Learning theorists

John Amos Comenius was a Czech educator who promoted ‘universal education’ to solve the problem of human and religious conflict.

Desiderius Erasmus was a truly European figure, having worked in the Netherlands, Belgium, Germany, Italy, Switzerland, France and England.

Calvin, with Luther, was a hugely influential Protestant reformer who attacked the Catholic Church and worked towards a return to a more basic form of Christianity, based on a personal relationship between God the creator, scripture and his subjects.

In Martin Luther’s call for universal education, literacy was part of his programme for ‘reformation’.

Ignatius Loyola was a Basque soldier turned priest who formed the Jesuits, or Society of Jesus, a missionary order driven by a military-type zeal to spread the Catholic faith.

Although a critic of Al-Ghazzali, Ibn Tufayl follows through in this tradition of educational enlightenment in another part of the Muslim world, modern Spain, in Granada.

Al-Ghazzalis was a renowned Muslim scholar, in an age where education, knowledge and scientific endeavour were greatly valued, encouraged and practiced in the Muslim world.

Augustine was a towering figure in Christian thought throughout the Dark Ages, as he helped transform the world of absolute forms and the world of representation into earthy and heavenly realms, Platonism into Christian theology.

It is claimed that Mohammed was illiterate and the Koran literally the word of God, transcribed by others from his revelations.

Jesus, as a teacher, was primarily a man of action but in terms of instruction it was his powerful parables and sermons that stand out in the Gospels.

The Buddha lived across the sixth and fifth centuries BC, although the exact dates are disputed.

Like Plato and Aristotle, Confucius (551-479 BC) had his own school, which he started in 552BC.

Moses is a seminal figure in the religious traditions of Judaism but also Christianity, and Islam.

Hypatia (360 - 415 AD) of Alexandria was a renowned philosopher, astronomer, and mathematician in ancient Alexandria.

Euclid (~ 300 BC) A parallel figure in the foreground of Raphael’s fresco, on the right is Euclid, from the Greek colony Alexandria in Egypt, by far the most important Greek mathematician, leaning down to demonstrate his mathematical proofs, on what looks…

Teacher to Alexander the Great and Plato’s pupil, Aristotle is in some ways a more important educational theorist and philosopher than Socrates or Plato.

It is through Plato that we know Socrates, but Plato is no mere mouthpiece.

Socrates was one of the few teachers who died for his craft, executed by the Athenian authorities for supposedly corrupting the youth.

Pre-Socratics Although subjected to criticism, even ridicule by Plato, who used them as a foil in his Socratic dialogues, the Sophists were arguably the first professionally paid teachers, who travelled from city to city during the 5th century BC teaching…

Egypt In parallel, Egyptian Civilization (c. 3100 - 30 BC), saw hieroglyphic writing emerge around 3200 BCE, contemporaneous with or slightly after the earliest Sumerian writing.

Sumerians The Sumerian Civilization (c. 4500 - 1900 BC) saw the earliest form of writing around 3200 BC.

It is clear that the brain is an evolved organ with evolved cognitive features such as sensory apparatus and the structure and process of memory.