Academic dishonesty

Academic dishonesty or academic misconduct is any type of cheating that occurs in relation to a formal academic exercise. It can include:

• Plagiarism - The adoption or reproduction of ideas or words or statements of another person without due acknowledgment.
• Self Plagiarism - The submission of the same work for academic credit more than once without permission.
• Fabrication - The falsification of data, information, or citations in any formal academic exercise.
• Deception - Providing false information to an instructor concerning a formal academic exercise, e.g. giving a false excuse for missing a deadline or falsely claiming to have submitted work.
• Cheating - Any attempt to give or obtain assistance in a formal academic exercise without due acknowledgment. Sabotage - Acting to prevent others from completing their work. This includes cutting pages out of library books or willfully disrupting the experiments of others.

Academic dishonesty has been documented in most every type of educational setting, from elementary school to graduate school, and has been met with varying degrees of approbation throughout history. Today, educated society tends to take a very negative view of academic dishonesty.

History of Academic Dishonesty

Academic dishonesty dates back to the first tests. Scholars note that cheating was prevalent on the Chinese civil service exams thousands of years ago, even when cheating carried the penalty of death for both examinee and examiner.[1] Before the founding of the MLA and the APA at end of the 19th century, there were no set rules on how to cite properly borrowings from others' writings, which may have caused many cases of plagiarism out of ignorance."[2].
In the late 1800s and early 1900s, cheating was widespread at college campuses in the United States, and was not considered dishonorable among students.[3] It has been estimated that as many as two-thirds of students cheated at some point of their college careers at the turn of the century. Fraternities often operated so-called essay mills, where term papers were kept on file and could be resubmitted over and over again by different students, often with the only change being the name on the paper. At that time, college students, usually white privileged men, were expected by their parents and by society to live the life of the young gentleman, and were required to fulfill a number of social obligations (make connections with the future elite, find a suitable mate, become independent) that were considered far more important than grades. Accordingly, cheating was commonly used by students to put more time towards fulfilling their social obligations at the expense of their academic ones. As higher education in the U.S. trended towards meritocracy, however, a greater emphasis was put on anti-cheating policies, and the newly diverse student bodies tended to arrive with a more negative view of academic dishonesty.

Academic dishonesty today

Academic dishonesty is endemic in all levels of education. In the United States, studies show that 20% of students started cheating in the first grade[4] Similarly, other studies reveal that currently in the U.S., 56% of middle school students and 70% of high school students have cheated.[5]The first scholarly studies in the 1960s of academic dishonesty in higher education found that nationally in the U.S., somewhere between 50%-70% of college students had cheated at least once.[6] While nationally, these rates of cheating in the U.S. remain stable today, there are large disparities between different schools, depending on the size, selectivity, and anti-cheating policies of the school. Generally, the smaller and more selective the college, the less cheating occurs there. For instance, the number of students who have engaged in academic dishonesty at small elite liberal arts colleges can be as low as 15%-20%, while cheating at large public universities can be as high as 75%.[7] Moreover, researchers have found that students who attend a school with an honor code are less likely to cheat than students at schools with other ways of enforcing academic integrity.[8] As for graduate education, a recent study found that 56% of MBA students admitted cheating, along with 54% of graduate students in engineering, 48% in education, and 45% in law.While research on academic dishonesty in other countries is minimal, anecdotal evidence suggests cheating could be even more common in countries like Japan.

