Ancient Rome Teachers: Despite the importance of education being recognized by the Romans, schools were not funded by the state. All schools were financed privately which led to huge variations in quality.
There was also very little financial security provided for Rome Teachers which meant that, while anyone could teach, salaries were low and talented professionals were few.
Advantages of Roman Education System
Ancient Roman schools had only one room and one teacher much like the American one-room schools. The same teacher taught boys of different ages, from about seven to eleven or twelve. (Boys younger than seven didn’t go to school).
The boys’ parents paid the teacher, the way your parents pay for music lessons or karate lessons today. Rich kids sometimes had a slave who walked them to school and back and kept them safe.
In order to cut back on costs, classes were often held outside in the streets, which must have been extremely distracting. School started at daybreak, to make good use of sunlight, and, while many classes stopped at noon, there were some which continued long after the lunch break.
Ancient Rome Teachers
A teacher’s day was exhausting not least because of the complaints received from tenants trying to sleep in houses near the makeshift classrooms. Teachers were hardly quiet when it came to dictation, it seems.
A teacher in ancient Rome would have lived in the home of a wealthy patrician, who would have provided the teacher with food and clothing appropriate to the house. The teacher would not have had much spending money but would have lived comfortably just the same. These are salaries in denarii per month, per student.
- Elementary teacher……………………………………………………………………. 50
- Arithmetic teacher……………………………………………………………………… 75
- Greek, Latin literature or geometry………………………………………… 200
- Teacher of rhetoric (public speaking)…………………………………….. 250
Concept of Home Schooling
The concept of home-schooling by parents was not unknown to the early Roman society before 6th century B.C. The mothers taught their daughters to do housework and anything else the mothers thought might be useful for their daughters to know. The mothers also taught their sons before the age of seven.
Ancient Greek and Roman education
In Roman Education System, after the age of seven, boys moved under the control of their fathers. The father would decide what his son needed to know in order to succeed in life and would give his son lessons.
Learning by following examples was considered important, so the son accompanied his father on all important occasions. Later in the history, Romans adopted Greek educations principals.
What Subjects were taught in Ancient Rome
The teacher taught the boys how to read and write, and also how to count and calculate some numbers. Books hadn’t been invented yet, and nobody in Europe knew how to make paper, so the boys read from papyrus scrolls.
To practice their writing, they scratched with wooden sticks on wooden boards covered with wax, or sometimes they scratched with a metal stick on old broken pieces of pottery.
The teacher wrote out the alphabet or lines from the Aeneid, and then the kids copied out what the teacher had written. They also learned math. He (all the teachers were men too) taught them their times tables. The boys memorized a lot of poetry, and sometimes they learned to play a musical instrument. They did not learn science, or art, or physical education.
