The Classical Education

by

Sangbin Park

Honors 212/Drama 494

Professor Johnson

June 7, 2011

Preface
The inspiration of this paper came from the simple question: Why are the classics still
important today? This curiosity took me to the 18th and 19th century when the Imperial British
Empire had the educational system that was heavily focused on the classical education.
Although there were other disciplines and subjects that were far more beneficial in advancing
human knowledge in the factual world, they were only a small concern. The British valued the
logic of the Ancient Rome and Ancient Greece over anything else. The classical education
manufactured Romans out of British gentlemen. Therefore, can we assume that their
distinctive education largely contributed to their actions during the imperial period?
What the history has left us are traces of classical education. The real impact of the
classical education is not clear. However, just because the textbooks do not implicitly state the
effects of the classics does not imply that impact was not there. It was definitely present. The
fascination of this subject is its ambiguity. The classical education has strong emphasis on
learning Ancient Roman and Ancient Greek values. By learning the languages of Latin and
Greek, the students can read pieces of literature from the Ancient civilizations. Did the classical
education really influence British elites, American colonists, and East Indians? What was the
impact of the classical education on the British and their subjects affecting the formation of the
cultured habitus that Viccy Coltman, the author of Fabricating the Antique, mentions in her
writing in regard to Pierre Bourdieus coinage of the term habitus?
Certainly, there are limitations in measuring the real impact and importance of the
classical education. This paper may make mere assumptions based on my own observations of
the history; thus, arriving at a conclusion of this curiosity is beyond history. However, the beauty
of this subject is within its openness and unlimited possibilities to stimulate our intellectual
minds to think about the classical education and its importance. It is up to the reader to draw
conclusions about the classical education and impact on Imperial British Empire.

Sangbin Park
Professor Johnson
Honors 212/Drama 494
1 June 2011
Final Paper: The Classical Education
I. Introduction: Classical education and English education system
What is the importance of learning the Roman ideals? Where do the ancient Roman
ideals take us? Even though the Roman Empire has fallen, its legacy lives among us and is
deeply attached to our intellectual minds. Then, a curiosity emerges from our educational
practice that exposes us to ancient values and their old glory. We bring back those ancient
civilizations to current times. What is there to be learned? The necessity to explore and absorb
the antiquity is fascinating. Perhaps, the classical education is a mere attempt to recapture the
glory of Ancient Rome through the ideals that personified the once great empire. The classical
education in the Imperial British Empire provided a model in which the empire could
characterize itself as the new Roman Empire and to glorify its culture by borrowing ancient
culture.
During the 18th and 19th century, the United Kingdom had an established education
system to educate its great number of citizens and subordinates. Certainly, the educational values
of the Kingdom were special in the sense that much of the emphasis was on the classical
education. Despite the fact that there were many subjects to explore, such as science and math, it
is interesting to see why one of the most powerful empires on the earth focused on teaching
classics. What exactly did the classical education implant in the minds of British citizens?
The classical education is known as an educational curriculum based on learning the traditional
Western culture.
English public schools such as Eton and Winchester were originally grammar schools
that concentrated on the classical education. The term public school does not imply the same
meaning as known to North Americans; it is a term that was created as a distinction from other
private schools. These public schools are one of the most expensive schools for privileged upper
class British. The purpose of these grammar schools was to educate their students in Latin and
Greek, but mainly in Latin. These schools were the stepping stones to enter high level
educational. The process starts at early age: When a boy can read English generally around
the age of seven or eight year, he is put to school to learn Latin and Greek (Sheridan 13). They
are trained to become proficient in these languages for nearly seven years. It is fascinating to see
that the educational curriculum was so heavily based on the classics. At the English public
school Eton, 88 percent of lesson time was allocated to the classics-twenty-one hours a week
for an average of six years at public school between the ages of nine and fifteen (Coltman 12).
Then, around the age fifteen, they are removed to one of the universities[to spend] four
years more in procuring competent knowledge of Greek and Latin (Sheridan 13). When this
proper education is over, one receives a degree in art and concludes his education of a
gentleman.