• Plagiarism is the adoption or reproduction of the ideas or words or statements of another person without due acknowledgment. This can range from borrowing without attribution a particularly apt phrase, to paraphrasing someone else's original idea without citation, to wholesale contract cheating. When plagiarizing, students will often turn to the Internet, due the ease of copying and pasting from websites such as Wikipedia. Other more old fashioned forms of plagiarism such as paper mills and passing off obscure articles or chapters of books of others as original work also still occur. Plagiarized papers are often riddled with gross inconsistencies such as referencing non-existent sections of the essay, changes in spelling and grammar customs, or the argument changing in mid-paragraph.
• Self Plagiarism is the submission of the same work for academic credit more than once without permission. For instance, submitting the same paper to two different courses is an example of self plagiarism. The practice is sometimes acceptable if permission is sought ahead of time.
• Fabrication is the falsification of data, information, or citations in any formal academic exercise. This includes making up citations to back up arguments or inventing quotations. Fabrication predominates in the natural sciences, where students sometimes fudge numbers to make experiments "work". It includes data falsification, in which false claims are made about research performed, including selective submitting of results to exclude inconvenient data to generating bogus data.
• Deception is providing false information to a teacher/instructor concerning a formal academic exercise. Examples of this include taking more time on a take-home test than is allowed, giving a dishonest excuse when asking for a deadline extension, or falsely claiming to have submitted work. This type of academic misconduct is often considered softer than the more obvious forms of cheating, and otherwise honest students sometimes engage in this type of dishonesty without considering themselves cheaters. It is also sometimes done by students who have failed to complete an assignment to avoid detection for doing so.
• Sabotage is when a student prevents others from completing their work. This includes cutting pages out of library books or willfully disrupting the experiments of others. Sabotage is usually only found in highly competitive, cutthroat environments, such as at extremely elite schools where class rankings are highly prized.
• Cheating is any attempt to give or obtain assistance in a formal academic exercise without due acknowledgment. Cheating can take the form of crib notes, looking over someone's shoulder during an exam, or any forbidden sharing of information between students regarding an exam or exercise. Many elaborate methods of cheating have been developed over the years. For instance, students have been documented hiding notes in the bathroom toilet tank, in the brims of their baseball caps, or up their sleeves. Also, the storing of information in graphing calculators, pagers, cell phones, and other electronic devices has cropped up since the information revolution began. While students have long surreptitiously scanned the tests of those seated near them, some students actively try to aid those who are trying to cheat. Methods of secretly signaling the right answer to friends are quite varied, ranging from coded sneezes or pencil tapping to high pitched noises beyond the hearing range of most teachers. Cheating differs from most other forms of academic dishonesty, in that people can engage in it without benefiting themselves at all. For example, a student who illicitly telegraphed answers to a friend during a test would be cheating, even though the student's own work is in no way affected. Another example of academic dishonesty is a dialogue between students in the same class but in two different time periods, both of which a test is scheduled for that day. If the student in the earlier time period informs the other student in the later period about the test; that is considered academic dishonesty, even though the first student has not benefitted himself.

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Education psychology

Educational psychology is the study of how humans learn in educational settings, the effectiveness of educational interventions, the psychology of teaching, and the social psychology of schools as organizations. Although the terms "educational psychology" and "school psychology" are often used interchangeably, researchers and theorists are likely to be identified as educational psychologists, whereas practitioners in schools or school-related settings are identified as school psychologists. Educational psychology is concerned with the processes of educational attainment in the general population and in sub-populations such as gifted children and those with specific disabilities.

Educational psychology can in part be understood through its relationship with other disciplines. It is informed primarily by psychology, bearing a relationship to that discipline analogous to the relationship between medicine and biology. Educational psychology in turn informs a wide range of specialities within educational studies, including instructional design, educational technology, curriculum development, organizational learning, special education and classroom management. Educational psychology both draws from and contributes to cognitive science and the learning sciences. In universities, departments of educational psychology are usually housed within faculties of education, possibly accounting for the lack of representation of educational psychology content in introductory psychology textbooks (Lucas, Blazek, & Raley, 2006).

