ABSTRACT

Long before the advent of mass schooling in forms resembling our own, there were schools in the more complex agrarian societies of China, Japan, India, the Islamic world and medieval Europe, as well as those of indigenous Mesoamerica and Peru. Agrarian schooling was limited in scope and usually involved a small and socially elite part of the population, though in some communities all children (or all male children) were involved for a short period of time. Islam's wide spread across the globe, and cultural dominance in places as diverse as Casablanca and Djakarta, as well as its significance as the major living example of a system and ideology of pre-modern education, make it the most accessible and interesting model for agrarian schooling. Agrarian schools still exist, not only in the Islamic world but also in India and Southeast Asia, though usually as religious supplements to a school system the form of which was imported from the West.