The end of Classical education (as H.I. Marrou knows it)

If there's one thing that bothers me more than anything about works of history it's when historians call the period after  the fall of Rome the "Dark Ages."

This bothers me because it's terribly biased towards Classical culture.

Sure, the invading peoples had no organized system of education or writing, but they weren't entirely ignorant. Theirs was just a different kind of knowledge and teaching. Besides, it's not like their leaders were such that they couldn't appreciate cultures other than their own. Marrou makes this clear, thankfully, when he writes of Theodoric of the Visigoths. Though he also repeatedly bemoans the threat that the invaders posed to Classical culture.

Matters of ridiculous bias aside, Marrou wraps things up nicely in his last two chapters. After a brief bit about the emergence of monastic schools, he then concludes with the idea that Classical culture lives on in the contemporary trivium/quadrivium (Arts and Sciences/Maths) educational structure. This sort of continuity is what I search for in history. But I can't help but wonder what would be different had Rome's invaders come into writing and the like on their own.

Overall, Marrou's style lends itself well to a work as long as A History of Education in Antiquity. He is, for the most part, straightforward and direct, but doesn't shy away from the odd exclamation point. Thus, his book is informative and perspective-broadening to some extent, while also possessing the personality of a serious, yet kindly, professor.