Talk:History of education

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Untitled[edit]

"Since Adam and Eve"? - so we're definitely not talking about science education here. And spell check would be nice.152.14.218.4 (talk) 20:59, 15 July 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Missing civilizations[edit]

Well before Islam and Greece, there were academic institutions in Mesopatamia. Certainly, teh Persian empire was considered more civilised than the Greek empire at the Greco-Persian wars. Tourskin 23:45, 24 February 2007 (UTC)[reply]

I am troubled by no mention being made of the Code of Hammurabi / Codex Hammurabi (1760BC), which predates the Hebrew & Christian biblical books (1200BC), and is the best preserved of the ancient textual evidence of schooling. Please clarify why this information was omitted. Thanks. --KeyMaker2012 (talk) 01:25, 18 August 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Europe: More in depth[edit]

I think the history is missing important early milestones, such as the creation of Plato's Academy, and early methods, such as apprenticeship. There was much that happened before the creation of the UniversitṚǍ⅔y of Bolgna that influenced the field. The article seems too short to cover all that happened to change the field of education and doesn't seem to adequately tell the story of how it got to where it is today.

Ideally what this article needs is a section covering education in the classical world (Egypt/Greece/Rome etc), a section on Islam (to go with Europe/China/Japan/India) and then small sub-sections in each section covering the modern history of education in individual countries (1800-2000). 62.25.106.209 12:34, 4 September 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Accuracy[edit]

There's a lot in this article that's just plain wrong...

It's slightly improved now...195.92.40.49 12:01, 4 September 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Where the hell is Persia mentioned? 47.198.8.213 (talk) 02:25, 11 March 2023 (UTC)[reply]

History of disciplines[edit]

When and how has the notion of different 'disciplines' developed?

Surely we need somethingon the quadravia and trivia, and the demise of the 'Renaissance Man' into lots of experts who know 'everything about nothing'.

Johnbibby 15:56, 29 October 2006 (UTC)[reply]


Removal by User:leuko[edit]

I started making changes along the following lines - I think it is valid to include sections here on the various disciplines:


- =Subject breakdown= - - ==History of mathematics teaching== - - ==History of statistics teaching== - - *[http://www.amazon.co.uk/History-Teaching-Statistics


- - ==History of XX teaching== - - ==History of XX teaching== - - ==History of XX teaching== - - ==History of XX teaching==

However, this edit was remoevd as "Spam" - which i do not think it was.

What do other people think - is it valid to have History of XX Education

Johnbibby 19:04, 5 November 2006 (UTC)[reply]

It was removed as spam because the only thing it contained was a link to amazon. The rest was removed because "History of XX education" is nonsense. It would be valid to have these sections if they actually included any content. Perhaps some day they could even have their own articles, but just adding empty sections serves no purpose. Leuko 19:13, 5 November 2006 (UTC)[reply]

As I understand it, this is precisely the porpose of a 'stub' section (as this was explicitly labelled). I had started work on the maths section, but I am not qualified to write on all subjects!
Johnbibby 18:22, 10 November 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Is this article really necessary?[edit]

I stumbled across while disambiguating a reference. So far, this article appears to be no more than the sum of its individual parts, and I consider that it may be more sensible to develop some of those articles, rather than trying to maintain a generic article on the worldwide "history of education" as distinct from more specific articles on primary, secondary, and tertiary (further and higher) education. --Lang rabbie 22:44, 19 September 2007 (UTC)

Probable plagiarism[edit]

The entire section on education in the USA looks like it's copied word for word from this site [1] Note even the section headings are the same! 71.126.174.235 (talk) 17:30, 29 January 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Yes, looks like plagiarism - user 24.243.142.167 added the entire section on 1 September 2007, it was that IP's only edit, and its not content from History of education in the United States. I'm going to clear the sections.

Dialectric (talk) 02:40, 8 February 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Nothing About France?[edit]

As I understand it, the history of education is changed through the establishment of a centralized education system in Napoleonic France, with examinations and placement in government. This merit-based system later influenced other nations. Am I wrong? Pittsburgh Poet (talk) 13:00, 29 March 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Badly structured - this article needs an major overhaul[edit]

This article deals with an important subject but does so very poorly. It is largely unstructured and lacks any overall perspective. It needs to commence with an Introduction, move on to an Outline (i.e. Overview or Summary), and only after those sections would deal with the details of particular countries and regions of the world.

