Lyceum

The lyceum is a category of educational institution defined within the education system of many countries, mainly in Europe. The definition varies between countries; usually it is a type of secondary school.

History

"Lyceum" is a Latin rendering of the Ancient Greek Λύκειον ("Lykeion"), the name of a gymnasium in Classical Athens dedicated to Apollo Lyceus. This original Lyceum is remembered as the location of the peripatetic school of Aristotle. Some countries derive the name for their modern schools from the Latin but use the Greek name for the ancient school: for example, Dutch has "Lykeion" (ancient) and "Lyceum" (modern), both rendered "lyceum" in English (note that in classical Latin the "C" in lyceum was always pronounced as a K, not a soft C, as in modern English).

This name, Lycée, was retrieved and utilized by Napoleon in 1802 to name the main secondary education establishments. From France the name spread in many countries influenced by French culture.

By country

Asia

India

The Goa Lyceum (Portuguese: Liceu de Goa) in Panaji, Goa - established in 1854, following the Portuguese model - was the first public secondary school in the state, then a Portuguese territory. Later, the Goa Lyceum received the official title of Liceu Nacional Afonso de Albuquerque (Afonso de Albuquerque National Lyceum).

Lyceum (Classical)

The Lyceum (Ancient Greek: Λύκειον, Lykeion) was a gymnasium and before that a public meeting place in a grove of trees in Classical Athens. The grove was named in honor of its patron Apollo Lyceus ("Apollo as a wolf" or "Apollo in the form of a wolf"). Though best known for its connection with Aristotle, the Lyceum was in existence long before his founding the Peripatetic school there in 334 / 335 BCE and continued long after his flight from Athens in 323 BCE until the Roman general Sulla sacked Athens in 86 BCE.

The remains of the Lyceum were discovered in modern Athens in 1996 in a park behind the Hellenic Parliament.

The Lyceum before Aristotle

Speculation suggests that Pisistratus or Pericles may have originally initiated the building of the Lyceum as a gymnasium in the 6th or 5th centuries BCE, though the Lyceum grounds would have predated the gymnasium. In the early years of the Lyceum the head of the Greek army was said to have had an office there, which would have made it easy for him to be involved in the military training and exercises for which the grounds were used. The Lyceum’s use as a recreational gym and military training base is attested by the existence of wrestling rings, a racetrack, and seats for athlothetai, the judges of athletic events.

Lyceum (synchronous CMC software)

Lyceum is a synchronous computer-mediated communication (CMC) software which allows groups of people to speak to one another in real time over the Internet using Voice over IP conferencing.

Lyceum was developed at the Open University in the UK and was introduced into language tutorials in 2002. It also offers an interactive whiteboard (for writing, drawing and importing images, e.g. from the Web), a concept mapping device (for taking notes or writing short texts), a word processor (for jointly writing and editing longer documents) and a written text chat facility.

The software was written in Java, with some C code to integrate a third party native library used for the Voice over IP conferencing functionality.

Lyceum is compatible with the Windows 9x, Windows NT 4, Windows 2000 and Windows XP operating systems. Use of Lyceum on Windows Vista requires the installation of a software patch for Lyceum. Lyceum runs on 32-bit, but not 64-bit editions. It does not run on Mac OS X or Linux.