{"id":94649,"date":"2026-02-24T16:00:00","date_gmt":"2026-02-24T13:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/forklog.com\/en\/?p=94649"},"modified":"2026-03-13T08:25:13","modified_gmt":"2026-03-13T05:25:13","slug":"what-are-schools-for","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/forklog.com\/en\/what-are-schools-for\/","title":{"rendered":"Why Schools? The Timeless Value of Education in a Modern World"},"content":{"rendered":"
Today\u2019s pupils and students enjoy entire ecosystems for learning and can choose future careers according to their interests. However, it was not always so, and even now access to knowledge remains a luxury for many. The head, temporarily detached from our colleague, the crypto\u2011polymath Aremefe, traces how education has shifted across eras\u2014and why it still offers the safest investment.<\/p>\n
How Indians Learned<\/h2>\n
Setting: Takshashila, Ancient India. 5th century BCE.<\/strong><\/p>\n
In the era before Buddhism, education in what is now India was largely practical. On one hand, brahmins studied sacred Hindu texts, rituals and philosophy. On the other, children of lower castes learned to till the soil, wield a sword or stitch shoes.<\/p>\n
Sacred Hindu texts, rituals and philosophy occupied the\u00a0Brahmins, while\u00a0children\u00a0of lower castes learned to till the soil, wield a sword or stitch shoes.<\/p>\n
Learning\u00a0began for all but Shudras with the initiation rite of upanayana.\u00a0Specifically, with his wife’s consent, a father brought his son to a teacher so the boy might become a dvija\u2014”twice-born”.\u00a0The\u00a0boy then had two fathers: one who brought him into the physical world and one who guided him into the world of knowledge. As the Laws of Manu declared:<\/p>\n
\u201cIn the eighth year from conception one should perform the initiation for a Brahmin; in the eleventh from conception, for a Kshatriya; in the twelfth from conception, for a Vaishya. [The initiation] of a Brahmin who desires [to acquire] sacred knowledge may be performed in the fifth [year], of a Kshatriya who desires power, in the sixth, and of a Vaishya who desires wealth, in the eighth.\u201d<\/em><\/p><\/blockquote>\n
Those who skipped initiation became outcasts and could not marry within their caste. Meanwhile, girls, with rare exceptions, were taught at home and only household management. The most admired quality in any woman was obedience.<\/p>\nIllustration: ForkLog.<\/p>\n
A man now known to all upended that order: Siddhartha Gautama, the Buddha Shakyamuni. <\/span>He was born the former and became the latter. By breaking the Brahmins\u2019 monopoly on religious authority, he spiritually levelled all people. Society leapt forward and, in its wake, education reformed: Sanskrit, built on <\/span>Brahmi<\/span>, became the leading language of northern India. Leave ideograms to the barbarians\u2014we have an alphabet. \n<\/span> \nRoughly 300 years on, teachers began to receive payment. <\/span>India moved to a two-tier system: tol (primary school) and agrahara (higher learning). Agraharas taught mathematics, geography, medicine, music and even the art of snake-charming.<\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n
How Romans Learned<\/h2>\n
Setting: Rome. 1st century BCE\u20145th century CE. \n<\/strong> \nWealthy\u00a0families usually taught their daughters at home, while\u00a0poorer\u00a0girls learned alongside boys.\u00a0A\u00a0three-stage system\u2014elementary, middle and advanced schools\u2014took hold under Hellenistic influence.\u00a0Pupils\u00a0in elementary schools learned writing, reading and simple arithmetic, often from slaves.\u00a0Grammar\u00a0schools trained them in proper phrasing and textual interpretation, and also in astronomy, philosophy and music\u2014now taught by freedmen using the first textbooks.<\/p>\nIllustration: ForkLog.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n
Howeber, fewer reached the third stage, the schools of rhetoric, for two reasons: distance and price. Such institutions were rare in the provinces and far dearer than grammar schools. But there one learned Greek if Roman, Latin if Greek, composition on set themes\u2014and even gymnastics. Interestingly, free citizens taught, and slaves could also enter, but only with their owners\u2019 consent.<\/p>\n
