-
200,000 BCE
Early humans
In the beginning, for hundreds of thousands of years, children educated themselves through self-directed play and exploration. Children in hunter-gatherer cultures learned what they needed to know to become effective adults through their own play and exploration. Adults in hunter-gatherer cultures allowed children almost unlimited freedom to play and explore on their own because they recognized that those activities are children's natural ways of learning. -
10,000 BCE
Agricultural communities
With the rise of agriculture, people could produce more food, also allowed people to live in permanent dwellings, where their crops were planted. While hunter-gatherers skillfully harvested what nature had grown, farmers had to plow, plant, cultivate, tend their flocks, and so on. Successful farming required long hours of relatively unskilled, repetitive labor, much of which could be done by children. Children's lives changed gradually. -
500
Middle Ages
Systems of slavery and other forms of servitude developed in the Middle Ages. Now the lot of most people, children included, was servitude. The principal lessons that children had to learn were obedience, suppression of their own will, and the show of reverence toward lords and masters. In the Middle Ages, lords and masters had no qualms about physically beating children into submission. -
Children labor
Later, during the rise of industry children became forced laborers. Play and exploration were suppressed. The labor of children was moved from fields, where there had at least been sunshine, fresh air, and some opportunities to play, into dark, crowded, dirty factories. Many thousands of them died each year of diseases, starvation, and exhaustion. A good child was an obedient child, who suppressed his or her urge to play and explore and dutifully carried out the orders of adult masters. -
Universal education
For various reasons, some religious and some secular, the idea of universal, compulsory education arose and gradually spread. Education was understood as inculcation. The idea began to spread that childhood should be a time for learning, and schools for children were developed as places of learning. The idea and practice of universal, compulsory public education developed gradually in Europe, from the early 16th century to the 19th. -
Rise of schooling
With the rise of schooling, people began to think of learning as children's work. The same power-assertive methods that had been used to make children work in fields and factories were quite naturally transferred to the classroom. Repetition and memorization of lessons is tedious work for children, whose instincts urge them constantly to play freely and explore the world on their own. -
Punishments of education
The brute force methods long used to keep children on task on the farm or in the factory were transported into schools to make children learn. In recent times, the methods of schooling have become less harsh, but basic assumptions have not changed. Learning continues to be defined as children's work, and power-assertive means are used to make children do that work. -
Conventional schooling
In the 19th and 20th centuries, public schooling gradually evolved toward what we all recognize today as conventional schooling. The methods of discipline became more humane, or at least less corporal; the lessons became more secular; the curriculum expanded, as knowledge expanded, to include an ever-growing list of subjects; and the number of hours, days, and years of compulsory schooling increased continuously. -
References
Gray, P. (2008) A Brief History of Education. Psychology Today. Retrieved from:https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/freedom-learn/200808/brief-history-education Historia Universal (n.d.) Revolución industrial. Retrieved from: https://mihistoriauniversal.com/edad-contemporanea/revolucion-industrial/ Hunter-Gatherers (Aug 15, 2019) HISTORY.COM EDITORS. Retrieved from: https://www.history.com/topics/pre-history/hunter-gatherers
