducted before the fi eld’s steroidal boosts in the mid to late 1970s — which I attribute to (a) Gene Glass’ popularization of meta-analysis 5 (that, among other things, defi nitively demonstrated the positive learning effects of small class size 6 ) and (b) Benjamin Bloom’s emergence as the preeminent learning theorists/ researcher of the 1970s and 1980s 7 — did uncover some very interesting findings, even if none quite transcended the “grandmother principle.”
Some of the more important of these fi ndings as they relate to school learning included:



Increased Instructional Time (or Time-on-Task)
Despite the obvious differences in settings, the classic learning principle that more instructional time (although classic learning researchers seldom labeled their presentation of nonsense syllables instruction ) results in greater learning did indeed apply to the classroom. In its most elemental form, the more time that is allocated to teach a topic, the more students will learn.

In fact, the amount of instructional exposure is one of the strongest determinants of school learning yet discovered. Of course none of this would come as a surprise to anyone’s grandmother. Neither would secondary evidence showing that children who are assigned homework (which, after all, translates to extra time-on-task) learn more than those who do not 10 or that those who attend summer school (which involves increased instructional time) learn more (or forget less) than those who do not.

Other similarly obvious manifestations of the relationship between instructional time and learning include the negative impact of school absences and even tardiness. Strangely, given its obvious importance, as far as I’m aware no one made a serious attempt to document the dose–response relationship between the amount of school instruction until the mid-1970s, when David Wiley and Annegret Harnischfeger 13 conducted a secondary analysis of data from 40 Detroit schools contained in the Equality of Educational Opportunity Survey. Defining the number of hours of schooling delivered to students in any given school, they used the following simple formula:

[# Hours of Instruction Delivered = Daily Attendance (which encompasses
absences) x # Hours in the School Day x # days in the School Year]

They found huge discrepancies in the total number of hours of schooling in this one city, ranging from 710 to 1,150 hours per year. “Typical pupils in some schools receive 50 % more schooling than pupils in other schools.” Then, controlling for student characteristics as best they could, they found that “over a year’s period … in schools where students receive 24 % more schooling, they will increase their average gain in reading comprehension by two-thirds and their gains in mathematics and verbal skills by more than one-third” (p. 9).

Needless to say, this finding reflects an extremely powerful relationship between the amount of school instruction and student learning. Yet, as powerful a factor as the amount of instructional time is, historically it has not been found to be the most powerful determinant factor influencing school learning. That distinction belongs to a relationship that was probably recognized the first time children were ever grouped together in classrooms.
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Classic Learning Research

Ultimately, learning entails a neurobiological response to a stimulus of some sort. This unobserved neurological response is translated to an observable behavioral response, which can encompass anything from avoiding the stimulus in the future to correctly answering a test item. Classic learning research (as well as educational research in general) primarily concerns itself with changes in such behavioral responses ( learning ) following the presentation of visual or oral stimuli ( instruction ). Thus, if students are able to correctly answer test questions following instruction that they couldn’t answer correctly beforehand, then we infer that learning has occurred.

Just as all learning basically involves some type of observable/ measurable behavioral response, instruction also always boils down to a stimulus that is capable of eliciting such a response. From this perspective, then, instruction can take the form of (but is not limited to) such diverse stimuli as:

• Being lectured to in a classroom setting
• Completing computerized/online instructional modules
• Being presented a word, phrase, or nonsense syllable and told to memorize it
• Completing homework
• Engaging in self-study
• Reading
• Being read to
• Watching television
• Surfing the internet
• Listening to others (whether in class or at the dinner table)
• Being the beneficiaries of direct parental teaching
• Being corrected by parents
• Observing and subsequently modeling parental or peer group behaviors
• Observing the environment
• Visiting institutions with instructional agendas such as a churches, museums, and science centers

To control as many factors as possible in their research and to avoid teaching something that their subjects had already learned, classic learning studies often employed the visual presentation of nonsense syllables via a technique called paired-associate learning trials . Experimental subjects (typically, college undergraduates) were taught, via repeated presentations — often involving a slide projector or its equivalent — to “pair” these syllables (or sometimes conceptually unrelated words) until this arbitrary association was successfully “learned.” To avoid as much error as possible in inferring that learning had occurred (and to measure it as precisely as humanly possible), testing involved exactly the same processes that were used in instruction (i.e., the syllables, words, or whatever, presented via the same medium in which they were learned).

As obsolete as current classroom instruction is, present-day teaching isn’t quite this rote. Still, unlike classroom research, these experiments employed a form of instruction and a method of measuring learning that could be controlled and repeated quite consistently. This meant that scientists could have a great deal of confi dence in any learning principles they unearthed. Whether these principles would apply to all types of learning, no one knew for sure, but the best guess was (and is) that the same neurobiological processes are associated with all types of learning resulting from all types of instruction, rote or creative, interesting or dull.

So, at the risk of oversimplifi cation, three facets of learning were inferred by these studies, based on how many trials (or how quickly) students mastered the paired-associate tasks for which they received “instruction.” These learning facets or parameters were:

• Original learning, which is identical to what we mean when we refer to school learning;
• Retention, which refers to how long what was learned is remembered — or to the circumstances under which forgetting occurs; and
• Transfer of learning, which in classic learning theory refers to the fact that previous learning can sometimes facilitate (and sometimes even impede) subsequent learning.

