---
title: "History of education"
chunk: 4/16
source: "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_education"
category: "reference"
tags: "science, encyclopedia"
date_saved: "2026-05-05T03:59:32.171634+00:00"
instance: "kb-cron"
---

According to legendary accounts, the rulers Yao and Shun (ca. 24th–23rd century BC) established the first schools.  The first education system was created in the Xia dynasty (2076–1600 BC). During the Xia dynasty, the government built schools to educate aristocrats about rituals, literature, and archery (important for ancient Chinese aristocrats).
During the Shang dynasty (1600 BC to 1046 BC), normal people (farmers, workers, etc.) accepted rough education. At that time, aristocrats' children studied in government schools. Normal people studied in private schools. Government schools were always built in cities and private schools were built in rural areas. Government schools paid attention to educating students about rituals, literature, politics, music, arts, and archery. Private schools educated students to do farmwork and handworks.
During the Zhou dynasty (1045–256 BC), there were five national schools in the capital city, Pi Yong (an imperial school, located in a central location), and four other schools for the aristocrats and nobility, including Shang Xiang. The schools mainly taught the Six Arts: rites, music, archery, charioteering, calligraphy, and mathematics.  According to the Book of Rites, at age twelve, boys learned arts related to ritual (i.e. music and dance) and when older, archery and chariot driving.  Girls learned ritual, correct deportment, silk production, and weaving.
It was during the Zhou dynasty that the origins of native Chinese philosophy also developed. Confucius (551–479 BC) founder of Confucianism, was a Chinese philosopher who made a great impact on later generations of Chinese, and on the curriculum of the Chinese educational system for much of the following 2000 years.
Later, during the Qin dynasty (246–207 BC), a hierarchy of officials was set up to provide central control over the outlying areas of the empire. To enter this hierarchy, both literacy and knowledge of the increasing body of philosophy were required: "....the content of the educational process was designed not to engender functionally specific skills but rather to produce morally enlightened and cultivated generalists".
During the Han dynasty (206–221 AD), boys were thought ready at age seven to start learning basic skills in reading, writing, and calculation.  In 124 BC, the Emperor Wudi established the Imperial Academy, the curriculum of which was the Five Classics of Confucius. By the end of the Han dynasty (220 AD) the academy enrolled more than 30,000 students, boys between the ages of fourteen and seventeen years. However, education through this period was a luxury.
The nine-rank system was a civil service nomination system during the Three Kingdoms (220–280 AD) and the Northern and Southern dynasties (420–589 AD) in China.  Theoretically, local government authorities were given the task of selecting talented candidates, and then categorizing them into nine grades depending on their abilities. In practice, however, only the rich and powerful would be selected.  The Nine Rank System was eventually superseded by the imperial examination system for the civil service in the Sui dynasty (581–618 AD).

=== Greece ===

In the city-states of ancient Greece, most education was private, except in Sparta. For example, in Athens, during the 5th and 4th century BC, aside from two years of military training, the state played little part in schooling. Anyone could open a school and decide the curriculum. Parents could choose a school offering the subjects they wanted their children to learn, at a monthly fee they could afford.  Most parents, even the poor, sent their sons to schools for at least a few years, and if they could afford it from around the age of seven until fourteen, learning gymnastics (including athletics, sport, and wrestling), music (including poetry, drama, and history) and literacy. Girls rarely received formal education. At writing school, the youngest students learned the alphabet by song, then later by copying the shapes of letters with a stylus on a waxed wooden tablet. After some schooling, the sons of poor or middle-class families often learned a trade by apprenticeship, whether with their father or another tradesman.
By around 350 BC, it was common for children at schools in Athens to also study various arts such as drawing, painting, and sculpture. The richest students continued their education by studying with sophists, from whom they could learn subjects such as rhetoric, mathematics, geography, natural history, politics, and logic. Some of Athens' greatest schools of higher education included the Lyceum (the so-called Peripatetic school founded by Aristotle of Stageira) and the Platonic Academy (founded by Plato of Athens). The education system of the wealthy ancient Greeks is also called Paideia. In the subsequent Roman empire, Greek was the primary language of science. Advanced scientific research and teaching were mainly carried on in the Hellenistic side of the Roman empire, in Greek.
The education system in the Greek city-state of Sparta was entirely different, designed to create warriors with complete obedience, courage, and physical perfection. At the age of seven, boys were taken away from their homes to live in school dormitories or military barracks.  There they were taught sports, endurance and fighting, and little else, with harsh discipline.  Most of the population was illiterate.

=== Rome ===