And its role in human life was insignificant, in terms of time and treasure. Few people were interested in it.
The ancient Greek schools were very informal, with students coming and going at will. Teaching was Socratic, i.e., in the form of question and answer. Socrates even rejected the professionalization of teaching, since he who pays the piper calls the tune.
Certainly, formal schooling existed within the Church, but it was largely for the formation of priests. The students were volunteers, and very small in number.
Until modern times, few rulers attempted compulsory schooling, because it was almost always resisted by wary parents.
With a handle like "St. Thomas Aquinas", you're going to tell me that even Catholic schooling is "bad".
The methodology of Catholic schooling today is bad. It is the methodology of nineteenth century schooling, the purpose of which "was to instill loyalty to the Crown and to train young men for the military and the bureaucracy," in accord with Fichte's dictum.
"If you want to influence [the student] at all, you must do more than merely talk to him; you must fashion him, and fashion him in such a way that he simply cannot will otherwise than what you wish him to will."The methodology is the message. Not the chalkboard lessons. It's easy to see why these schools quickly adopted the methodology of the behaviorists. Teacher colleges, including leading teacher colleges like Columbia, are the province of behaviorists to this day.
Sadly, Catholics adopted this model of schooling in response to several important societal movements in the nineteenth century.
Irish immigrants, who flooded the northeast following the potato famine, were regarded as a societal pestilence. To get the children of these immigrants off the streets, and to diminish the spread of Catholicism, many states implemented compulsory school attendance laws.
Because the existing schools were effectively Protestant, Catholics resisted. Bishops ordered the construction of schools for Catholic children, which mirrored the existing Protestant/Unitarian government schools.
To prevent tax dollars going to the support of these schools, many states attached Blaine amendments to their state constitutions, prohibiting the tax funding of private, i.e., Catholic, schools.
The methodology of compulsory schooling has remained largely unchanged since then, except for the elimination of every last vestige of Christianity.