And, if you think about it, these three behaviors pretty much reflect what we expect students to take from the schooling process: learning what is taught (otherwise attending school is a total waste of time), remembering what is taught (because if we don’t remember what we’ve learned, we might as well have not learned it in the fi rst place), and being able to apply what is learned to new situations (because supplying correct responses to test items would be worthless if we can’t assume that this will ultimately be related to other types of innovative, creative, or compliant behaviors of societal importance).

In a nutshell, then, the principles emanating from this type of research that were most relevant to classroom instruction and student learning were:

1. The more times the paired-associate tasks were repeated (that is, the more instructional time supplied), the more learning occurred. This was the strongest and most consistent relationship that this line of investigation ever uncovered: more relevant time on task (or more presentations of the stimuli) results in more learning. It was so pervasive, in fact, that some researchers embraced a “total-time hypothesis,” which basically postulated that, within reasonable limits, the same amount will be learned in a given amount of time regardless of the number of trials presented within that time period.
2. Some forgetting almost always occurs, but the more time on task (or the more presentations of the stimuli), the longer the association (or learning) was retained (remembered). Retention can also be improved by (a) increasing the meaningfulness (or relevance) of the content and/or (b) continuing to present the stimuli even after they are learned (which was called over-learning ). Of course, this still reduces to time on task (or increased instructional time) since the presentation of a stimulus is a form of instruction.
3. Transfer of learning (one form of which was called “learning to learn”) proved to be a more tenuous affair, but it does occur as a function of instruction under certain conditions. For example, transfer was facilitated by over-learning, and it occurred most reliably when the training conditions were most similar to the ultimate testing conditions (which in schooling terms is reflected by practices such as teaching to the test or teaching test-taking skills) and when the original learning task possessed certain components in common with the transfer task (such as teaching a child the sound representing a certain vowel to facilitate the learning of a word containing that vowel). However, we still haven’t learned enough about this concept to stretch it to what we mean by such attributes as creativity (or innovativeness), and this remains a major gap in our understanding of the instructional–learning process. Suffice it to say that the occurrence of learning is a prerequisite for both retention (and transferring that learned knowledge to novel applications), but learning is no guarantor of either.

Now, admittedly, this brief overview does not do justice to classic learning research. Other variables were involved 4 but, generally speaking, most of the work in classical learning research, as in educational research in general, never transcended what educational researchers in my day called the “grandmother principle,” which can be summed up in the following succinct generalization:

You never discover anything in educational research that your grandmother didn’t already know .

Still, our grandmothers weren’t always right about everything, so it doesn’t hurt to subject some of their opinions to scientifi c tests. Thus, in summary, far and away the most important finding emanating from this classic research (as well as from learning research that involved rats navigating mazes) was that the strongest determinant of laboratory learning is the amount of instruction delivered. More instruction, more learning; more time spent studying, more learning; more time on task, more learning; the more time an author spends repeating something, the more likely the reader is to learn it — to remember it — and to apply it.
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Socrates - Classical Education

Socrates (470/69-399 BCE)
Socrates was the son of Phaenarete, a midwife, and Sophroniscus, a stone-carver. In Plato's Euthyphro (lib), he traces his ancestry to the mythical sculptor Daedalus, so it may be that he too practiced his father's craft early in life. He served as a hoplite (heavily armored infantryman) in the Athenian army during the Peloponnesian War with Sparta, where he gained attention for his courage, his capacity to tolerate hunger, thirst, and cold, and powers of concentration that could keep him rooted to the spot for hours on end. Since hoplites had to own property and provide their own weapons, Socrates cannot have been very poor. Still, he seems to have been exceptionally frugal in his habits. He often went barefoot, seldom bathed, and wore the same thin cloak winter and summer. In a society that worshipped male beauty, he was noteworthy for his ugliness. He had a snub-nose, bulging eyes, thick lips, and a pot belly. Yet his personal magnetism was such that many of the best looking young men avidly sought out his company. In Plato's Symposium, indeed, he characterizes himself as a master of the art of erotic attraction (ta erotika), though that characterization no doubt involves some ironic punning, since the verb erotan means to ask questions.

In 406 BCE, Socrates served on the steering committee (prytamis) of the Athenian Assembly, where he alone voted against an illegal motion to try as a group the generals who had failed to pick up the bodies of the dead after the sea battle at Arginusae. Later, at the risk of his own life, he disobeyed the unjust order of the Thirty
Tyrants to bring in Leon of Salamis for execution.

In 423 BCE, he was made the subject of Aristophanes' comedy, Clouds, as he was of other non-extant comedies by other authors, including Amipsias and Eupolis. In Clouds, he appears: first, as the head of the phrontisterion, a school where, for a small fee, one can learn the just logic, which represents traditional aristocratic values, and also the unjust logic, which represents the new values of the sophists; second, as the
ascetic high priest of a mystery religion, who teaches a variety of sciences, including a mechanistic theory of the cosmos, on the basis of which he denies the existence of Zeus and the other gods of tradition, worshipping in their place the various forms of Air, including the eponymous Clouds. It is not much of a reach to conclude that Socrates must have looked enough like other sophists to lend popular credibility to Aristophanes' portrait.