What did the English public schools attempt to achieve through this classical education?
Perhaps they were merely Romanizing British elite boys. School was the perfect place for such
intellectual programming. British schoolboys, who were exposed to the classics at early ages in
their lives, definitely took on the ideals of ancient empire. They were involuntarily absorbing the
knowledge of Romans and built their characteristics based upon it. Consequently, their thoughts
and actions reflect those of the Romans. They spent long hours of school hours dedicated to
the classical education and the repetition of classical education in which instilled a habitus, a
habit of mind, deep inside them.
The importance of education cannot be overlooked, and the impact of the classical
education on the British men is doubtlessly immense. This notion of the influence of the classical
education on the characteristics of British men can be easily neglected. This is because it is
necessary to trace back to their origins of behaviors and minds to know the true effect of their
distinctive education. After the formal education, the British elites went on the Grand Tour,
When the British elite left public school with their minds steeped in the classics, it was
customary for them to travel throughout Europe on the grand tour (Coltman 14). The Grand
Tour was the final step in education that wrapped everything that was learned; The grand tour
was a form of classical pilgrimage that traced the cult of ancient Italyevery visual sight was
used to refer to an ancient hero, event or text (Coltman 35). This travel was extraordinary in the
sense that the British elites who had always met the Roman culture through the texts now were
able to perceive it through their own eyes. This firsthand experience made a Roman out of a
traveller finalizing the process of Romanization.
Even though the British schoolboys were educated in numerous literatures from both
Ancient Roman and Ancient Greek writers, much of the emphasis was on the Roman culture,
the Grand Tour stopped in Italy, it was not common for Englishmen to go so far in the
eighteenth century. Greece was admired from afar (Irwin 32). It is said that in Eton, the
schoolboys learned ancient Greek after they became proficient in Latin language. Nevertheless,
they repeated and translated passages from Homer, Lucian, Virgil, Horace... [and] they spoke
Latin during public debates and even-in the upper school at Westminster-conversation (Coltman
12). Was there every a distinction between the two empires? James Barry, an Irish Neoclassical
artist once said, [he] never could discover any solid ground for such a distinction (Irwin 69).
Perhaps, gaining knowledge in Ancient Rome was enough because Ancient Greece was, in a
sense, a part of Ancient Rome history. Since Ancient Rome borrowed cultures from Ancient
Greece, Greek culture was necessary passage to acquiring knowledge in Roman culture.
II. Ancient Rome and Education in Ancient Rome
The beginning of the classical education brings us back to the Ancient Rome itself. Rome
was once one of largest and the most powerful empires in the world. At its heart was the city of
Rome. Through the constant conquest and assimilation, the empire grew and created an identity
for itself. Inside the empire, the Romans were being educated. Education and schooling are
simple notion. It was nothing extraordinary; it was practically passing down ones knowledge to
another.
Education in early Ancient Roman times was taught in domestic settings. Even though
ludus, a private elementary school, existed, many of the teachings were done at home by
paterfamilias, the head of the family. The father was the one with responsibility to educate his
young ones in basic education, the father would shoulder his responsibilities
seriously[however]the content of native education was extremely limited, embodying little
more than the minima of reading, writing, and counting (Smith 186). Furthermore, the Laws of
the Twelve Tables, which is simply the ancient Rome laws, were required to be memorized.
Around 272 B.C., Romans began to bring Greek slaves to Rome. This enlarged the
influence of Greek culture on Rome; thus, marking the start of Hellenization, the spread of Greek
culture, in Rome. Some of the highly educated Greeks became grammatici, private teachers, and
taught children of wealthy Roman families. Of course, these grammatici taught Romans about
Greek culture through its literature. Among them are Livius Andronicus, who translated the
Odyssey into Latin. It is noted that by the middle of the century there wasa very
widespread appreciation of Greek literature among upper class Romans (Smith 187).
Consequently, the cultural blend created a new personality of elites who embraced both old
Roman and the new Hellenistic values.
