Geographically, it’s a distinctive sea. It’s almost surrounded by land, much of which is temperate and arable, lending itself to farming. As crops are heavy, the nearby sea made the transport of those crops easier, which encouraged trade. It’s also a very large sea and relatively immune to hurricanes, which meant that competing civilizations could develop and try to out-do each other without running into each other unneccasarily, or being destroyed by natural disasters.
The spread of new ideas back then was glacial by today’s standards, but it happened more quickly around the Mediterranean than anywhere else. Like a pre-modern wiki-sea, everyone got ideas from everyone: the Egyptians developed irrigation, the Phoenicians the alphabet, the Israelites monotheism.
They fought each other, too. War was nasty and epic and cruel and in the history of the Mediterranean, nobody has a more fierce reputation than the warriors of Sparta.
Sparta was a tiny city-state in ancient Greece, but for nearly three hundred years it was the dominant military power of the Mediterranean. They achieved that distinction by creating a society focused primarily on producing great warriors. In doing so they not only created the foundation for all military training, but also incidentally developed the blueprint for educating children we still use today.
At the age of 7, Spartan boys were sent to the state-run agoge to become warriors, and often wouldn’t see their mothers again until they were. They were taught fighting, hunting and military discipline, with a particular focus on withstanding pain and hunger. Legendarily, boys had to find and fight a wild wolf as part of their ‘curriculum’.
By the time they graduated the agoge at about 18, they were the hardest men of a hard age. Their military routinely beat larger forces - despite being outnumbered, they won due to their legendary discipline and courage. According to ancient lore, such was the honor expected in combat that when Spartan mothers and wives sent their men into battle, they bid them to, “Return with your shield… or on it." Charming.
Even in the ancient world, the notion of sending children at seven to essentially join the army was a bit severe. I can just hear the non-Spartan parents threatening their kids – “Tidy your room, or I’m sending you to Sparta!”
Still - it clearly produced remarkable soldiers. The agoge became famous. That idea, of seeing children away at 7 years old, influenced first Athenian and then Roman education and, ultimately, our education system today.
The Athenian versions were less militaristic than the Spartan agoge, of course. Instead of pitting their students against wild wolves, they focused on subjects like morality, science and art. Instead of being a compulsory state-run institution, the schools and tutors were paid for by wealthy families. Often, the schools were only attended during the day whilst the boys returned to their families at night! The agoge-inspired schools remained a vigorous challenge for the children.
From the age of seven, the Athenian and Roman children were taught how to think. For instance, they were given complex moral questions, where no clear ‘right’ answer exists, and asked to deduce their response. Logic and principle were paramount. As there was no correct answer, their ideas revealed their thinking skills. Is stealing wrong? What about stealing when you’re hungry? Is courage always a good thing? The child’s opinion was irrelevant; the point was to develop their logical ability. In order to defend their logic, they were taught Rhetoric.
Rhetoric was the art of speaking. Throughout ancient Greece and Rome, children were taught how to construct an argument, how to debase another’s argument, and how to win a crowd when speaking in public. The most celebrated rhetorician of the age was Cicero, famous for both his many students and his convincing political speeches. Long before the sound bite, there was an established protocol for reasoned discourse. There were (and are) rules for doing it well.
Now, let's stop and consider the curriculum of these education systems.
The agoge of the Spartans was specifically designed to reflect the boys' future role in society. They became great at fighting, and the Spartan won a lot of wars.
The Roman children were taught how to think and share those thoughts publicly. They were expected to govern as adults, and in their world, public oratory was the internet. So they grew an empire, and ran lots of governments, partly based on their skills as governors. (Of course, they had armies, too)
Of course, we have no idea what our kids will do as adults. The world is changing fast. We know they’ll be expected to navigate a highly complex society, and it seems the goalposts will change rapidly in their lifetimes.
Even still, there are a few things we can predict they'll need, and some they likely won't.
For instance, most kids will graduate high school with a surface understanding of geography, chemistry and algebra. These are nice, classic topics - all ones I enjoy learning about to this day. But how many kids need these topics?
Most kids won't be taught a single class in Contract Law, or the Tax Code. There are very few classes on Banking, Accounting or Loans. These are all topics that almost all adults need to understand in life. And of course, as we've seen in the 2008 banking crises, very few do.
Surely the Tax Code is a more robust topic, of clear benefit to the student, as compared to Algebra in an age of smartphones. I think they'd love it - I can see the teacher, "do you want the government getting more of your money than they're due?" and cannot imagine a single wise-crack shared.
The core curriculum, the one all kids have to take, is based around the perceived needs of math and science from a century ago. Science is great, but my knowledge of valance levels, or cell mitosis, has never assisted me in my adult life.
The main point here is that we teach children very little about the adulthood they're likely to have, whereas the Spartans, Greeks and Romans focused their education systems on the topics required in actual life.
(At worst, it couldn't be a conspiracy, could it? Keep kids ignorant of all this financial stuff until we get them hooked on credit cards and student loans and stuck on the work treadmill of life...)
Either way, it’s not good. The question the ancient world asked their children was, what will you need to know as an adult? We seem to ask our kids, what would it be nice to know as a child?
What I think the Spartan agoge teaches us is that, starting from 7 years old, children can handle learning more advanced topics, even robust ones, and that it’s ok to start preparing them for adulthood. Unlike the Spartan agoge, our schools aren’t doing that job.
Before we go too fast, the first question we ought to ask is whether the children are ready for it. Nobody wants a return to ancient times. Just because they started preparing children for adulthood earlier, and with more robust topics, it doesn't mean they should have.
So let's look at the science of kids brains and how they develop.