In any case, he was brought to trial in 399 BCE on a charge of corrupting the youth by teaching them not to believe in the gods, found guilty (in large part, he claims, because of the prejudice against him fanned by Aristophanes), and condemned by a close vote to death by hemlock poisoning. Central, it seems, to the prosecution's case was one of the most puzzling aspects of Socrates: his daimonion or spiritual voice, which held him back whenever he was about to do something wrong. Though this may, in fact, have been no different from other acceptable forms of religious practice, in someone already suspected of being an atheistic sophist, it no doubt seemed - or could be made to seem - much more sinister and subversive.

Socrates' personal characteristics played, and continue to play, a very significant role in attracting devotees to him. He demonstrates - what every teacher knows - that charisma can be as important as content. If Socrates hadn't been erotikos, if he hadn't had that certain compelling something, who would have listened to what he had to say? As it is, however, many listened. And since Socrates himself wrote nothing, it is to those who did that we must turn for information. The problem is that some of the writings of those who knew him - Antisthenes, Phaedo of Elis, Eucleides of Megara, Aristippus of Cyrene, Aeschines of Sphettos - have disappeared or exist only in very fragmentary form, while others that we do possess - those of Aristophanes, Plato, and Xenophon - present us with very different portraits. Moreover, Plato's own portrait is a double one, at least: the Socrates of his early dialogues (Apology, Charmides, Crito, Euthyphro, Hippias Minor, Hippias Major, Ion, Laches, Lysis, Menexenus) is thought to be based to some extent on the historical figure (they are often called "Socratic" dialogues for this reason). The Socrates who appears in his transitional (Euthydemus, Gorgias, Meno, Protagoras), middle (Cratylus, Parmenides, Phaedo, Phaedrus, Republic,

Symposium, Theaetetus), and some of his late (Critias, Philebus, Sophist, Statesman, Timaeus, Laws, Seventh Letter) dialogues, however, seems to be increasingly a mouthpiece for his own developing doctrines. When we look at Socrates, therefore, we are perforce looking at many potentially different figures. For some were influenced by the historical Socrates, some by portrayals of him only some of which we know, some more by the man and his character, and some more by his specific doctrines.

Nonetheless, a few significant ideas come close to being the common property of these different figures: (1) knowledge or theory (logos) is important for virtue; (2) virtue is important for happiness; (3) the sort of self-mastery (enkrateia), selfsufficiency (autarkeia), and moral toughness (karteria) exhibited by Socrates with
regard to pleasures and pains is important for happiness; (4) the use of questioning based on epagoge (induction, arguing from parallel cases) is important with regard to the possession of knowledge, and so of virtue; (5) eros and friendship have important roles to play in philosophy, and philosophy in life; (6) the traditional teachers of virtue (the poets), as well as the alleged embodiments of wisdom (the politicians), are
deficient in various ways that questioning reveals.

These ideas are vague, of course, and so can be understood in various ways. Socrates could hardly have influenced Cynics, Cyrenaics, Stoics, Epicureans, and Skeptics had it been otherwise. Important as these developments are, however, they are overshadowed by the decisive role Socrates played in Plato's thought and, via it, in Aristotle's.
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Plato - Classical Education

Plato (428-347/8 BCE)
While Plato was still a boy, his father, Ariston, died and his mother, Perictione, married a friend of the great Athenian statesman Pericles. Plato was thus familiar with Athenian politics from childhood and was expected to take up a political career himself. Horrified by actual political events, however, especially the execution of Socrates in 399 BCE, he turned instead to philosophy, thinking that only education in it could rescue mankind from civil war and political upheaval, and provide a sound foundation for ethics and politics (Seventh Letter, 324b-326b). It was with Socrates, then, that our Plato began.

As represented in the early dialogues, Socratic philosophy consists almost exclusively in questioning people about the conventionally recognized ethical virtues. "What is justice?" he asks, "Or piety? Or courage? Or wisdom?" Moreover, he takes for granted that there are correct answers to these questions, that each virtue is some definite characteristic or form (eidos, idea). And though he does not discuss the nature of these forms, or develop any explicit theory of them or our knowledge of them, he does claim that only they can serve as reliable standards for judging whether any given type of action is an instance of a virtue, and that they can be captured in explicit definitions (Euthyphro, 6d-e; Charmides, 158e-159a).

Socrates' interest in definitions of the virtues, Aristotle tells us, resulted from thinking of them as ethical first principles (Metaphysics, 1078bl2-32). That is why, if one does not know them, one cannot know anything else of any consequence about ethics (Hippias Major, 286c-d, 304-e; Laches, 190b-c; Lysis, 212a, 223b; Protagoras, 361c; Republic, 354c). Claiming not to know them himself, Socrates also claims to have little or no other ethical knowledge (Apology, 20c, 21b). These disclaimers of knowledge are often characterized as false or ironical, but Aristotle took them at face value (Sophistical Refutations, 183b6-8).

Socrates' characteristic way of questioning people is now called an elenchus (from the Greek verb elegchein, to examine or refute): Socrates asks what some virtue is; the interlocutor gives a definition he sincerely believes to be correct; Socrates then refutes this definition by showing that it conflicts with other beliefs the interlocutor sincerely holds and is unwilling to abandon (often a consideration of parallel or analogous cases plays an important role in eliciting these beliefs). In the ideal situation, which is never actually portrayed in the Socratic dialogues, this process continues until a satisfactory definition emerges, one that is not inconsistent with other sincerely held beliefs, and so can withstand elenctic scrutiny. Since consistency with false beliefs is no guarantee of truth, and untrue definitions are no basis for knowledge, Socrates' use of the elenchus seems to presuppose that some sincerely held beliefs are in fact true.

