The Early History and

Philosophies of School
Philosophy of Science
What are we going to cover?

 The Beginnings both Schooling and S/FL Literacy

 The Beginning of Higher Education and Philosophies of Schooling
 The Philosophies of Early Schools
 S/FL Learning in Ancient Schooling
 Modern School
The Beginnings of both Schooling and
S/FL Literacy
The earliest formal schooling is associated with elite palace or temple
operations.

Mesopotamia (writing is considered the signal of education development).

Education (specialized trainings) was only meant for the service of state, not for
citizen.

Chinese civilization was known to conduct the earliest formal school

(Meritocratic) systems (1000 BCE).

In India, children (boys) learned their letters and also memorized the Vedas.

Greece and Rome: Home tuition moved to small schools without the direct
involvement of religious institution.

The spread of roman empire indicated the training for bilingual literacy.
The Beginning of Higher Education and
Philosophies of Schooling
The first college was opened by Confucius in 5th century BCE.

The city of Takashila & Nalanda claimed to be the 1st university.

Plato's academy (387 BCE) and the Lyceum of Aristotle (335 BCE)

The rise of christianity education.

The rise of Islamic education was by 11th centuries (CE).

China (in 977) started the expansion of the examination system.

The Philosophies of Early Schools

The general pedagogy of pre-modern school was

memorization.
Memorization (Chinese modern schooling) stifled the
development of creativity and individuality.

Aristotle and Isocrates formulate for the first time an educational system in
which literacy is a fundamental requirement (Morgan, 1998)

Chinese rulers always saw school in political terms and made serious
efforts to control them (Zheng, 1994)

Aristotle and Quintilian

Rome conquered Greece and relied heavily on educated enslaved

Greeks as teachers in their schools.
S/FL Learning in Ancient Schooling
In the classical era, it was intuitive command of the target language that was required,
formal knowledge was being seen as a mere reinforcement of practical mastery. (Kelly,
1969)

St. Augustine was attributed for his dialogued methods of teaching.

The spread of Buddhism was heavily associated with the work of translators, particularly
between sanskrit and Tibetan.

Chinese didn't need for bilinguals for administrative purpose. Yet, they naturally developed
multilingualism capabilities through growing up in cultural borderlands. (Hung, 2005)

Europe tended to access L2s by way of Latin in 14th century.

Modern School

Then-now: the power of

the western world
16th century: the Euro-american school
emergence of
modern school

15th century: China was

better than Europe
Conclusion
• School is not inherently western institution.

• Formal higher education is not necessarily western in origin.

• A meritocratic (exam-driven education) is not a western invention.

• S/FL teaching has been involved in the process of empire building on various occasions.

• Right from the start, schools had a political role and ideologically contested sites.

• The past of S/FL is not all memorization and translation.

• Had China not turned away from science and technology, mass schooling by now would have been an
“Eastern” phenomenon
References

 Crookes, G. (2009). Values, philosophies, and beliefs in TESOL. Cambridge:

Cambridge University Press.