Toys included dolls, balls, drums, and hobby horses.
Children played "hide and seek", "here we go around the Mulberry
bush", and other group games. School children were taught by "horn
books". This was a piece of paper with the alphabet and perhaps a
religious verse, such as the Paternoster prayer, that was mounted
on wood and covered with thin horn to prevent tearing. Little
girls cross-stitched the alphabet and numerals on samplers. Block
alphabets were just coming in. Most market towns had a grammar
school which would qualify a student for university. They were
attended by sons of noblemen, country squires [poor gentlemen],
merchants, and substantial yeomen, and in some free schools, the
poor. School hours were from 6:00 a.m. to noon or later.
Multiplication was taught. If affordable, families had their
children involved in education after they were small until they
left home at about fifteen for apprenticeship or service.
Otherwise, children worked with their families from the age of
seven, e.g. carding and spinning wool, until leaving home at about
fifteen.
There were boarding schools such as Winchester, Eton, Westminster,
St. Paul's, and Merchant Taylors'. There, senior boys selected for
conduct and ability supervised younger boys. They thereby got
experience for a future in public life. The system was also a
check on bullying of the weak by the strong. The curriculum
included Lilly's "Grammar", Aesop, Terence's Roman comic plays,
Virgil's "Aeneid", the national epic of Rome, Cicero's "Letters"
reflecting Roman life, Sallust's histories showing people and
their motives, Caesar's "Commentaries" on the Gallic and civil
wars, Horace's "Epistles" about life and poetry, poet Ovid's
"Metamorphoses" on adventures and love affairs of deities and
heros, or "Fasti" on Roman religious festivals and customs,
Donatus' grammar book, and other ancient Latin authors.
Pages:
691
692
693
694
695
696
697
698
699
700
701
702
703
704
705
706
707
708
709
710
711
712
713
714
715