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Quadrivium

The quadrivium comprised the four subjects, or arts, taught in medieval universities after the trivium. The word is Latin, meaning "the four ways" or "the four roads": the completion of the liberal arts.
At many medieval universities, this would have been the course leading to the degree of Master of Arts (after the BA). After the MA the student could enter for Bachelor's degrees of the higher faculties, such as Music. To this day some of the postgraduate degree courses lead to the degree of Bachelor (the B.Phil and B.Litt degrees are examples in the field of philosophy, and the B.Mus remains a postgraduate qualification at Oxford and Cambridge universities).
In medieval educational theory, the quadrivium consisted of arithmetic, geometry, music, and astronomy. These followed the preparatory work of the trivium, made up of grammar, logic (or dialectic, as it was called at the times), and rhetoric. In turn, the quadrivium was considered preparatory work for the serious study of philosophy and theology.[1]
The subject of music within the quadrivium was originally the classical subject of harmonics, in particular the study of the proportions between the musical intervals created by the division of a monochord. A relationship to music as actually practised was not part of this study, but the framework of classical harmonics would substantially influence the content and structure of music theory as practised both in European and Islamic cultures.
In modern applications of the liberal arts as curriculum in colleges or universities, the quadrivium may be considered as the study of number and its relationship to physical space or time: arithmetic was pure number, geometry was number in space, music number in time, and astronomy number in space and time. Morris Kline classifies the four elements of the quadrivium as pure (arithmetic), stationary (geometry), moving (astronomy) and applied (music) number.[2]
This schema is sometimes referred to as classical education, but it is more accurately a development of the 12th and 13th centuries, with classical elements often recovered through Islamic classical scholarship, rather than an organic growth from the educational systems of antiquity.

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Trivium (education)

For the band of the same name, see Trivium (band).For any other uses see, see Trivium (disambiguation).In medieval universities, the trivium comprised the three subjects taught first: grammar, logic, and rhetoric. The word is a Latin term meaning “the three ways” or “the three roads” forming the foundation of a medieval liberal arts education.

Description
Grammar is the mechanics of a language; logic (or dialectic — logic and dialectic were synonymous at the time) is the "mechanics" of thought and analysis; rhetoric is the use of language to instruct and persuade. (As Latin was both a second language and the international language of scholarship and thought, it had to be learned intentionally and thoroughly.) These were considered preparatory fields for the quadrivium, which was made up of arithmetic, geometry, music, and astronomy. In turn, the quadrivium was considered preparatory work for the serious study of philosophy and theology. The trivium was the beginning of the liberal arts. At many medieval universities this would have been the principal undergraduate course


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Modern interpretations of classical education

Much of the current and modern renaissance of classical education is owed to the Dorothy Sayers essay "The Lost Tools of Learning", in which she describes the three stages of the trivium, grammar, logic and rhetoric, as tools by which a student can then analyze and master every other subject.
"The Well-Trained Mind: A Guide to Classical Education at Home," by Jessie Wise and Susan Wise Bauer (W.W. Norton, 1999), is a modern reference on classical education, particularly in a homeschool setting. It provides a history of classical education, an overview of the methodology and philosophy of classical education, and annotated lists of books, divided by grade and topic, that list the best books for classical education in each category.
"The Grammar of Our Civility: Classical Education in America," by Lee T. Pearcy (2005) provides a theoretical and historical account of classical education in the United States and suggests the need for a distinctly American approach to ancient Greece and Rome.
Marva Collins has successfully taught a rapid-fire classical education to inner-city deprived children, many of them labeled as "retarded."
Also of note is "A New Trivium and Quadrivium," an article by Dr. George Bugliarello (Bulletin of Science, Technology & Society, Vol. 23, No. 2, 106-113 (2003)). In it, he argues that the scope of the classical liberal education is inadequate for today's society, and that people should also be conversant with the basic facts of science and technology, since they now form a much more important part of our lives than did the tertiary studies of antiquity. He argues for a new synthesis of science, engineering, and the humanities in which there is a balance between what can be done and what ought to be done, between human desires and earthly consequences, and between our ever-increasing power to affect our surroundings and the ever-present danger of destroying the ecological and environmental systems which allow us to exist.
No discussion of classical education could be complete without mentioning Mortimer Adler and Robert Hutchins, both of the University of Chicago, who set forth in the 1930s to restore the "Great Books" of Western civilization to center stage in the curriculum. Although the standard classical works—such as the Harvard Classics—most widely available at the time, were decried by many as out of touch with modern times, Adler and Hutchins sought to expand on the standard "classics" by including more modern works, and by trying to tie them together in the context of what they described as the "Great Ideas," condensed into a "Syntopicon" index and bundled together with a new "five foot shelf" of books as "The Great Books of the Western World." They were wildly popular during the Fifties, and discussion groups of aficionados were found all over the USA, but their popularity waned during the Sixties and such groups are relatively hard to find today. Extensions to the original set are still being published, encompassing selections from both current and older works which extend the "great ideas" into the present age and other fields, including civil rights, the global environment, and discussions of multiculturalism and assimilation.
There still exist a number of informal groups and professional organizations which take the classical approach to education seriously, and who undertake it in earnest. Within the classical Christian education movement, David Hicks, author of Norms and Nobility, the Society for Classical Learning, the Association of Classical and Christian Schools, and the CiRCE Institute, founded by Andrew Kern, co-author with Gene Edward Veith of Classical Education: The Movement Sweeping America, play a leading role.
In addition to many middle-schools and high schools across the country, there are at present several universities or colleges in the United States wherein such an Oxonian classical education is taking place:
St. John's College (two campuses, one in MD and one in NM); Thomas Aquinas College in Santa Paula, CA; New Saint Andrews College in Moscow, ID; and, The Torrey Honors Institute at Biola University, in La Mirada, CA. Gutenberg College in Eugene, OR At each of these institutions some variation of the Canon of Western Great Books is used as the primary course material, and tutor-lead "Socratic discussions" are the primary vehicle for ingestion and digestion of the selected works.
A more traditional, but less common view of classical education arises from the ideology of the Renaissance, advocating an education grounded in the languages and literatures of Greece and Rome. The demanding and lengthy training period required for learing to read Greek and Latin texts in their original form has been crowded out in most American schools in favor of contemporary subjects. Latin is taught at some schools, but Greek rarely.