First, some basics: of all the parts of the brain, the prefrontal cortex is what makes us most human – only the great apes share this relatively recent evolutionary development, but ours is much bigger. It is responsible for reason, planning, abstract thought, risk analysis and complex thinking – it allows us to function as adults.
The brain doesn’t grow in a linear or uniform way; for instance the mid-brain, part of which is responsible for speech, grows a lot more in the first couple of years than the prefrontal cortex. This is why kids can usually speak before they can plan a logical argument. Makes sense.
The prefrontal cortex is actually the last part of the brain to develop fully, which it doesn’t complete until we’re about 18. Therefore it’s a bit surprising to learn that by the age of seven it is already 85% fully developed. Neurologically speaking, it’s very capable by the time the ancients educated their kids.
An interesting sub-aspect of all this is the rate of growth. At the age of six, the prefrontal cortex is about 75% developed, whilst at the age of eight it’s only 77% developed. So the prefrontal cortex grows very quickly right up until about the age of seven, and then it settles into a much slower rate of growth over the next 10 years.
I'm not a neuroscientist, but follow this logic with me. If we teach children how to speak whilst the speaking part of their brain is growing, then shouldn't we teach children about things like risk analyses, comparing complex moral situations and abstract thought while that part of the brain is developing?
If so, according to that logic, we should start teaching kids how to reason out problems and plan solutions at the age of 8, when their brain has developed that capacity. But many kids are more focused on learning their times tables at that age.
The ancients seem to have got it right. We seem to have evolved so that the brain is ready to be taught some complex life stuff at this age.
Of course, the ages listed here are only averages and every child is different. And just because the brain may be capable doesn’t translate to ability. As any parent knows, kids can be as logical as a bank bailout. They need to be taught how to reason and plan and think in more complex ways. But the potential seems to be there.
This becomes even more interesting when we consider the plasticity of the brain. Neuroplasticity describes how the brain changes when we learn stuff. Scientists have worked out that, whenever we learn something, the physical architecture of our brain actually changes – the little neurons make new connections via their synapses.[11] It’s like creating a network of roads. This is why we don’t have to learn to walk every day of our lives – we’ve already built a road along a path of neurons that knows how to walk.
This continues to happen throughout our lives, which is the proof you need whenever someone says ‘people never change’ – actually they do, at a cellular level, all the time. As it happens, it’s easier to build some roads when the brain is actually constructing the part of itself that is meant for that road, which is why it’s easier to learn languages when we’re young. When we wait until the mid-brain has finished growing, it becomes harder to learn a language. It’s not impossible, just harder. The brain wants to be taught certain things at certain times.
Well, contrast that with how we teach some more advanced concepts in our society, essentially waiting until kids are 18 years old and the prefrontal cortex has finished growing before sending them to college to make their own decisions.
This is a big point, so I’m going to repeat it. The prefrontal cortex, the part which has its main growth phase from 8-18, is what helps us develop our complex thinking skills for life – things like:
· Planning and organizing a complex activity, and assessing its risk.
· Weighing up what is right in awkward moral dilemmas.
· Understanding complex documents, like legal and tax ones.
We know that the brain performs most efficiently when it learns an activity while the part of the brain responsible for that activity is growing. We know the prefrontal cortex is mostly developed, but untrained, from the age of seven/eight. And while there are exceptions, in our society we generally wait until the prefrontal cortex is finished growing before we provide kids with the freedom and support to really challenge and develop their prefrontal cortex.
Here’s a crazy idea – maybe if we taught kids how to think before they turned 18, allow them to experience genuine risk and moral quandary, perhaps they'd be more willing to go after life in the way we hope for them later.
So what does all this add up to?
Well, for me, I've decided to start teaching my children some of the ideas listed above right now. Yes, Contract Law and Tax Code for my 8 year old. Their favourite game is when I ask them how much income I had to generate, before taxes, to pay for their ice cream or roller coaster. They also clearly enjoy being given a budget at the amusement park - so I give them £25 for food, drinks, and ice cream for the whole day (which doesn't go far in an amusement park) and they can choose when and where to spend it. When we see a homeless person, or a piece of bad news, we talk it through. Properly. Not just the part about how bad it is, the whole circle that contributes to it. We also talk about the various biases we humans have, and why we make mad decisions. All kinds of stuff, but I guess, stuff you normally don't think kids will be interested in.
I find, with a little imagination, it's not that hard to make it interesting, and they love it.
For me, the grand point is taking time on every holiday to think about this, to try to expose them, bit by bit, to more complex ideas.
At the age of 13, I'm also taking each of my kids on a one-month adventure. It'll involve planning and risk, and all sorts of things. It won't be easy, but they will learn a lot from it. Ben is turning eleven soon, and his adventures will be either hiking or cycling or canoeing.
Just trying to do my bit.
The next few parts of the blog will carry on from here, focusing on children aged 7-12. For Part 3 we’re going to look at our Spartan inspiration in more detail, and explore a modern agoge that’s been running for almost 20 years. We’ll look at how that agoge, and our schools in general, are preparing kids to start work in the 2020s. This might be a good one to read if you’ve had a few drinks and need to sober up really quickly.
Part 4 will look at some studies from child development and see what siblings who’ve been raised separately (so similar nature, different nurture) can teach us about how kids environments affect their personalities. Crucially, this is going to focus on the influence parents have on their kids’ development, and the limitations of that influence that parents, in my opinion, must learn to accept. There are times where we can make an impact and, as you’ll remember from your own childhood, times where we can’t.
To start this journey, we’re going back down to the southern US, to the steaming inner city of Houston and a community trapped in a cycle of poverty, crime and hopelessness. It probably shouldn’t surprise us that Texas was the home of the first Spartan agoge founded in America.
