Elementary Education

The Artifacts of Learning

Artifacts of Teaching Young Children

Topic Description and Links

What examples of the learning and teaching of young children can be found in the artifacts and settings of ancient to contemporary Greece? How were games used as an educational artifact? How was elementary educational practices and settings depicted in the artifacts of other domains such as painting, sculpture, music, poetry, drama, and the physical arts?

The idea that youngsters take kindly to reading, writing and arithmetic when taught by way of games was dominant to the ancient Greek theory of education.

Generative Questions and Hints

To help you reason through this case, answer these questions and record your responses to recall during the corresponding lesson activities in Greece and for the reports that you will make on what you have learned.

	How was learning achieved through games in ancient Greece? See HINT#1 below.
	How were games structured to provide useful educational experiences for young children? See HINT#2 below.

Hint#1: There were two aims that could be achieved through games in bringing up decent citizens:

1. To take on something of the ideal forms of manliness, fair-play, loyalty to his fellows and a host of similar virtues, all making for good citizenship.
2. To develop the childish beginnings of such virtues as self-control, friendly cooperation, respect for elders and to accept a certain measure of direction from above.

Children's games also became a sort of play-reflex of the activities of the family and neighborhood life and interests. Children were associated with one another naturally and spontaneously in such games.

The big difference is that the child was not entitled to a child’s life. From the beginning, male children were trained in the civic virtues of self control and manliness. They were educated in this by many extra-curricular methods.

Hint#2: Playgrounds were provided by the state. A matron functioned as a playground supervisor, armed with necessary authority. The children’s games are treated as a part of the state educational system, receiving a certain amount of impulse and control.

The games both acquired and received a certain measure and control. The spontaneity of childhood if left entirely to itself was thought that could easily run wild. In such cases the matron appointed by the state interfered.

Lesson Activity

Compare the aims that were posed to be achieved through games in ancient Greece with the way we currently use children’s games.

After collecting data from your visits to museums and sites try to create a list of the articrafts related to the educational use of games.

Topics for discussion:

After having the experience of the trip, your representations of knowledge will probably change becoming more specific and less abstract. The deeply situated knowledge you will experience will give more meaning and understanding to concepts and sites.

After your field trip, try to answer again the generative questions that were posed at the beginning of this presentation. Have your answers changed? In what way?

Gather data from your activity and record notes on your reasoning of this case for later analysis and reporting (and publishing on the QFK Web).

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