Learning lessons on education from ancient Greece

The free market Athenian education system (if it can be called a system) produced a remarkable number of innovations as teachers vied with one another to attract and keep students. Games were introduced to keep children’s interest and reduce the need for corporal punishment. A great variety of teachers sprang up. They were able to teach material which was contrary to accepted wisdom; after all, as long as a teacher was able to attract enough pupils to make a living, he or she was in business.

For example, in a climate which favoured men as teachers and questioned the need for girls to be educated, Aspasia, a female teacher born in neighbouring Miletus, was able to set up shop in Athens and promote the liberation and education of women, much to the displeasure of the ruling class. She was extraordinarily successful, so much so that it is said she attracted such luminaries as Plato and Pericles to her lectures and Socrates referred to her as his “excellent mistress in the art of rhetoric”.

Fifth century Athens is synonymous with learning, culture and intellectual creativity. No one would suggest that its free market education system was not solely responsible for this flourishing of the intellect. Nevertheless, it is significant that such a society, comprising as it did some of the wisest and most original thinkers in the history of mankind, was conducive to a free market approach to education.

If Brendan Nelson wants to move in the direction of a centralised education system, he must be able to come up with a justification based on sound educational research. But it will be very difficult for him to do so, because, as history shows, no good reason exists.