Stages of education through history

  • 3100 BCE

    The primitive education

    The primitive education
    The history of civilization started in the Middle East about 3000 BCE, whereas the North China civilization began about a millennium and a half later. The Mesopotamian and Egyptian civilizations flourished almost simultaneously during the first civilizational phase (3000–1500 BCE).
  • Period: 2000 BCE to 600 BCE

    Eastern education It includes towns like Egypt, India, Arabia, China and the Hebrew town among others.

    Perhaps the earliest formal school was developed in Egypt's Middle Kingdom under the direction of Kheti.
    Of the ancient peoples of the Middle East. the Jews were the most insistent that all children regardless of class--be educated. The Jews established elementary schools where boys from about 6 to 13 years of age probably learned rudimentary mathematics and certainly learned reading and writing.
  • 146 BCE

    Classical education

    Classical education
    The military conquest of Greece by Rome in 146 BC resulted in the cultural conquest of Rome by Greece. As the Roman poet Horace said, "Captive Greece took captive her rude conqueror and brought the arts to Latium." Actually, Greek influence on Roman education had begun about a century before the conquest.
    When the Roman Republic became an empire, in 31 BC, the school studies lost even their practical value. For then it was not the orator in the Senate but the emperor who had the power.
  • 500

    Medieval education

    Medieval education
    The invading Germanic tribes that moved into the civilized world of the West and all but destroyed ancient culture provided virtually no formal education for their young. In the early Middle Ages the elaborate Roman school system had disappeared. Mankind in 5th-century Europe might well have reverted almost to the level of primitive education had it not been for the medieval church, which preserved what little Western learning had survived the collapse of the Roman Empire.
  • 1200

    Medieval education, in which essentially developed Christianity that had begun in the previous stage

    Medieval education, in which essentially developed Christianity that had begun in the previous stage
    The 12th and 13th centuries, toward the end of the Middle Ages, saw the rise of the universities. The university curriculum in about 1200 consisted of what were then called the seven liberal arts. These were grouped into two divisions. The first was the preparatory trivium: grammar, rhetoric, and logic. The second, more advanced division was the quadrivium: arithmetic, geometry, music, and astronomy.
  • 1300

    Humanistic education

    Humanistic education
    The essence of the Renaissance, which began in Italy in the 14th century and spread to northern European countries in the 15th and 16th centuries, For inspiration the early Renaissance humanists turned to the ideals expressed in the literature of ancient Greece. Like the Greeks, they wanted education to develop man's intellectual, spiritual, and physical powers for the enrichment of life. The humanists also gradually purged astronomy of many of the distortions of astrology.
  • 1500

    The Reformation

    The Reformation
    The degeneration in practice of the early humanists' educational goals and methods continued during the 16th-century Reformation and its aftermath. The religious conflict that dominated men's thoughts also dominated the "humanistic" curriculum of the Protestant secondary schools. The Protestants' need to defend their new religion resulted in the further sacrifice of "pagan" content and more emphasis on drill in the mechanics of the Greek and Latin languages.
  • Realistic education, education, based on those of new philosophy and science.

    Realistic education, education, based on those of new philosophy and science.
    The 17th century philosophers, too, were beginning to develop theories of learning that reflected the new scientific reliance on firsthand observation. One of the men whose theories had the greatest impact on education was the English philosopher John Locke (1632-1704). According to, the mind at birth is a blank tablet. That is, it has no innate, God-given knowledge. But it does have a number of powers or faculties, such as perceiving, discriminating, comparing, thinking, and recalling.