Poetry

Homer as Educator

The Educational Practice of Poetry

Topic Description and Links

And when the boy is beginning to understand what is written...they put into his hands the works of the great poets, which he reads at school; in these are contained many admonitions, and many tales, and praises and encomia of ancient famous men, which he is required to learn by heart, in order that he may imitate or emulate them and desire to become like them.

- Pythagoras, from The Protagoras by Plato

Epic poetry, particularly Homer's The Illiad and The Odyssey, was used to teach many things in ancient Greek education.

First, the poems were memorized by children barely able to recognize their letters. They then transcribed these poems, thereby acquiring reading and writing skills. The subject matter of the poems often dealt with Greek history, geography, and mythology, so that these areas were also taught to children through the use of poetry. The tales related also increased children's ability to case-based reason as their experiences were expanded through the retelling of adventrues in the epic poems.

But perhaps most importantly, the epic poems gave examples of the ideal men and women of society, whom the children learned to emaulate through painstaking study of the poems. In this sense especially, the epic poems are very similar to myth which was taught in ancient Greek elementary education.

For examples, Achilles was the ideal man of valor, while Odysseus was the ideal man of knowledge. Children were taught to revere the qualities of the characters they read about, hence enhancing their own personal character development. To further the ideal of valor, or physical strength and courage, physical education was a very important part of the early Greek curriculum.

Children were exposed to the poems before they could read by rhapsodes, who were men who traveled the country performing the poems as song so as to teach the poems to new learners. And the poems did such a good job of teaching subjects beyond their immediate realm, that the study of geography or astronomy were considered unnecessary, if not ludicrous.

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.

	Do you think rote memorization can ultimately promote complex mental models? What advantages and disadvantages do you find in this approach to teaching and learning?
	Can you think of any modern day correlaries of declarative knowledge promoting higher ideals? Hint: Alcoholics Anonymous, the creed and its memorization leading, hopefully, to a person leading a well-adjusted, temperate life.

Lesson Activity

While in Greece, listen to a group of "rhapsodes" perform. Do a search on that term to learn more about it. Can you think of a way to incorprate performance of mnemonic devices into a contemporary educational technology curriculum?

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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