The subject is such a large one that the sections dealing with the detailed history of education in each a particular country or areas should be in separate articles, which would be linked from this article

Currently, the article leaps away into national/geographical/cultural sections without addressing other perspectives. There are many other strands into which the history can be categorised or described. Examples are the historic links between education and wealth, education and gender, education and cultural tradition, education and religion (the current article does deal with this topic but in a piecemeal way), and so on.

I would be willing to helping to overhaul the structure of the article, but I am a beginner at wiki. I am not an educational historian or a teacher. How do we flag the area and get a concerted effort going to fix what is really a disgrace

--AlotToLearn (talk) 01:11, 20 August 2008 (UTC)[reply]

New introduction and structure created for this article[edit]

I have spent three days trying to improve the structure and content of this article, and have taken into account points raised in this talk page by previous commentators

I believe it is now a much better article, but it is far from a good article and needs effort and expertise from others to improve it more.

I cannot spare any more time on it, so it must suffer whatever fate is decided! --AlotToLearn (talk) 07:37, 22 August 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Removal of sexuality from the introductory list of things that each generation seeks to pass on to the next[edit]

An editor with an IP address today added the word "sexuality" to the second sentence of the article, after which the sentence read:

"Education has taken place in most communities since earliest times as each generation has sought to pass on cultural and social values, traditions, morality, sexuality, religion, knowledge and skills to the next generation."

This seems to me to be controversial, and no footnote reference was given to justify the addition of this word to this list, so I have now removed the word. --AlotToLearn (talk) 09:19, 10 February 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Desperate need for Expansion[edit]

This article is extremely important, but has very little information. This is also true of all the articles attached to the subject (regional histories, school, etc). Is there any way we can flag this article as needing more desperate attention? If so, please do so.

Major problems:

  • It is unbalanced - the section on Europe is much longer than others.
  • Hardly an information as to the history of compulsory schools, which is essentially universal in its method - age segregation, Primary, Secondary, Bachelors, Masters, Doctorate, etc. This should have a whole section devoted to it, separate from the divisions by regions, as it is the dominant institutional framework. It was developed in many places, especially Europe, and was spread everywhere with colonization and continues to spread with the "modern".

Other thoughts:

  • The distinction, if there is any, between schooling (institutions), education, and learning is not made clear, and should be carefully done so. To what degree it they are mutually exclusive terms should of course be left somewhat vague, because they are used interchangeably.
  • Why are the periods divided into "Ancient, Middle Ages, and post 15th Cent"? This may apply to European history (essentially pre-church, church, and post-church), but this does not apply to the whole world and is thus Eurocentric

NittyG (talk) 18:06, 16 February 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Glad to get some comment on this article, which I have been trying to improve for several months. Please join me in improving it! You might be interested to see what it looked like when I first saw it last August[2]. I have been working from the distant past towards the present, and most of the material I have added was for countries outside Europe (16 "screenfulls") rather than in Europe (4 "screenfulls"! I am no expert, but have been reading books as I go to obtain information for periods or major areas which were not yet discussed. I have quite a bit of material not yet added to the article.
In response to your specific comments...
  • Have you seen the Education page (which does deal with the different types of compulsory schools, colleges etc)? With so much else to cover here, and those things being fairly "recent", I had not addressed them here.
  • The history of formal education over the past one or two hundred years would be a voluminous topic if it was dealt with on a worldwide basis. From what I have seen, compulsory schooling in those recent centuries are currently covered in topics like History of Education in the United States, and for some other individual countries, Scotland, England, and some countries in Africa and elsewhere. But if you want to try to bring it into this article soon, that's great. Maybe you would be willing to start on that end of the article, i.e. assembling and summarising all that more recent history and in the course of that maybe having to handle the sensitive aspects of colonial education, use of education for political or economic ends, etc?
  • I have been working on the basis that education is the process of learning, including informal learning and formal learning. Maybe one day, when the article gets too large, it will need to be split up into different articles dealing with different aspects.
  • I thought it made sense to split things into time slices because then one can more easily see how things have sometimes spread between different parts of the world over a period. I split up the history into periods that seemed to me to make some sense. I certainly was not trying to be Eurocentric nor anything to do with the church etc. It seemed to me that "ancient civilisations" covered everything in the Middle East and Mediterranean up to the end of the Roman Empire. True China continued afterwards, but the 500 CE time period near enough matches the introduction of the examination system for entry to the bureaucracy, so formed a possible split date. In India, the north was conquered and settled by Islam a few hundred years later. If you can suggest better split dates, I would be glad to listen to your reasoning.
I will be glad to hear any further suggestions - and to get your help in making this a better article, if you can spare the time.

