Schools and Academies

For other uses, see School (disambiguation).

Schools Portal

American high school students in a school

A school is most commonly a place designated for learning. The range of institutions covered by the term varies from country to country.

In the United Kingdom, the term school refers primarily to pre-university institutions, and these can, for the most part, be divided into primary schools (sometimes further divided into infant school and junior school), and secondary schools. School performance is monitored by Her Majesty's Inspectorate of Education.

Japanese secondary school students in uniform.

In North America, the term school can refer to any institute of education, at any level, and covers all of the following: preschool (for toddlers), kindergarten, elementary school, middle school (also called intermediate school or junior high school, depending on specific age groups and geographic region), high school, college, university, and graduate school. In the US, school performance through high school is monitored by each state's Department of Education. Many of the earlier public schools in the United States were one-room schools where a single teacher taught seven grades of boys and girls in the same classroom. Beginning in the 1920s, one-room schools were consolidated into multiple classroom facilities with transportation increasingly provided by kid hacks and school buses.

In both, a school may also be a partially autonomous or indeed entirely separate institution, not necessarily a part of a system of compulsory public education at all, dedicated to learning within one particular field, such as a school of economics (e.g. the London School of Economics), a school of dance, or a school of journalism.

A madrassa in the Gambia

In much of continental Europe, the term school usually applies to primary education, with primary schools that last between six and nine years, depending on the country. It also applies to secondary education, with secondary schools often divided between Gymnasiums and vocational schools, which again depending on country and type of school take between three and six years. The term school is rarely used for tertiary education, except for some upper or high schools (German: Hochschule) which are more accurately translated as colleges.

Records

The King's School, in Canterbury in the south east of England, may be the oldest existing school in the world. It was founded in 597 AD.

Criticism

During the twentieth century traditional schools have been the target of widespread criticism. The French sociologist Pierre Bourdieu in his book Distinction: A Social Critique of the Judgement of Taste showed how schools help to reproduce class structure. Schools were accused of inhibiting rather than promoting the learning of children, basically by creating fear. People like A.S. Neill tried to create more libertarian schools (Summerhill) while others like John Holt saw home schooling as an alternative.

Bullying

Bullying can be a common problem within many schools, which can sometimes create emotional problems. Programs to target bullying have often been introduced, and some states have changed laws to make it illegal. For the most part though, bullying is a very second rate problem compared to many problems on hand.

External links

Pro-school

• greatschools.net
• eschoolsearch.com

Against school

• John Taylor Gatto, former New York State & New York City Teacher of the Year
• School Survival - Support site for kids who hate school

Others

• Tutors Network

Raphael's portrait of Plato, a detail of The School of Athens fresco

An academy is an institution for the study of (usually) higher learning.

The name Academy rose from Plato's Athenian school of philosophy, founded in approximately 385 BC.

The term is also used for various other institutions in modern times (see below).

The original Academy

Before the Akademeia was a school, however, even before Cimon enclosed its precincts with a wall (Plutarch Life of Cimon xiii:7), it contained a sacred grove of olive trees outside the city walls of ancient Athens (Thucydides ii:34). The archaic name for the site was Hekademeia, which by classical times evolved into Akademeia and was explained, at least as early as the beginning of the 6th century BC, by linking it to an eponymous Athenian hero, a legendary "Akademos".

The site of the Academy was sacred to Athena and other immortals; it had sheltered a religious cult since the Bronze Age, a cult that was perhaps associated with the hero-gods the Dioskouroi (Castor and Polydeukes), for the hero Akademos associated with the site was credited with revealing to the Divine Twins where Theseus had hidden Helen. Out of respect for its association with the Dioskouri, the Spartans would not ravage these original "groves of Academe" when they invaded Attica (Plutarch, Life of Theseus xxxii), a piety not shared by the Roman Sulla, who axed the sacred olive trees in 86 BC to build siege engines.

Among the religious observations that took place at the Akademeia was a torchlit night race from altars within the city to the Promemeikos altar in the Akademeia. Funeral games also took place in the area as well as a Dionysiac procession from Athens to the Hekademeia and then back to the polis (Paus. i 29.2, 30.2; Plut. Vit. Sol. i 7). The road to Akademeia was lined with the gravestones of Athenians.

The Platonic Academy is usually contrasted with Aristotle's own creation, the Peripatetics.

Famous philosophers entrusted with running the Academy include Arcesilaus, Speusippus, Xenocrates and Proclus.

The revived neoplatonic Academy of Late Antiquity

After a lapse during the early Roman occupation, the Academy was refounded (Cameron 1965) as a new institution of some outstanding Platonists of late antiquity who called themselves "successors" (diadochoi, but of Plato) and presented themselves as an uninterrupted tradition reaching back to Plato. There cannot really have been any geographical, institutional, economic or personal continuity with the original Academy in the new organizational entity (Bechtle).

The last "Greek" philosophers of the revived Academy in the 6th century were drawn from variouis parts of the Hellenistic cultural world and suggest the broad syncretism of the common culture (see koine): Five of the seven Academy philosophers mentioned by Agathias were Syriac in their cultural origin: Hermias and Diogenes (both from Phoenicia), Isidorus of Gaza, Damascius of Syria, Iamblichus of Coele-Syria and perhaps even Simplicius of Cilicia himself (Thiele).

