Talk:List of oldest schools

I think this list will become unmanageable if we include all schools from the 1800s onwards. We need to set a limit. Should the list perhaps be confined to schools founded before 1700 or before 1600? Dahliarose (talk) 15:33, 7 October 2008 (UTC)

I went to Lincoln Christ's Hospital School, which proclaimed to have roots back until 1090. However, the realistic length of time the school had actual been operating as it is was more like 100 years. Therefore, there also needs to be a decision about what counts as the founding date of various schools 131.111.202.136 (talk) 17:05, 20 January 2009 (UTC)

What should go into this list ? Should it be deleted ?

It is unclear what this list is good for, what should go into this list and whether the most relevant (the oldest) entries will ever be added. The biggest problem with the current form of the list is that there are no references at all. In the current form, I propose deletion of this list.

It is clear that every pupil now adds HIS school (which he thinks is most important, of course), founded in 1823 (or wasnt there some mentioning from the 16th century?). Lots of schools have been added this way (and I see mostly UK schools, but there is also the (almost identical) list of UK schools http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_the_oldest_schools_in_the_United_Kingdom ). I further propose that each and every list entry MUST have a valid reference or it should be deleted (the "unreferenced" template seems to be on top of the article since a year now.).

Some words about the "missing content": The first known schools ? What about Babylon, Egypt, Greece, Rome ? They had schools for sure, e.g. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peripatetic_school Even if the list is closed at 1000 there are loads of schools to be added (there are some 10 or 20 other countries in the world that had schools a thousand years ago ...). You could say, only schools that are still active (and always have been), but thats again difficult to find out.

Summary:

• add the really old schools from egypt, china, greece,..
• get a reference for each entry

or DELETE THIS LIST. --89.27.217.18 (talk) 22:55, 13 March 2009 (UTC)

I've removed the proposed deletion tag. In response to your points: As the intro makes clear, this is a list of the oldest extant schools. If you are aware of any extant schools in former Babylon, please contribute them to the list. You are right that continuous activity may not always be straightforward, but reliable sourcing of claims should normally suffice. The list should have references, but many of the linked articles contain the references. Instead of immediately deleting the content some effort should be made to find, verify, and add the references here. The list has a natural cutoff point - currently the year 1600. If the list becomes too long this will probably be adjusted. As you've suggested most future additions are likely to be from outside the UK, so the list is likely to increasingly differ from the list of oldest UK schools. In summary, there seems to be no reason to prefer deletion over improvement. -- zzuuzz ^(talk) 00:06, 14 March 2009 (UTC)

Good list but there are many "extant" schools that have been around since the earliest in your list and before in other countries. I can think of China and India (I'm sure there are others) though I'm not very knowledgeable on these, but also in the Islamic world where "traditions" of learning were established at the outset of the religion and later on formalised into schools ("madrasas"), the culmination of which was the establishment of a "university" at Al Azhar in Cairo (still extant) in 970AD. I'll see what I can dig up with references but you may have to be ready to expand your definition of "school" since early Islamic systems and methods of learning and transmitting knoweldge followed a different philosophy and route than in the Christian west. This is if you intend to still keep this list in the first place.