--AlotToLearn (talk) 06:10, 17 February 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Sorry for the long delay... I've been a bit busy, but I'm anticipating working on this with everyone. I am planning on delving into this topic in great detail over the next few months (at some time all at once).
AlotToLearn - to answer your points - I think the only period that can be effectively divided as synchronous worldwide would be the last ~500 years. Since then, education or schooling has been similar worldwide, as it has sought mass accreditation and certification, as well as serving the needs of industrialization and the modern state. Across the world, the classroom and style of education is increasingly similar, or standardized - the classroom, school, teachers, progressive education, age segregation, separation into primary, secondary, and higher - bachelors, masters, post-doc, etc. Though this is a voluminous topic, it is very necessary - maybe it should also be a separate article, such as "History of the Modern School" or "History of Modern Education". There are hints of this in various places. The modern school largely began in Prussian Education System, from where it spread, and pedagogies were traded between many nations through the modern era.
The following is a very good book on the subject that gives some insight, though it is a bit one-sided and not properly backed up:
  • A basic overview of the book [4]

Cyberistan[edit]

I´m removing all the material backed up this this source.It´s an islamic website with self published content, and therefore, unreliable.--Knight1993 (talk) 18:49, 20 May 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Copyright problem removed[edit]

One or more portions of this article duplicated other source(s). The material was copied from: http://eprints.mdx.ac.uk/3201/1/final_final_proof_Market_paper_050308.pdf and http://logica.ugent.be/albrecht/thesis/FOTFS2008-Heeffer.pdf. Infringing material has been rewritten or removed and must not be restored, unless it is duly released under a compatible license. (For more information, please see "using copyrighted works from others" if you are not the copyright holder of this material, or "donating copyrighted materials" if you are.) For legal reasons, we cannot accept copyrighted text or images borrowed from other web sites or published material; such additions will be deleted. Contributors may use copyrighted publications as a source of information, but not as a source of sentences or phrases. Accordingly, the material may be rewritten, but only if it does not infringe on the copyright of the original or plagiarize from that source. Please see our guideline on non-free text for how to properly implement limited quotations of copyrighted text. Wikipedia takes copyright violations very seriously, and persistent violators will be blocked from editing. While we appreciate contributions, we must require all contributors to understand and comply with these policies. Thank you. Sjakkalle (Check!) 13:21, 1 October 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Middle Eastern Education and Jewish History[edit]

The Citation to " Bar-Ilan, M. "Illiteracy in the Land of Israel in the First Centuries C.E." in S. Fishbane, S. Schoenfeld and A. Goldschlaeger (eds.), "Essays in the Social Scientific Study of Judaism and Jewish Society", II, New York: Ktav, 1992, pp. 46-61" Is cute, but the argument is badly constructed, and not particularly convincing, especially if you know anything about the subject. The citation and "data" should be removed. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Davidmanheim (talkcontribs) 18:16, 2 December 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Little to no citations[edit]

"The systematic provision of learning techniques to most children, such as literacy, has been a development of the last 150 or 200 years, or even last 50 years in some countries."

Where did you find this? There are not enough citations to even prove your introduction, let alone your article.

180.200.233.250 (talk) 05:55, 18 November 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Why does this article not mention Gutenberg or the invention of printpress?[edit]

Widespread adoption of formal systems of education is limited by the amount of information that can be transferred within a given society. Schools, which were truly public in nature, depended on the availability of printed books, and without a print press, teacher would have no permanent records of the subject to be shared with the students.

There are schools without buildings, but there are no schools without printed books (or electronic equivalency of books).

