I am quoting from Ancient Education and Today, by E.B. Castle
First comes the explanation of the synagogue and how adults and
not children were taught from the sacred books, the Law to the body of the people, which I am skipping over to get to the point. Basically the children's education was up to the parents, and not a Jewish controlled education, as the synagogue education was for adults. As Roman children's education also was up to the parents. Whereas the Greeks had public education for children, called gymnasiums.
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Even this firm foundation of religious conditioning failed to withstand the inroads of Hellenism into Jewish society. In the third century Greek settlements had appeared all over Palestine, even within the Holy City itself, and municpal government was organized on Greek models. In the second century the Jews of Alexandria had produced their own Greek version of the Old Testament, the Septuagint written by 'the seventy', for they had long ceased to speak their own language. Many Jews in Palestine fell before the blandishments of this new and attractive culture. For the young generation the most potent Hellenizing influence was the appearance in Jersalem of a Greek gymnasium, violently attractive to the gilded youth in its gay and sporting life, but equally seductive by the new learning it purveyed. To the horror of the pious, young men adopted the Greek practice of running in the games completely naked. It was the despicable Jason, 'that ungldly man and no high priest', who was responsibble for this betrayal. But this was the culmination of Greek influence, not the beginning. For the Hellenised Jews had become an even more dangerous enemy to Judaism than the Hellenized Egyptian monarchy that ruled Syria at this time. They were the fifth colunm, as the sordid intrigues recorded in the books of Maccabees make evident.
For a century Judaism was in jeopardy, but in the end the superb courage of the Chasidim and Pharasees, and solid fabric of popular adult education proved just sufficient to prevent disaster. The attempt of Antiochus Epiphanes ro eradicate Judaism by force precipeated the fiece natonalistic revolt of the Maccabees in 168 B.C., which resulted in the first separation of Jewish education from the Graeco-Roman world
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To get to the point, the Jews began educating their own children for the first time; to teach them to reject Hellenism and the ways of the world that were not the way of Judaism.