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Educational Philosophy

Classical education as understood and taught in the Middle Ages of Western culture is roughly based on the ancient Greek concept of Paideia. China had a completely different tradition of classical education, based in large part on Confucian and Taoist traditions. This article concerns the Western tradition.

The overall organization
Classical education developed many of the terms now used to describe modern education. Western classical education has three phases, each with a different purpose. The phases are roughly coordinated with human development, and would ideally be exactly coordinated with each individual student's development.
"Primary education" teaches students how to learn.
"Secondary education" then teaches a conceptual framework that can hold all human knowledge (history), and then fills in basic facts and practices of the major fields of knowledge, and develops the skills (perhaps in a simplified form) of every major human activity.
"Tertiary education" then prepares a person to pursue an educated profession, such as law, theology, military strategy, medicine or science.


Primary education
Primary education was often called the trivium, which covered grammar, logic, and rhetoric.
Logic and rhetoric was often taught in part by the Socratic method, in which the teacher raises questions and the class discusses them. By controlling the pace, the teacher can keep the class very lively, yet disciplined.


Grammar
Grammar consists of language skills such as reading and the mechanics of writing. An important goal of grammar is to acquire as many words and manage as many concepts as possible so as to be able to express and understand clearly concepts of varying degrees of complexity. Very young students can learn these by rote especially through the use of chant and song. Their minds are often referred to as "sponges", that easily absorb a large number of facts. Classical education traditionally included study of Latin and Greek, which greatly reinforced understanding of grammar, and the workings of a language, and so that students could read the Classics of Western Civilization in the words of the authors. In the modern renaissance of classical education, this period refers to the upper elementary school years.


Logic
Logic (dialectic) is the art of correct reasoning. The traditional text for teaching logic was Aristotle's Logic. In the modern renaissance of classical education, this logic stage (or dialectic stage) refers to the junior high or middle school aged student, who developementally is beginning to question ideas and authority, and truly enjoys a debate or an argument. Training in logic, both formal and informal, enables students to critically examine arguments and to analyze their own.

Rhetoric
Rhetoric debate and composition (which is the written form of rhetoric) are taught to somewhat older (often high school aged) students, who by this point in their education have the concepts and logic to criticize their own work and persuade others. According to Aristotle "Rhetoric is the counterpart of dialectic." It is concerned with finding "all the available means of persuasion." The student has learned to reason correctly in the Logic stage so that they can now apply those skills to Rhetoric. Students would read and emulate classical poets such as Ovid and others in learning how to present their arguments well.

