School

• 1. Introduction

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  A school is, at its simplest, a place built to teach. The word itself carries a small irony. It descends from the Greek scholē, which originally meant leisure, or the way leisure is spent. Only later did it come to mean a group gathered to hear lectures, and then the institution we know today. That gap between leisure and obligation runs through the whole story. In most countries, formal education is not a pastime at all. It is sometimes compulsory, a series of buildings a child passes through under the direction of teachers. So how did a word for free time come to name an institution that prescribes exactly what to do, how, when, where, and with whom? And why do its critics and its defenders still argue over whether it nurtures curiosity or quietly suppresses it?

• 2. Ancient Foundations

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  Classical antiquity already grouped students together in a centralized location for learning. Formal schools existed in ancient Greece, where the Academy taught, in ancient Rome, in ancient India through the Gurukul, and in ancient China. The Byzantine Empire ran an established system that began at the primary level. According to Traditions and Encounters, the founding of Byzantine primary education began in 425 AD, and military personnel usually had at least a primary education. A large and often efficient government meant that educated citizens were a necessity. The Empire emphasized efficiency even in its war manuals, having shed much of the grandeur and extravagance of Roman culture in order to survive. That Byzantine schooling system endured until the empire's collapse in 1453 AD, a span of more than a thousand years tied to the life of a single state.

• 3. Cloisters And Cathedrals

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  The King's School, Canterbury was established in 597 CE, and it remains the oldest still-existing, continuously operated cathedral school. In Western Europe during the Early Middle Ages, a considerable number of cathedral schools were founded to train future clergy and administrators. King's School, Rochester followed in 604 CE, St Peter's School, York in 627 CE, and Thetford Grammar School in 631 CE. Beginning in the 5th century CE, monastic schools spread across Western Europe as well, teaching both religious and secular subjects. Universities emerged in Europe during the 12th century, where scholasticism was an important tool and the academicians were called schoolmen. For schools as opposed to universities, the main purpose through the Middle Ages and much of the Early Modern period was to teach Latin. That purpose gave the world the term grammar school, a name that still means different things on opposite sides of the Atlantic.

• 4. The Spread Of Islamic Learning

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  Al-Qarawiyyin was founded in 859 CE, an example of a school built independently from the mosque. Islam developed a school system in the modern sense, placing emphasis on knowledge and on the systematic teaching and spreading of it. At first, mosques combined religious performance with learning. By the 9th century, the madrassa appeared as a separate structure, and Islamic authorities were the first to make the madrassa system a public domain under a Caliph's control. Under the Ottomans, the towns of Bursa and Edirne became the main centers of learning. The Ottoman Külliye was a building complex containing a mosque, a hospital, a madrassa, and public kitchen and dining areas. Through its free meals, health care, and sometimes free accommodation, the Külliye made learning accessible to a broader public, an idea of the school as a place that fed and healed as well as taught.

• 5. Compulsion And Consolidation

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  Denmark-Norway introduced obligatory school attendance as early as 1739-1741, with the primary aim of raising the literacy of the almue, the regular people. Obligatory attendance became common in parts of Europe during the 18th century. Many earlier public schools in the United States and elsewhere were one-room schools, where a single teacher taught seven grades of boys and girls together in the same classroom. Beginning in the 1920s, those one-room schools were consolidated into multiple classroom facilities. Transportation was increasingly provided by kid hacks and by school buses, machinery that turned scattered rural pupils into a gathered student body.

• 6. Many Names For School

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  In the United Kingdom, the word school refers primarily to pre-university institutions, divided into nursery schools, primary schools, and secondary schools. Some of the most selective and expensive private schools there are known as public schools, a usage confusing to speakers of North American English, where a public school is publicly funded or run. Performance is watched by different bodies in each nation: Ofsted in England, Estyn in Wales, and Education Scotland in Scotland. In North America, by contrast, the term school can mean any educational institution at any level, from preschool for toddlers through graduate school. In much of continental Europe, school usually applies to primary education lasting between four and nine years, and to secondary schools often split between Gymnasiums and vocational schools. In Germany, students graduating from Grundschule cannot progress directly into a vocational school. They must first attend a general education school such as Gesamtschule, Hauptschule, Realschule, or Gymnasium, leaving usually between age 15 and 19.

• 7. Gurukuls And Bush Schools

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  In ancient India, schools took the form of Gurukuls, traditional Hindu residential learning schools set in the teacher's house or a monastery. British records show indigenous education was widespread in the 18th century, with a school for every temple, mosque, or village in most regions, teaching subjects from Arithmetic and Law to Astronomy, Metaphysics, and Medical Science. Under British rule, Christian missionaries from England, the United States, and other countries established missionary and boarding schools whose syllabus and calendar became the benchmark for modern India. In West Africa, school can also mean a bush school, a training camp set in forests outside the towns and villages. Once students arrive, they cannot leave until their training is complete, and visitors are prohibited. Bush schools are separated by gender rather than age. Boys learn cultural crafts, fighting, hunting, and community laws, while girls are trained in domestic affairs such as cooking and childcare. In Mozambique, Qur'anic schools come in two kinds, the tariqa-based, controlled locally, and the Wahhabi-based, controlled by the Islamic Council, with levels ranging from the basic chuo and kioni up to the most advanced, ilimu.

• 8. The Weight Of The System

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  Eight in 10 U.S. college students said they had sometimes or frequently experienced stress in their daily lives, according to a 2008 mental health study by the Associated Press and mtvU. That figure was an increase of 20% from a survey five years earlier. Thirty-four percent had felt depressed at some point in the past three months, 13 percent had been diagnosed with a condition such as anxiety or depression, and 9 percent had seriously considered suicide. The pressure runs both ways. As a profession, teaching carries levels of work-related stress among the highest of any profession in some countries, such as the United Kingdom and the United States. Critics accuse the school system of failing to prepare students for their future lives and of using grades and homework that inhibit a child's natural curiosity. Practitioners of critical pedagogy argue that disciplinary measures undermine students' dignity and sense of self-worth. Against them stands a supportive statement issued by the Catholic Church in the 1960s, which held that among all educational instruments the school has a special importance, designed not only to develop intellectual faculties but to form the ability to judge rightly and to hand on the cultural legacy of previous generations.