3: A Brief History of Education – From Ancient Greece to the Enlightenment

Past civilisations were quick to recognise the power of education and how it could be directed towards achieving a whole raft of societal goals. As such, we use this chapter to explore some of the thinking of the past in order to gauge whether there are education-related ideas that might be usefully harnessed moving forwards – in other words, to explore whether the thinking of the past can inspire new educational directions to help us reach the post-pandemic future we desire. Our delve into the past starts in ancient Greece and Rome. While we do know something about earlier education systems (such as the Sumerian and Egyptian education systems), there is not enough to tell a coherent story in the same way that we can trace a clear thread from the fall of Rome to the present day.¹ Likewise, our story is set predominantly in mainland Europe, England and the United Kingdom in general. Clearly other educational systems and traditions exist. In particular, China, India and the Muslim world have a long and illustrious history of teaching and learning, but the purpose of our analysis here is to explore how we in England got to where we are today. This means we have only touched on other systems where they have a bearing on the development of the current English education system.