Secondary education
Secondary education, classically the quadrivium or "four ways," classically taught astronomy, arithmetic, music and geometry, usually from Aristotle and Euclid. Sometimes architecture was taught, often from the works of Vitruvius.
History was always taught to provide a context, and show political and military development. The classic texts were from ancient authors such as Herodotus, Thucydides, Livy, Cicero and Tacitus.
Biographies were often assigned as well; the classic example being Plutarch's "Lives." Biographies help show how persons behave in their context, and the wide ranges of professions and options that exist. As more modern texts became available, these were often added to the curriculum.
In the Middle Ages, these were the best available texts. In modern terms, these fields might be called history, natural science, accounting and business, fine arts (at least two, one to amuse companions, and another to decorate one's domicile), military strategy and tactics, engineering, agronomy, and architecture.
These are taught in a matrix of history, reviewing the natural development of each field for each phase of the trivium. That is, in a perfect classical education, the historical study is reviewed three times: first to learn the grammar (the concepts, terms and skills in the order developed), next time the logic (how these elements could be assembled), and finally the rhetoric, how to produce good, humanly useful and beautiful objects that satisfy the grammar and logic of the field.
History is the unifying conceptual framework, because history is the study of everything that has occurred before the present. A skillful teacher also uses the historical context to show how each stage of development naturally poses questions and then how advances answer them, helping to understand human motives and activity in each field. The question-answer approach is called the "dialectic method," and permits history to be taught Socratically as well.
Classical educators consider the Socratic method to be the best technique for teaching critical thinking. In-class discussion and critiques are essential in order for students to recognize and internalize critical thinking techniques. This method is widely used to teach both philosophy and law. It is currently rare in other contexts. Basically, the teacher referees the students' discussions, asks leading questions, and may refer to facts, but never gives a conclusion until at least one student reaches that conclusion. The learning is most effective when the students compete strongly, even viciously in the argument, but always according to well-accepted rules of correct reasoning. That is, fallacies should not be allowed by the teacher.
By completing a project in each major field of human effort, the student can develop a personal preference for further education and professional training.


Tertiary education
Tertiary education was usually an apprenticeship to a person with the desired profession. Most often, the understudy was called a "secretary" and had the duty of carrying on all the normal business of the "master." Philosophy and Theology were both widely taught as tertiary subjects in Universities however.
The early biographies of nobles show probably the ultimate form of classical education: a tutor. One early, much-emulated classic example was that Alexander the Great was tutored by Aristotle.

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Classical education

Classical education as understood and taught in the Middle Ages of Western culture is roughly based on the ancient Greek concept of Paideia. China had a completely different tradition of classical education, based in large part on Confucian and Taoist traditions. This article concerns the Western tradition.

The overall organization
Classical education developed many of the terms now used to describe modern education. Western classical education has three phases, each with a different purpose. The phases are roughly coordinated with human development, and would ideally be exactly coordinated with each individual student's development.
"Primary education" teaches students how to learn.
"Secondary education" then teaches a conceptual framework that can hold all human knowledge (history), and then fills in basic facts and practices of the major fields of knowledge, and develops the skills (perhaps in a simplified form) of every major human activity.
"Tertiary education" then prepares a person to pursue an educated profession, such as law, theology, military strategy, medicine or science.


Primary education
Primary education was often called the trivium, which covered grammar, logic, and rhetoric.
Logic and rhetoric was often taught in part by the Socratic method, in which the teacher raises questions and the class discusses them. By controlling the pace, the teacher can keep the class very lively, yet disciplined.

Grammar
Grammar consists of language skills such as reading and the mechanics of writing. An important goal of grammar is to acquire as many words and manage as many concepts as possible so as to be able to express and understand clearly concepts of varying degrees of complexity. Very young students can learn these by rote especially through the use of chant and song. Their minds are often referred to as "sponges", that easily absorb a large number of facts. Classical education traditionally included study of Latin and Greek, which greatly reinforced understanding of grammar, and the workings of a language, and so that students could read the Classics of Western Civilization in the words of the authors. In the modern renaissance of classical education, this period refers to the upper elementary school years.

