Education, Research, and Government in the Ancient Greek World
What is the purpose of education, who should provide it and who is its primary beneficiary: the person educated, or society as a whole? In the ancient as well as in the modern world, societies have answered these questions in different ways, shaping the futures of those societies. Different types of education in the ancient Greek world will be considered, focussing on the special relationship between education and democracy: do democracies foster education because it is a benefit for the masses, or because government by the uneducated is disastrous for everyone?
Professor Eleanor Dickey is a Professor of the Classics and Ancient History department at the University of Reading.
Professor Dickey is the departmental linguist, specialising in the history of the Latin and Greek languages (their development from Indo-European through the ancient languages we usually study to the modern Romance languages and modern Greek) and in how those languages were taught and analysed in antiquity. Her work is interdisciplinary, involving both Classics and linguistics.
She received a Marc Fitch Fund Small Research Grant from the British Academy in 2012, and has benefited from AHRC funding which has allowed her to trial Latin language textbooks in local schools.