Ideals of education in history

For the Greeks there were three overriding educational goals: the achievement of perfection, the creation of a culturally developed person and preparation for citizenship. 'Education is about providing body and soul with all the perfection of which they are capable', according to Plato.

In Roman times the emphasis in education and schooling lay more on practical application in policy, the administration of justice, and organization than on cultural development. A well-educated man had a public function and participated actively in public life. All schooling was considered to be a preparation for this role. As the Romans adopted more ideas from the Greeks, the cultural objectives of education and schooling also became important, as did the molding of an individual into 'vir bonus' ('gentleman' or 'bonhomme'). For Cicero that was someone who was 'right-thinking, courteous and eloquent', someone who could create a connection between philosophy and practice, between wisdom and social activity.

Only those who possessed the appropriate language skills could bring about this excellence, whether in themselves, in others, in a group, in an organization or in society. Moral order and the legal order, the state and politics, as well as systems of belief, culture and science, all of these are realized through 'the correct use of language'.
These ideas experienced a revival during the Renaissance. The educational ideal of that time was equally aristocratic: humanist education and schooling focused on the development of the 'homo universalis'. The Greek ideals of perfection and balance, of truth and individual development, came to flower anew. At the same time the manner in which cultural development could be realized was canonized: study of the classical languages, classical literature, art and history plus a healthy development of the body.

This model for classical education still exists today, albeit with a number of adjustments. Erasmus summarized it as follows: 'The first and most important part of education and schooling is that the spirit receive the seed of devotion, then that he learn to love and know thoroughly the liberal arts; thirdly that he be prepared for the duties of life; and in the fourth place that he becomes from the youngest possible age familiar with the fundamentals of good breeding.'

During the Reformation religious objectives overshadowed the cultural objectives. But thereafter, during the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, the ideals of character-formation and preparation for a role in public life returned. The gradual and natural development of someone's talents was introduced as a goal. (Rousseau, Pestalozzi). But the perfection-ideal also remained current. Kant, for example, wrote that the goal of upbringing and education is to school pupils 'not with an eye on their success in the current state of society, but with an eye on a possible better state which conforms more closely to an ideal concept of humanity.'