Logic
Logic (dialectic) is the art of correct reasoning. The traditional text for teaching logic was Aristotle's Logic. In the modern renaissance of classical education, this logic stage (or dialectic stage) refers to the junior high or middle school aged student, who developementally is beginning to question ideas and authority, and truly enjoys a debate or an argument. Training in logic, both formal and informal, enables students to critically examine arguments and to analyze their own.

Rhetoric
Rhetoric debate and composition (which is the written form of rhetoric) are taught to somewhat older (often high school aged) students, who by this point in their education have the concepts and logic to criticize their own work and persuade others. According to Aristotle "Rhetoric is the counterpart of dialectic." It is concerned with finding "all the available means of persuasion." The student has learned to reason correctly in the Logic stage so that they can now apply those skills to Rhetoric. Students would read and emulate classical poets such as Ovid and others in learning how to present their arguments well.

Secondary education
Secondary education, classically the quadrivium or "four ways," classically taught astronomy, arithmetic, music and geometry, usually from Aristotle and Euclid. Sometimes architecture was taught, often from the works of Vitruvius.
History was always taught to provide a context, and show political and military development. The classic texts were from ancient authors such as Herodotus, Thucydides, Livy, Cicero and Tacitus.
Biographies were often assigned as well; the classic example being Plutarch's "Lives." Biographies help show how persons behave in their context, and the wide ranges of professions and options that exist. As more modern texts became available, these were often added to the curriculum.
In the Middle Ages, these were the best available texts. In modern terms, these fields might be called history, natural science, accounting and business, fine arts (at least two, one to amuse companions, and another to decorate one's domicile), military strategy and tactics, engineering, agronomy, and architecture.
These are taught in a matrix of history, reviewing the natural development of each field for each phase of the trivium. That is, in a perfect classical education, the historical study is reviewed three times: first to learn the grammar (the concepts, terms and skills in the order developed), next time the logic (how these elements could be assembled), and finally the rhetoric, how to produce good, humanly useful and beautiful objects that satisfy the grammar and logic of the field.
History is the unifying conceptual framework, because history is the study of everything that has occurred before the present. A skillful teacher also uses the historical context to show how each stage of development naturally poses questions and then how advances answer them, helping to understand human motives and activity in each field. The question-answer approach is called the "dialectic method," and permits history to be taught Socratically as well.
Classical educators consider the Socratic method to be the best technique for teaching critical thinking. In-class discussion and critiques are essential in order for students to recognize and internalize critical thinking techniques. This method is widely used to teach both philosophy and law. It is currently rare in other contexts. Basically, the teacher referees the students' discussions, asks leading questions, and may refer to facts, but never gives a conclusion until at least one student reaches that conclusion. The learning is most effective when the students compete strongly, even viciously in the argument, but always according to well-accepted rules of correct reasoning. That is, fallacies should not be allowed by the teacher.
By completing a project in each major field of human effort, the student can develop a personal preference for further education and professional training.

Tertiary education
Tertiary education was usually an apprenticeship to a person with the desired profession. Most often, the understudy was called a "secretary" and had the duty of carrying on all the normal business of the "master." Philosophy and Theology were both widely taught as tertiary subjects in Universities however.
The early biographies of nobles show probably the ultimate form of classical education: a tutor. One early, much-emulated classic example was that Alexander the Great was tutored by Aristotle.

