Drudgery

A less scholastic post is coming soon. But in the meantime, consider the following:

So then in Roman education there were three stages, presided over by the litterator, the grammaticus, and the rhetor respectively. [...]
The litterator taught the elements of knowledge, the three R's, reading, writing and arithmetic. Although Quintilian was to leave as fine an outline of primary education as man ever produced, it is probably true to say that never at any time in the history of education was primary education worse done than it was in Rome. [...]
Such then was the content and method of the Roman education. In the ancient days it was founded on an ideal of the home and of parental duty than which none has ever been higher. The very circumstances of empire conspired to make that ideal impossible. So Rome produced a primary education which was founded on the drudgery of repetition and the incentive of corporal punishment; and she produced a secondary education which was dominated by the conviction that the power to speak in public was the only power worth having, and the career of the orator the only possible career.
(William Barclay, Educational Ideals in the Ancient World, 1959, pp. 160, 190-191)

Sadly enough, the pages between these quotes sounds horrifically like modern public education. One more item for Dr. Fears to compare our culture to Rome's, right next to fast food.