Then, after Rome fell, many technologies and institutions vanished, decayed or changed beyond recognition.\u00a0In particular, education, too, became predominantly ecclesiastical.<\/p>\n
How Burghers Learned<\/h2>\n
Setting: Western Europe. 5th\u201314th centuries CE.<\/strong><\/p>\n
The Middle Ages could fill volumes, but our focus is education\u2014at three stages: Early, High and Late.<\/p>\n
In the Early Middle Ages<\/span> things were bleak. Had the Buddha Shakyamuni seen it, he might have slapped his forehead and gone into deep meditation. Once\u00a0again, education narrowed to a circle of initiates and centred on religion.\u00a0Preachers\u00a0served as teachers;\u00a0memorisation\u00a0and repetition defined instruction.<\/p>\n
Latin, the psalms and church singing remained beyond the reach of all but a\u00a0few.\u00a0A\u00a0child of wealthy parents might be sent to a monastic school, doomed to a life of service to God.\u00a0By\u00a0the standards of the time, not bad: food delivered, clothes laundered, hands kissed\u2014had trams existed, the fare would have been free. <\/span>But getting there took effort.<\/p>\n
The High Middle Ages<\/span> were livelier\u2014universities appeared. People, it turned out, were different. One boy sang psalms badly but had a kind look and could tear up a young willow with one hand; he was sent to a lord\u2019s court to learn arms, etiquette and horsemanship en route to knighthood and a portrait of his lady beneath his cuirass. Those inclined to intellect went to universities\u2014for learning and religion. All seemed set: universities existed, knights were ambitious, power intact. But nothing lasts forever.<\/p>\nIllustration: ForkLog.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n
Firearms and the Black Death reshaped learning. With the advent of handguns, knights declined as a fighting force; the plague thinned Europe\u2019s great cities. When it ebbed, the economy reset; hired merchants demanded triple for single, amassed fortunes and sent their children to study.<\/p>\n
Surging demand bred supply: Vienna, Copenhagen, Aberdeen and other universities. Education, though, was still for elites\u2014only now money was not the preserve of aristocrats.<\/p>\n
As navigation improved and vagrants could be trained for the sea, Europeans discovered a new continent\u2014America. Universities pored over the ancients; ignorance of Seneca\u2019s Moral Letters to Lucilius was bad form.<\/p>\n
The focus shifted from religious to general learning: geography, ethics, the rudiments of law. Gutenberg\u2019s press whirred\u2014those soot-blackened teacherly grimoires, handed down through generations, could be binned.<\/p>\n
Education grew professional. Sir Thomas More posed a radical question for his day: why should access to knowledge be a privilege if a chain is only as strong as its weakest link?<\/p>\n
But marvelling is not doing. To belittle More would be wrong, yet his works pale beside a true reformer of education: Jan Amos Comenius, the Czech writer and pedagogue. He was ahead of his time, seeking to teach through motivation, not punishment.<\/p>\n
Thanks to him, the class-and-lesson model took shape. Schooling became regular and inescapable; textbooks became standard; teaching became a state profession. The separation of “pay for labour” from “payment for good” put an end to arguments that \u201cknowledge is a divine gift\u201d and therefore must be free.<\/p>\n
More\u2019s idea bore fruit\u2014England introduced free schooling, vastly widening access. But the sirs wanted more: not just broadening knowledge, but making it universal and compulsory, and looking beyond secondary to higher education. They opened doors to children from low-income families and ethnic minorities\u2014an unheard-of liberty for the time.<\/p>\n
Comenius\u2019s ideas were refined; learning became continuous. The system was pyramidal: lower grades had more subjects at lesser depth; middle grades fewer subjects at greater depth; upper grades profile subjects at maximum depth.<\/p>\n
Bachelor\u2019s and master\u2019s degrees expanded as social elevators. A graduate of the arts might apprentice to a master; a doctor could open a practice; a master of law could enter government.<\/p>\n