Modern interpretations of classical education
Much of the current and modern renaissance of classical education is owed to the Dorothy Sayers essay "The Lost Tools of Learning", in which she describes the three stages of the trivium, grammar, logic and rhetoric, as tools by which a student can then analyze and master every other subject.
"The Well-Trained Mind: A Guide to Classical Education at Home," by Jessie Wise and Susan Wise Bauer (W.W. Norton, 1999), is a modern reference on classical education, particularly in a homeschool setting. It provides a history of classical education, an overview of the methodology and philosophy of classical education, and annotated lists of books, divided by grade and topic, that list the best books for classical education in each category.
"The Grammar of Our Civility: Classical Education in America," by Lee T. Pearcy (2005) provides a theoretical and historical account of classical education in the United States and suggests the need for a distinctly American approach to ancient Greece and Rome.
Marva Collins has successfully taught a rapid-fire classical education to inner-city deprived children, many of them labeled as "retarded."
Also of note is "A New Trivium and Quadrivium," an article by Dr. George Bugliarello (Bulletin of Science, Technology & Society, Vol. 23, No. 2, 106-113 (2003)). In it, he argues that the scope of the classical liberal education is inadequate for today's society, and that people should also be conversant with the basic facts of science and technology, since they now form a much more important part of our lives than did the tertiary studies of antiquity. He argues for a new synthesis of science, engineering, and the humanities in which there is a balance between what can be done and what ought to be done, between human desires and earthly consequences, and between our ever-increasing power to affect our surroundings and the ever-present danger of destroying the ecological and environmental systems which allow us to exist.
No discussion of classical education could be complete without mentioning Mortimer Adler and Robert Hutchins, both of the University of Chicago, who set forth in the 1930s to restore the "Great Books" of Western civilization to center stage in the curriculum. Although the standard classical works—such as the Harvard Classics—most widely available at the time, were decried by many as out of touch with modern times, Adler and Hutchins sought to expand on the standard "classics" by including more modern works, and by trying to tie them together in the context of what they described as the "Great Ideas," condensed into a "Syntopicon" index and bundled together with a new "five foot shelf" of books as "The Great Books of the Western World." They were wildly popular during the Fifties, and discussion groups of aficionados were found all over the USA, but their popularity waned during the Sixties and such groups are relatively hard to find today. Extensions to the original set are still being published, encompassing selections from both current and older works which extend the "great ideas" into the present age and other fields, including civil rights, the global environment, and discussions of multiculturalism and assimilation.
There still exist a number of informal groups and professional organizations which take the classical approach to education seriously, and who undertake it in earnest. Within the classical Christian education movement, David Hicks, author of Norms and Nobility, the Society for Classical Learning, the Association of Classical and Christian Schools, and the CiRCE Institute, founded by Andrew Kern, co-author with Gene Edward Veith of Classical Education: The Movement Sweeping America, play a leading role.
In addition to many middle-schools and high schools across the country, there are at present several universities or colleges in the United States wherein such an Oxonian classical education is taking place:
St. John's College (two campuses, one in MD and one in NM); Thomas Aquinas College in Santa Paula, CA; New Saint Andrews College in Moscow, ID; and, The Torrey Honors Institute at Biola University, in La Mirada, CA. Gutenberg College in Eugene, OR At each of these institutions some variation of the Canon of Western Great Books is used as the primary course material, and tutor-lead "Socratic discussions" are the primary vehicle for ingestion and digestion of the selected works.
A more traditional, but less common view of classical education arises from the ideology of the Renaissance, advocating an education grounded in the languages and literatures of Greece and Rome. The demanding and lengthy training period required for learing to read Greek and Latin texts in their original form has been crowded out in most American schools in favor of contemporary subjects. Latin is taught at some schools, but Greek rarely.

Education System

Education encompasses teaching and learning specific skills, and also something less tangible but more profound: the imparting of knowledge, positive judgement and well-developed wisdom. Education has as one of its fundamental aspects the imparting of culture from generation to generation (see socialization). Education means 'to draw out', facilitating realisation of self-potential and latent talents of an individual. It is an application of pedagogy, a body of theoretical and applied research relating to teaching and learning and draws on many disciplines such as psychology, philosophy, computer science, linguistics, neuroscience, sociology and anthropology.
The education of an individual human begins at birth and continues throughout life. (Some believe that education begins even before birth, as evidenced by some parents' playing music or reading to the baby in the womb in the hope it will influence the child's development.) For some, the struggles and triumphs of daily life provide far more instruction than does formal schooling (thus Mark Twain's admonition to "never let school interfere with your education"). Family members may have a profound educational effect — often more profound than they realize — though family teaching may function very informally.
1. Education systems
Schooling occurs when society or a group or an individual sets up a curriculum to educate people, usually the young. Schooling can become systematic and thorough. Sometimes education systems can be used to promote doctrines or ideals as well as knowledge, and this can lead to abuse of the system.