Education for Romans started at the elementary school known as the ludus. Boys and
some girls attended ludus from about the age six to thirteen. Their teachers, the ludi magister,
who usually taught them to read, write, and count. Then, children entered the School of the
Grammaticus, the grammar school. Although the first grammar schools were Greek, by the first
century B.C., Latin grammar school appeared. It was place to learn basic grammar and literature.
The importance of learning Greek started to diminish as well. Latin replaced Greek as the
primary learning material, and In the Latin grammar schools of the imperial period Virgil
actually very largely replaced Homer (Smith 190). Children were in the grammar school were
usually from the age twelve to sixteen. After the grammar school, the students continued on their
education at the rhetorical school. The main purpose of it was to train public speakers of the
highest order (Smith 190). However, the Roman ideal of the educated man was he is a good
orator. This is because a good orator can be persuasive to endorse action. Just being a well-
educated did not remotely guarantee that he had the social insight and wisdom to lend his
weight to the promotion of the issues and measures that were most urgently needed by Roman
society (Smith 191). With respect to the praise of a great orator, it is evident that the British and
its subjects were into the idea of persuading others to incite actions, which is a practical skill that
the classical education implanted in the minds of young schoolboys.
Because the Latin and Greek classical education lacked real notion of social science and
the quantitative world, the decay of classical culture in the educational system of Rome occurred.
[the classical culture] did not promote a continuous expansion of factual information about
man and his world (Smith 192). They never developed the way to accurately measure matters in
quantities. It can be assumed that the British were simply borrowing the lens from the Romans
to see the world. The mode of thinking remained in the logic Classical learning attempted to
teach men how to act, not how to produce or construct, and when successful in this effort it
produced closed minds, which, if change occurred, were necessarily blind (Smith 193).
Nevertheless, the wealthy Romans continued to be educated in the classical culture, and Roman
emperors, from the Julio-Claudians through Antonines, were on the whole favorably disposed
toward educationthemselves were for the most part well-educated men (Smith 194). The
classical education largely became a decorative accomplishment, yet it remained a language of
the elites forming the habitus. It was more of a status symbol than practical purpose. Perhaps,
their decorative classical education fueled British to conquer and expand their territory, because
the classics set a boundary to their perspective of world as a place of logic and moral to be
conquered by a superior empire rather than a place of infinite wonders to be explored.
III. Imperialism: British and Roman Imperialism
During the 18th and 19th centuries, Britain was the imperial power. The British Empire
stretched all over the globe. It had no threatening rival, and it was uncontested in the sea.
However, in the midst of the rising ideas of liberty and equality, the empires stability was
challenged. In 1783, the British lost thirteen American colonies. The British shifted its focus to
expanding their trade instead of expanding their territorial empire (Racine and Mamigonian
210). Nevertheless, this did not dramatically decrease its influence as an imperial power. The
empire merely alternated its concentration to controlling the current colonies. Increased
commercial control and control of its subjects became important than ever before.
Evidently, Britain was the new Roman Empire. Rising as the worlds most powerful
empire, the British attempted to capture the antiquity of glorious Ancient Rome through the
classical education. The British elites who were well educated in the Latin and Greek were
familiar with the ancient ideals and histories. They emphasized the importance of the classical
education in their colonies. It is fascinating fact that they placed more importance in the Ancient
Roman civilization than their own empire. Perhaps this maybe contributed to the subjects of
British Empires attempt to become more like a British citizen by becoming more Roman.
An interesting comparison is the classical education being the white toga of the British
Empire symbolizing the status of citizenship in the empire. What exactly was the role of the
classical education in the lives of the British subordinates? The classical education gave them
access to the upper-class. It gave them a foundation to move up in the society and become more
British than ever. For instance, India was a colonized by the empire. India was known as the
jewel in the crown with a large resource to offer to the empire. Being an essential part of the
empire, the influence of the empire on the inhabitants of India was immense.