The definitions Socrates encounters in his elenctic examinations of others always prove unsatisfactory. But through these examinations, which are always at the same time self-examinations (Charmides, 166c-d; Hippias Major, 298b-c; Protagoras, 348cd), he comes to accept some positive theses which have resisted refutation. Among these are the following three famous Socratic "paradoxes": (1) The conventionally distinguished virtues are all identical to wisdom or knowledge (Charmides, 174b-c; Euthydemus, 281d-e; Protagoras, 329b-334c, 349a-361d); (2) this knowledge is necessary and sufficient for happiness or perhaps even identical to it (Crito, 48b; Gorgias, 471e); (3) no one ever acts contrary to what he knows or believes to be best, so that weakness of will is impossible (Protagoras, 352a-358d). Together these three doctrines constitute a very strict kind of ethical intellectualism: they imply that all we need in order to be virtuous and happy is knowledge.

The goal of an elenchus, however, is not just to reach adequate definitions of the virtues, or seemingly paradoxical doctrines about weakness of will and virtue, but moral reform. For Socrates believes that regular elenctic philosophizing - leading the examined life - makes people happier and more virtuous than anything else can by curing them of the hubris of thinking they know when they don't (Apology, 30a, 36c-e, 38a, 41b-c). Philosophizing is so important for human welfare, indeed, that he is willing to accept execution rather than give it up (Apology, 29b-d).

In the transitional dialogues, as well as in some earlier ones, Socrates, as the embodiment of true philosophy, is contrasted prejudicially with the sophists. They are unscrupulous moral relativists, who think that virtue is different for different people and societies and undertake to teach it for a fee; he is an honest moral absolutist, who thinks that virtue is the same for everyone everywhere, claims not to know or teach it, and so accepts no fees. The problem latent in this contrast is that if moral beliefs do vary from culture to culture, it is not clear how the elenchus, which seems to rely wholly on them, could reach knowledge of the objective or non-culture-relative moral truth Socrates seeks.
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Aristotle - Classical Education

Aristotle (384-322 BCE)
Aristotle was born in the small Macedonian town of Stagira in northern Greece. His father, Nicomachus, who died while Aristotle was still quite young, was physician to King Amyntas of Macedon. When Aristotle was seventeen, his uncle, Proxenus, sent him to study at the Academy, where he remained for twenty years, initially as a student, eventually as a researcher and teacher.

On Plato's death in 347 BCE, Aristotle left Athens for Assos in Asia Minor. Three years later he moved to Mytilene on the island of Lesbos, and two years after that he became tutor to the thirteen-year-old Alexander of Macedon - later the Great. In 335, Aristotle returned to Athens and founded his own school, the Lyceum. Alexander died in 323, with the result that anti-Macedonian feeling in Athens grew in strength.

Perhaps for that reason, Aristotle left for Chalcis in Euboea, where he died twelve months later at the age of sixty-two. A list of Aristotle's papers, probably made in the third century BCE, seems to describe most of his extant writings, as well as a number of works, some in dialogue form, that are now lost. When Sulla captured Athens in 87 BCE, these papers were taken to Rome, where they were edited, organized into different treatises, and arranged in a logical sequence by Andronicus of Rhodes in around 30 BCE. Most of the
writings he thought to be genuinely Aristotelian have been transmitted to us via manuscript copies produced between the ninth and sixteenth centuries CE. These writings may be classified as follows:

• Logic, dialectic, metaphysics: Categories, on Interpretation, Prior Analytics, Topics, on Sophistical Refutations, Metaphysics.
• Science and philosophy of science: Posterior Analytics, Physics, On the Heavens, On Generation and Corruption, Meteorology, History of Animals, Parts of Animals, Movement of Animals, Progression of Animals, Generation of Animals.
• Psychology and philosophy of mind: De Anima, Sense and Sensibilia, On Memory, On Sleep, On Dreams, On Divination in Sleep, On Length and Shortness of Life, On Youth, Old Age, Life and Death, and Respiration.
• Ethics, politics, philosophy of art: Nicomachean Ethics, Magna Moralia, Eudemian Ethics, Politics, Rhetoric, Constitution of Athens, Poetics.

Most of these works are lecture notes written or dictated by Aristotle himself and not intended for publication. Their organization into treatises and the internal division of the treatises into books and chapters may, however, not be his. Nonetheless, that organization reveals immediately - what would in any case become obvious to an attentive reader - that "knowledge" is organized in them into fields that have retained much of their epistemological viability and continue to shape our curricula.

Of the various things in the world described in Aristotle's writings, some have a nature, an internal source of movement, growth, and alteration (Physics, 192b8-9, 13-15). Thus, for example, a feline embryo has within it a causal nexus that explains why it grows into a cat, why that cat moves and alters in the ways it does, and why it eventually decays and dies. A house or any other artifact, by contrast, has no such source within it. This nature is the same as the thing's essence (to ti en einai) or function (ergon), which is the same as its end (telos). Indeed, its end just is to actualize its nature by performing its function. Aristotle's view of natural things is therefore teleological: he sees them as being defined by an end for which they are striving, and as needing to have their behavior explained by reference to it. It is this end, essence, or function that fixes what the good for that being consists in, and what its perfections or virtues are (Nicomachean Ethics, 1098a7-20, Physics, 195a23-25).

