Abstract
The centrality of schools
The centrality of the school explains why the State and the Church were particularly interested in it during the period we're looking at. The former paid increasing attention to teaching, and for this reason was the subject of legislation that intensified from Julian to Justinian, with the aim of bringing it into harmony with its needs (training efficient civil servants) and values (training teachers of good character).
As for the Church, it took an even greater interest in schools. It's true that the stakes are very high for the Church, as it is initially concerned with converting new generations to Christianity and, later, offering the children of Christians an education in line with its values. The Fathers of the Church began to reflect on what a Christian education should include in its lectures. Their thinking was not just theoretical. They were also, in specific contexts, teachers and had to grapple with the problem of instruction. They were confronted with the question of the form of their readings and its institutionalization.
School documentation : its biases and limitations (1)
How is all this reflected in papyrological documentation, which is best placed to give us the most concrete possible insight into the world of teaching through the numerous texts left by teachers and their pupils ? To study them, we first need to be aware of the biases and problems of delimitation and definition that this corpus poses. In the first place , it is not always easy to date school papyri as accurately as other papyrological documents, and to place them in their geographical and socio-cultural context (like most literary papyri) ; in the second , it is not always clear whether we are dealing with a master's model or a pupil's exercise.
