EDUCATION DURING THE FIRST SEVEN YEARS

The State must begin the education of children before their birth; indeed, before the marriage of their parents. It must see that only persons of robust constitutions marry. Athletes are not suited for marriage, neither are weaklings. The best age for marriage is thirty-seven for a man, and eighteen for a woman. During their pregnancy women must take special care of their health, living on light food, and taking short walks. The State should make a law that they visit the temples of certain gods every day, and offer up a prayer of thanksgiving for the honor conferred upon them. They must carefully avoid all forms of emotional excitement. When defective children are born, they must be exposed or destroyed. The State must determine what number of children each married couple may have, and, if more than this number are begotten, they must be destroyed either before or after birth. "As soon as children are born, it ought to be remembered that their future strength will depend greatly upon the nourishment supplied to them." A milk diet is best, and wine must be avoided. "It is likewise of great importance that children should make those motions that are appropriate to their stage of development.... Whatever it is possible to inure children to, they ought to be subjected to from the very outset, and gradual progress to be made. Children, on account of their high natural warmth, are the proper subjects for inurement to cold. These and other points of the same nature are what ought to be attended to in the first years of the child's life. In the following years, up to the age of five, while children ought not to be subjected to any instruction or severe discipline, for fear of impeding their growth, they ought to take such exercises as shall guard their bodies from sluggishness. This may be secured by other forms of activity as well as by play. Care must be taken that their games shall be neither unrefined, laborious, nor languid. As to the conversation and stories which children are to hear, that is a matter for the attention of those officers called Guardians of Public Instruction. It ought to be seen to that all such things tend to pave the way for future avocations. Hence all games ought to be types of future studies. As to the screaming and crying of children, they are things that ought not to be prohibited, as they are in some places. They contribute to the growth of the body, by acting as a sort of gymnastics. Just as persons engaged in hard work increase their strength by holding their breath, so children increase theirs by screaming. It is the business of the Guardians of Public Instruction to provide for their amusement generally, as well as to see that these bring them as little as possible in contact with slaves. It is, of course, natural that at this age they should learn improprieties of speech and manner from what they hear and see. As to foul language, it ought, of course, like everything else that is foul, to be prohibited in all society (for frivolous impurity of talk easily leads to impurity of action), but above all, in the society of the young, so that they may neither hear nor utter any such thing. If any child be caught uttering or doing anything that is forbidden, if he be freeborn and under the age when children are allowed to come to the public table, he ought to be disgraced and subjected to corporal punishment; if he be older, it will be sufficient to punish him with disgrace, like a slave, for having behaved like one. And if we thus prohibit all mention of improper things, with stronger reason shall we prohibit all looking at improper pictures and listening to improper narratives. It ought to be made the business of the Guardians of Public Instruction to see that there does not exist a statue or a picture representing any such thing anywhere in the State, except in the temples of those gods to whom ordinary belief ascribes a certain wantonness.... There ought to be a regulation forbidding young persons to be present at lampoons or comedies before they reach the age when they are allowed to come to the public table and partake of wine, and when education has fortified them against all possible danger from them.... We all have a preference for what we first know; for this reason everything that savors of meanness or ignobility ought to be made alien to children. From the completion of their fifth year to that of their seventh, children ought to be present at the giving of the various kinds of instruction which they will afterwards have to acquire."

In this brief sketch of primary education we see that Aristotle does not depart far from the notions of Plato. It contains even the revolting features of his scheme. It assumes that the citizens—men, women, and, after a certain age, children—eat at public tables, and that education is entirely managed by the State,—the family, in this respect, being merely its agent. Some of its features, including the Guardians of Public Instruction (pa?d?????, child-herds) are plainly borrowed from Sparta.