Question

Education in sparta: did the strengths outweigh the weaknesses?

Answer 1

As students of warfare trained to become soldier citizens their difficult, grueling training methods produced very loyal, hardened soldiers prepared for survival and military conflict however their intellectual education suffered and provided a key pitfall. As students of military might, they would have done well to take on more difficult intellectual studies, pursuing invention and engineering with expanded imagination could have provided a military minded state with stronger defense tools and supplies. With limited numbers and strict criteria for newborn health they would have found themselves at the mercy of sheer numbers and superior technology.