دانلود کتاب آموزش در اواخر باستان – چالش ها، پویایی و تفسیر مجدد، 300-550 پس از میلاد

Education can be a divisive issue. When the Gothic court at Ravenna in 526 ce debated the upbringing of King Athalaric, a serious conflict erupted. Athalaric was the grandson and successor of Theoderic the Great but, as a minor, still under the guardianship of his mother Amalasuintha. On one side of the divide was the boy’s mother, herself of sharp mind and well educated. If everything had gone according to her plans, Athalaric would have received a thorough training by mature experts in Latin grammar and letters, so as to adopt the lifestyle becoming for Roman nobles. On the other, a clique of powerful Goths mounted resistance. ‘Letters’, they asserted, ‘are widely separated from manliness, and the teachings of old men for the most part results in a cowardly and submissive mind.’ Alleging that already Theoderic had evinced dislike for literate education in favour of training in arms, they forced Amalasuintha to abandon the aspirations for her son and replace the three elderly tutors with the company of boys who were to share Athalaric’s life. From then on, the child king’s fate was sealed, as the Greek historian Procopius informs us. These lads, only a little older than Theoderic’s grandson, soon enticed him into drunkenness and debauchery, until any advice of his mother fell on deaf ears. But, as Edward Gibbon dryly remarked on Athalaric’s nature, ‘the pupil who is insensible of the benefits, must abhor the restraints, of education’.2