Isocrates: Oratory and Rhetoric

educated, rational people who can use their reason to make decisions to govern society. Aristotle advocated the study of the liberal arts and sciences, which he believed enlarged a person’s knowledge and choices. Though needed by some individuals, vocational training, limited to specific skills, did not enlarge general human choices. Contemporary liberal arts and career educators still argue over the issue of liberal versus career education. As a teacher, you may encounter similar issues when students ask you why they should learn something they believe they will never use. What is your rationale for teaching certain skills and subjects but not others? How do we know what knowledge and skills your students may need in the future?

Aristotle was a proponent of compulsory schooling. Early childhood education included play, physical activities, music, and heroic and moral stories. Children from ages 7 to 14 were to learn reading, writing, arithmetic, and proper moral habits that prepared them for the later study of the liberal arts and sciences. Their curriculum also included gymnastics and music to develop physical dexterity and emotional sensitivity. From age 15 through 21, youths were to study the liberal arts and sciences— mathematics, geometry, astronomy, grammar, literature, poetry, rhetoric, ethics, and politics. At age 21, students would proceed to more advanced subjects, such as physics, cosmology, biology, psychology, logic, and metaphysics. Aristotle, like Plato, endorsed the doctrine of education as preparation in that each lower stage of schooling was to prepare students for the next higher stage. Later, progressive educators attacked the doctrine of preparation, arguing that students should pursue their interests and solve their immediate problems. Do you think the purpose of education is to prepare for future studies or to solve the problems in one’s immediate life?

Believing women were intellectually inferior to men, Aristotle was concerned only with male education. Girls were to be trained to perform the gender-specific household and child-rearing duties appropriate for their future roles as wives and mothers.

Aristotle on the School and Curriculum As a realist, Aristotle believed the curriculum should be based on subjects that rested on the classification of objects. Early on, children were to learn that some things are like each other and other things are not like each other. Objects can be classified into minerals, plants, and animals. These three simple but basic categories lead to more specific subdivisions. For example, we can study minerals in the subjects of mineralogy and geology; plants in the subjects of botany and horticulture; animals in the subjects of zoology and ichthyology; and people in the subjects of anthropology, history, literature, and political science. Through the liberal arts and sciences, we can access and inform ourselves about these subjects and use them to make our choices and decisions.

An Aristotelian school’s purpose is to develop students’ rationality. As academic institutions, schools should offer a prescribed subject-matter curriculum based on academic scholarly and scientific disciplines. In their preservice preparation, teachers need to acquire expert knowledge of their subjects and learn the methods needed to motivate students and transmit this knowledge to them. Aristotle’s philosophy has had great significance in Western education. Along with Christian doctrine, it became a foundation of medieval scholastic education, discussed later in this chapter, and of realism and perennialism, discussed in Chapter 6, Philosophical Roots of Education.

3-5h isocrates: oratory and rhetoric

The Greek rhetorician Isocrates (436–388 BCE) is significant for his well-constructed educational theory, which, taking a middle course between the Sophists and Plato, emphasized both knowledge and rhetorical skills.39

39Ekaterina V. Haskins, Logos and Power in Isocrates and Aristotle (Columbia: University of South Carolina Press, 2004). Also, see Gerald L. Gutek, A History of the Western Educational Experience (Prospect Heights, IL: Waveland Press, 1995), pp. 52–54.