1.1. Primary education
Primary or elementary education consists of the first years of formal, structured education that occur during childhood. In most countries, it is compulsory for children to receive primary education (though in many jurisdictions it is permissible for parents to provide it). Primary education generally begins when children are four to eight years of age. The division between primary and secondary education is somewhat arbitrary, but it generally occurs at about eleven or twelve years of age (adolescence); some educational systems have separate middle schools with the transition to the final stage of secondary education taking place at around the age of fourteen. In the United Kingdom, Ireland, New Zealand, Australia, South Africa, etc., schools which provide primary education are referred to as primary schools. Primary schools in these countries are often subdivided into infant schools and junior schools.

1.2. Secondary education
In most contemporary educational systems of the world, secondary education consists of the second years of formal education that occur during adolescence. It is characterised by transition from the typically compulsory, comprehensive primary education for minors to the optional, selective tertiary, "post-secondary", or "higher" education (e.g., university, vocational school) for adults. Depending on the system, schools for this period or a part of it may be called secondary or high schools, gymnasiums, lyceums, middle schools, colleges, or vocational schools. The exact meaning of any of these varies between the systems. The exact boundary between primary and secondary education varies from country to country and even within them, but is generally around the seventh to the tenth year of education. Secondary education occurs mainly during the teenage years. In the United States and Canada primary and secondary education together are sometimes referred to as K-12 education. The purpose of secondary education can be to give common knowledge, to prepare for either higher education or vocational education, or to train directly to a profession.

1.3. Higher education
Higher education, also called tertiary, third stage or post secondary education, often known as academia, is the non-compulsory educational level following the completion of a school providing a secondary education, such as a high school, secondary school, or gymnasium. Tertiary education is normally taken to include undergraduate and postgraduate education, as well as vocational education and training. Colleges and universities are the main institutions that provide tertiary education (sometimes known collectively as tertiary institutions). Examples of institutions that provide post-secondary education are vocational schools, community colleges and universities in the United States, the TAFEs in Australia, CEGEPs in Quebec,and the IEKs in Greece. They are sometimes known collectively as tertiary institutions. Tertiary education generally results in the receipt of certificates, diplomas, or academic degrees. Higher education includes teaching, research and social services activities of universities, and within the realm of teaching, it includes both the undergraduate level (sometimes referred to as tertiary education) and the graduate (or postgraduate) level (sometimes referred to as graduate school). In the United Kingdom post-secondary education below the level of higher education is referred to as further education. Higher education in that country generally involves work towards a degree-level or foundation degree qualification. In most developed countries a high proportion of the population (up to 50%) now enter higher education at some time in their lives. Higher education is therefore very important to national economies, both as a significant industry in its own right, and as a source of trained and educated personnel for the rest of the economy.

1.4. Adult education
Lifelong, or adult, education has become widespread in many countries. However, education is still seen by many as something aimed at children, and adult education is often branded as adult learning or lifelong learning. Adult education takes on many forms, from formal class-based learning to self-directed learning. Lending libraries provide inexpensive informal access to books and other self-instructional materials. The rise in computer ownership and internet access has given both adults and children greater access to both formal and informal education.

1.5. Alternative education
Alternative education, also known as non-traditional education or educational alternative, is a broad term which may be used to refer to all forms of education outside of traditional education (for all age groups and levels of education). This may include both forms of education designed for students with special needs (ranging from teenage pregnancy to intellectual disability) and forms of education designed for a general audience which employ alternative educational philosophies and/or methods.
Alternatives of the latter type are often the result of education reform and are rooted in various philosophies that are commonly fundamentally different from those of traditional compulsory education. While some have strong political, scholarly, or philosophical orientations, others are more informal associations of teachers and students dissatisfied with certain aspects of traditional education. These alternatives, which include charter schools, alternative schools, independent schools, and home-based learning vary widely, but often emphasize the value of small class size, close relationships between students and teachers, and a sense of community.
In certain places, especially in the United States, the term alternative may largely refer to forms of education catering to "at risk" students, as it is, for example, in this definition drafted by the Massachusetts Department of Education.

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