Let me examine some ancient forms of basic learning to see how they stack up to today’s basic learning.
If university learning is believed to be the culmination in learning, then the basic learning will be the stepping stone towards it. However, ancient education system divided the learning clearly into what men can learn or women can learn.
Ancient Egyptian education was around boys learning either farming or the trades from their fathers. Girls learned from their mothers things like cooking, sewing and maintaining the house. Reading, writing and mathematics were limited to wealthier families and learning was mostly by memorizing.
Ancient Greek education had the school system where boys went to school to learn reading, writing and mathematics and girls learnt from their mothers. However, Spartan girls learned athletics and dancing mostly to become healthy mothers to bear strong babies to become strong soldiers.
Roman education had both girls and boys attending schools, but it was limited to wealthier families. While boys continued to higher secondary school education, girls left the primary schools called Ludus, where basic writing, alphabets and simple mathematics were taught.
Ancient Hindu education revolved around Gurukul system where boys went to learn from a Guru and completion of the education was only when the Guru told so. However, the Gurukul system was wholly dependent on what Guru would teach. Hence, students would go to different Gurus to learn different things.
I will examine the 20 the century learning in my next blog to give you a feel for the COL concepts and the merits and demerits of the approach.