Enough of foreign lands. Let\u2019s jump through space and time to the Soviet Union.<\/p>\n
The early post-revolution years were a breakthrough for education in Russia. The\u00a0literacy campaign (likbez) launched in 1919;\u00a0grades\u00a0vanished from schools alongside many other experiments\u2014soon scrapped under triumphant Stalinism.\u00a0A\u00a0strong ideological core now infused education’s natural-science and technical bent.<\/p>\n
From\u00a01918 to 1920, the authorities reorganized the Far Eastern, Nizhny Novgorod and Smolensk universities to prioritize cadres for industrialization and the army.\u00a0Cutting\u00a0deals with party policy, university leaders set up workers’ faculties and departments of socialism.<\/p>\n
A rabfak allowed workers and peasants who had missed secondary school to catch up in three to four years and prepare for higher education. Departments of socialism produced ideological units who, devoting their lives to Marxist-Leninist theory, spread it among the masses like preachers.<\/p>\n
Education almost always serves as a potent instrument of propaganda, but Soviet authorities raised this to a new qualitative level. Even after Stalin\u2019s death and the denunciation of his cult, authoritarian ideology did not leave schools and universities: alongside traditional courses in political economy and the basics of Marxism-Leninism came mandatory subjects such as scientific communism and the history of the CPSU.<\/p>\n
After the war, mores softened; children of White Guards could hold any university chair, not just in the natural sciences. The 10th\u201311th grades were a bridge to professional training. Given the USSR\u2019s production focus, many more vocational colleges opened than universities. After Gagarin\u2019s flight, the space sector\u2014and with it engineering and military-technical specialties\u2014became especially prestigious.<\/p>\nIllustration: ForkLog.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n
The USSR constitution guaranteed education to be entirely free and accessible to all social groups without gender distinctions. In practice there were surcharges for extended days, and some specialties had competitive entry\u2014not everyone could make the cut. Understandable: there were not enough rockets for all aspiring cosmonauts. Another problem was the shortage of schools in the regions.<\/p>\n
Overbearing bureaucracy hampered teachers. Paperwork and weak technical facilities lowered teaching quality, even if reporting took only 3\u20137% of working time.<\/p>\n
How Gen Z Learned<\/strong><\/h2>\n
Setting: Labubovo, planet Earth. First quarter of the 21st century.<\/strong><\/p>\n
We were taught much like the boomers, with one key difference: instead of the theory of capital we got practice from the start. Education is for everyone\u2014expensive, cheap or free\u2014but you still have to chip in for new curtains.<\/p>\n
School programmes vary by profile: more physics and maths here, more IT there, and elsewhere no lesson starts until you do three laps on skis. Higher education has become more elite as costs soar. As a classic line has it: \u201cThe factories stand idle; the country is nothing but guitarists.\u201d<\/p>\n
The COVID-19 pandemic sped up distance learning, exposing a serious flaw. Designing a course for LMS<\/span> takes time that is not funded by the state. Teachers are paid for contact hours, not for prep or marking. On the plus side, the system removes the drudgery of collecting exercise books and taking attendance.<\/p>\n
Late Gen Zers favour high-tech schooling: QR codes in textbooks and smart boards in class. Technology has leapt ahead: 20 years ago a fifth-grader might flaunt a Siemens S65 with Bluetooth and 38 MB of memory; today no one blinks at a pupil with an Apple ecosystem\u2014wireless earbuds, watch, phone and an NFC tag tucked in the shoe bag. For instance, graduates five years ago did not turn to LLM<\/span> to write papers; today 86% of surveyed students use<\/a> ChatGPT.<\/p>\nIllustration: ForkLog.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n
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