Primary Education in ancient time

[Noor E Alam]

Ancient time In this period the primary objective of education was based on spiritual development. Devotion, contemplation and self-control were required for this. According to the historians, a special type of primary education was common in the Vedic era. According to this concept there was practice of education in the Vedic era, but it was only temple-centered. Only monks had the rights to acquire knowledge and only they learned about worships. Besides, there were scope for learning agriculture, business and crafts etc for having a better life on earth. But probably in this subcontinent, the Aryan education began with the conversation of Vedas and this education of Vedic era is called 'Vedic education'. In the pre- Vedic era education was mostly based on religion and school was meant to be the house of the mentor or the 'Guru'. At that time, 'Brahmmachariya' or student life was divided in five stages and the timeline of education was continuously twelve years. At the first stage, children (age level-five) were made familiar with the alphabets. This was the foundation stage for primary education. After completion of this primary education, only one student was welcomed home with the love and affection as his own son. Considering the age and ability, the Mentor educated the apprentices about the spiritual theory gained by understanding. Knowledge acquired by this method was passed on in the same manner to the next appropriate ones by the apprentices. In the beginning, the educational theories were conserved as the individual family's possessions. Afterwards, eventually the apprentices from outsides also started to acquire this theoretical knowledge. As a result, the establishment of different branches in the Vedic education allowed its expansion. The theories of education in the preliminary stage were in the form of 'trastas' and were individual family's possession, but in course of time as the 'trastas' were of different kinds and multifarious, so to train the monks for enlightening others, different schools or training institutes started established in various places (around 1000-800 BC). Although the education system of Vedic era was not very-well ordered, the exercise of activities, culture, distinctive words in the language, phrases, thoughts etc. proves that the education system of that time was developed to a great extent. But only the 'Brahmanas' had the right to study religion, philosophy, art and culture, science and social institutions etc. and they received the most priority in the society. It is in this Vedic era when the great 'Mahabharata' and the 'Ramayana' originated.

Source:- http://en.banglapedia.org/index.php?title=Primary_Education