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Quintilian on the Child as a Learning Subject
- Classical World
- Classical Association of the Atlantic States
- Volume 105, Number 1, Fall 2011
- pp. 109-137
- 10.1353/clw.2011.0103
- Article
- Additional Information
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Quintilian communicates definite ideas about the educability of children. From the perspectives of the history of education and childhood, his innovation is a theory of the child as a learning subject. The child (consistently represented as the male, free puer) has a native mimetic ability lacking judgment but with a natural, almost bodily need for book learning. The teacher (not parent) shapes the child’s developing mind just as if he were writing a book from a clean slate. The maturation of the child is imagined not in biological or social terms but as a correlate to the process of writing.