The classical education meant privilege and power. Only the ones who were wealthy
enough could enjoy the luxury of the classical education. Furthermore, the classical education
represented power because, without it, one was not considered elite. The entrance in to Indian
Civil Service (ICS) required examination in heavy emphasis on the ancient Greek and Rome,
Classical studies alone carried a total of 1500 points-more than any other subject except
English (Larson 201). The knowledge about India and its language was not as important as the
ancient histories. Consequently, it can be viewed that the classical education was a private
language of the elites. It literally was the entrance to becoming a gentleman. Romanization
was the process of becoming British and gaining social power.
The impact of the classical education in India is clear. Theres an evidence of the
classical education in use:
The Indian Mutiny spawned a large number of novelistic rewritings of the event
from the imperial point of view, many of which romanticized reports that
British women had been raped by Indian men with allusions to the legendary
rape of the Roman Lucretia by the foreign (Etruscan) Tarquin (Larson 216).
The necessity to go back to antiquity and drawing a connection between the British Empire and
the Ancient Rome shows the East Indian peoples habitus well steeped into their classical
learning.
It is noted that As a result of their educational system, elite British men took on a
distinctly Roman mind set. Their attitude to the spolia opima of their travels was proprietary
rather than exploratory (Coltman 11). India was not an exception to this proprietary Roman
expansion of British Empire. In 1876, Queen Victoria declared herself as Empress of India, then
she became known as the title Kaiser-i-Hind in India, a title which was suggested and
accepted because "the term 'Kaiser' was well known to the natives of India, having been used by
Muhammadan writers in relation to the Roman Caesar (Larson 222). Queen Victoria was
known to receive the classic education with an adequate Latin, and her reading collection
included 13 volumes of classical Latin and grammar(McDonald). Thus, the application of
her education can be seen in her rulings of the colony. She had established imperial power
borrowing the power of the classical vocabulary to magnify its impact on the subject races, and
even her British citizens; she is perhaps invented traditions for colonial states.
In the Imperial Assemblage celebrating Queen Victorias declaration of the tile as
Empress of India, there was another practice of Roman ideals that took place. Lord Robert
Bulwer-Lytton, Viceroy of India, embraced the Roman ideals by presenting the Indian princes
with Roman style silk standards (embroidered with a fictitious coats of arms), rather than with
traditional Indian banners (Larson 222). The purpose of his action can be translated into many
ways. However, it is certain that it was an act to create a correlation between the British Empire
and the Roman Empire to glorify the Britain through Roman culture. Of course, this was all done
with understanding that everyone, British and Indians, were familiar with the classical education.
Colonial India provides rich evidence of British classical education, and it is appropriate
to address the influence of the classical education on the Thirteen American colonies. These
American colonies were definitely a part of Imperial British Empire. American colonists were
essential British citizens living in the American continent following the British way of life.
Therefore, they had similar, if not identical, educational system. Our Founding Fathers of the
United States were no exceptions. At age nine, the third President of the Unites States Thomas
Jefferson learned Latin in English school; it was his fathers intention. Jefferson was deeply into
the Greek and Latin classics, and it is said that [Jefferson] filled his commonplace notebook
with quotations from the political philosophers and legal historians, the great poets and prose
writers (Mayo 3). His early education in classics was forming Roman habitus in him
unconsciously; his library full of Latin texts from Cicero, Virgil, Ovid, and Horace kept the
antiquity of the ancient civilization alive in him. He enjoyed ancient writers such as Homer, and
thanked his father for directing his early education in classics, I thank on my knees him [my
father] who directed my early education for having put into my possession this rich source of
delight; and I would not exchange if for anything which I could then have acquired, and have not
since acquired (Mayo 30). Clearly, the classical education has been meaningful to growth of
his intellectual mind as wells as giving him a pleasure.
Other Founding Fathers of the United States, John Adams, was steeped into the classical
education. Adams read many Latin texts written by Cicero, Tacitus, etc. He praised works of
Cicero and once mentioned that there was no greater statesman and philosopher than Cicero,
whose authority should ever carry great weight, and Ciceros decided opinion in favor of the
three branches of government (McCullough 375). His ideas and ambitions for the America may
have originated from his classical learning.
