The Complete Aristotle (eng.)

bodies. Straining the voice has a
strengthening effect similar to that produced by the retention of
the breath in violent exertions. The Directors of Education should
have an eye to their bringing up, and in particular should take
care that they are left as little as possible with slaves. For
until they are seven years old they must five at home; and
therefore, even at this early age, it is to be expected that they
should acquire a taint of meanness from what they hear and see.
Indeed, there is nothing which the legislator should be more
careful to drive away than indecency of speech; for the light
utterance of shameful words leads soon to shameful actions. The
young especially should never be allowed to repeat or hear anything
of the sort. A freeman who is found saying or doing what is
forbidden, if he be too young as yet to have the privilege of
reclining at the public tables, should be disgraced and beaten, and
an elder person degraded as his slavish conduct deserves. And since
we do not allow improper language, clearly we should also banish
pictures or speeches from the stage which are indecent. Let the
rulers take care that there be no image or picture representing
unseemly actions, except in the temples of those Gods at whose
festivals the law permits even ribaldry, and whom the law also
permits to be worshipped by persons of mature age on behalf of
themselves, their children, and their wives. But the legislator
should not allow youth to be spectators of iambi or of comedy until
they are of an age to sit at the public tables and to drink strong
wine; by that time education will have armed them against the evil
influences of such representations.
    We have made these remarks in a cursory manner—they are enough
for the present occasion; but hereafter we will return to the
subject and after a fuller discussion determine whether such
liberty should or should not be granted, and in what way granted,
if at all. Theodorus, the tragic actor, was quite right in saying
that he would not allow any other actor, not even if he were quite
second-rate, to enter before himself, because the spectators grew
fond of the voices which they first heard. And the same principle
applies universally to association with things as well as with
persons, for we always like best whatever comes first. And
therefore youth should be kept strangers to all that is bad, and
especially to things which suggest vice or hate. When the five
years have passed away, during the two following years they must
look on at the pursuits which they are hereafter to learn. There
are two periods of life with reference to which education has to be
divided, from seven to the age of puberty, and onwards to the age
of one and twenty. The poets who divide ages by sevens are in the
main right: but we should observe the divisions actually made by
nature; for the deficiencies of nature are what art and education
seek to fill up.
    Let us then first inquire if any regulations are to be laid down
about children, and secondly, whether the care of them should be
the concern of the state or of private individuals, which latter is
in our own day the common custom, and in the third place, what
these regulations should be.

Politics, Book VIII
    Translated by Benjamin Jowett
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    div id="book8" class="book">
I
    No one will doubt that the legislator should direct his
attention above all to the education of youth; for the neglect of
education does harm to the constitution The citizen should be
molded to suit the form of government under which he lives. For
each government has a peculiar character which originally formed
and which continues to preserve it. The character of democracy
creates democracy, and the character of oligarchy creates
oligarchy; and always the better the character, the better the
government.
    Again, for the exercise of any faculty or art a previous
training and habituation are required; clearly therefore for the
practice of virtue. And since the whole city has one end, it is
manifest that education should be one and the same for all, and
that it should be public, and not private—not as at present, when
every one looks after his own children separately, and gives them
separate instruction of the sort which he thinks best; the training
in things which are of common interest should be the same for all.
Neither must we suppose that any one of the citizens belongs to
himself, for they all belong to the state, and are each of them a
part of the state, and the care of