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Class Size and Pedagogy in Isocrates' School

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  24 February 2017

Edward J. Power
Edward J. Power*
Affiliation:
Boston College
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Extract

Historians of ancient education have been speculating about the enrollment in Isocrates' school. While enrollment can hardly be taken as a critical historical datum—and evidence supporting even the best opinions on the subject is not too good—these speculations may bring to light some little-known dimensions to Isocrates' basic teaching method. If Isocrates were teaching as many as 100 students a year, his pedagogy should not have been the same as if he taught only 100 students during his entire career. Freeman believes that Isocrates had a huge school attracting an annual clientele of 100 students; Isocrates himself speaks of having had more pupils than all the other schools combined. Marrou, on the other hand, describes the Isocratic school as an elite institution supplying an academic adventure of rare quality to carefully selected and highly motivated persons. Is there any way of illuminating these divergent views since apparently they cannot be reconciled?

Type
Education in Antiquity
Information
History of Education Quarterly , Volume 6 , Issue 4 , Winter 1966 , pp. 22 - 32
Copyright
Copyright © 1967 by New York University 

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References

Notes

1. For example, Johnson, R. S., “A Note on the Number of Isocrates' Pupils,” American Journal of Philology , LXXVIII, 297–300; and Marrou, H. I., A History of Education in Antiquity (New York: Sheed & Ward, 1956), p. 82.Google Scholar

2. Freeman, K. J., Schools of Hellas (3d ed.; London: The Macmillan Company, 1932), p. 191.Google Scholar

3. Antidosis , p. 41. He refers, of course, to the schools conducted by stationary schoolmasters who aimed at the training of leaders for politics and society.Google Scholar

4. Marrou, , op. cit. , p. 82.Google Scholar

5. Antidosis , pp. 39, 146, 164.Google Scholar

6. Johnson, , op. cit. , pp. 297–300.Google Scholar

7. This estimate of lower middle-class income is made by Glotz, G., Ancient Greece at Work (London: Kegan Paul, 1926), p. 236.Google Scholar

8. Laistner, M. L. W., “The Influence of Isocrates' Political Doctrine on Some Fourth-Century Men of Affairs,” Classical Weekly , XXIII, 131.Google Scholar

9. Antidosis , pp. 183–85.Google Scholar

10. For example, see Jebb, R. C., Attic Orators , II (New York: The Macmillan Company, 1893), 5 ff.; and Hudson-Williams, H., “Thucydides, Isocrates, and the Rhetorical Method,” Classical Quarterly, LXI, 76-81.Google Scholar

11. Johnson, R. S., “Isocratic Methods of Teaching,” American Journal of Philology , LXXX, 36.Google Scholar