Many natural things, as well as the products of art or craft, are hylomorphic compounds, compounds of matter (hule) and form (morphe). Statues are examples: their matter is the stone or metal from which they are made; their form is their shape. Human beings are also examples: their matter is (roughly speaking) their body; their soul is their form. Thus a human soul is not something separable from a human body, but is more like the structural organization responsible for the body's being alive and functioning appropriately.

This soul consists of distinct, hierarchically organized constituents (Nicomachean Ethics, 1.13). The lowest rung in the hierarchy is vegetative soul, which is responsible for nutrition and growth, and which is also found in plants and other animals. At the next rung up, we find appetitive soul, which is responsible for perception, imagination, and movement, and so is present in other animals too, but not in plants. This sort of soul lacks reason but, unlike the vegetative, can be influenced by it. The third element in the human soul is reason, which is further divided into the scientific element, which enables us to contemplate or engage in theoretical activity, and the calculative or deliberative element, which enables us to engage in practical or political activity.

Because a human soul contains these different elements, the human good might be defined by properties exemplified by all three of them or by properties exemplified by only some of them. In the famous function argument, Aristotle argues for the latter alternative: the human good is happiness, which is "an active life of the element that has a rational principle" (Nicomachean Ethics, 1098a3-4). The problem is that the scientific and the deliberative elements both fit this description. Human happiness might, therefore, consist in practical political activity, or in contemplative theorizing, or in a mixture of both. Even a brief glance at Nicomachean Ethics X.6-8 will reveal how hard it is to determine which of these Aristotle has in mind.

The various sciences Aristotle recognizes are what provide us with knowledge of the world, how to live successfully in it, and how to produce what we need to do so.
Hence they fall into three distinct types:

• Theoretical sciences: theology, philosophy, mathematics, natural sciences.
• Practical sciences: ethics, household management, statesmanship, which is divided into legislation and politics, with politics being further divided into deliberative science and judicial science
• Productive sciences (crafts, arts): medicine, building, etc.

Of these, the theoretical ones are the Aristotelian paradigm, since they provide us with knowledge of universal necessary truths. The extent to which ethics or statesmanship fits the paradigm, however, is less clear. For a huge part of them has to do not with universal principles of the sort one finds in physics, but with particular cases, whose near infinite variety is not easy to sum up in a formula (Nicomachean Ethics, 1109b21; Rhetoric, 1374al8-b23). The knowledge of what justice is may well be scientific knowledge, but to know what justice requires in a particular case one also needs equity, which is a combination of virtue and a trained eye (Nicomachean Ethics, V. 10). Perhaps, then, we should think of practical sciences as having something like
a theoretically scientific core, but as not being reducible to it.

Each Aristotelian theoretical science deals with a genus or natural class of beings having forms or essences. When appropriately regimented, it may be set out as a structure of demonstrations, the indemonstrable first principles of which are definitions of those essences. More precisely, the first principles special to a science are like this. Others that are common to all sciences, such as the principle of noncontradiction and other logical principles, have a somewhat different character. Since all these first principles are necessary truths, and demonstration is necessitypreserving syllogistic deduction, scientific theorems are also necessary.

Though we cannot grasp a first principle by demonstrating it from yet more primitive principles, it must, if we are to have any unqualified scientific knowledge at all, be "better known" to us than any of the science's other theorems. This better knowledge is provided by intuition (nous) and the process by which principles come
within intuition's ken is induction (Nicomachean Ethics, 1139b28-9, 1141a7-8).
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Stoicism - Context and History

Stoicism, like the other Greek philosophies, can be seen as a continuation of the Socratic movement. There is no single, distinct branch of Stoic theory that we can identify as their "philosophy of education." But the Stoics produced an original and powerful set of ideas on human development, the acquisition of knowledge (especially knowledge of the good), and types of value, and these ideas are of continuing significance for modern students of the philosophy of education.

Also important in this connection are their views about the need for an integrated philosophical curriculum, the teaching of practical ethics, and the relationship between philosophical theory and conventional beliefs and practices.

Context and History
Stoicism, like its great rival, Epicureanism, emerged in Athens at the start of the third century BCE. Through the activities of Socrates, Plato, and Aristotle, Athens had become by this date the main center of philosophy in Greece, indeed in the ancient Mediterranean world. Two major "schools" of philosophy had been established, in the Academy (by Plato and his successors) and in the Lyceum (by Aristotle and his successors). Two more schools emerged, that of Epicurus (based in his house and garden outside the city) and that of Zeno, based in the Painted Stoa in Athens.

Though intellectually sophisticated and covering complex fields of knowledge, these schools were highly informal as institutions. They functioned as research groups for likeminded independent scholars and provided public lectures and more sustained courses of teaching for interested young people and adults. The philosophical schools, alongside the rhetorical schools (their more successful and more "mainstream" rivals) offered what could be considered as higher or university-level education. The teachers and students were predominantly (though not entirely) males; the students were mostly (though not invariably) from the upper classes in the Greek-speaking world. Stoicism and Epicureanism, together with other, still more informal, groups such as the Cynics, also represented a distinct set of ethical attitudes, way of life and world view.


