Spartan Education
The Spartans, located in the southern Peloponnesus, were a totalitarian society. The state was oriented entirely toward the military life. Weak children were abandoned to die in the wilderness so that the strength of the state would not be threatened by weak citizens.
Education, which was controlled by the state, was a harsh process of training for the males. The educational process was almost entirely physical.
The emphasis on preparing the male child for the military life included diligent programs of running and throwing activities, swimming, wrestling, boxing, and gymnastic activities.
Dance was popular in Sparta because it not only was used to initiate military movements, but was part of the ceremonial and recreational occasions as well. Music also was important, for much of the exercise was performed to music.
Many songs were composed to honour dead heroes, and the laws of the state were set to music. The male children went through three stages of military training. They left their homes to live in barracks at the age of seven years and training.
They left their homes to live in barracks at the age of seven years and trained in packs under an older youth until they were about fourteen. The then underwent more intensive military training until they were about fourteen.
They then underwent more intensive military training until they were about twenty years old, at which time they became regular members of the military.
Even as military men, they had to live in the barracks until they were thirty years old. At that age they could marry and leave the barracks, though they still were required to eat with the other soldiers, rather than in their own homes.
The education of the girls was not neglected by the state from the time a girl was seven years old until she was about eighteen.
The training, which emphasized weight control and conditioning to prepare the girls for motherhood, included many of the same activities used by the boys. The girls participated regularly in athletics, just as the boys did, and many markers honouring their athletic feats were put up by proud fathers and brothers.
Unlike the men, however, when a woman married, her athletic activities were ended, and she was expected to stay in the home.
While the Spartans were important participants in the games and sports at the many festivals of the times, they discouraged boxing and the pan ration because the fighter had to admit defeat to prevent death or severe injury.
Spartans were taught never to admit defeat. They considered victory very important, and the records of their victories provide many of the earliest clues to the nature of sport in Greece.
Because of their emphasis on military training, the Spartans developed the best war machine in Greece, but they did not develop the ability to rule well politically.
The boundaries of the areas that they ruled successfully were never very large, even though they did defeat the Athenians in the Peloponnese wars. The Spartans placed no real emphasis upon intellectual forms of education.
The Spartans were trained for war, but they were not equipped to survive a successful peace. Their inability to rule well in times of peace eventually led to the conquest of the Greek people, first by the Macedonians and then by the Romans. The Spartan failure points out the severe shortcomings of their unbalanced approach toward education.
