Oral culture Vs Written culture in Academia

Essay by balanceheartUniversity, Bachelor'sA+, November 2006

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Long ago in Greece there was a line of great orators who would tell the tales of gods and great experience. Greece was an oral culture. What does that mean? If the culture was to survive it must be passed down from generation to generation by telling all that you knew. Social contact with people was very high. The ability to speak well to pass on your values, laws, and discoveries were all spoken as accurately as possible to preserve it for future generations.

There stories were not short and their memories were trained to be used like a computer. They had many ways of remembering all of this; because many did not write or read mnemonic devices were the answer. They learned that associations of the mind and their surroundings were one of the best ways to learn, teach and remember. For instance while speaking of a great story of Zeus the speaker would take you out into the field that Zeus would swoop down into as He snatched his woman.

The speaker would act out the part looking around making faces and voices as His teacher before him did. An story after story was laden with information about the gods and men; or merely when to plow the fields for the best harvest it was told to you, acted out, or experienced with the tale.

Much later in this country schools began to pop up for children as well as adults. They were divinity schools. These were schools that were supposed to prepare the student to become a priest and go out into the world. As life was almost always very hard in these times women worked as well as the men often in factories just to survive. It didn't take long after that for a boy...