From N.S. Gill,
Your Guide to Ancient / Classical History.
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In the 8th century B.C., Sparta needed more fertile land to support a booming population, so it decided to use the fertile land of its neighbors, the Messenians. At the end of a 20-year war, the Messenians became the Spartans' agricultural laborers, henceforth known as Helots. Eventually, the serf-like Helots rebelled, but by then the population problem in Sparta had been reversed. By the time Sparta won the Second Messenian War (perhaps in 640 B.C.), the Helots outnumbered the Spartans by possibly as much as 10 to 1.

Since the Spartans still wanted the Helots to labor for them, they had to devise some means of keeping them in check -- a Military State.

The Spartans were particularly formidable as soldiers because, as Herodotus says, they weren't entirely free.

One-against-one, they [sc. the Spartans] are as good as anyone in the world. But when they fight in a body, they are the best of all. For though they are free men, they are not entirely free. They accept Law as their master. And they respect this master more than your subjects respect you. Whatever he commands, they do. And his command never changes: It forbids them to flee in battle, whatever the number of their foes. He requires them to stand firm -- to conquer or die.
- From Herodotus' dialogue between Demaratos and Xerxes Book 7

Modern psychologists might approve of positive reinforcement and carrots rather than sticks, but the Spartans thought otherwise. Modesty and obedience followed peer beatings, according to this account by Xenophon:

[2.2] Lycurgus, on the contrary, instead of leaving each father to appoint a slave to act as tutor, gave the duty of controlling the boys to a member of the class from which the highest offices are filled, in fact to the "Warden" as he is called. He gave this person authority to gather the boys together, to take charge of them and to punish them severely in case of misconduct. He also assigned to him a staff of youths provided with whips to chastise them when necessary; and the result is that modesty and obedience are inseparable companions at Sparta.
From Xenophon Constitution of the Lacedaimonians 2.1

Education

Boys left their parents at age 7 to live in barracks, for the next 13 years, where they were under constant attention:

"In order that the boys might never lack a ruler even when the Warden was away, he gave authority to any citizen who chanced to be present to require them to do anything that he thought right, and to punish them for any misconduct. This had the effect of making the boys more respectful; in fact boys and men alike respect their rulers above everything. [2.11] And that a ruler might not be lacking to the boys even when no grown man happened to be present, he selected the keenest of the prefects, and gave to each the command of a division. And so at Sparta the boys are never without a ruler."
- From Xenophon Constitution of the Lacedaimonians 2.1

The Spartans' state-controlled education (agoge) was designed not to instill literacy, but fitness, obedience, and courage. Boys learned survival skills, to steal what they needed without getting caught and, under certain circumstances, to murder helots. Even as adults, men did not live with their wives, but ate at common messes with the other men of the syssition. They contributed a prescribed share of the provisions. If they failed, they were expelled from the syssiton and lost some of their citizenship rights.

Plutarch
"After they were twelve years old, they were no longer allowed to wear any undergarments, they had one coat to serve them a year; their bodies were hard and dry, with but little acquaintance of baths and unguents; these human indulgences they were allowed only on some few particular days in the year. They lodged together in little bands upon beds made of the rushes which grew by the banks of the river Eurotas, which they were to break off with their hands with a knife; if it were winter, they mingled some thistle-down with their rushes, which it was thought had the property of giving warmth."

• Sparta's System of Government
• Lycurgus

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