Middle ages what was education like

This remained the case not just in France but also elsewhere throughout Europe until at least the High Middle Ages. The Church, as the primary patron of arts and education, would remain the key institution which aided in imparting education to medieval Europe.

A wide range of subjects were taught as part of education during the medieval period. In grammar schools which typically fell under a large church, subjects such as Latin, rhetoric, Greek and basic sciences such arithmetic were taught. Towards the later medieval period, this list included geography and a number of other natural sciences as well.

In monastic schools which were directly associated with monastic orders, a wider latitude was exercised in the choice of subjects.

Such schools typically taught directly from the rich treasure-trove of Greek and Roman books, often exploring even such subjects as physics, philosophy and botany. Education in early medieval period was imparted and overlooked by the Church.

Frankish king Charlemagne was among the first in medieval Europe to support formal education. Medieval education institutions were of three types: grammar schools, monastic schools and universities. The first university in medieval Europe was established in Italy in It becomes more popular later.

The kind of education that you get there may be very slow, you may be reading one text and really absorbing it over a period of a year or more, copying out the text and absorbing it as you go. So in a royal court you might get the kind of education — you might learn your letters at the royal court, so you might become literate in Latin, just enough to be functional, maybe as a diplomat.

What does a cathedral school look like? The kind of education you get at these cathedral schools is shrouded in mystery. There are lots of cathedral schools that do exist. What happened there? Well, one account we have is by John of Salisbury who is a wonderful writer from the midth century.

He remembers his time at cathedral school, and this is actually quite a physical education: he remembers the master beating them, beating ideas into them. One of the oldest was in the important market town of Maidstone in Kent. Schools then were very small. Many had just one room for all the boys and one teacher who invariably had a religious background.

The teacher would teach the older boys who were then responsible for teaching the younger ones. Lessons frequently started at sunrise and finished at sunset. The opposite was true for the winter. Discipline was very strict. Mistakes in lessons were punished with the birch or the threat of it In theory pupils would never make the same mistake again after being birched, as the memory of the pain inflicted was too strong.

For those who excelled at a grammar school, university beckoned. Medieval England saw the founding of both Oxford and Cambridge Universities. Both universities were renowned seats of learning — though both universities had a reputation for exuberant student behaviour at this time. The sons of the peasants could only be educated if the lord of the manor had given his permission.