Roman Education

[Guest spartacus]

I assume roman children were taught a variety of subjects, philosophy being one, their curriculum would be totally different from todays schoolchildren, so what other lessons were they taught?

[Primus Pilus]

Rhetoric, oration, military 'arts'

[Guest spartacus]

Anything Else?

 

Would lessons also depend on what their parents did for a living?

 

Example: if the father was a senator would they be taught laws and the like?

[Guest Scanderbeg]

If his father was a senator, protector of th people, relgious leader, questor etc etc. the son maybe inclined to go that way but I don't think so. Education in Rome was very advanced when compared to how crappy it was during the middle ages. You had choices then.

[pompeius magnus]

Among the first thing that a Roman child would learn would be Greek.

[longbow]

Did they learn Military Tactics as children,like the greeks did?L

[Guest Scanderbeg]

Yes I believe they studied old battles and such. Also tactics used by generals. Foe or Friend.

[Guest spartacus]

What did a good Tutor earn?

 

Was it considered a good job?

[Germanicus]

Tutors in Rome were often Greek, and were often educated slaves. There was a word for them other than Tutor, which I can't remember now.

[Zeke]

Most teachers were slaves that were in the Roman household and like the Greeks the Roman Children would learn the Illiad, the Odessy, Philosphy, music, mathematics (Probably business math) and of coarse atheletics..Roman children didn't have to go to school and I believe they were probably taught a trade by one of the parents untill they had to go to the army when they were 15.

 

Almost 65% of the Roman population was employed in farming when they got out of the Legions after 35 years of faithful service and probably remained farmers or became senators....Was the Roman army mandatory...because if it wsan't you probably didn't have to go to the army and became a potter, glass blower, marble sulpture, muscian or politican, or other numerous jobs that were avaliable.

 

I don't think the army was mandatory....but someone correct me because after some schooling when they were younger Roman male children became soliders.

 

Sorry about spelling and grammer,

Zeke

[Ursus]

According to Daily Life in Ancient Rome by Jerome Carcopino:

 

In the Republic fathers looked after the education of their own sons. Presumably the education was rather vocational, designed to teach the son to take over for his father.

 

In the Empire, the wealthier sorts assigned a Greek slave called a paedagogus to teach small children how to read and so forth.

 

In elementary school they learned reading, writing, and arithmetic from a teacher called a magister.

 

In middle and higher school, they would teach rhetoric and Greek.

 

Carcopino derides Roman education as being overly practical and dull in the extreme, designed to teach the most basic skills at the expense of a broader "liberal arts" education. But the wealthy could afford to send their children to the East where they would have a more Greek style education in the arts and sciences.