Zeno (c.334-262 BCE), the founder of the Stoic school, was strongly influenced, in ideas and approach, by Socrates; his decision to teach in a public colonnade near the city center represented a renewal of the Socratic style of teaching by argument with all comers. During his lifetime, Zeno was strongly challenged by others, notably Aristo, who claimed, like Zeno, to be capturing the heart of the Socratic ethical message.

After his death, Zeno was regarded as the clear leader of a new philosophical movement, and his ideas were developed and systematized by subsequent leaders of the school, notably Chrysippus, the greatest Stoic theorist (280-207 BCE). However, debate about the core doctrines and their implications continued thoughout the third and second centuries BCE; Stoicism also developed through argument with other schools, notably the Academic (Platonic) school. In the early first century BCE, Athens ceased to be the main center of philosophy, and Stoicism, like other philosophies, was taught and studied throughout the main cities of the Eastern (Greek-speaking) Mediterranean, now dominated by Rome, and at Rome itself. Stoicism, in this more widespread and diffused form, became the most influential of Greek philosophies during the first and second centuries CE. Subsequently, Stoicism was eclipsed in antiquity by revived forms of Platonism and Aristotelianism and by Christianity, though Stoic thought continued to influence all three traditions.
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Stoic Theory as a System

As formulated by Chrysippus, Stoicism is highly systematic in its teachings. The philosophical curriculum, in its full form, consists of a combination of ethics, logic (in effect, philosophical method, including epistemology), and physics (study of nature) (Long and Sedley, 1987, section 26). Wisdom, the Stoic ideal - an ideal that no Stoic teacher claimed to have attained - depends on the complete integration of these branches of inquiry.

The full understanding of core notions in Stoicism, such as reason, order, and the good (notions whose meaning is closely interconnected), depends on this combination and integration of branches of philosophy. In broad terms, the world view offered by Stoicism is both naturalistic and idealistic. It is naturalistic in rejecting the Platonic contrasts between soul and body, or forms and particulars, and in insisting that there is one (material) world that is the object of both perception and knowledge. It is idealistic in maintaining (in sharp contrast to Epicureanism) that this world is shaped by purposive, divine rationality and order (Long and Sedley, 1987, ss. 44-5, 53-5).

Ethics: Values and Development
Since Stoicism has this strongly unified character, "education" depends on understanding and integrating all three branches of philosophy and on putting this understanding into practice. Ethics may be the best point of access to Stoic thinking about education, though it needs to be taken with related aspects of logic and physics. Ethics was itself seen as a highly integrated set of topics, including categories of value and a theory of
development (Long and Sedley, 1987, s. 56).

A core ethical claim, going back to Zeno and taken to stem, ultimately, from Socrates (Long, 1996, chapter 1), is that virtue is the only good, and that other so-called goods (such as health, wealth, and beauty) are, by contrast, "matters of indifference" which have no effect on happiness. For Aristo, this seems to have been both the beginning and the end of Stoic ethics. But Zeno, followed by the main line of Stoic thinking, maintained that things such as health are, at least, "preferable indifferents," and that we are naturally inclined to

"select" such preferable things rather than their opposites (Long and Sedley, 1987, s. 58). This process of "selection" forms a key part of the way we develop as rational human beings. But a crucial part of this process lies in coming to recognize that what matters, ultimately, is not obtaining preferable things but selecting them in the right way - that is, virtuously - and, to that degree, coming to know and express the good.

Stoic concepts of value are closely bound up with their thinking about development, a distinctive feature of their theory that is clearly relevant to the subject of education. Development is analysed by them as oikeiosis, "familiarization" or "appropriation"; it consists in making the world "one's own" (oikeios) and in enabling the world (understood as a providential and rational system) to make one "its own."

This process has several different aspects and stages. At a basic level, all animals, including humans, are seen as instinctively motivated to seek those things that maintain and nurture their own distinctive character or "constitution" (Long and Sedley, 1987, s. 57A). (There is a sharp and deliberate contrast with the Epicurean
view that animals, including humans, naturally pursue pleasure (Long and Sedley, 1987, s. 21 A). For human beings, who are fundamentally rational, this process comes to take the form of (rationally) "selecting" such things as being "preferable" to their alternatives. If human development takes its proper course, such selection
becomes progressively more internally coherent, based on rational considerations and (in principle) open to rational justification. Also, selection is increasingly based on proper norms for "appropriate actions" (or "proper functions," kathekonta). In this respect, selection comes increasingly to exhibit the features (consistency, order, rationality) that constitute "the good" for Stoicism. But a crucial further dimension is the realization, noted above, that what matters, ultimately, for human happiness is not obtaining the "preferable" things but selecting them in a rational and ordered (that is to say, virtuous) way. One comes to realize that "virtue is the only good" and the only thing that should be chosen for its own sake (Long and Sedley, 1987, s. 59D). This can also be expressed by saying that the ultimate goal of human life is living "according to virtue (or reason)," which can also be characterized as living "according to nature" (as the Stoics understand "nature") (Long and Sedley, 1987, s. 63).

