66 votes

Were Egyptian Pharaohs literate?

First, a few general observations: The time period covered here is more than 3,000 years and we know very little about many of the Pharaohs. Also, there were different scripts which evolved over time ...
58 votes
Accepted

Why didn't Portugal found universities in its colonies like Spain?

SHORT ANSWER Spanish policy was rooted in the tradition of setting up universities in conquered territories, accompanied by the aim of converting the local people to Catholicism in order to bind them ...
56 votes
Accepted

How likely it is that a nobleman of the eighteenth century would give written instructions to his maids?

I think the answer to the headline question is "not very, which is why everyone thought Cavendish was a bit weird" :-) But focusing on the detailed question - from his entry in the revised ...
  • 9,062
48 votes
Accepted

When did "&" stop being taught alongside the alphabet?

Ironically, it seems to coincide with the addition of the very word 'ampersand' to the dictionaries. But the process took a while to complete and a precise date seems to be undeterminable, not in the ...
43 votes
Accepted

Where did Asian Americans go to school during the 'separate but equal' era?

Short Answer This really depended on several factors, including state, city, time, Asian origin and even international politics. Local housing regulations also influenced the schools that Asian ...
27 votes
Accepted

Who are the three men standing and what are they holding at this University of Paris Doctors' Meeting?

The three man are, also according to the text, the three rectors present at a faculty meeting. The staffs they are carrying are rectorial staffs ("Rektorstab"), symbolising their honour and ...
24 votes
Accepted

What is the history of the university asylum law?

This goes back to Frederick Barbarossa. He granted the university the so called scholar's privilege the privilegium scholasticum or authentica habita in 1150s. Full universities had to be granted ...
20 votes

Who taught Russian in Eastern-bloc satellite countries?

TL;DR Teachers were local. Instruction was good enough for the majority of the victims ;-) to read a simple text and understand slow direct speech. Why? The foreign/second language teachers all ...
  • 26.6k
20 votes
Accepted

What kind of education would a 12th/13th century English knight get?

First, let's remember that a knight is not just an armoured soldier on horseback; he is a knight precisely because of being in receipt of a knight's fee under knight-Service, with military (and/or ...
19 votes

Why were schoolchildren in the USA taught virtually nothing about the Holocaust during the fifties and sixties?

Both question and answer /comments appear very Americo-centric. I was born in 1949, just 2 years after the OP, and I cannot remember not knowing about the second world war and the atrocities. We did ...
  • 7,821
16 votes

Who taught Russian in Eastern-bloc satellite countries?

Anecdotal reports from friends suggest that in the German Democratic Republic, the teachers were mostly Germans.
  • 2,200
16 votes
Accepted

What did it mean to be a Grecian in late-18th Century British schools?

From the 1928 OED: Grecian: .... 2. One learned in the Greek language; a Greek scholar. [Attestations omitted] b. A boy in the highest class of Christ's Hospital (the Blue-coat school). Blue-Coat: ...
14 votes
Accepted

How did people apply for university in the 18th century?

Universities in Europe changed little during the early modern period and, in many respects, resembled the institutions of the late medieval period. At the beginning of the sixteenth century, ...
14 votes
Accepted

What happened to the undergrad students who attended the Feynman Lecture Series in 1961-63?

I'm going to address your question in two parts: 1. The accuracy of the claim that attendance dropped. 2. The effect that the lectures had on the attendees. Firstly, as you rightly hypothesised, ...
  • 403
12 votes
Accepted

How did the education system in Colonial North America work?

(There are quite a number of sources on the internet concerning colonial education, some of which are provided at the end for those who want more than the 'highlights' below.) The education available ...
12 votes
Accepted

What would a Roman education include in the years 77 - 85?

Among the best primary sources for this are Institutio Oratoria by Quintilian (c.35 to c.100 BC) and Dialogus de oratoribus, usually attributed to Tacitus (c.56 to c.100). Both of these are cited ...
11 votes

Why were schoolchildren in the USA taught virtually nothing about the Holocaust during the fifties and sixties?

There appears to be an explanation in the book Generations by (the late) William Strauss and Neil Howe. It has to do with kinds of people, specifically generations, that became teachers immediately ...
  • 104k
11 votes

What universities existed in Dutch East Indies, and how available were they to the native population?

SHORT ANSWER In 1901, there were two higher education institutes but neither was, at the time, truly comparable to Dutch universities. The first genuine university-level education was not available ...
11 votes
Accepted

Who taught Russian in Eastern-bloc satellite countries?

The USSR didn't send local teachers to the satellite countries. They probably could have done it: a quick demographic calculation shows, some thousands of native Russian teachers had been enough for ...
11 votes

Why did the GHQ not promote English during the occupation?

You can't "abolish" a language by decree. People can't just be ordered to forget how to speak, nor can they learn an entirely new language within a short period of time. As long as the language ...
  • 96.6k
10 votes
Accepted

What were the required conditions to be accepted by a university in Medieval times?

The minimal requirement to study the liberal arts seems to have been sufficient financial means to support yourself and pay the fees, which usually implied that you were of good (or at least moneyed) ...
  • 30.4k
10 votes
Accepted

How successfull were Albert Einstein's PhD mentees or children?

Einstein had no PhD students, although he did famously collaborate with junior colleagues on the EPR paradox. He had three children: Lieserl Her fate is unclear. She may well have died young, ...
  • 745
9 votes

Why did the US enact compulsory education?

From about the mid-19th century on, there were four distinct trends occurring that all motivated, in unison, the development of compulsory education. These trends occurred throughout all of Western ...
8 votes

How did Milton know about Egyptian gods like Osiris, Isis and Orus?

Because Hermes Trismegistus told him the secret of the sacred writing and he read the walls of the pyramids of Unas.  Just kidding. Plutarch and Diodorus Siculus both wrote long accounts of the ...
  • 37.6k
8 votes

What level of knowledge was required to enter medieval universities?

Entrance varied dramatically by time and place, with students enrolling at Oxford or Paris around the age of 14 to study the liberal arts, and at Bologna around the age of 30 to study law. ...
8 votes

What happened to the undergrad students who attended the Feynman Lecture Series in 1961-63?

As a member of "Feynman's Class" (You can see me in the Realites photo above: Top row, third from the right), I have often wondered why Caltech hasn't done an oral history project on this ...
8 votes

What have been the major milestones in the creation of state literacy policies?

It sounds like you are referring to compulsory education. By and large, compulsory education appears to be a trailing indicator of heavy literacy, not a leading one. In other words, once a critical ...
  • 114k
8 votes
Accepted

When was the term 'finishing school' first used?

Short answer As a term used to mean a school for preparing young women to enter fashionable society (or something similar), 'finishing school' seems to have already been in use in the late 1790s. ...
7 votes

Who taught Russian in Eastern-bloc satellite countries?

It was local teachers teaching Russian in Poland. Another interesting tidbit, is what happened when the USSR collapsed. I was born in 1980, and was lucky enough to be the first class of students who ...
  • 171

Only top scored, non community-wiki answers of a minimum length are eligible