A Short History of Writing Instruction

From Ancient Greece to The Modern United States

James J. Murphy, Chris Thaiss

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2020
• ISBN:
  9781000053555
• Edition: 4
• Topic: Education
• Subtopic: Education General

This newly revised Thirtieth Anniversary edition provides a robust scholarly introduction to the history of writing instruction in the West from Ancient Greece to the present-day United States.

It preserves the legacy of writing instruction from antiquity to contemporary times with a unique focus on the material, educational, and institutional context of the Western rhetorical tradition. Its longitudinal approach enables students to track the recurrence over time of not only specific teaching methods, but also major issues such as social purpose, writing as power, the effect of technologies, orthography, the rise of vernaculars, writing as a force for democratization, and the roles of women in rhetoric and writing instruction. Each chapter provides pedagogical tools including a Glossary of Key Terms and a Bibliography for Further Study. In this edition, expanded coverage of twenty-first-century issues includes Writing Across the Curriculum pedagogy, pedagogy for multilingual writers, and social media.

A Short History of Writing Instruction is an ideal text for undergraduate and graduate courses in writing studies, rhetoric and composition, and the history of education.

Chapter 1

Ancient Greek Writing Instruction and Its Oral Antecedents

Richard Leo Enos

Key Concepts

Abecedaria • Aoidoi • Casuistry • Craft Literacy • Curriculum • Declamation • Epigraphy • Hupogrammateus • Letteraturizzazione • Logography • Melete • Paideia • Phronesis • Progymnasmata • Rhapsodes • Rhetoric • Sophists • Sumposium • Syllabary • Technē • Thetes.

Synopsis: The Scope of Writing Instruction in Ancient Greece

Conventional approaches to understanding writing instruction in ancient Greece typically draw upon well-established literary sources. Since the last edition, new sources of material evidence—such as statuary, pottery, epigraphy,^* and continuing excavations at archaeological sites of instruction and performance—have brought to light new sources for study. These new contributions have enriched our understanding of the types and range of writing instruction in ancient Greece. As with the previous edition, Athens is an understandable focal point of study, not only because this powerful and enduring city-state is widely regarded as the first literate community in ancient Greece and offers a substantial amount of evidence for examination, but also because new sources of evidence have come to light in recent decades that tell us a great deal more about Athens as a literate community. Archaeological excavations in the Agora, for example, have unearthed inscriptions and related artifacts that provide material evidence about everyday writing habits and how they were learned. These new resources—often in the form of graffiti and dipinti—expand and deepen our knowledge of what community literacy meant in ancient Athens and, correspondingly, the attendant modes of instruction that accompanied a variety of writing functions.

* Glossary terms are printed in bold in their first appearance in the text.

Figure 1.1 Sitting scribe. Greek terracotta figurine from Thebes, Boeotia. 1st quarter of the 6th century BCE. Location: Louvre, Paris, France.

Photo Credit: Erich Lessing/Art Resource, NY. By permission of Art Resource: image reference, ART58134 (© The Metropolitan Museum of Art/Art Resource, NY).

In addition to discussing writing instruction at Athens, this chapter also includes perspectives on writing instruction from other prominent Greek city-states ranging as far east as the Ionian cities of Western Anatolia. The reach for understanding writing instruction in Greece extends beyond Athens because in the last decades archaeological contributions have revealed that there were centers for the study of rhetoric in ancient Greece that were lost, and rediscovering these centers has enriched our understanding of the spectrum of writing instruction across the Hellenic world. For example, extensive study at Rhodes, Sparta, Thebes, Teos, and Halicarnassus reveals not only rival manifestations of rhetoric but also correspondingly different approaches to the teaching of writing. For city-states such as Athens, writing for civic purposes was important. For others, as with Sparta, effective written communication in military situations was critical. For still others, such as Rhodes, rhetoric that stressed cross-cultural issues was emphasized. Some sites, such as Halicarnassus (i.e., the modern Turkish city of Bodrum), are currently under study.¹ The instructional approaches vary at these and other sites in ways that correspond to the orientations of rhetoric. Such examples illustrate the diversity of writing instruction and explain why certain educational approaches emphasized different features of writing in their instruction, and make clear the necessity of more fieldwork.

The ever-widening spectrum of writing instruction expands not only in sites other than Athens, but also with respect to history and in gender. The long-held belief that women were not literate needs to be reconsidered and qualified. There is evidence that writing instruction occurred even during Greece’s Bronze Age (c. sixteenth to twelfth centuries BCE) and that the training and use of writing involved women to a much greater degree than had previously been realized.² Evidence examined a few years ago at the British Museum suggests that literacy was not uncommon among certain classes of Athenian women (see also Figure 1.2).³ Further, epigraphical evidence reveals that education for women in Athens was not representative of all of Greece. Co-educational systems were known to have existed on both Teos and Chios and, as Marrou notes, “in Hellenistic schools sexual discrimination tended to disappear.”⁴ We often assume, for example, that writing is for the privileged few. We now understand, however, that some writing was done as a functional craft practiced by artisans of the thetes class with instruction in the form of teaching a labor-skill. Such new evidence provides a more comprehensive view of both civic literacy and also the spectrum of writing instruction ranging from writing as an aspect of early education, writing in everyday social interaction, writing as a trade-skill, and writing at the most sophisticated and highest levels of advanced education. Finally, and because ancient Greeks faced the challenge of communicating effectively with other social groups, this chapter also examines writing instruction for such cross-cultural purposes as a commercial transaction with Phoenicians, Carthaginians and Etruscans.

1 Richard Leo Enos, “Was There an Art of (Asiatic) Rhetoric at Halicarnassus? A Plea for Rediscovering the Lost Centers of Classical Rhetoric,” The Routledge Handbook of Comparative and World Rhetorics, ed. Keith Lloyd (New York, NY and London: Routledge, forthcoming).

