ABSTRACT
In our own time, when education has become so vast an enterprise, and is a subject on which a multitude of voices can claim a hearing, it may well be the common opinion that there is little or nothing to be learnt any longer from the experience of two thousand years ago. But perhaps those who have followed the story of Roman education to this point will be disposed to agree that it still carries a few lessons for today. Obviously, there was much that was extremely unsatisfactory in Roman times, and we may take the deficiencies first. The Roman state neither created an educational system itself nor gave anything like adequate financial support to the system which developed of its own accord. Education was not made compulsory even at the primary stage, and the acquisition of literacy was haphazard. There was no provision for the training of teachers. There was no schools building programme, and most of the instruction was given in premises never designed for teaching purposes. It is true that some of the more enlightened rulers gave help and encouragement here and there, and the state eventually allowed municipalities to appoint and pay a certain number of teachers, granted exemptions from civic burdens, and gave a more permanent, though limited, patronage to the higher learning. But it left most of those who were engaged in education in our period to rely on such fees as they could obtain in competition with one another, with the result that they had no security of livelihood. Private tuition (which had both its advantages and its disadvantages) was far more extensively employed than it is today. There was, clearly, inequality of opportunity, and the children of the well-to-do classes benefited most. But it should not be forgotten in this connection that there were also poorer parents who were prepared to make sacrifices for their children's education. Also, by necessity, there was a great deal of self-help, and quite a number even of the teachers had experienced most adverse conditions in early life and yet had managed somehow to educate themselves. Despite the disadvantages, and the lack of any organized examination system, there was an extraordinary uniformity, and a good deal that was permanently sound, in both the substance and the methods of teaching, which, derived in large measure from the Greeks, still made their influence felt long after the Roman Empire had crumbled.
