THE CLASSROOM AND THE COMPUTER SCREEN Online Education | Page 6

between teachers and students, even
the best private tutors cannot supply
the competition and cooperation that
students can experience within the
fellowship of a cohort.
Quintilian, the great Roman
teacher, promoted the principle of
fellowship in Quintilian
education. He understood that
argued for the the fellowship of a
principle by cohort provides
exposing the the comradery
shortcomings of an
needed to ward off
education the dullness of
delivered to one learning alone.
lonely student.
else flies to the opposite
extreme and becomes
puffed up with empty
conceit; for he who has
no standard of
comparison by which to
judge his own powers will
necessarily rate them too
high. Again when the
fruits of his study have to
be displayed to the public
gaze, our recluse is
blinded by the sun’s
glare, and finds
everything new and
unfamiliar, for though he
has learnt what is
required to be done in
public, his learning is but
the theory of a hermit. 5
Quintilian understood that the
fellowship of a cohort provides the
comradery needed to ward off the
This is the student who is cast away to
dullness of learning alone. It also
his own educational island; he learns
motivates a student to excel by driving
from his own private teacher, away
him to outdo his peers, or at the very
from the company of fellow students.
least, by working to keep up with them.
Quintilian called him “the pale student,
Through fellowship with others, a
the solitary and recluse,” and
student also sees a lesson through the
contrasted him with students
eyes of other students, which provides
privileged to study as part of a cohort.
depth and breadth to his
The practice of withdrawing a student
understanding. More than that,
from the presence of other students
because he identifies with the
“induces languor,” Quintilian warned,
perspectives of the fellow students
and the mind becomes
mildewed like things that
are left in the dark, or
around him, he is moved by the praise
Quintilian, Institutio Oratoria: Books I-
III, trans. H. E. Butler, vol. 1, Loeb Classical
Library (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University
Press, 1980), I.ii.18-19.
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