Sparta vs. Athens

In my opinion Sparta and Athens are both equally corrupt. In American schools it is common for Sparta to be created as the "bad" city-state and Athens to be portrayed as the knowledgable one. My reasoning is Athens was the city-state that taught and tried to personally better themselves educationally. The teachers who are teaching Ancient Greek history mostly agree with this method of teaching and learning and that is why they work at schools. So according to my reasoning, Athens is automatically the good guy. If you compare Athenian direct democracy to American representative democracy today you will find major flaws within the system. Athenian democracy immediately eliminates slaves and women as candidates for cititzens. Before Pericles foreigners were rarely offered cititzenship although Athens greatly profited from foreigners crafts and goods. Socrates is a great example of the backstabbing side of Athenian democracy. Even assemblymen who argued Socrates was innocent called for his death. In Athenian democracy (and arguably today also) this method of government can be persuasive and pressuring beyond natural amounts. Many historians believe that Athen's democracy was the first in the history of the world. If you look at the world today where there are cases of moderately uncorrupt democracies such as the United States, countries such as Iraq cannot even become democratic. This shows that one of the first democracies could hardly be anything but barely democratic in those days and ages. Sparta, however is very open about it's control. Everything was ordered by the two kings and his advisors with no say from the people. Boys were sent to the barracks at age 7 and taught to steal. But is that so much worse as a so called fair democracy which really contains and premotes and sly behavior. Naturally, democracy is a form of government that promotes corruptness. People are all supposed to have a say in the government, but naturally some people want more of a say then others. People are voted on to represent the people, but what if those representatives put on a fake front for the public. Really, without strict rules and restrictions it is hard for a democracy to become what it is supposed to be: government by the people. Women in Greece is an example of how Athenian democracy was limiting. Women were forced by society to stay secluded in doors and leave all political activities to their husband. Athenian democracy was direct and therefore they could not take into consideration every person in Athens' view. Therefore Athens had to restrict who could be cititzens or not and created a very unequal political system. Women in Sparta however had much bigger opportunities in Greece and had much more freedom. In all these ways Sparta and Athens are mostly the same in the amount of equality and virtuosity they offered.