Mission

The Syllabus Institute strives to provide a syllabus stomping ground to the academic community with in‑depth and interactive resources relating to trends, best practices, accessibility, policy, solutions, and news in education. We are passionate about the dynamic role of the syllabus, and it’s time to build a knowledge base and community around it.

Origin of the Syllabus

It is said, that shortly after returning from exile around 58 B.C., approximately 15 years before his murder, Cicero sent a brief note to Atticus with the sole purpose of requesting his friend’s assistance in arranging his library. This letter, and a few others that followed it, became a source of conjecture about the specifics of bookmaking in classical Rome and Greece, as well as the etymology “syllabus.”

Cicero’s letters became the primary evidence for this particular Greek term, shrouded in uncertainty of whether Cicero writes “s…lluboj”or “sittÚbai”. While it seems a grammatical error is likely responsible for the confusion and variation that contributed to the creation of the term “syllabus” in humanist Latin and some modern European languages. The word was suitably reinterpreted or adapted in the 1650s to denote any kind of a concise summary or list of subdivisions in a text, a label for the papyrus role.

Modern Interpretation

According to dictionary.com, a syllabus is an outline or other brief statement of the main points of a discourse, the subjects of a course of lectures, the contents of a curriculum, etc.

Merriam-Webster (1913)
Syllabus: Syl”la*bus , n.; pl. E. Syllabuses, L. Syllabi.
1. A compendium containing the heads of a discourse, and the like; an abstract.

Wikipedia
A syllabus (from Latin syllabus “list” probably of Greek origin), is an outline and summary of topics to be covered in an education or training course. It is descriptive (unlike the prescriptive or specific curriculum). A syllabus (plural syllabi, or syllabuses) is often either set out by an exam board, or prepared by the professor who supervises or controls the course quality.

We would reference the Oxford English Dictionary as well, but you have to pay for a subscription. Regardless of origin, the syllabus was one of the first objects of teaching and still considered to be an integral foundation of the college course.