ABSTRACT
Most scholars would probably agree that “The term education can be applied to primitive cultures only in the sense of enculturation, which is the process of cultural transmission.” In that sense the education of primitive peoples was quite egalitarian, for it entailed participatory learning throughout society and involved all members of community about equally. In ancient Israel, as in most other pre-industrial societies, education was originally familial, and in that sense egalitarian. The mother instructed the girls, while the father instructed the sons, and for centuries the Hebrew teacher's role was expressed in terms of parenthood. During the Hellenistic Age, the educational patterns established in classical Greece were expanded, and the state exerted far more legislative control over the schools than had been the case in Athens. The scope of education was considerably expanded; and though most students were males from the aristocratic and urban bourgeois classes, girls were allowed a modest place in the system as, occasionally, were slaves.