2 Richard Leo Enos, Natasha Trace Robinson, and Heidi Gabrielle Nobles, “Rhetorical Decipherment and the Archaeological Implications of Field Rhetoric for the Recovery of Women in the History of Ancient Rhetoric: A Note on the Bronze Age Women of Linear B Scripts from Pylos,” Journal for the History of Rhetoric, forthcoming.

3 Richard Leo Enos. “The Archaeology of Women in Rhetoric: Rhetorical Sequencing as a Research Method of Historical Scholarship.” Rhetoric Society Quarterly 32.1 (Winter 2002) 65–79.

4 H. I. Marrou, A History of Education in Antiquity, trans. George Lamb (Madison, WI: University of Wisconsin Press, 1956 [reprinted in 1983]) 222, esp. ns. 1 and 2.

Figure 1.2 Painter of Bologna 417 (5th century BCE). Two schoolgirls, one holding a writing tablet. Terracotta kylix (drinking cup) c. 460–450 BCE. The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, NY, U.S. By permission of Art Resource: image reference, ART367355.

(© The Metropolitan Museum of Art/Art Resource, NY).

Issues of Historiography and Writing Instruction in Ancient Greece

At first glance, the study of writing instruction does not appear to seem complex, but there are issues of historiography that must be noted. If we consider “literacy” to be nothing more than acquiring the skill of how to read and write, then writing instruction would be nothing more than learning the rudiments of a recording technique that would serve as an aid to speech. However, it is important to stress the complex, endemic relationship that existed among reading, writing, and speaking in ancient Greece. We tend to think of writing instruction as a separate category from oral instruction, but the interrelation of orality with literacy was much closer than our current perspectives reveal. Writing instruction was integrated with, and a part of, “oral” instruction, as is clearly evident when we examine Greek declamation.⁵ Writing developed for reasons other than as an aid to memory for speech. Writing also served as a technology for developing not only tally systems to facilitate quantitative memory but also problem-solving in early mathematical accounting. In the past, insights into the cognitive processes that structure meaning have been through the study of theory and performance. An understanding of instruction provides another critical perspective on the relationship between thought and expression, between wisdom and eloquence, in ancient Greece.

The Homeric Tradition of Oral Education and the Development of Writing Instruction

Before writing, of course, Greece was exclusively an oral culture or, in the terms of Walter J. Ong, a culture of primary orality.⁶ Ancient Greeks relied on oral discourse to express thoughts and sentiments; their culture, including their educational practices, was oral. If we were to use three adjectives to characterize what we know about the earliest forms of Greek education they would be: oral, musical, and athletic. The earliest known educational practices in Greece were direct and personal, often associated with family relationships. Elders of the family—both male and female—participated in educating their children personally and directly. Such knowledge, especially at this earliest, preliterate phase of instruction, was oral, aural and physical. At the heart of this education was the sumposium. That is, wisdom was imparted to youth from family elders; in the case of young boys, education passed through elder males and was seen as a means for not only imparting wisdom but also strengthening kinship bonds. Females had parallel forms of instruction, primarily directed toward learning domestic skills. In both instances, and before writing began to be introduced, the family-bound education was cemented through orality.

While the earliest Greeks did not have an education that could be described as communal or systematic, the “curriculum” was fairly common, at least among the higher classes of citizens. The one clear exception was Sparta, whose citizens had their own mode of communal education and chose to de-emphasize literacy to the point that some Spartans even bragged about their inability to read and write.⁷ In most other settings, however, the responsibility for education centered on the family. In addition to the skills necessary for managing the economy of property and (in many cases) animal husbandry, youthful citizens were “educated” by learning Homer, by engaging in athletic contests that were oriented toward military and agonistic skills, and by acquiring (to some degree) proficiency in music. Eventually, education would be de-centered away from the family and home in two respects. First, centers such as the gymnasium would evolve from sites of military and athletic training to include other forms of education. One of the most important aspects of this education was elementary rhetorical exercises called progymnasmata. Although these early exercises are most closely associated with the more formalized educational practices of the later Hellenistic and Roman periods of writing instruction, scholars such as D. A. Russell strongly argue that they were evident early in Greek education.⁸ Second, instruction from the home would be extended by foreign educators (metics), who would be attracted to cities such as Athens. In fact, many of the most famous Sophists were often non-Athenian but saw in Athens a site that offered both the freedom and the reward for their pedagogical skills.

5 D. A. Russell, Greek Declamation (London and New York, NY: Cambridge University Press, 1983).

6 Walter J. Ong, Orality and Literacy: The Technologizing of the Word (New York, NY: Methuen, 1982) 6, 11, 31–75.

7 Richard Leo Enos, “The Secret Composit...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Dedication
• Table of Contents
• Before You Read This Book: What is the Story Here?
• 1. Ancient Greek Writing Instruction and Its Oral Antecedents
• 2. Roman Writing Instruction as Described by Quintilian
• 3. Writing Instruction from Late Antiquity to the Twelfth Century
• 4. Writing Instruction in Late Medieval Europe
• 5. Reading, Writing, and Rhetoric in the Renaissance
• 6. Continuity and Change in Writing Instruction in Eighteenth- and Nineteenth-Century Great Britain
• 7. “Available Means” of Rhetorical Instruction: “Broadening Perspectives” on Rhetorical Education Prior to 1900
• 8. Writing Instruction in U.S. Colleges and Schools: The Twentieth Century and the New Millennium
• Not a Conclusion but an Epilogue
• Glossary of Key Terms in the History of Writing Instruction
• The Next Step in Your Research: A Bibliography for Further Study
• Contributors
• Index