Even to the American colonists, the classical education may have been a private language
among the upper-class gentlemen. Through their education, they may have obtained the same
ambitions that inspired the British to be the new Rome. The classical education and its antiquity
created an elite, cosmopolitan intellectual culture (Coltman 44). America was following the
path of imperial Rome just as the British trailed behind the glory of the ancient empire. Adams
compared the creation of America as Immortal Rome was at first but an insignificant village,
(McCullough 39). The evidences of the classical education validated imperial power, and, to
a much lesser extentperhaps even in the minds of those who were subjected to it. As such,
classical studies were part of the cultural hegemony of nineteenth-century Britain (Larson 190)
IV. Neoclassicism
Neoclassicism is a name given to the movements that took place in the Northern Europe
which attempted to appreciate the ancient Western classical art and culture, mainly from Ancient
Greece and Ancient Rome. The movements took place during the mid-18th century to late 19th
century. The movements were around the decorative and visual arts including literature, theatre,
music, and architecture.
During the early 18th century, the neoclassicism movement was being motivated by the
increasing number of archaeological excavations. The two excavations, Herculaneum and
Pompei, in particular sparked the interest in artists and writers, Magnificent examples of
classical art, unknown to the Renaissance, were a revelation to artists and writers (Irwin 26).
These two ancient cities that were both destroyed by volcano eruptions exposed the classical art
and brought a stimulated revival of antiquity.
Neoclassicism was more than a mere attempt to imitate the ancient arts. It was not a case
of slavishly replicating the material culture of the ancients but rather a carefully molded
simulacrumas its canonical associations (Coltman 196). The emphasis was on creating art
that embodies ancient values. It is also based the classical education and literature of the ancient
civilizations, namely Ancient Rome, with the notion that binds an artists ambitions a modern
artist could only become great by imitating the works of classical Greece (Irwin 24). In the
early eighteenth century, the appreciation of antiquity was not only occurring in the actions of
artists, [The British gentleman] wanted classical sculpture as well as Italian paintings to
transport to his English country-house. Collecting became a fashionable aspect of neoclassical
taste (Irwin 27). British gentlemen could not finish his Grand Tour without taking some
souvenir.
Neoclassicism has strong correlation with the classical education, because Knowledge
of sculpture of this period was based on Roman copies and classical descriptions (Irwin 33). It
is no coincidence that neoclassical buildings can be found in places such as America. For
instance, Thomas Jeffersons Monticello is a building that embodies neoclassical ideals. These
demonstrations of going back to antiquity may lead us to believe that Ancient Rome was the
model for the British and its subjects and the source guidance of the way of life.
V. Conclusion: Importance of classical education
The impact of the classical education is enormous. Ancient Roman values that lived
thousand years ago survived and lived on in the minds of Imperial British Empire. Certainly, it is
difficult to gauge the impact of the classical education of Ancient Rome on British during the
imperial times. However, it is certain that the classical education was well present in the early
childhood education of many British elites forming their intellectual minds. The classics told
them how to think, and they built their moral values upon the literatures and the words of great
ancient writers such as Cicero and Virgil.
The classical education was an act of intellectual programming. To say it more precisely,
it was traditional practice of becoming social elite. British elites finished this education of
becoming gentlemen and closed their classical learning with the Grand Tour. Nevertheless,
their minds were deeply steeped into the classics. Finding values, ideals, and guidance from the
classics. Their foundations, and the origin of thoughts, were the classics, The schoolboy rituals
of parsing, translating, and imitating the classical authors patented styles of thought among the
British elite (Coltman 14). Their habitus induce them to be Romans of their current Imperial
British Empire. They are caught in the behaviors of fabricating the antique.
Of course, it might be too simple to conclude that the classical education was the only
way of gaining higher social status in the imperial period. In addition, it is stretch to say that the
classical Latin literatures influenced the American colonists, such as John Adams and Thomas
Jefferson, to advocate for independence. Nonetheless, it may well have become their habitus to
follow what their classical education has taught them. The British and their subjects, American
colonists and East Indians, were not merely imitating the ancient Romans; they were intellectual
descendants of Romans.

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