A second dimension of development, which is also presented as a profoundly "natural" one, is the social one. Common to all animals, and built into their physical and psychological constitution, is the capacity for reproduction and (more crucially) the motivation to care for, and nurture, their offspring. This motivation is the most obvious manifestation of a more pervasive desire to "familiarize" oneself to others by bonding with them and benefiting them. For adult human beings, this process normally takes the form of full engagement in family and communal life or in other forms of positive social relationship, such as that of teaching philosophy.

Another side of this process is the progressive extension of our concern to those outside our immediate family and community and the recognition that, as fellow rational human beings, we are also "familiarized" to them (Long and Sedley, 1987, s. 57D-H). The relationship between these two aspects of development is not as fully explained in our sources as we would wish. But it seems clear that both are taken as key features of a developmental process that contributes toward, and includes, a more theoretical understanding of the good. Social engagement, both within and outside our immediate community, provides a context through which we can learn to select "appropriately" between preferable things and, thus, learn how to act virtuously and to recognize that this is, ultimately, all that matters in human life. Also, both the processes of rational discrimination and of appropriate bonding can be understood as ways of actualizing the order, rationality, and benefit that are the salient marks of the good. To that degree, both aspects of development are interconnected facets of learning to live the life "according to nature/reason/virtue" which is human happiness, as the Stoics understand this. (See further Inwood, 1985, chapter 5; Annas, 1993, chapters 5 and 12.2; Striker, 1996, chapters 12 and 13; Algra et al., 1999, chapter 21, especially pp. 677-82.)
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Stoicism - Knowing the Good

Making sense of Stoic thought about coming to know the good involves consideration of several related aspects of Stoic thought. One of these is the Stoic theory of knowledge. From a modern perspective, the Stoic theory seems to combine aspects that are characteristic of both empiricist and idealist approaches and of both "correspondence" and "coherence" theories of knowledge. On the one hand, they see knowledge as based on perceptions (not innate ideas), which enable us to form concepts and beliefs. In their terms, we "assent" to an "impression" (phantasia) and thus produce "cognition" (katalepsis), which may constitute either belief/opinion or knowledge. They also maintain that a certain kind of perception (a "cognitive impression") necessarily yields a true cognition, a claim defended through sustained argument with skeptics in the Platonic Academy during the third and second centuries BCE. On the other hand, they also maintain that we are naturally capable of forming (by inference from perception) "preconceptions" or "natural/common notions," such as those of the good or of god.

Knowledge is based on a combination of cognitive impressions and preconceptions. True propositions correspond to actual states of affair in the world but also constitute an internally consistent set of ideas (Long and Sedley, 1987, ss. 39-41; Everson, 1990, chapter 9; Algra et al., 1999, chapter 9).

Coming to know the good, therefore, involves both inference from perceptions and the formation of a preconception. But it is a process of a very special kind because "good" represents both the highest kind of value and one that is applicable in widely different contexts. Stoics lay special stress on the role of analogy in enabling us to recognize connections between the forms of goodness found in these different contexts.

Virtue - what we might call "ethical" or "moral" goodness - is one aspect of this notion. The recognition of our own developing virtue (if we develop as we should) and that of other people constitutes an important dimension of the process of coming to know the good. But Stoics emphasize that what we are recognizing is not just a moral notion (human virtue) but is one aspect of a broader concept. The salient marks of goodness are order, structure, harmony, and rationality. The development of virtue involves recognizing virtue as something good - that is, as manifesting order and rationality. But goodness also exists elsewhere, above all, in the universe, understood as an ordered and rational structure. Structure and rationality also, necessarily, confer "benefit," which is another of the salient marks of goodness. So coming to know the good, in the fullest sense of the word, is a matter of understanding how goodness manifests itself in these various sectors (which can be summed up as the spheres of ethics, physics, and logic) and also a matter of expressing this in your own life and character (Long and Sedley, 1987, ss. 60; cf. leradiakonou, 1999, chapter 3).

Interpreting Stoic ideas about the relationship between ethical goodness and goodness in other contexts (in particular, in the universe as a whole) is a difficult matter. (For contrasting interpretations see Annas, 1993, chapter 5; Striker, 1996, chapter 12, especially pp. 221-31.) But there is no doubt that wisdom, the Stoic ideal state, includes knowledge of goodness in all these areas and of their interconnection. The goodness of the universe is displayed in the visible order and harmony of the heavenly bodies and in the regular cycles of day and night and of the seasons. It is also manifested in the way that each species is naturally adapted (in its physical and psychological capacities) to function as a unified organism and to do so within the world, which itself functions as a coherent system. These manifestations of organic system and coherence are taken as evidence of divine providence - an aspect of Stoic thought that is strongly influenced by Plato's vision of the world in the Timaeus. But, unlike Plato's craftsman god, who is distinct from the world he creates, the Stoic god is an immanent force, at once a physical entity ("designing fire") and the active cause, a principle of order and rationality working within nature (Long and Sedley, 1987, s. 54, based especially on Cicero, On the Nature of the Gods, Book 2; also Long and Sedley, 1987, ss. 44, 46). Hence, recognizing the divinity of the world (its immanent structure and coherence) is another key aspect of coming to know the good (cf. Rousseau, 1979, pp. 313-14ff).

