Pedagogue

• PostEagle
• April 21, 2016
• Word Etymology
• 0 Comments

Today’s word is PEDAGOGUE.

A PEDAGOGUE is a schoolteacher, an educator, one who instructs.

The Latin word – PAEDAGOGUS – means slave who supervised children and took them to and from school. Initially Plato believed that the real lessons were not learned in school but instead in settings of playfulness. He believed that the activity of children is what truly teaches and so he recommended that the guard’s children learn their lessons through play. The Greek words paidagogos, paideia, paidia and pais show a primary reference to the activity of children. The word pais directly translates to mean children. The word gogue translates to mean to lead. Therefore the word pedagogue was a person who walked alongside a child to a place of learning and returned with that child from that place of learning – not a place as in a school, but an activity of playfulness.