The emperor Justinian closed the school in AD 529, a date that is often cited for the end of Antiquity. According to the sole witness, the historian Agathias, its remaining members looked for protection under the rule of Sassanid king Khosrau I in his capital at Ctesiphon, carrying with them precious scrolls of literature and philosophy, and to a lesser degree of science. After a peace treaty between the Persian and the Byzantine empire in 532 guaranteed their personal security (an early document in the history of freedom of religion), some members found sanctuary in the pagan stronghold of Harran, near Edessa. One of the last leading figures of this group was Simplicius, a pupil of Damascius, the last head of the Athenian school. The students of the Academy-in-exile, an authentic and important Neoplatonic school surviving at least until the 10th century, contributed to the Islamic preservation of Greek science and medicine, when Islamic forces took the area in the 7th century (Thiele). One of the earliest academies established in the east was the 7th century Academy of Gundishapur in Sassanid Persia.

Raphael painted a famous fresco depicting "The School of Athens" in the 16th century.

The site of the Academy was rediscovered in the 20th century; considerable excavation has been accomplished. The Church of St. Triton on Kolokynthou Street, Athens, occupies the southern corner of the Academy, confirmed in 1966 by the discovery of a boundary stone dated to 500 BC.

Modern use of the term academy

The Academy, next to the University of Athens and the National Library forming 'the Trilogy', designed by Schinkel's Danish pupil Theofil Hansen, 1885, in Greek Ionic, academically correct even to the polychrome sculpture.

Because of the tradition of intellectual brilliance associated with this institution, many groups have chosen to use the word "Academy" in their name.

During the Florentine Renaissance, Cosimo de' Medici took a personal interest in the new Platonic Academy that he determined to re-establish in 1439, centered on the marvellous promise shown by Marsilio Ficino, scarcely more than a lad. Cosimo had been inspired by the arrival at the otherwise ineffective Council of Florence of Gemistos Plethon, who seemed like a Plato reborn to the Florentine intellectuals. In 1462 Cosimo gave Ficino a villa at Careggi for the Academy's use, situated where Cosimo could descry it from his own villa. The Renaissance drew potent intellectual and spiritual strength from the academy at Careggi. During the course of the following century many Italian cities established an Academy, of which the oldest survivor is the Accademia dei Lincei of Rome, which became a national academy for a reunited Italy. Other national academies include the Académie Francaise; the Royal Academy of the United Kingdom; the International Academy of Science, the United States Military Academy at West Point, NY; the United States Naval Academy. In emulation of the military academies, police in the United States are trained in police academies. The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences presents the annual Academy awards.

A fundamental feature of academic discipline in those academies that were training-schools for artists was regular practice in making accurate drawings from antiquities, or from casts of antiquities, on the one hand, and on the other, in deriving inspiration from the other fount, the human form. Students assembled in sessions drawing the draped and undraped human form, and such drawings, which survive in the tens of thousands from the 17th through the 19th century, are termed académies.

In the early 19th century "academy" took the connotations that "gymnasium" was acquiring in German-speaking lands, of school that was less advanced than a college (for which it might prepare students) but considerably more than elementary. An early example are the two academies founded at Andover and Phillips Exeter Academy. Amherst Academy expanded with time to form Amherst College.

Mozart organized public subscription performances of his music in Vienna in the 1780s and 1790s, he called the concerts "academies." This usage in musical terms survives in the concert orchestra Academy of St Martin in the Fields and in the Brixton Academy, a concert hall in Brixton, South London.

Academies proliferated in the 20th century until even a three-week series of lectures and discussions would be termed an "academy." In addition, the generic term "the academy" is sometimes used to refer to all of academia, which is sometimes considered a global successor to the Academy of Athens.

See also: national academy, list of honorary societies, academician, military academy

Honorary Academy

See the Académie Française and its many emulaters among national honorary academies of strictly limited membership..

Research Academy

In Imperial Russia and Soviet Union the term "academy", or Academy of Sciences was reserved to denote a state research establishment, see Russian Academy of Sciences. The latter one still exists in the Russian Federation, although other types of academies (study and honorary) appeared as well.

English school type

In England Academies are a type of secondary school introduced in the early years of the 21st century. They are mainly state funded but administratively autonomous. They were briefly known as "City Academies".

External links

• Christopher Planeaux' history of the site of the Academy
• Site of the Academy rediscovered (needs better site linked)
• Site of the Academy
• The Demosion Sema along the road to the Academy
• Film Academy
• The Academy at Charlemont

Reference

• Allen Cameron, "The last days of the Academy at Athens," in Proceedings of the Cambridge Philological Society vol 195 (n.s. 15), 1969, pp 7-29.
• Gerald Bechtle, Bryn Mawr Classical Review of Rainer Thiel, Simplikios und das Ende der neuplatonischen Schule in Athen. Stuttgart, 1999 (in English).
• John Glucker, Antiochus and the Late Academy, Göttingen 1978.
  • Francis Haskell and Nicholas Penny, 1981. Taste and the Antique: The Lure of Classical Sculpture, 1500-1900 (New Haven: Yale University Press)