Education and learning is as old as man because once a child is born he starts learning. The world is an exciting and dangerous place and to cope and live here successfully one must understand the nature of things and learn to adapt to them accordingly. Failure to adapt or learn the way of the world and the nature will bring man against the forces of nature such as disease, naturaldisasters and adverse weather conditions. Our early ancestors lost many of their own kind to these adverseforces until they began to learn faster and then adapt faster as their understanding grew. What facilitated this speedy learning is formal education and what institutionalised formal education is the university system which is regarded as the highest seat of learning . Now the world has thousands of universities but the world didn’t begin with thousands of universities, this article is about those who began it all. This article is about the 3 oldest university in the world.
oldest university in the world
As children we startedlearning through child’s play, it was fun then they took the fun out of it by making it a requirement for acceptance into the social order or as a determinant of one’s place in that order. The early agrarian societies had little need for cerebral things but that changed when the first university was born, knowledge wasn’t for seers, gurus and masters anymore, and their apprentices. The first university in existence was university of Al-Karaouine opened in the year 859. Also written as al-Qarawiyyin. This university was located in Fez in present day Morocco. This university holds a Guinness book of record of being the oldest continuously operating university in the world as confirmed by UNESCO. The city of the university was home to one of the greatest Muslim enlightenment of its time and the school had students ranging in age from 13 to 30 years. The students were expected to have the koran completely in memory and other texts on grammar and of course have a good command of Arabic.
The second among the 3 oldest university in the world is the university of Bologna, referred in the Italianlanguage as Università di Bologna and is abbreviated as UNIBO. History has it that this university was founded in the year 1088 by a guild of students. It is one of the leading institutions of learning in Europe and the world and the number one in Italy even after all these years. It has about 5 campuses and 11,000 students now. It was essentially brought to life in the organised form of a university by foreignerswho lived in Italy then, who hired teachers to give them lectures on the important matters of the day. After some time all the private tutorial centres or schools came together to form the university or stadium.
The university of Oxford is considered the third oldest university in the world. The veritable school has as it motto; the lord is my light. The university of Oxford is the first university in the English speaking world but then lessons weren’t given in English but Latin. The university flourished when a ban was given by Henry II stoppingall English studentsfrom studying in Paris. The University is one of the most prestigious in the world . All the colleges in the university are self governed with its own peculiar internal structures.
location of oldest university in the English speaking world
The oldest university in the English speaking world is Oxford university and it is located in Oxford, in north East part of UK. It is among the 3 oldest university in the world . More information here
Conclusion
The world has advanced because of the knowledge that man has gained through the university education . This article has discussed the 3 oldest university in the world.