A related subject is Stoic thinking on determinism and agency, which involves recognizing in a different way the goodness of the universe. The Stoics are usually seen as "compatibilists," who try to reconcile universal causal determinism with the idea that human beings are responsible for their actions. This reconciliation is
brought about, in part, by explaining human (and other) actions by reference to two kinds of cause: internal and external causes. The fact that (adult) human actions depend on a specific kind of internal cause (namely, assent to a rational impression) entitles us to hold human beings responsible for the actions that result from this
assent. (This kind of compatibilism does not involve the idea of "indeterminist" freedom of choice, an idea that was developed in Epicurean theories.) But there is a different, and arguably more profound, way of understanding Stoic compatibilism.

Universal causal determinism (the "seamless web" of causes) and adult human rationality are both manifestations of the order, rationality, and goodness that are fundamental to nature, as the Stoics understand this (Bobzien, 1998; also Long and Sedley, 1987, ss. 55, 62). This point helps to explain why accepting the fated outcome of events (even in cases where this seems, on the face of it, strongly disadvantageous to us as individuals or to our community or humankind) is seen as a key mark of a virtuous attitude or character. In doing so, we recognize that the universe, in the relevant respects, is good (despite apparent indications to the contrary) and we are thus expressing (at least some measure of) goodness in ourselves. This topic is another

that exemplifies the importance of integrating physics, ethics, and logic, since the proper understanding of determinism embraces aspects of all three studies.
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Education in Classical Athens

Slave or free? Citizen or foreign? Rich or poor? Male or female? These questions largely determined the course of one's education (paideia) - as of one's life - in ancient Athens. Slaves, whether the children of slaves or war captives, were excluded from the gymnasia and wrestling schools (palaistrai) which prepared young males for future citizenship. The only training they received was in their domestic duties, which might include attending something like a cooking school, or in the art or craft (techne) of their master or someone else, or in what we now refer to as the sex industry - prostitution was legal in Athens. Unless their art or craft required it or they were paidagogoi, who accompanied their master's sons to school and sat with them through the lessons, slaves did not learn to read or write.

Crafts were not the exclusive prerogatives of slaves, however. Poorer citizens as well as free foreigners worked as craftsmen. And their sons typically received an elementary education in mousike and gymnastike (described below) before being apprenticed in their father's workshop. Though training in a craft was not thought of as education in the strict sense, some knowledge of crafts such as medicine was considered - at least by some theorists - to be part of the repertoire of a well educated citizen.

After the creation of the Athenian polis (city, city-state) in the late seventh century BCE, free women spent their time at home. There they learned to spin, cook, take care of children, and manage the household. No schools were provided for women and, even in the Hellenistic period, illiteracy rates were higher among them than among men. Nonetheless, some women were well educated. Aspasia, the Milesian-born mistress of Pericles, is said to have taught rhetoric and to have had discussions with Socrates, and both Plato and Epicurus, as well as earlier Pythagoreans, are known to have admitted women into their schools.

For the first few years a boy was looked after by his mother or nurse (usually a slave). He played games and listened to stories based on traditional myths. Later he received elementary education, typically at the hands of three different teachers. The paidotribes taught gymnastics, games, and general physical fitness, usually in the palestra. The kitharistes taught music, lyric poetry, and song. The grammatistes taught reading, writing, mathematics, and literature. Here a boy learned Homer and Hesiod by heart, not just for their beauty and cultural importance, but as a way of acquiring Greek moral values. Frequent public competitions in athletics, dance, music, recitation - often coinciding with religious festivals - provided an opportunity for both the exhibition of skill and its evaluation by adults.


By the mid-fourth century BCE, and probably earlier, Athens required the legitimate sons of Athenian citizens of all classes to undergo two years of compulsory, statesponsored, military training (ephebeia), beginning at age eighteen (see Plato, Republic). This was supervised by a kosmetes and by ten (later twelve) sophronistai, one from each Athenian tribe. In the first year, it consisted of physical training and technical weapons instruction conducted in a barracks in Piraeus. In the second year, epheboi served at the frontier posts of Attica. From the third century BCE, with the decreased significance of citizen militia, intellectual training in philosophy, literature, rhetoric, and music came to play an increasing role in the ephebeia.

From puberty (which probably occurred quite late in the ancient world) until he grew a full beard, an adolescent Athenian male was sexually pursued by older males. This paiderasteia, as it was called, was supposed to provide sexual pleasure for the older male (erastes) and an education in male virtue, but no sexual pleasure, for his "boy" (pais, eromenos). When the boy grew to manhood, he was supposed to become an erastes in turn and cease to play the role of an eromenos. The symposium, or drinking party, was a locus both for the transmission of traditional values and for male homosexual bonding. Its political and educational significance - somewhat strange to us - is manifest in the attention paid to it by Plato in his Protagoras and Laws.

By the late fifth century BCE, it was possible for Athenians to acquire further education by attending the lectures, or listening to the conversations, of a group of itinerant "professors," the sophists. Though not organizationally, doctrinally, or methodologically a school of any sort, the sophists tended to be pragmatic, naturalistic, humanistic, agnostic in religious matters, and relativistic (in some sense) in ethical ones. The sophists popularized Ionian natural philosophy (Thales, Anaximander, Anaximenes, Heraclitus), taught history, geography, and anthropology, and pioneered the systematic study of language, including techniques of argument and persuasion, grammar, literary criticism, and semantics. As a consequence, they were seen as potentially subversive of traditional values, especially by more conservative citizens.
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