I would write about this, but I know very little about the topic.Tofoo (talk) 01:56, 13 June 2014 (UTC)[reply]

I agree, this should be included. 80.212.44.121 (talk) 20:17, 10 April 2016 (UTC)[reply]
it's not true -- actual schools existed for many centuries before printing--including universities. Rjensen (talk) 20:34, 10 April 2016 (UTC)[reply]

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Colonial Education[edit]

Commonly regarded as a sensitive topic, colonial history is important in understanding the educational developments over the past few centuries. There is a dearth in colonial educational history in India and Africa. Just something to consider in the future. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Minupol (talkcontribs) 19:45, 3 May 2016 (UTC)[reply]

New attempt to clean up this article[edit]

Rjensen Thank you for your previous involvement and watching this article. I came here chasing photographs that had been inserted into Education Articles out of context, and read the text. It is a curious amalgam of style, and of content. Part of it is written like a portal, and parts like student essays on specific topics. Just from personal knowledge a lot of the assertions are inaccurate and downright confusing. Take a moment to research the comments I have made- and use those as a starting point. The problems start on line one by confusing education with the development of writing and then to confuse education with schooling. There are many approached to writing about English Education, if you don't wish to start with King's School, Rochester in 604, then you could start with Manchester Grammar School a late starter in 1515 that was founded as a free school. This is well documemnted on other parts of Wikipedia. My inclination is to delete the obvious mistakes, then concentrate on sorting out the structure. Where existing text is out of scope, or off focus spin it off to other articles- where sections are missing- that will be a lot of work. That is for another day. Ping me if I can be any help. ClemRutter (talk) 15:19, 21 December 2019 (UTC)[reply]

personal knowledge doesn't count here. If you can IMPROVE the articled prove it by making actual additions instead of erasing other editors' hard work. Rjensen (talk) 15:31, 21 December 2019 (UTC)[reply]
At this stage in an articles life, most improvements are done by evaluating the material, redirecting and often merging. It is important to read the responses to your edits, rather than just reverting. I have contributed by giving other editors and yourself some suggestions of a way forward. My role at the moment must remain advisory- as I am busy elsewhere on the project.ClemRutter (talk) 20:22, 21 December 2019 (UTC)[reply]

First two sentences are confusing[edit]

The first two sentences of the article are strange and not very encyclopedic.

"The quest for universal literacy is a development of the last 150–200 years." Uh, okay? I suppose that's related to the topic of education, but it's probably not the information that someone is seeking when they visit this page.

"Schools for the young have historically been supplemented with advanced training for priests, bureaucrats and specialists." Well, that's a nice little detail, but it feels like it belongs elsewhere in the article, not at the very introduction.

I would expect the article to begin with text such as, "The idea and practice of universal, compulsory public education developed gradually in Europe, from the early 16th century on into the 19th." B.A.B.E. (talk) 20:34, 3 May 2020 (UTC)[reply]


History of education in Tanzania[edit]

In ancient times 41.89.182.173 (talk) 12:29, 3 November 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Wiki Education assignment: CMN2160B[edit]

This article was the subject of a Wiki Education Foundation-supported course assignment, between 8 September 2022 and 1 December 2022. Further details are available on the course page. Student editor(s): BoyaJia666 (article contribs).

— Assignment last updated by BoyaJia666 (talk) 00:35, 3 December 2022 (UTC)[reply]

"History teacher" listed at Redirects for discussion[edit]

An editor has identified a potential problem with the redirect History teacher and has thus listed it for discussion. This discussion will occur at Wikipedia:Redirects for discussion/Log/2023 January 4 § History teacher until a consensus is reached, and readers of this page are welcome to contribute to the discussion. Steel1943 (talk) 20:45, 4 January 2023 (UTC)[reply]

"Education history 1" listed at Redirects for discussion[edit]

An editor has identified a potential problem with the redirect Education history 1 and has thus listed it for discussion. This discussion will occur at Wikipedia:Redirects for discussion/Log/2023 January 4 § Education history 1 until a consensus is reached, and readers of this page are welcome to contribute to the discussion. Steel1943 (talk) 20:52, 4 January 2023 (UTC)[reply]